LIVING UP...

...to the Truth	

by Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb
Second Revised Edition

Originally Transcribed by Joshua Hermelin
Under the Title The Search for Truth

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The following text is being provided to you by Ohr Somayach Institutions, 
Jerusalem.  You may view it, download it, print it, and distribute it.  
However, the material is Copyright (C) 1996 by Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb.  
The text may not be used for commercial purposes or published in ANY form 
without the express written permission of the author.

Rabbi Dr. Gottlieb is a former professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins 
University, is an internationally acclaimed lecturer and author of several 
books.  He is presently a senior lecturer at Ohr Somayach Institutions in 
Jerusalem.

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                   Preface to the Second Revised Edition

	In the last one and a half years a great deal of progress has been 
made on this manuscript. There are  three very obvious changes. Summaries 
have been inserted on almost every page so that the reader can have a 
running formulation of the points that have been made. In fact, it has been 
suggested to me that one might read the summaries through from beginning to 
end as a first pass through the manuscript in order to become familiar with 
the ground to be covered. This strikes me as an excellent idea. In 
addition, I have placed technical comments in brackets [ ]. These comments 
are designed for those with a background in philosophy, mathematics, or 
science - and for those with an intellectually adventuresome spirit. They 
can be skipped without missing anything essential to the argument. Also, 
the title has been changed to reflect my better understanding that the 
argument is based on the princeples of responsible living.
	Not so obvious is the care that has been taken to tighten the 
formulations, to make the expression of ideas consistent, to reorganize the 
flow of argument, and to correct mistakes. For the first time I think it is 
approaching the status of written work. On the way to a book, I would call 
it a second draft. Much work remains to be done. Chapters IV (True 
Predictions) and V (Archeology) need to be greatly expanded. A  substantial 
amount of documentation must be supplied. The quality of writing could be 
vastly improved. It still has the status of work in progress. I can only 
pray that just as G-d has enabled me to get this far, He will also make the 
further work possible.
	It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help of my colleagues and 
students at Ohr Somayach, especially the summer Jewish Learning Exchange of 
1995. Their critical attention revealed a number of problems and some 
outright mistakes which have been corrected. Taffy Gould provided expert 
editing advice. Jon Erlbaum read the majority of the manuscript with 
exquisite attention to both content and editing. Since I followed their 
advice selectively, I remain fully responsible for the remaining defects. 
Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb
Channukah, 5756
Jerusalem

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                                  PREFACE

	Joshua Hermelin has provided a very significant service in 
transcribing three of my lectures.  The material presented is complex and 
controversial.  Relying on verbal transmission is not ideal for careful 
perusal.  Having a written version which can be read at one's own pace, 
reviewed, consulted repeatedly, and used to compare different sections 
simultaneously, is a great benefit.  I hope to have it distributed when the 
lectures are presented in the future.
	It must be recognized that this is the transcription of material 
presented verbally.  Were I writing this material, the text would be 
substantially different.  There is much repetition, reformulation, and use 
of nearly equivalent but somewhat different expression.  In a written text 
more attention would be paid to precision, verbal consistency and economy.  
More important, certain matters receive very curtailed treatment due to the 
limitations of the particular audience to which the lectures were given.  
For example, the mention of Pascal's argument (and game theory in general)  
needs much more elaborate treatment (which I have done privately, but not 
presented in lecture).  Similarly, the treatment of archeology  needs great 
expansion.  Thus the reader should not regard this "text" as a complete 
argument, but rather as an outline of how the argument goes.  He can assess 
its internal logic and try to anticipate how it will be finished, but the 
whole scope of the argument is not yet present.  (Work is underway to put 
it in written form.)
	In spite of these limitations, the availability of the version of the 
lectures is a great step forward in making this material available to the 
thoughtful "quest for truth" as Joshua puts it.  If the lectures continue 
to have an impact it will be due in significant measure to his efforts.
	It is a pleasure to acknowledge comments of these who read this 
material, especially Professor David Wierderker and Dr. Yisroel Asher. I am 
especially indebted to Rabbi Eliezer Shapiro for his patience and expert 
help in preparing the manuscript.

Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb
Rosh Chodesh Iyar 5754
Jerusalem


(C) 1994-6 Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb All Rights Reserved. Printed In Israel

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                                  Foreword

