Why I Don't Believe in Judaism (part 3: What Would it Take)

Shortly after I left Judaism, I came up with the following metaphor to capture my disillusionment with the religion. Imagine there exists a large building. From the outside the building looks enormous and impressive. It is covered in beautiful artwork, stained glass windows, the works. The building is also constantly being worked on, but in a strange way. Every time some facet goes out of style, or is damaged, instead of fixing it, the workers just build another structure out over it, covering the unsightly or passe parts and leaving a new one. However, despite this constant work on the outside, no one ever works on the internals. The foundation is crumbling, the old art, since covered over, is fading. To me this building represented Judaism, and unlike most people I wasn't content in walking around the outside admiring the beautiful new works. I went inside, and made the mistake of testing the foundations. I kicked a couple support beams, and before I knew it, the entire building came crashing down.

When I want to describe, as succinctly as possible why I don't believe in Judaism, it makes sense to highlight the difference in how Judaism decides on what is true and how science does. Judaism has a concept, which I've mentioned before, called Yeridat HaDorot which means the descent of generations. The idea is that each generation is farther away from the Sinai revelation, and thus is less capable of making decisions on what is religiously appropriate. The result is that older decisions that are based on faulty information are impossible to overturn. Religious precepts that by today's standards look immoral cannot be removed. Like the building metaphor, a painting can never be removed, it can just be covered over with something less offensive, with the exhortation to please not look behind the new painting.

I've already provided some examples of practices that are immoral by today's standards, such as the laws of Agunah, which has not been overturned despite nearly every modern Rabbi agreeing that the current halachic law is unfair to women. There are countless examples of halachic decisions made on wrong information that are now inscribed in Jewish law. I will talk a little bit about one of them.

When I was in high school, I once asked my Rabbi why we can't use electricity on Shabbat. Previously, I assumed this was a extension of lo teva'aru aish (do not light a fire). This makes sense for things like incandescent light bulbs. But as I learned what electricity actually is, I realized this is untenable for most appliances. What does turning on the AC have to do with lighting fires? My Rabbi actually had a book on the topic which he lent me, and the explanations were pretty much the same as can be found on Wikipedia today.

What I learned is that the original halachic ruling on electricity was that one could not use it because electrical circuits create sparks, which are equivalent to lighting fires. This explanation was based off of a 19th century layman's understanding of electricity and was highly problematic. For one, electric circuitry today does not create any sparks, as the switching is done mainly through semi-conductor transistors. Furthermore, you make more sparks when you put on a sweater, yet that is not forbidden.

In the years that followed, Rabbis learned more about electricity and realized that the original ruling was wrong. However since electricity was forbidden on Shabbat, it was impossible to reverse this decision. Instead, they tried to justify the ban on electricity with other reasons. One said that you were "building" a circuit, another that you were applying the "final hammer blow" and turning something non-functional into something functional. But these answers ring hollow. It's obvious the real reason electricity is not used, because some Rabbi didn't understand the science behind it and made a decision on wrong information. Judaism cannot correct it. They can't tear down the old painting, they have to paint over it.

When we compare the arc of Jewish development to that of science we see something very different. Science continually replaces anything faulty with corrections when they become available. However, because it does this so effectively, you are actually left with a very similar structure compared to what you started with. Just the incorrect things have been updated. Again, using this analogy, science doesn't make a new painting to cover up a faded one, it instead updates the old painting so that it looks new again. Here's a concrete example: the physics we use to calculate the motion of balls or bullets is exactly the same as the expressions postulated by Newton some 300+ years ago. However, when you get to very fast moving objects, like electrons in accelerators, then those laws break down. Instead a new calculation emerges. And the new expression shows very clearly that the old way of calculating balls and bullets is accurate enough. Of course it couldn't be otherwise, because if it was wrong now, it would have been wrong then too and never adopted.

Science is self-correcting, Judaism is not. When I looked at how I should figure out whether something is true or not, science didn't just have an advantage, it blew Judaism out of the water.

But of course, a scientific approach updates with new information. It's very much worth looking at what possible new information might change my opinion on certain matters relating to Judaism. This is what I'll spend the rest of the post talking about.

Divinity of the Torah

Last week I talked about why I didn't believe in the Torah's divinity. But it's worth reiterating what would cause me to believe that there's something to it. An easy way, would be if someone where to use the Torah to forward predict a piece of knowledge. For example, if someone were to use various passages of the Torah to accurately name something like new superconducting materials (which are constantly being discovered in a sort of scattershot approach), then I would take notice.

It of course doesn't have to be superconducting materials, anything will do. The point is that the prediction needs to be forward and not backward. Generally, when people try to square the Torah with science, they do so by accepting the scientific explanation learned from elsewhere and trying to fit the Torah to it. That's not good enough, I want the Torah to give us something definitively new.

This isn't the only thing that would make me believe in the divinity of the Torah, but I'm not going to outline every possibility. One is enough for these cases.

Judaism's Oral Tradition

Another big part of Rabbinic Judaism is the claim of an oral tradition stemming from Sinai to the present day. There are a lot of ways this can be proven, but a very simple one would be by applying the exact same criteria I outlined for the divinity of the Torah to the Oral Torah and seeing if it satisfies any of them. Based on the parts I have studied (which is not complete) it did not seem divinely inspired, but maybe select parts of it do?


