קאווע שטיבל

Abraham's attempted sacrifice of his son Isaac (as given in Genesis) and Jephthah's actual sacrifice of his daughter (as given in Judges), can be viewed as two-person games played by the fathers with God. Different interpretations of these games suggest there is a trade-off between "Faith" and "Rationality": the more sophisticated the rationality calculations biblical characters make, the less need for them to have blind faith in God to achieve their goals. Thus, as the faith of a character wavers, his rationality may sustain him - but not necessarily if he deviates seriously and God is unsympathetic

One conclusion I draw from these stories is that "rational" interpretations of biblical actions are no more farfetched than "faith" interpretations. In fact, I would argue that a more mundane, rational explanation, precisely because it does not assume of biblical characters super-human righteousness in the face of adversity, is more credible. This is not to say, however, that faith is irrational. On the contrary, being faithful means having preferences such that one's rational strategy is independent of the strategy of other players - that is, one's own values completely determine how one acts

In the Constraint Game, God may or may not impose constraints on Adam and Eve, who may or may not adhere to them if they are imposed. This game is complicated by the wily serpent in a contemporaneous Temptation Game, who successfully tempts Eve. She in turn inveigles Adam into eating from the forbidden fruit

We never learn why the serpent wished to tempt Eve, but in the end Eve falls prey to its powers of persuasion. Might the serpent be a Satanlike creature that God finds convenient to make His evil surrogate for testing Adam and Eve?

This hypothesis is rendered plausible if God wants Adam and Eve to disobey Him in order to set an example that violation of His commands carries serious consequences. But the fact that God does not kill Adam and Eve for their sins, as He had threatened to do, suggests that He wanted them to fail in order to be able to promulgate both His power and His mercy in punishing them but sparing their lives

God’s real concern, it seems, was that if Adam and Eve ate with impunity from the tree of knowledge of good and bad, they would become godlike and so too much like Him. As a consequence, they might be able to challenge His dominion over all living things

But God also makes clear His vulnerability — in particular, that a thin line separates Him from them, based on His possessing a kind of moral knowledge. He does not want to share it with humans, it appears, lest they be able to mimic Him. Ironically, however, God’s moral superiority is challenged in later stories by the evil that He sanctions

The three Testing Games highlight this issue. In Testing Game 1, God asks Abraham to prepare Isaac, his son, for a burnt offering. Abraham is obedient to a fault, so the test is successful: Abraham proves himself willing to do something awful, without a peep of objection, and, consequently, Isaac’s sacrifice is arrested by the intervention of an angel

Does this signify that Abraham had complete faith in God and the superiority of His moral judgment? As I reconstructed the players’ choices and preferences in Testing Game 1, Abraham could surmise that God has a dominant strategy of reneging on His command to sacrifice Isaac. Supposing that God will choose it, Abraham can afford not to choose his own dominant strategy of disobeying God. Instead' he can heed God’s command for a sacrifice, which yields an NME [Nonmyopic Equilibrium] that is not the Nash equilibrium

But there is a second NME, whereby Abraham obeys God’s command and God reneges on His demand that Isaac be sacrificed. However, it occurs only if play starts at this outcome, which one might argue it did when Abraham prepares Isaac for sacrifice

God can implement this NME if He has moving power. However, its invocation is not necessary if Abraham anticipates that God will renege on His command, based on God’s promise that Abraham will found a great nation and have multitudinous descendants

Obviously, this cannot happen if Abraham kills Isaac. Abraham, therefore, can afford to forsake his dominant strategy of disobedience, knowing that Isaac will almost surely be saved and this will please God

On the one hand, if Abraham outwitted God in this manner, we might question whether God is really the superior player. On the other hand, it seems plausible that God could anticipate that Abraham would make this kind of calculation, in which case God would know that His testing of Abraham is not genuine. If this is the case, can God be considered morally superior if He knows His test has been adulterated, and the results are bogus?