Before you, the reader, embark on this most fascinating journey through 
significant events of the history of the Jewish people, with its purpose 
being the revelation of the verification of the Torah, and thus the truth 
of Judaism, it is relevant to first determine your objective, and 
subsequently your mind set in approaching this most significant of topics.  
It is apparent to me that there are people who although they attempt to, 
are unable to see the truth of events.  So, before continuing, we must 
determine how you evaluate new information.  It is crucial, especially in 
the area that we will be discussing, that you approach this information 
with an open mind, for if you do not, you will automatically reject the 
information that is being unmasked.  Before we continue, I am going to ask 
you a question, the purpose of which will not be understood until further 
in the foreword.  The question is this: Do you associate positive or 
negative feelings with the term 'wedding,' or, in different words, does the 
word 'wedding' generate in you feelings of joy or feelings of despair?
	Let me illustrate what I am trying to express in terms of an 
appropriate mind set that an individual must necessarily have before 
commencing reading of the essay at hand by way of a theorem.
	The theorem will go like this: Let E be an event such that E elicits 
an emotional response from the viewer.  Let's also suppose that there 
exists a certain truth to the quality of E.  Now, let there be two people, 
A and B, that are viewing E such that from the outset, person A will have 
an open mind towards E, and person B will not have an open mind towards E.  
Most likely, person A will be able to see the truth of E, and person B will 
not be able to see the truth of E.  That is our theorem.
	Now, let me depict this by way of example.  Let's suppose that the 
event in question here is a wedding.  Now, a wedding is a very emotional 
event that generally leaves strong emotional feelings in the heart and mind 
of the viewer.  I think it is fair to say that weddings can be considered 
to be events, or occasions, that are joyous.  That is the quality of truth 
to be attached to a wedding.  Now, there are two individuals at this 
wedding.  The first individual, person A, has no pre conceived prejudices 
towards weddings and arrives at the wedding with an objective mind set able 
to distinguish the quality of truth that we attached to a wedding, namely, 
joy.  The second individual, person B, has not necessarily had the best of 
experiences at weddings.  Person B has been divorced three times, and on 
person B's most recent attempt to get married, was left at the alter.  
Therefore, person B cannot be considered to have the appropriate mind set 
to decipher the quality of truth to the wedding: joy.  Most likely, Person 
A will be able to see the joy in the wedding, and thus the truth, and 
person B will not be able to see the joy in the wedding because he/she 
harbors negative feelings towards weddings, and thus, no matter how clear 
the quality of truth is at a wedding, person B will simply not be able to 
see it.  Person B will not be able to be objective, and thus will not see 
the truth.
	Similarly here with respect to this paper.  The event at hand is the 
essay.  The topic of the essay is the historical verification of the Torah 
- and in a sense, G-d, a topic that has been known to elicit quite powerful 
emotional responses from individuals throughout history.  There exists in 
this essay a certain quality of truth, namely, evidence and logical support 
that verifies the truth of the hypothesis.  Now, one can either approach 
this essay with an open mind, or one can approach it with a closed mind.  
Those who are reading this essay to investigate the truth, will undoubtedly 
be satisfied in the analysis that is done, and will likewise be able to see 
the truth that the essay attempts to show: the historical verification of 
the Torah.  However, there are those individuals who have made up their 
minds that there is no G-d, and who even after support and proof is given 
that validates G-ds existence and the Torah, will say "Well, that's fine, 
but I still don't believe."  Those individuals are not investigating for 
the truth.  Those individuals have already made up their minds whether or 
not there is a G-d, and thus the effort put into the proof is futile.  If 
there is a table in a room, and I say "Oh, wow, isn't that a nice table?" 
and you reply, "Tables do not exist.  However, occasionally I hallucinate 
and think that I see a table.  When this occurs I immediately go and lie 
down and try to regain composure."  I don't think that any proof I would 
give to you that tables indeed exist would sway you towards the truth.  If 
you are operating within this frame of mind, nothing I do will convince you 
that tables exist.
	Now, some may try to raise an objection to what we have said.  Some 
might say "Well, that's fine, and it makes a lot of sense, if you believe 
in the original premise as to the quality of truth to an event.  Maybe I 
disagree with that premise, maybe I don't think that events have any 
specific quality of truth.  Maybe I don't think weddings are joyous events 
at all."  Now, to this individual I have only one response.  You do believe 
that events have a certain quality of truth attached to their essences.  
Your intuition tells you they do.  Let's think back to the beginning of the 
foreword.  I asked you a seemingly out of place question about whether a 
wedding elicits in you feelings of joy or despair.  How did you answer that 
question?  You answered that a wedding gives you tremendous feelings of joy 
and happiness.  So, based on your own feelings, and your own intuition, the 
premise holds.  We are not simply raising an objection to hear ourselves 
speak.  We are not interested in raising objections to satisfy some need we 
have not to hear the truth.  Save that for the PC crowd in America.  We 
want to see that given certain circumstances, option A, option B or option 
X has more evidence and support in its favor than does any other option.  
And, based on your own intuition, the proposed theorem is most valid.  This 
is not me speaking for you and telling you what you are thinking.  This is 
your thoughts, your mind, your heart, your intellect, your emotions, and 
your intuition that have lent support to this thesis.
	I only hope that I have been able to convey to you, the reader, the 
importance of a proper frame of mind upon entering this most stimulating 
task that is ahead of you.  It is very easy to fool others, and even 
yourself, into truly believing that you have analyzed certain information 
or events objectively.  Yet, if one really is able to stand back, and give 
oneself that objective outlook, he has hurdled the most difficult step to 
belief.  In his book The Closing Of The American Mind, Allan Bloom writes 
"Yet if a student can -and this is most difficult and unusual-draw back, 
get a critical distance on what he clings to, come to doubt the ultimate 
value of what he loves, he has taken the first and most difficult step 
toward the philosophic conversion."  One can say or believe whatever one 
wants with respect to objectivity, but if one hasn't truly become objective 
in his analysis, he will never let go of a belief that he possesses.  Only 
you can determine the true frame of mind that you possess.  Whatever your 
mind set may be and whatever you decide to do in terms of proceeding, it is 
important to always keep in mind what we have discussed here in the 
foreword.  If at any time you seem overly skeptical of an argument, or seem 
to be rejecting an argument outright for reasons that do not necessarily 
seem altogether adequate in your eyes, refer back to this short foreword 
and try to determine for yourself if you are being entirely objective in 
your thoughts and analysis of what is written.  I can assure you that 
immense care has been taken in what has been written here in this essay, 
and that apparent deficiencies in the arguments can often be resolved by 
simple introspection on the part of you, the reader.