Also, just like the Tanakh itself, if you can use the Gemara to forward predict information then that would greatly bolster its claims of divine inspiration.

Historicity of Genesis 1-10

The evidence here is overwhelming that these chapters are ahistorical. It's actually nearly impossible for me to figure out how to change my view on this matter as it would entail a complete upheaval of pretty much everything we know about science. So, I guess to be convinced of this, I'd need to be convinced that pretty much everything we know about geology, biology, and physics is wrong. That's a high bar. Luckily, many people still manage to believe in Judaism without interpreting these chapters literally.

Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives

Many of the individual details of the patriarchal narratives are beyond what we expect to measure. There's no reason to ever expect some independent verification that, say, some guy named Avraham (Abraham) tried to slaughter his son Yitzchak (Isaac). However, many of the external details of the world do fit into the measurable realm. Unfortunately for the Torah, these descriptions of the world are not accurate. But let's see what could be reasonably discovered that would lend credence to the historical treatment of this era.

1) Indications of a pre-bronze era collapse civilization that called themselves Plishtim, or similar either from on site excavations, or from foreign records from Hattusa, Ugarit, Egypt, Assyria or somewhere else. This would lend credence that the encounters of Avraham and Yitzchak with Avimelech the Philistine king were not anachronisms.

2) Proof of a large scale geological disturbance in the vicinity of the dead sea. This would provide evidence that the cities of S'dom and Amorrah (Sodom and Gemorah) were not wholly fictitious creations.

3) Evidence of kings named Chedarlaomer or Amraphel in Elamite and Babylonian kings lists respectively. Currently, these names have not been found in any of the fairly extensive kings lists, but that doesn't mean that they won't be yet. This would provide evidence that the war of 4 kings against 5 has some historical backing. (Although it's still problematic unless the previous point is resolved, since the five king side appears to be completely fictitious)

4) Of course, even though it's not expected, any independent verification of any of the people mentioned in these stories would make a strong case that at least something here belongs in the world of fact and not the world of myth.

Historicity of the Exodus

The main way of squaring away the biblical account with modern day archaeological knowledge is to reduce the scope of the biblical story to a much smaller scale. This is fine by me and many of the resulting ideas regarding the various exoduses are plausible. However, none of them resemble the Torah in anything but a few details. They certainly don't have the grand sweep of the biblical statement in Deut 4:34

Or hath God assayed to go and take Him a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before thine eyes?

To believe in the Jewish narrative, I would need some hard evidence. For example, I would accept evidence of a significant drop in Egyptian population that could be plausibly related to both the plagues and a departure of a large nation. The discovery of an Israelite encampment (as large as the largest city in the world) at an expected site like Kadesh Barnea or any other  would do as well. I'd even take a well attested conquest of the territory of Israel by outsiders, again numbering roughly what the Torah attests, and allow the extrapolation backwards under the assumption that the Torah does contain true history here. There's nothing like this currently, despite numerous archaeological excavations. But maybe new stuff will be found? That could change my opinion.

Efficacy of Prayer

This is actually a topic that has had much scientific inquiry. The main approach is to have people pray for ill individuals without their knowledge and compare that to an unprayed for control group. A clear result showing the effectiveness of prayer has never been shown. It's pretty easy to describe what would change my mind here, a highly reproducible study showing the effectiveness of prayer.

What has been shown is that people do get an improvement if they believe in prayer and they know someone is praying for them. So if it makes my family feel better, I will tell them that I'll pray for them, fully aware that the prayer does nothing, but the comfort they get from knowing I'm praying is effective.

Moshiach

This is another gimme. The Jewish Messiah (or Moshiach) has as one of his conditions that the entire world will believe in Judaism. So obviously, if someone comes around and establishes Judaism as the world religion, then I will believe. But probably not before.

Existence of Souls

This is trickier. It's already fairly definitive that "souls" if they do exist, do not deal with the laws of physics as we know them. This is already a huge mark against them, and is enough to assert the null hypothesis, souls do not exist, as the most likely. Obviously, I will change my belief if there can be demonstrable physics evidence of the existence of the soul, but assuming that this cannot be done, there may be ways to determine the existence of souls.

One possible approach would be to show some function of cognition or decision making is impossible to influence by affecting the (very physical) brain. This article does a great job of showing how many things normally attributed to souls can be manipulated by altering the brain. It is very difficult to prove that something cannot be affected by changing the brain, but in the absence of any actual physical evidence, this is the high bar that needs to be met.

Paranormal Capabilities of a Rabbi

Sometimes, people will base their belief on Judaism (or really any religion) based on what they claim is witnessing firsthand some miraculous performance of an individual. It is impossible for me to deal with these claims individually. Thankfully there exists a group dedicated to testing all paranormal claims, namely the James Randi foundation has a one million dollar challenge for anyone who claims the capability of paranormal behavior. I will accept any successful completion of the trial as evidence of whatever paranormal phenomenon is being tested. If the trial participant is a Rabbi promoting his use of ruach hakodesh then so be it.

Conclusion

As hopefully I've made clear, what I'm always interested in is trying to figure out what is real and what is fake, myth and legend. If I've been misled, I'd like to determine that and alter my beliefs accordingly. When I was religious, I often found that it was the religious people that often provided specious or incorrect information, and this gave them a black mark on their credibility. However, if they were and are correct, I sure would like to know!