In Testing Game 3, Job is a paragon of righteousness at the outset, but God still permits him to be tested by Satan. This time, it is the afflicted player, Job, who eventually succeeds. However, he suffers mightily before triumphing over Satan, in part because, while faltering, he never loses his faith in God entirely. One can say that God is vindicated, obtaining His best outcome, but Job does not do so well when he must endure the worst depredations of Satan. Although Satan loses his wager with God, he apparently survives to another day to test other human players

In summary, the people tested by God or Satan all survive their tests, but their experiences are bittersweet:
• Abraham saves Isaac, but there may well be repercussions in their father-son relationship over Abraham’s apparent willingness to sacrifice his son

• Job is rewarded with a new family and great riches, but is that really recompense for being severely tested, and losing everything, in order that God can win a wager?

All these stories put God’s ethics under scrutiny, which casts doubt on whether He can be considered on a morally higher plane than those He tests

I consider the choice, as formulated by Pascal, about whether to believe or not believe in God. Although biblical characters almost never doubted the existence of God, some, such as Pharaoh, questioned whether He had the supernatural powers attributed to Him

Pascal analyzed, from a decision-theoretic viewpoint, the consequences of P’s choice when she takes into account the penalties and rewards associated with each of two states — that God exists or does not exist. This became known as Pascal’s wager, although Pascal never suggested that betting actually take place

From a pragmatic, if not secular, perspective, Pascal concluded that belief in God is justified — even if there is only a small probability that He exists — because of the horrific consequences of not believing when, in fact, He exists. Pascal even recommended that P [person] adhere to rituals that reinforce her belief, especially if she thought that she might waver

I amended Pascal’s wager in the Search Decision to include the possibility that the existence of God, whom I subsequently refer to as SB [Superior Being], might be indeterminate. With the inclusion of this option, P does not have a dominant strategy and, therefore, cannot make the relatively easy choice that Pascal’s wager affords her

In the Search Decision, an agnostic might wish to continue searching — though this could prove costly in terms of time, mental effort, or emotional energy — so it seemed reasonable to postulate as a state of nature that SB’s existence could be indeterminate. In the related Concern Decision, wherein P must decide whether to be concerned about the choice she makes, there is a similar problem: Whether P benefits or not depends on whether SB is aware of, and cares about, P. Not knowing the answer to this question, P is left in a quandary

The P that I assume in these decisions, based on her preferences, is neither a believer nor a skeptic but rather someone eager to find answers, unavailing as they may be. In my opinion, the decisiontheoretic framework helps to show why P’s choices are difficult and may leave her vexed and anxious

SB is a player, whose existence and behavior cannot be described as simply a state of nature. Like P, SB makes choices to advance his goals; furthermore, it behooves both P and SB to try to take into account the other player’s preferences in deciding on a rational strategy

In both Belief Games, SB’s strategies are either to reveal himself or not to do so, and P’s strategies are to believe or not to believe in SB. In the two Belief Games, SB’s goals remain the same: Primarily, he wants P to believe in his existence; secondarily, he does not want to reveal himself, lest doing so prevent a test of P’s faith. P, I assume, is of a scientific bent and seeks evidence — positive or negative — for her choice. In both games, she wishes, as a primary goal, that her belief (or nonbelief) in SB’s existence be confirmed by evidence (or lack thereof)

What distinguishes the two Belief Games are the different secondary goals of P. In Belief Game 1, P prefers to believe in SB’s existence if he exists, whereas she prefers not to believe if he does not exist in Belief Game 2. Thereby P gives SB the benefit of the doubt in Belief Game 1 but not in Belief Game 2

In both games, SB has a dominant strategy of not revealing himself, inducing P not to believe, which is the unique Nash equilibrium in both games

In fact, even while admitting the existence of the theological God, and the reality of his so discordant attributes which they impute to him, one can conclude nothing to authorize the conduct or the cult which one is prescribed to render him. Theology is truly the sieve of the Danaides. By dint of contradictory qualities and hazarded assertions it has, that is to say, so handicapped its God that it has made it impossible for him to act. If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?