The best of luck in your quest for truth,


Joshua Hermelin

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Chapter I:  The Relevance of Religion

	The question is whether religion is relevant.  What I would really 
like to argue is that this question is an incoherent question.  The 
question makes no sense.  However, I am afraid that if I argue directly 
that the question has no sense, then you readers will take it as an excuse 
for not being able to answer the question.  You will think that I am 
ducking the question.  So, I am going to adopt the following  strategy.  I    
am going to first answer the question, and then I will tell you why this 
question is illegitimate.  So, everything that you read in the next couple 
of pages, put it on hold (even though it is something that we should all no 
doubt reflect upon), and afterwards, we will dissolve it with a little 
logic.
	So, the question is: Is religion, or in our case historical 
Traditional Judaism, relevant? Yes, of course it is.  Historical 
Traditional Judaism is relevant because given the concerns that people 
typically have, the Torah has a very good track record of producing 
results.
	Take for example the issue of quality of life.  Marriage and the 
family are still fairly popular institutions in the United States and the 
Western World.  No one goes into marriage looking for a divorce.  No one 
goes into marriage looking for the kinds of tensions and unhappiness which 
make people wish they had divorces. So, a stable and fulfilling family life 
is a goal for many people.  Those of you whom have had any contact with the 
Traditional Jewish community know very well that the Torah way of life has 
a very good track record for this.  Granted it is not ideal or perfect, but 
it has a very good track record in producing that kind of family life.  For 
example, the divorce rate is comparatively low vis-a-vis secular society, 
and quality of relationships between parents and children, and between 
husband and wife, is something of which the traditional Jewish community is 
very proud.  
 	A second area of concern  for quality of life is freedom from 
addictions.  I don't have to tell you that if we put together all the 
alcoholics and all the drug addicts, and include in the drugs the middle 
and upper class pills which are openly prescribed by doctors and which are 
perfectly legal and to which people are also addicted, we would have a 
large percentage of the population battling addictions.  If 10-15% of the 
population is addicted to alcohol, and another 5-10% are addicted to drugs 
in the sense that we described, we would be talking about approximately 20% 
of the population that has a problem with addictions.  The Torah community 
is very proud that it is relatively free of these addictions.  I say 
relatively free because again the record is not perfect.  No one is 
claiming that it is perfect, but vis-a-vis the general society, if you 
would observe the phenomena the way a sociologist would observe it, plot a 
curve, and do a statistical analysis of the information, you would see that 
the incidence is  much smaller.
	A third area of concern is crime. Everyone wants to live with as 
little crime as possible.  Again, Jewish Tradition is very proud that 
within Torah communities, crime, violent crime in particular, is almost 
unknown. Imagine interviewing the presiding police officer in a precinct in 
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Borough Park, Flatbush, Monsey, Monroe, or any 
place where you have large concentrations of Traditional Jews. Ask him how 
many times he is called out on a murder charge, rape, assault and battery, 
mugging, child abuse,  etc.  The incidence of these sort of crimes in 
Orthodox communities is very low. 
	A fourth area is literacy. The rate of literacy in traditional 
communities for children with the capacity to read is 100%. And this 
usually means competence in two languages. This is far in excess of  the 
national or regional averages. 
	No one is claiming that the Torah way of life makes all its adherents 
perfect.  This is not being claimed and is obviously not true. In no way do 
we expect that to be the case.  However, what we do expect, and what we do 
find, is that it makes the Torah community significantly better than the 
average surrounding communities.  So much so, that if we return to our 
original question, in asking whether the Torah is relevant, and given the 
standard concerns for quality of life, then the answer is yes, the Torah is 
of course relevant.
 	A  fourth concern that most people share is the meaningfulness of 
life.  As Viktor Frankl said, we suffer from an existential vacuum, the 
angst, or the ennui that the existential philosophers have written about.  
We want to know where we are going, why we are going there, and what the 
importance of going in one particular direction or another is.  
	Meaningfulness is a function of relationships, of context, of 
consequences, and of connections.  In order to understand the meaning of 
one's life, one has to have a picture of the historical perspective of the 
past, a vision of the future, and how one's life relates to that historical 
perspective.  Judaism provides that kind of perspective.  There is not only 
a recording of important episodes of history, but there is also a view of 
the dynamics of history, the laws of history if you will, where it comes 
from, where it is going, and what its purpose is.  One can achieve for 
oneself a picture of one's own position in that flow or slot, and therefore 
the meaningfulness of what one does.  
	One does this not only by taking one's life vis-a-vis the outer 
environment, but also by taking different sections of one's own personal 
life.  For example, each year, or each crucial event whether it be birth, 
achieving adulthood, marriage, having children, or experiencing death.  
Each of these is a stage on an integrated path, so that each step on the 
path is related in a determinate way to the preceding steps, and 
contributes in a determinate way to the following steps, and hence gives 
oneself a clear picture of the meaning of each particular step.  There is 
an integration of life, a plan which enables one to organize all the 
details of life around a central theme, so that each detail contributes to 
the expression of that overall theme. Even though they are tiny details, 
they contribute to the overall impact of the theme which is trying to be 
expressed.  Likewise, that in turn confers a meaningfulness on those 
individual choices, and enhances the meaningfulness of life.  So, in so far 
as we are concerned about the meaningfulness of our lives, the Torah is 
again quite relevant.
	
SUMMARY
Judaism is relevant because it contributes to our goals - specifically to 
successful marriage, reduction in addictions and crime, universal literacy, 
and a meaningful life. 

