Blog/December 2017/Dec 15th

December 15th

It was a pretty productive week, but before getting into that…

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Last week I mentioned that I got a book which gives five different proofs of God’s existence. I said I’d worked through two of them, and that I was familiar with the first of them. In the meantime I’ve worked through another two, which were more difficult and I think less direct, but still intellectually satisfying.

One of my readers said that he didn’t think one could prove the existence of God, and that if we could, everyone would be a believer and have the same beliefs. I told him that it doesn't follow that ‘we would all be believers’. There is proof that the Earth is round, but there are still people who don't believe it. Nor does it follow we would all be of the same faith.

We're given free choice specifically so that we can choose to behave as we wish. Otherwise there would be no point to the Torah punishing or rewarding a person for some action or inaction.

In any event, assuming the validity of the proofs (of course you might not, but this is an intellectual exercise so please bear with me), there is a God with the characteristics we monotheists assume He has. He is one, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, fully good, intelligent, and omniscient. But these proofs say nothing as to what religious beliefs (if any) are correct (or most nearly correct). I’ll take a stab at that.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of religions. We can winnow the list of candidates immediately by noting that since God is one, none of the non-purely-monotheistic religions will qualify as “nearly correct”. The list of purely-monotheistic religions is quite short. There are the ones we know best: traditional Judaism, non-Trinitarian Christianity, and Islam. In addition, there are some others like Sikhism, Bahai and a few others.

But Sikhism is derivative of Islam and Hinduism, and Bahai is derivative of Islam, and Islam is derivative of Christianity and Judaism, and Christianity is derivative of Judaism. So what?

Well, one problem with derivatives is that you can always invent another one. Christians claim that Jewish scripture supports their interpretations of it, and came up with their own set of Scriptures in addition to ours. Then came Islam, and invented an entirely new book, claiming (of course) that Christians and Jews got it wrong. But this leads to an infinite regress: anyone can, at any time, have a “revelation” and claim the ultimate Truth. But almost all roads in this path lead back to Judaism.

Furthermore, any derivative which builds upon a predecessor, but which also claims the predecessor is wrong, necessarily undermines its own claims.

Speaking of the revelatory process: Judaism is unique among world religions in that it makes the ludicrously bold claim that the entire nation witnessed God’s revelation to its main prophet, Moses. The idea that a lie of that magnitude could be “put over” on an entire population without there being truth in it, is difficult to fathom.

I’ll leave you with that thought, for now.

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… and we’re back!

So after a restful shabbat with Sarah, we basically went “back to work” this week. Esther’s got plenty to do, since the only other person who handles US taxes at her firm is leaving. She should ask for more money, in my humble opinion!

I made another release of 8th this week, mostly bug-fixes. We also started our traditional “year-end sale” which seems to be popular. I also apparently will be starting a short-term consulting job, essentially telling people how they can improve their software development process.

It was Sarah’s birthday this week, so we went to the land of Tel Aviv to meet her. The weather was balmy, particularly after a month of Seattle drear and moist. We had a nice time with her, and visited a store “Palais des Thés”, which has some outrageously good teas (at outrageous prices, but they are really good teas).

And we started the holiday of ḥanukka. So it was a good week, all in all.

By the way: Esther reminds me that last week she completed the sweater she had been making for me, and I wore it, and it fits perfectly, and I love it! And her, of course.

This shabbat we’re invited out for a meal, and for the rest we’ll have:
homemade ḥalla, chicken with mushrooms, rice, various salatim, and fruit.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom and ḥanukka sameaḥ!

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