The examination of this subject requires that it should be stripped of all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the common opinion of men. The existence of a God, and a future state of rewards and punishments are totally foreign to the subject. If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favor of a future state. It has been asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to be numbered among the attributes of the Deity, he will undoubtedly compensate the virtuous who suffer during life, and that he will make every sensitive being, who does not deserve punishment, happy forever. But this view of the subject, which it would be tedious as well as superfluous to develop and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts the knot which we now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, on the other hand, that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, to neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward

The evils suffered by a person because he is a material being, Maimonides argues, are “privations,” that is, situations that have no actual existence and that appear to us as the absence of a desired situation. Illness is the absence of health, death is the absence of life, infirmity is the absence of completeness, and so forth. In these cases, God does not create the evil because the evil does not really exist, and all that exists is good. Evil is the absence of certain reality; existence as such is good

Of all the philosophical arguments made in the Guide, this seems the weakest. First, the evil caused by the absence of the good can sometimes cause great pain and unbearable suffering. The pain itself can hardly be described as an absence, for it is real, extant, and scorching. Beyond that, the argument seems to be a casuistic logic game that contributes little to an understanding of the question. What is gained by calling something the absence of something else? There is, to be sure, something else in play behind the flimsy argument from absence, a more profound and significant argument: the impairments and evils that result from our material nature are necessary conditions. To ask why death, illness, or difficult old age exist in the world is to ask a meaningless question as long as we are interested in being what we are, namely, material creatures. To complain about those evils necessarily entails an expectation of being something other than what we are. By its very nature, matter is limited and finite, and hoping for it to be perfect and eternal is like hoping for a square to be circular. Destruction and impairment are part of the essence of something material, and matter is given to accident and will never be perfect. And so, in those relatively few instances when children are born with defects, the situation is tied of necessity to our being creatures possessed of bodies. That God does not create durable or perfect material does not mean that his power is limited, because God does not do the logically impossible: He is unable to create a number “two” such that multiplying it by itself will yield “five.” This approach to the first category of evil is marked by a profound acceptance of limits and a recognition of our finitude. The consciousness of evil is, among other things, a consequence of expectation which confronts the limitation of what is possible. If death is necessary, we do not experience it as evil; it is part of being what we are. Recognition that something is inevitable blunts the force of the complaint

But affirmation of reality cannot entail solely the inevitability of its deficiencies. Reality, as it is, must afford us the possibility of a good and rewarding existence. And here we turn to the two remaining sorts of evil, those wrought by other people and those that are self-imposed. The evils that men do to one another, such as wars and crimes, result, in Maimonides’ view, from competition for limited resources. Nevertheless, examination of the nature of the world shows that the more basic and necessary a resource, the more abundant it is. Air, water, and basic food exist almost without limitation. The struggle for resources begins when people internalize unnatural goals, such as pursuit of wealth, honor, and pleasure. There are not enough diamonds and gold bars to go around, nor is there power and might for all. People internalize inappropriate goals and then complain that the world does not provide adequately for their desires. And this affects not only interpersonal relationships but also the life of the individual. Were a person to be satisfied with meeting his basic needs, he would not have to spend his life in risktaking, worry, frustration, jealousy, and bitterness. Similarly, given that Maimonides believed that most illness originated in improper consumption of food, a man in control of his desires would have less exposure to illness and decline

The goal of a human being is to develop the intellectual elements of his life and to pursue knowledge and truth. Knowledge, unlike power, wealth, and honor, is an inexhaustible resource. That one person has knowledge does not diminish the supply available to others. Other, imagined, goods entail a zero-sum game, in which one person’s gain is another’s loss, and a society that pursues those goods will experience conflict as a result. But a society that internalizes knowledge as its highest goal will be spared such conflict. It will possess all the material resources it needs to exist, because the world provides them in sufficient quantity, and its highest goal, knowledge, is not limited or subject to competition. And what is true of society is true of the individual as well. By internalizing the proper goal, he will free himself from the physical and spiritual torments associated with a life given over to pursuing desires. This attitude toward the problem of evil is profoundly accepting of the world as it exists. The world is a domain fit for a human being as long as the human being adopts the proper goal for his life. But if he does ill to himself or his fellow, it is ridiculous to see that as a tragic flaw in the world or the basis for a complaint against God

The deep-seated basis for Maimonides’ position on the question of evil, then, is affirmation of reality, an idea corresponding to Maimonides’ position regarding God’s revelation in the world as it exists. But does existence itself react to the righteous and the wicked in the same manner? Does a man’s religious and moral standing have any impact on his fate? To what extent, if any, is God involved in what goes on in the world that He created or that causally arose from Him? Given these questions, the discussion of providence is a natural extension of the inquiry into the question of evil; in the Guide, it follows right on its heels

. . .