	Finally, in addition to the Torah being beautiful, profound, noble, 
challenging, mind expanding et cetera, it is also true.   And since it is 
true, of course it is relevant. If I want to live successfully in the world 
around me, if I want my actions to be intelligently related to my ends, 
then I have to know the nature of reality.  I have to know the nature of 
the world that surrounds me.  To choose intelligently means to understand 
the characteristics of the world in which I live.  
	Also, not only is truth relevant to choosing means, but also in 
adopting ends themselves.  It is important to have accurate information of 
the world around you because it can often happen that a person espouses to 
a number of goals, and when he analyses the world around him, he finds that 
those goals are incompatible to one another.  One cannot simultaneously 
realize all his goals because the world does not  allow all of them.  If 
you realize one, you will therefore prevent yourself from realizing one of 
the others, and then a choice must be made.  Ignorance of the world can 
lead one to extend oneself and to commit one's efforts to goals which 
cannot be simultaneously realized, which is of course a tragedy.  
	Take for example the twin goals possessed by many people that Judaism 
should survive as a distinct culture because it has an important distinct 
contribution to make to the world, and simultaneously are  recommending a 
path of cultural compromise of some kind or other.  They are interested in 
some kind of accommodation with Western Civilization.  Now, if one studies 
history, in particular Jewish History, one will quickly come to the 
conclusion that those two goals are incompatible with one another.  This 
path of cultural compromise, of accommodation with host civilizations, is a 
path which has been tried many times in the past.  In each case it has 
resulted in cultural failure, complete cultural disintegration. [For the 
full argument on this point, see below Historical Verification of the 
Torah, Chapter V.]
	Similarly, someone who wants to simultaneously contribute to the 
moral maturation of mankind, and also wants to contribute to Western 
Civilization, for such a person the experience of Germany should give him 
second thoughts. Germany represented the flowering of Western Civilization. 
They were great in art, literature, science, poetry, music et cetera.  Yet, 
morally speaking, they were capable of sinking, in one decade, to the 
lowest depths that humanity has ever trod.  So, one has to ask whether 
Western Civilization, morally speaking, is only skin deep and does little 
if anything to tame the beast that rages within. (Perhaps it helps in 
creating that kind of bestiality?)  At any rate, surely those two goals  
have to be scrutinized  top see if they can be made to live together.  This 
is an example of how knowing the truth is crucial not only for choosing 
means to our ends, but also for choosing our ends intelligently by making 
sure that they are jointly realizable.
	
SUMMARY
Judaism is relevant because it  provides truth about the world which 
enables us to make fruitful decisions.
	
	So much for the treatment of the question in a serious fashion.  Now, 
what I want to tell you is the truth which is that the question is really 
no question, that it can't be asked, and that it is really incoherent.  
Why?
	What does relevance mean?  Relevance is a relative term.  Relevant to 
what?  When I say that something is relevant, what I mean is that it is 
relevant to some given concerns, goals and values. For example someone is 
applying for a job. Is that fact hat he is 5'2" tall relevant? It depends: 
if they want an accountant then no, but if they want a basketball player 
then yes! Every question of relevance presupposes a context of accepted 
goals and values. For me to ask whether religion is relevant is to measure 
religion against my goals and values.  But, this presupposes that I already 
have goals and values. We could raise the question: How were they chosen?  
How were they established and justified?  
	Even more fundamentally, the Torah doesn't allow itself to be a tool 
with which we can realize our extra -Jewish or our extra-Torah goals and 
values.  The reason is that the Torah itself provides a complete set of 
values.  The Torah itself dictates what shall be the goals of man.  Thus, 
the Torah contains its own complete standard of relevance. The only way in 
which I can ask if the Torah is relevant or not is to have already decided 
not to treat it as true, not to take it on its own terms, in terms of its 
own self-conception, but rather to set something else up as a standard of 
what shall or shall not be relevant. The Torah dictates for itself its own 
standards of relevance, and so to ask whether it is relevant or not is to 
ask an incoherent question. 
 	I'll give you an analogy. There is an international commission which 
determines the rules of international chess competition. Now when they 
publish the latest rules we cannot ask: "Are those rules really valid? Are 
they correct rules of chess?" We can't ask that because they determine the 
rules of chess. Similarly here, if the Torah is going to dictate what my 
ultimate values are, and what my ultimate goals are, and my ultimate values 
and goals are my standards of relevance, then I can no longer ask whether 
the Torah is relevant.  The Torah is that which determines relevance for 
everything else.  The Torah is that to which  other things have to be 
relevant, if they are to be relevant at all. The question then becomes not: 
Is the Torah relevant to me, to mankind, to society? and so forth, but the 
question then becomes: Am I relevant to the Torah?  Is my life a relevant 
life?  I become the subject matter of the question, not the one who asks of 
the question.  
	
SUMMARY
Relevance is relative to a standard set by our goals and values. To ask if 
religion is relevant is to evaluate religion by a standard external to 
religion itself. Judaism contains its own goals and values, and thus its 
own standard of relevance. Therefore it falsifies Judaism to assess its 
relevance to external standards. Judaism is the standard of relevance for 
everything else. 


	Now, this idea that the Torah can dictate goals and values is going 
to run counter to the intuition of many. Many people think that they think 
that values are relative. (Or rather many people think that they think 
that, because I am going to argue that they don't  really think it.) 
Relative values means that each person chooses his own values, each person 
makes his own commitments, no one can tell anyone else how they are going 
to live and what they should pursue. In short, the question of values, 
ethics and morals is purely a personal question, a subjective question.  I 
am not drawing fine distinctions between relativism, nihilism, subjectivism 
et cetera. Let's just lump it all together: there is no objective standard 
of right and wrong.  That, anyway, is what they think they think.  
	Now, I am not going to address this question philosophically simply 
because 2500 years of philosophical ethics has produced nothing  conclusive 
on the question.  We are still floundering around much as we were before 
Plato and Aristotle started the current tradition.  So, instead of arguing 
about the question philosophically, I am going to argue to you as people.  
I am going to argue what is called ad hominem.  I am going to argue that 
you yourselves do not hold this position.  You may think you do, you may 
have been taught  the phrases, but I can ferret out of you intuitions which 
are very much at variance with this conception.  I think that I will show 
you, unless one or two of my readers are very recalcitrant which I doubt, 
that you are believers in absolute universal binding values, and the only 
question is what particular values are the correct values. 
	So, let me argue to you, ad hominem, that you really do believe in 
this shockingly old fashioned thesis.  Consider the following two 
conflicts.  Number one, you have two conflicting desires.  You want to go 
to the rock concert and you want to go to the hockey game, but they are at 
the same time.  So, you have to decide what to do.  So you say "Well let's 
see, the concert costs $35, the ice hockey game costs $45, that one's 
farther away, this one would be more exciting, but that one happens more 
rarely, but this one my friend wants to go to, or that one not," and so on.  
You make up a calculation and you decide "Okay, I'm going to the concert." 
That is the first case.
	Now, the second case.  You have a rock concert to go to and you have 
a promise to keep, and there is a conflict and you cannot do both.  Again 
you weigh up that the rock concert only happens once a year, but then 
again, I made this promise, these people need it and so on.  Again, you 
weigh up all the factors, and you make a decision to go to the concert.  
That is the second case.
	Now let's suppose that in both cases, later, you feel as if you have 
made a mistake.  You go back over it and you say "No, I should not have 
made that decision, I should have made the other decision.  I wish I had 
made the other decision.  If I could do it all over again, I would do it 
the other way."
	Now, I suggest to you that in the case where you chose the rock 
concert over the promise (the second case), it is relevant, reasonable, and 
coherent that you feel guilty.  I am not saying that you have to feel 
guilty, or that you will feel guilty.  But, if a person does happen to feel 
guilty, it is a normal response to have that feeling.  Whereas, in the 
first case, where you chose the rock concert over the hockey game, if a 
person feels guilty in that circumstance, it is pathological. It is not 
logically relevant to feel guilty for having chosen the wrong one of your 
desires.  This is now not a point about psychology, but rather a point 
about logic.  The conflict of desires on the one hand, and the conflict of 
a desire with a recognized obligation on the other hand, produce the 
relevance of an entirely different kind of emotion - the logical relevance 
of the emotion.  This is an indication that we do not conceive of our 
obligations on a par with our desires, our inclinations, our feelings, and 
the rest of our subjectivity.  But, this is  merely indicating evidence.
	
