Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] So my question is, what is faith?
[00:00:06] People very often use this word in various contexts. I believe this person. I don't believe this person. I believe the source. I don't believe the source. There are people who swear by CNN and don't believe Fox News. There are people who swear by Fox News and don't believe cnn.
[00:00:23] And then there are people who believe that this doctor or that doctor, that lawyer or that lawyer. And then there are people who say, I believe in God. I don't believe in God.
[00:00:33] So what does believing mean? What does it mean to have faith?
[00:00:38] So various religions or various theological systems have different definition of this word. And belief means different things in different places. So I will tell you now how Judaism defines it.
[00:00:52] Belief means relying on an external source of information which you at this time cannot verify yourself.
[00:01:02] In other words, it's relying on something that you cannot know. You see, if I see you sitting here in front of me right now, I know you are here.
[00:01:12] That's knowledge. That's not faith. That's not believing. If I am in a different room and Janet comes and says, I saw him. He's sitting there in that room. I have to believe Janet or I don't have to believe Janet. But that's where faith is.
[00:01:26] Faith could have different degrees. And also faith could be more rational or less rational.
[00:01:34] If I know that you went on a vacation and you're not in the country and she says, I saw him. He's sitting in that room, then if I will still believe her, I guess I could say it's going to be not such a rational belief.
[00:01:48] But if you know this is the middle of your workday and you are usually sitting here in your office, and she says, I saw him. He's sitting here. It's pretty rational to believe that he's there.
[00:01:58] So in other words, we have people making assertions all the time. I can say that I saw an elephant walking through Reisterstown Road yesterday.
[00:02:08] I guess whether you'll believe me or not will depend on two factors. A, how probable it is that an elephant is walking down Reisterstown Road, and B, how reliable I am as a source and whether I trust and believe. What you are saying is going to be determining to believe or not to believe.
[00:02:25] So now let's speak about more complicated cases. If I go to a lawyer and my lawyer tells me I believe that this should be our strategy.
[00:02:37] If I go to a lawyer and my lawyer says, I believe we need to make this in this claim, we need to file this in this paperwork now I know nothing about criminal law and I have no clue if what my lawyer is saying is right or wrong.
[00:02:52] Now, I could go for a second opinion, but when I'll get my second opinion, I also won't know whether the guy is saying something right or wrong or not. Now, I could go to five people and let's say four of them will be saying something that pushes me to do one thing, and one of them is going to say something different. Here already I will believe four lawyers over one, and that probably will be more rational to believe.
[00:03:17] But I still believe. I still don't know. I know nothing about criminal law.
[00:03:23] So when I go to a lawyer and he tells me to do something, to file certain paperwork, to make certain claim, to go about it certain way, it's all faith.
[00:03:32] Same thing with the doctor. My doctor is prescribing to me certain medication.
[00:03:37] Obviously I can Google it. Google is the best doctor. Nowadays, everybody Googles everything. But at the end of the day, Google will not give me exhaustive information about the medication. Google cannot know all of the health implications that it could have on me personally.
[00:03:53] So it's up to me to trust doctor or not to believe doctor or not to have faith in this doctor or not.
[00:03:59] So why do I believe a lawyer? Why do I believe a doctor? I would say it might be a rational faith. Why? Because he has a big diploma hanging behind him in his office. He has a whole bunch of plaques with different nominations in the conference room.
[00:04:14] Then my friends went to this lawyer and they got good results.
[00:04:18] So all of this is making my belief more rational. But I still believe.
[00:04:24] So now we are coming to a belief in God.
[00:04:27] I don't know how this world came about. I wasn't there. If I would be there, then I would not need to have faith in how the world was created or how did it come about? Was it a big bang? Was it a small bang? Was it God? Or was it an alien who decided to make us?
[00:04:44] So the only way how I can know what this world came from is faith.
[00:04:52] So some people believe that there was a big bang that exploded and that what made us here.
[00:05:01] Now, the probability of all of these untold number of chemical and biological processes that had to take place in a millisecond together for the world to come about makes a probability of such event very, very low.
[00:05:17] On the other hand, even if I believe in it, the question still remains, what exploded? Did energy explode? Where did energy come from? Did some dust or sand explode? Where did this dust and sand come from? So really doesn't answer the question of where the world comes from. It only answers the question of where does the world, the way we know it, comes from.
[00:05:37] But Big Bang theory does not explain where does matter come from, where does energy come from? Because as we know from the law of conservation, that every child that studies physics knows that a matter or energy cannot appear or disappear. They only get transformed from one to another.
[00:05:55] So a matter cannot appear. So where did it come from?
[00:05:59] So we don't know.
[00:06:02] But then we have a religious answer that again, you need to have a faith for. And this faith is that God created this world.
[00:06:12] Now here comes another question. Why did God create this world?
[00:06:17] What was the purpose?
[00:06:19] There's a religious answer for that as well.
[00:06:22] And the religious answer is that God, who gave us our world and who gave us our life, did it for a purpose.
[00:06:30] And he gave us the Torah where he described this purpose.
[00:06:34] Do I know that God gave us the Torah at Mount Sinai? I don't know, I wasn't there.
[00:06:40] It's an article of faith.