The fifth position Maimonides describes is that of the Torah, his own. As long as one is speaking of non-humans, he believes, Aristotle is correct to assert that providence applies only to species overall. God does not govern the events experienced by each and every animal, and He certainly does not directly deploy His will each time a leaf falls from a tree. All such events are within the context of general causal regularity. Most human beings, too, are relegated to natural randomness and are not governed by providence. Where Maimonides departs from Aristotle is in maintaining that perfected human beings are subject to providence as individuals. He understands providence as a privilege that distinguishes the perfected among human beings from others, and the perfected human differs from other beings in the degree of providence to which he is subject. The closer a person comes to perfection, the greater the degree of divine providence to which he is subject, for he is bonded more closely to the intellect emanating onto him

Maimonides’ position departs in no uncertain terms from the traditional view of providence, which believes that God punishes the wicked and rewards the ordinary (that is, those who are neither wicked nor virtuous). According to Maimonides, the wicked and the ordinary, constituting most of humanity, are relegated to happenstance. But despite this dramatic divide, the concept he presents has an internal religious logic: providence is not a basic given and does not apply to all people; it is, rather, something achieved only by a few. Throughout existence, God attends only to species as a whole, but perfected human beings merit individual providence. How that individual providence operates, however, is subject to widely differing interpretations

The conservative reading of the Guide offers one such interpretation. The causal structure is what controls all existence and the fate of most men, but perfected men are subject to God’s special attention, and He exercises His will to protect them from the harms and misfortunes that befall other creatures. On this reading, nature and wisdom are maintained with respect to reality as a whole, but when necessary, divine will bursts through and acts within it. If that is so, Maimonides rejected the Ashʿarite position, according to which God’s willful providence governs every individual and event to the point of negating the entire causal order. But he also rejects the Aristotelian position, which sees the causal order as the exclusive principle governing all existence, wicked and perfected alike. According to the conservative reading, Maimonides’ view of providence parallels his views of creation and prophecy. With respect to creation, he preserved a necessary, fundamental element of creation in time — the creation of existence ex nihilo — and allows for the action of divine will when necessary. With respect to prophecy, he interpreted the phenomenon as a natural one but left room for a supernatural exercise of will in the case of Moses’ prophecy. The same structure can be seen in connection with providence. The causal order applies everywhere except with regard to perfected people, who are protected by God’s will. Accordingly, the principle of causal wisdom is not the exclusive explanation for what happens in the universe, and it is limited in areas related to the principles of religion — creation, prophecy, and providence

The Guide’s philosophical readers, for their part — that is, those who understood it as affirming eternal preexistence — took a very different view of the idea that perfected people were subject to divine providence on an individual basis. On their reading, which seems to have better internal, textual logic, perfected individuals are not providentially overseen by means of divine intervention volitionally bestowed only on them. Providential oversight is afforded them, rather, by reason of causal reality itself, and it can be accounted for in terms of wisdom, not will. The perfection of the individuals who enjoy providence is commensurate with their apprehension of God and the world, as Maimonides emphasized, and that apprehension affords them two advantages that distinguish them from other men and beasts. Those advantages are theirs without any intervention of the divine will

The first advantage is that of a place in the world to come; their souls do not perish and they are not eliminated from the world. Like Aristotle, Maimonides believed that providence implies the possibility of eternity and stability inherent in the causal order. That capacity for eternity is granted to those who attain knowledge and become bound to the active intellect; accordingly, providence - bestowed, in Aristotle’s view, only on sorts whose eternity is ensured — pertains to perfected individuals

Samuel Ibn Tibbon read Maimonides this way, understanding him to hold the view that individual providence did not involve willful divine intervention in an individual’s life. In a letter on providence that he sent to Maimonides (and that Maimonides never answered), he afforded a philosophical interpretation to the concept of prophecy as it appeared in the Guide. In his view, misfortunes befell perfected people in the same way as others, and God did not intervene to free them from poverty, illness, or travail. But because they adhere to the proper goal of apprehending the intelligibles, which assures them eternal life, they do not regard these events as troubles. They do not consider such things as loss of wealth, illness, or handicap to be losses, for they are bound to what truly matters and what assures a person eternal life. Accordingly, in addition to the eternal life these individuals are assured of, they experience providence in their day-to-day lives, expressed not in the form of events that happen to them but as a profound change in consciousness