SUMMARY
Many people think they believe that values are relative. But they recognize 
that a failure to live up to one's values makes guilt a relevant reaction, 
which is not the case for a failure to satisfy desires. This indicates that 
we experience our values differently from our desires.

	Let me argue the case directly now, the case for what you really 
think.  The following story appeared in the Wall Street Journal a number of 
years ago.  There was a student at a philosophy course who was assigned to 
write a paper on ethics.  He wrote a paper defending the thesis that there 
are no universal objective values.  Everyone can more or less do what one 
likes, choose one's own commitments and so on.  He received the paper back 
with an "F" on it.  He  went to the professor and  said: "Why did you fail 
me?"  The professor replied: "Because your wrong," and the student said: 
"Prove it!"  The professor  took out all the standard arguments that prove 
why there are objective values, and to each argument, the student  said: "I 
don't believe that...I'm not committed to that," or, "I don't accept 
that...that doesn't persuade me," and so on down the line.  After a half an 
hour, the student  said: "Well, see, you tried out all your arguments and I 
am unmoved."  The professor then replied "I'm going to fail you anyway, and 
not only that, I'm going to fail you in the course."  The student, feeling 
a little unsettled and worried,  said: "You can't do that!"  The professor  
replied: "Of course I can. I put an F right here, see?  Then, I sign my 
name over here.  There's nothing to it!"  The student then said: "No, no, 
you have no right to do that!"  
	What did the student say?  "You have no right to do that?"  This is 
the student  who has  denied the objectivity of value, thus denying the 
universality of value.  Who is he to tell the professor what rights he has?  
Suppose the professor says, "My value that I have chosen  is the following.  
I fail all those whom disagree with me, and I give A's to all those who 
agree with me."  Now, the student, given his position, cannot  criticize 
the professor because he has just defended the thesis that anybody can 
choose whatever values he likes.
	Now let me ask you: with whom do you agree in this story? Do you side 
with the student, or with the professor? I think we should side morally 
with the student - he is clearly a victim. But then what about his paper? 
His thesis that values are relative gives him no room to complain when he 
is treated unjustly! If the student wants to condemn the professor, he 
needs to have objective values which apply to the professor no matter what 
the professor thinks.
	If you reject objective values then you give up the ability to 
condemn even the most outrageous injustice. What can you say even to a 
Nazi? He will tell you: "You chose your values, I chose mine. Who are you 
to tell me what values to choose? You mollycoddle Jews; I kill them. The 
future will be decided by the stronger army!" When you protest that what he 
does is unjust, evil, you are only expressing your private choices. Why 
should that be of any relevance to him? 
	The fact is that there is a deep inconsistency here. When I want to 
stifle a nagging conscience, and when I want to throw off the ideals of a 
society with which I disagree, then I become a nihilist, I become a 
subjectivist, I become a relativist, everyone can choose their own their 
own values, and everyone makes their own commitments.  But, the minute that 
someone tries to interfere with me, the minute someone tries to limit my 
freedom, I then suddenly become a universalist, an absolutist: I trumpet my 
universal values and expect the other person to pay attention.  
	I don't merely fight it out with the Nazi, I don't believe that the 
reason Democracy should triumph over the Nazis is because we have more guns 
than they do. I brand the Nazi as evil!  Also, I expect all the people who 
have moral conceptions, and who are not evil themselves, to agree with me.  
When I declare the Nazi as evil, I don't think of myself as just letting 
off steam the way some philosophers would have it.  We want our own freedom 
that we expect other people to respect.  That being the case, we all 
believe in absolute, universal and binding values.  The only question is, 
which ones are they?
	
SUMMARY
The fact that people are willing to condemn injustice in others despite 
their choice of different values shows that people believe in universal 
objective values.