[00:06:42] How rational is this faith? Well, like in any, let's say, criminal matter, whenever you have an event that's happening, there's a car accident. If you have one witness, it's better than nothing. But one witness can make a mistake. One witness can be paid off. One witness could be biased. Maybe he's an anti Semite and he hates Jews and he knows that one of the sides is a Jew.
[00:07:06] So having one witness is good, but it's not the best. Two witnesses. It's very hard for two witnesses to have the same mistaken opinion.
[00:07:15] Now, could both witnesses be biased or something? Yes, it's possible. Now what if you have 100 witnesses?
[00:07:20] That's already much harder for them to have the same mistake or to be altogether biased, or to be altogether paid off, or to be all together on meth and having hallucinations.
[00:07:31] So the giving of the Torah happened when there were about 2 million Jews standing at Mount Sinai. So this is a historic event that had millions of witnesses.
[00:07:39] I guess it's a pretty irrational thing to have faith in this event.
[00:07:44] Is it knowledge? It's not, but it's faith.
[00:07:48] So now here comes the most important part. The Torah is giving us mitzvahs. The Torah is giving us commandments. The Torah is telling us what to do, what not to do.
[00:07:58] Some of the things that the Torah says in modern culture is considered to be kind of understood. The Torah is telling us, don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat, don't rape.
[00:08:10] That's kind of people would say illogical mitzvah. But then the Torah has also irrational mitzvahs, not logical mitzvahs.
[00:08:20] Tefillin, we have some explanation to mitzvah Tefillin, but nobody is going to claim that they understand exactly why and how tefillin has to be put on the way that we do it.
[00:08:31] The epitome of mitzvahs which are not understood at all in the Torah is the mitzvahs that we have concerning ritual purity.
[00:08:42] So this is something which we totally don't understand.
[00:08:45] So here it is. Many people have a problem with doing things they don't understand. And they say, whoa, one second. So you know what? Don't murder and don't steal and don't cheat, I will do because I understand them.
[00:08:58] But tefillin or Shabbos or some other things which the Torah is telling me to do, which I don't understand, I don't want to do it. Why should I do things that I don't understand? And many people blame observant Jews that they are doing it just because they're following their faith, just because somebody else said that, and they're just blindly following what somebody else once told them.
[00:09:19] Well, it is true. We are following something which someone else told us. We are using our faith for it, just like anyone does when they go to a doctor or just like anyone does when they go to a lawyer.
[00:09:33] My math teacher in school used to always tell us whenever we would question everything he says and we would just not let him move forward in his class, he would always tell us, obviously a person has to use his brain all the time, in every circumstance, in dealing with every question, including when he is dealing with a question, whether to listen to his brain or not to listen to his brain.
[00:09:59] In other words, there are things which I need to understand, and in order for them to be done properly, I. I need to understand what I'm doing. There are things that I need to do without understanding because I know I'll never understand it. I will never be able to understand why this doctor is prescribing this medicine to me, because then I'll have to go to a medical school for that and spend years of my life. By the time I'll get the education I need, I'll probably already will have to say goodbye to the world from this illness.
[00:10:29] So I can't go to law school. And then I will understand why my lawyer is recommending me to file this paperwork and that paperwork.
[00:10:36] But I don't because I don't have a chance. I don't have an opportunity. I have a different job, I have different specialties. I use faith. So yes, when we follow the commandments that we don't understand, we are following what somebody else told us.
[00:10:49] And because we follow someone else told us, that's why it's called religion, that's why it's called faith.
[00:10:56] But it's not any different than me having faith in a doctor, in a lawyer, in an accountant, in or in any other professional. I just came back from a car mechanic. He looks at my car and he tells me, this is a timing belt. I don't even know where this timing belt is in my car.
[00:11:15] I trust this mechanic. I believe him. And my faith tells me, okay, I have to let him fix my car. Whatever he says needs to be done.
[00:11:24] So this is why in the Torah we have commandments that we understand fully, like don't murder or don't steal.
[00:11:31] There are commandments that we don't understand fully, but we can kind of appreciate them once they're given, like Shabbat, for example, because, you know, the cultures of the world that were not touched by Judaism or religions that came out of it don't have the concept of a week and a one day off once a week. They don't have that.
[00:11:50] China, Japan, don't have this thing. Culturally, it was brought, it was imported already now to some areas in China. But that's not their culture.
[00:12:02] So the nations of the world, they saw the Jews have this idea as Shabbat. And with Christianity and Islam, this idea has traveled. It was transformed. Some people keep Sunday, some people keep Friday. But the idea that we need to keep one day for ourselves, for holy purposes, we not to work it kind of somewhat understood. So this is the middle category. And then there's a third category, mitzvot, that we don't understand at all, that we are performing them purely based on our faith. And there's nothing wrong with that because people, every single person exercises his faith every single day. Whenever he does, he goes. A scientist at work is hiring a mathematician to do research for him, for whatever physics work he's doing right now. And this mathematician is making the research for him. And this mathematician is coming back with results. This physicist does not know if these results are correct. He has faith. He believes in this mathematician.
[00:13:03] So as a matter of fact, scientists use faith far more often than non scientists, but everybody uses faith every single day of their lives.