The second advantage that apprehension affords to individuals overseen by providence was formulated by Moses Ibn Tibbon, Samuel’s son. Unlike his father, Moses held that those perfected in thought were protected from troubles in a practical way, but not because God willfully directed reality to their benefit, as the conservative reading would have it. Rather, the knowledge of the world that these people acquired allowed them to live better protected lives, and that is their second natural advantage: they know how to foresee risks and properly assess situations. Moreover, their focus on the higher goal of knowing God frees them from the mental and physical woes that ensue when a person’s life is controlled by his desires. Perfected individuals are distinguished, then, by being providentially protected from the afflictions of the world to a greater extent than other people, but in the understanding associated with a preexisting universe, that distinctiveness does not entail a miraculous departure from the causal order. The protection and endurance simply reflect the fact that the causal order itself does well for the good

Conservative and philosophical readers agree that Maimonides’ great innovation here was the idea that providence was something afforded only to individuals and that other people were given over to chance. He thereby rejected the position of the Kalam, which saw divine intervention in every event that transpired in the world, and dissented from the traditional Jewish view that individual providence governed all people. According to Maimonides, God’s presence and providence, for most people, are mediated via the causal order that He created, an order to which people are subject. The dispute between the conservative and philosophical readings pertains to how the providence extended to perfected individuals should be understood: is it effected through willful divine intervention, as the Kalam understood it to be, or is it built into the causal order itself, to be understood in terms of eternity and immortality, as Aristotle understood providence with respect to other species? The philosophical reading affords Maimonides’ acceptance of reality, emphatically declared in the discussion of theodicy, a more profound meaning. Existence itself, structured through divine wisdom, corresponds to the varying degrees of human virtue, responding to differences among people without any need for willful divine intervention

I think faith is a form of courage. You know if you're hurt by life and you will be it's understandable that you might react in a nihilistic and hopeless fashion and become anxious and depressed and cynical and bitter and all of that. That's a bad pathway and I think part of what helps you through that, is faith. And and part of that faith is that it's incumbent upon you and actually in your best interest and everyone else's to maintain faith in the fundamental goodness of existence including your own, despite the evidence to the contrary. Because you can draw conclusions from suffering in two ways: one is that you have a duty and perhaps the capability to transcend the suffering and still serve the good, or you can derive the conclusion that life is so unbearable that it would be best terminated, which is the conclusion that Girth as Mephistopheles derives for example in Faust. He says the world is rife with suffering and it's so unbearable that consciousness itself, all being, should cease to exist - that would be better; nothing is better than something, if something is rife with suffering. And you can derive that conclusion and you'll be driven to it in some of the farther reaches of your life when terrible things happen to you. But I would say faith is the courage to not take that path despite the evidence that that might be justified. And so I think it is a form of courage in the highest sense and I also think it is a redeeming form of courage

I presume that the charge of incompetence is really reflective of incredulity toward the pains of planet earth, a planet where the glory of creation brought forth sentient creatures who have at times suffered greatly. This presents us with a problem of evil that every theist must take seriously. While the problem of evil is difficult, it is also important to keep it in perspective. To dismiss God as an incompetent creator based on your experiences on planet earth is tantamount to dismissing the president of the United States as an incompetent leader based on the cleanliness of a single bathroom tile at Chicago's O'hare Airport. This kind of charge smacks of an indefensibly narrow-minded provincialism and anthropocentrism. Indeed, it appears to be the height of hubris to make sweeping judgments about the Creator's competence based merely on our experience on this infinitesimal pale blue dot called earth

I believe that the same situation adheres to the story of the “binding of Isaac” of Gen 22. Interpreters have long grappled with the strange fact that God’s demand that Abraham sacrifice Isaac contradicts his own promise that he would make of Isaac, the son of Sarah, a great nation. In my view, the original narrative spoke of an anonymous beloved son of an unknown mother, who was indeed sacrificed. There was nothing paradoxical about this demand, since this only son was never destined to be more than Abraham’s heir. Only at a secondary stage was this son identified with Sarah’s son, Isaac, the son of the covenant, and, accordingly, saved at the last moment