	So, which absolute, universal and binding values are the ones which 
we should believe in?   When you come down to cases there is a lot of 
difficult discussion, and that is where the real interesting and important 
issues lie.  Some people will say that it is patent: The absolute value and 
the absolute responsibility is not to interfere with other people.  But 
this is not so obvious.  Interference can be defined in a variety of ways.  
Take for example zoning laws. When someone buys a plot of land you tell 
him: "No! No two family houses, just one family houses."  The purchaser 
will respond: "But it's my plot of land, they are my bricks, I hired the 
workers, why can't I build whatever I like? I don't care about your desire 
to preserve a certain quality to the neighborhood."  
	Well that's too bad, because even though it is his land, he will 
still not be allowed to build whatever he wants. Social legislation in 
general is like this. You tell someone who owns his own restaurant that he 
has to serve the public indiscriminately.  But suppose he says "I only want 
to serve blue eyed people, I like blue-eyed people.  Brown-eyed people make 
me nervous."  Well that is too bad.  He can't keep brown eyed people out. 
Why not? What counts as freedom from interference is a difficult matter, 
and it is going to be discussed and debated because people have different 
ideas.  
	In any case the general point remains:  no one believes across the 
board in the subjectivity or the relativity of values.  That being the 
case, I hope that you can at least accept the possibility of a philosophy, 
like the Torah, which says that there is an objective, universal, binding 
standard.
 	People  may still try to argue as follows.  Values cannot be 
objective because in the last analysis, I have to choose my own values.  I 
have to make the choice.  You can talk to me, you can show me the relevant 
facts, you can ask me to read the important novels or philosophical works 
which will have an impact on me, but in the last analysis, I have to make 
the choice.  So, how could it possibly be objective?  How can there be a 
universal standard if everyone has to make his own choice?
	Now, that is nothing but a complete, irrelevant fallacy, and I will 
prove it to you. We will compare it with truth,  in particular with 
science. Suppose someone said: "There can't be an objective truth, there 
can't be a reality, because in the last analysis, I have to decide what to 
believe.  You could present me with the evidence, you could present me with 
the arguments, you could present me with all the theories and how they fit 
the data, but in the last analysis, I, and only I will have to make the 
decision to believe it or not to believe it.  So, therefore, there can't be 
any objective standard and there can't be any universal standard.  Each 
person's standard is his own standard for himself."  
	No one is going to buy that in science because science distinguishes 
between my choice of what to believe on the one hand, and the standard for 
correctness of belief on the other hand.  Of course I will decide what I am 
ultimately going to believe and what I am not going to believe, but that 
means I can decide to believe  what agrees with the real world, and is 
true, or I can to decide to believe what disagrees with the real world, and 
hence is false.  The fact that I am making the decision does not imply that 
there is no correctness or incorrectness to the decision. The same thing is 
true with respect to values.  The mere fact that I am going to decide what 
values to espouse and what values to commit myself to has nothing to do 
with the question as to whether or not there is an objective, universal 
standard.
	As we will see in detail in chapter II, there are two basic attitudes 
toward religion.  There is the pragmatic attitude and the realist attitude.  
One either looks at religion as a tool for self-realization, for self-
actualization, for development of character, all as part of our cultural 
heritage. Or, one looks at religion as the picture of reality that we live 
in.  Now then, from this point of view, if someone is going to look at it 
as reality, reality now not only includes factual reality, not only where 
did the world come from, how is it governed, where is it going, what is the 
essence of mankind and so on. It is also going to give us an objective 
account of what are values, of what are obligations, and what are goals 
that are universal and binding.  So, in a rather convoluted way, we can 
come back in the end to the question of relevance.
	If one is committed to understanding the world in which we live, if 
one wants to grasp reality mentally so as to live in it consciously, then 
discovering the truth of religion, if it is true, becomes one of life's 
most relevant projects.  If there is a possibility, more than just a 
logical possibility, but if there is some evidence for the truth of Judaism 
in particular, then one has an overriding interest, it seems to me, in 
sifting that evidence, in investigating the possibility so as to come to a 
reasoned and informed conclusion as to whether or not it is true.  Because, 
if it is true, then with respect to the first half of this discussion, 
given our concerns it will be tremendously relevant.  Secondly, with 
respect to the second half of the discussion, it will then become the 
standard of relevance, and it will dictate the ultimate meaningfulness and 
significance of our lives.

SUMMARY
There is controversy in particular value judgments, but that does not 
contradict the existence of objective values. Nor does the fact that each 
person must make his own value commitments contradict objective values; 
just as in science each person decides what he will believe and yet there 
is a standard of correctness, so too for value. 

===========================================================================

Chapter II:  Religion: Pragmatism Or Truth?

	There are two fundamental attitudes towards religion.  I believe that 
they are mutually exclusive and exhaustive, that is to say, that everyone 
adopts exactly one of these two attitudes.  I call them the pragmatic and 
the realist.  Now, what I will try to do in this chapter is to describe to 
you these two attitudes, and to evaluate whether they are on a par or 
whether one is more fundamental, more appropriate, or more justified.  
Then, we will describe how the more fundamental of the two attitudes should 
be implemented and practiced.
	The pragmatic attitude starts with the self. I am a person with 
goals, desires, hopes, fears, projects, scruples and so on.  There are 
various things that I want to accomplish, and I look at the world as a set 
of resources to accomplish my projects.  All of human history and human 
culture can be seen as a means, or tools which I select to further my 
goals.  
	This attitude, the pragmatic attitude, can be applied, among other 
things, to religion.  Religion can also be used to serve goals. It can 
unite society by coordinating activities and creating  mutual understanding 
and support. It can serve personal goals by increasing sensitivity, 
providing a feeling of oneness with the universe, strengthening courage, 
and so on.  (Sometimes these goals are combined.  If someone convinces the 
rest of his citizens that he is a demi-god, then he will have both a 
political and a personal benefit!)  
	The pragmatic attitude towards religion leads to the expectation that 
different cultures, different times, and different periods will have 
different forms of religious expression because their goals, needs, and 
values will be quite different - we expect the religions of ancient Egypt, 
ancient Rome, and modern Los Angeles to differ from one another.  
Similarly, we expect the religious expression of an individual to vary 
through his lifetime.  The goals and aspirations of a seventeen year old, a 
thirty-five year old and a sixty year old are usually different.  
	Pragmatic religious expression would likely be eclectic.  There is no 
reason to be bound by any one particular tradition.  If a Hindu prayer is 
inspirational on Tuesdays, and a Moslem ritual on Thursdays, and the Jewish 
Sabbath on Saturdays, there is no reason not to combine them.  Indeed, 
there is no reason to be bound to tradition at all - religious creativity 
will be encouraged to develop new forms of expression. And of course the 
pragmatic attitude  includes the ' null' option where no religious 
expression whatsoever is found relevant to any of one's goals, and 
therefore religion is abandoned altogether.  
	
SUMMARY
The pragmatic attitude takes religion as a means to personal and social 
goals. Pragmatism expects variations in religious practice in different 
cultures, individuals, and periods of life. All religious traditions and 
new creativity provide materials for the individual's religious expression. 
For some, zero religious expression will best serve their goals.
	
	The second is the realist attitude.  The realist wants truth.  Every 
religion has some story to tell.  Where did the universe come from?  What 
is its fundamental nature?  What forces guide its development?  What is the 
nature of the human being?  What will the future be?  The realist wants the 
religion whose story is true.
	[I am skirting a difficult problem here: are pragmatism and realism 
really distinct? One might say that among my goals is to know the truth. 
Then pragmatism defined as seeking means to achieve my goals will include 
realism. But it is not obvious that we want truth as a goal. We all 
appreciate that truth is an indispensable means to my other goals; perhaps 
this is all we want from truth. In any case, if you think that truth can be 
a goal, then think of pragmatism as defined to exclude truth, i.e. 
pragmatism means the assessment of everything as a means to achieving my 
goals other than acquiring truth. Then the two positions will be distinct.]  
	Now put this way, it is obvious that everyone is a realist and 
everyone is a pragmatist.  Everyone has goals, desires, hopes, and 
projects, and looks to his culture as means and materials to further those 
projects.  Similarly, everyone has an interest in the truth, since truth is 
an indispensable means to achieve other goals.   When I say that these two 
attitudes are mutually exclusive, what I mean is what a person will do if 
he is forced to choose.  
	So, for example, suppose that you are exploring different religions 
and you come across one which as a pragmatist is ideal - it inspires you, 
it ennobles you, it increases your sensitivities, and it furthers the 
social projects in which you are interested.  It fits your personality like 
a glove.  It's just that there is no evidence whatsoever that its account 
of the world is true.  In fact, there may be considerable evidence against 
it.  In such a condition you would have to choose between pragmatism which 
is satisfied, and realism which is not.  
	You could have the same conflict working in the opposite direction.  
You could come across a religion where there is a complete misfit in 
pragmatic terms: it dashes your hopes, it violates your scruples, it 
requires a reorganization of your world view, your goals and your focus.  
But the evidence seems to indicate that its picture of the world is true.  
Under those conditions you again have to make a choice between pragmatism 
and realism, and there the criteria obviously will conflict.  So that when 
it comes to crucial choices of this kind, all people adopt one or the other 
of these two attitudes: the pragmatist or the realist.  
	
SUMMARY
The realist attitude assesses religion in terms of the truth of its 
description of  the world. The two attitudes will conflict for religions 
which are pragmatically useful but lack evidence of truth, and for 
religions which are pragmatically useless but do possess evidence of truth. 
Then a choice must be made between the attitudes. 

	Now, it is obvious that there are hundreds of millions of pragmatists 
at the very least, and hundreds of millions of realists.  The world has 
many people of both types.  The question is, are these two attitudes 
equally appropriate and equally valid, and people are split in terms of 
their personalities and preferences, or, is one or the other more 
fundamental and more appropriate?  
	It seems to me that the fundamental attitude with which one must 
begin any investigation is the realist.  As long as there is the 
possibility of truth in any investigation, one has the responsibility to 
search for the truth.  Only if we can conclude that there is no truth to be 
had is it justifiable to make our decisions on a pragmatic basis. 
	I will give you some examples of why this is so.  Imagine that you 
are a teacher and that you have caught one of your students cheating.  You 
call in the parents for a conference, and you tell the parents that their 
child has a problem: "Your child cheats on exams, copies homework from 
other children," and so on.  Suppose that the parents say that you are a 
liar, and that you have a vendetta against their child.  Furthermore, they 
tell you that they have an uncle who is on the school board, and that if 
you keep persecuting their child, they will have you fired.  Why would we 
not respect that sort of reaction?  Because the child's cheating is a 
matter of fact. You presumably have evidence of the cheating.  A parent who 
disregards the evidence and believes what he thinks it is convenient for 
him to believe, is regarded as irresponsible and irrational for so doing.  
	Similarly, some people who smoke have said to me that smoking isn't 
really injurious to your health.  All the research is phony, it is paid off 
by underground left-wing groups who want to discredit the big tobacco 
companies. Why don't we credit that type of response?  Because the danger 
to your health is a matter of fact.  If there is evidence the very least a 
person must do is survey the evidence, and if he has an objection to it, 
offer it in logical terms, and not just dismiss it on an unfounded charge 
of bias or fraud.  
	We don't credit pragmatic responses when there is evidence available 
which could lead to the truth.  Any investigation must begin with the 
realist attitude.  If and when the realist attitude comes up empty - if the 
investigation leads to the conclusion that there is no truth to be had - 
then of course we fall back on pragmatism.  There is nothing left to do.  
But, the realist approach must be applied at the outset.  From the 
philosopher's point of view, it is especially unfortunate that the vast 
majority of pragmatists, vis-a-vis religion, are so by default.  They have 
never undertaken any serious investigation.  They simply assume that there 
simply is no truth to be had, and therefore fall back on what is useful for 
their life projects.  What we are going to do is pursue the realist 
attitude to see how far it can take us.  
	[The responsibility to seek the truth is of course only one 
responsibility among many, and it may be overridden when it conflicts with 
a more pressing responsibility. For example, suppose seeking the truth will 
cost my life! Also, there is considerable discussion of the foundation of 
the responsibility to seek the truth. As mentioned in the last [ ], it is 
be a crucially important means to our other goals, and it may itself be a 
goal. This is a theoretical matter which does not touch its validity. In 
our case, since the utility of having the truth is infinite (see the 
discussion of Pascal's wager  in chapter III), the responsibility to seek 
the truth obviously applies.]
	
SUMMARY 
In any investigation upon which a decision will be based we are required to 
start with realism. To make a decision pragmatically without considering 
the evidence of truth is irrational and irresponsible.  	
	
 	 One immediate consequence of approaching religion as a realist and 
searching for the truth is to be prepared to reject falsehood.  One cannot 
be searching for the truth unless one is prepared to reject inadequate 
ideas as false.  In any area where we believe that there is a truth, we 
recognize that in the collection of contradictory opinions, if they truly 
are contradictory, no more than one can be true.  
	We do not accord equal intellectual status to groups such as The Flat 
Earth Society which believes to this day that the Earth is flat.  And 
whereas we may not throw them in jail or recommend that they be exiled or 
censored, we certainly do not accord their opinion equal intellectual 
status.  We are not likely to offer them equal time to teach their opinions 
in the schools, or to write their alternative textbooks, because what they 
believe is nonsense.  We react similarly with people who don't believe in 
the reality of the Holocaust.  We are not likely to give their views equal 
intellectual weight because we are dealing with a matter of fact, and the 
evidence is against them.  To be searching for the truth means to be 
prepared to reject falsehood.  
	Now, when it comes to religions, and I am talking now about the major 
world religions, they contradict each other on some crucial aspect of 
belief.  That is to say if you take any two of the major world religions, 
there is some proposition about which they disagree. And that being the 
case, no more than one can be wholly true. For, if religion A wholly true 
then, each of the others is wrong at least on the proposition in which it 
disagrees with religion A.
	For example, according to Catholicism, a certain man was G-d.  
According to Islam, no man ever was G-d and no man ever could be G-d. Islam 
believes that Mohammed was a true prophet while Catholicism denies this.  
They cannot both be right. At least one of them has to be wrong.  Hinduism, 
in the mainstream of Hindu thought, believes that the world is infinitely 
old, that there was not a creation at a finite time in the past.  Since 
Catholicism and Islam share a belief in creation, and Hinduism rejects it, 
that means that no more than one of the three can be wholly true.  Buddhism 
goes further and denies the existence of a creator altogether.  (Hinduism 
would allow a creator who has always been creating the universe from 
infinity.)  Then, no more than one of the four can be wholly true.  Since 
Judaism believes in creation of finite age, that no man was G-d and that 
Mohammed was not a prophet, Judaism is opposed to all four. That means that 
no more than one of these five can be wholly true.  
	And so it goes. Take any major world religion and it will contradict 
the others on some fundamental aspect of belief. Therefore no more than one 
can be wholly true. (Of course, as I'm sure you have picked up, it is 
possible for none of them to be wholly true.)  So if we are looking for the 
truth, we cannot give equal weight to all religions (unless we find that 
they are all false). If one is wholly true then the others are not. 
	Now, a common response to this observation is to say that maybe we 
could look at religions in terms of what they share.  Perhaps there is a 
certain common core to all religions, a general sense that there is a 
superior power, and an appreciation of the spiritual and the moral aspects 
of life, a sense that our material world is not self contained and that it 
really is the surface of something that is much deeper.  Perhaps we could 
take this common core which all religions share, approach it realistically, 
see it as the truth, and then with regard to the other matters in which the 
religions differ, look at them as matters of style.  
	Matters of ethnicity, which really are not crucial, do not have to be 
regarded as true and could be selected on the basis of pragmatism.  We 
could have a split methodology - realists for the core and pragmatists for 
the trappings.  Does it really matter whether you eat meat on Fridays, 
smoke cigarettes on Saturdays, or have one month a year in which you fast 
all day long?  Those are surely not matters of truth, those are purely 
matters of style.  
	This suggestion is attractive until you start to pin it down in 
detail.  What exactly should go into the core (the core being beliefs 
shared by all religions)?  Can any of the accounts of our origins go into 
this core?  Obviously not, since, as we just pointed out, different 
religions have radically different views about the origins of the universe: 
created by a personal being a finite number of years ago, or going through 
infinite cycles, or existing independently without the guidance of an all 
powerful being, and so on. There will be no scriptures that can go into the 
core because no scriptures are agreed upon by all religions.  There will be 
no prophets in the core  because no prophets are recognized by all 
religions.  
	An account of the soul?  Sometimes religions share a word without 
sharing a concept because it is difficult to translate from one language to 
another. It may be said that all religions recognize the "soul," but when 
you look to see what they think the soul is, you get so radically different 
a picture, that there is no common concept underlying the variety.  
	Is the soul a personal spirit whose personhood, whose uniqueness is 
essential and infinite - eternal - and never to be destroyed as you have, 
for example, in Judaism?  Or, is the soul an illusion, something which must 
be stripped away so that one achieves a consciousness that does not 
distinguish one significantly from a rock, a praying mantis, or a sea gull 
as you have in some Eastern religions?  Is the ultimate relationship with 
G-d like a drop of water falling into an ocean, which many religions have 
as their metaphor for mystical union with G-d, where the individuality of 
the drop is lost entirely? Or is it the Jewish conception - the attachment 
of one thing to another, like gluing a pebble onto a wall, where the pebble 
becomes part of the wall, while at the same time its unique contours are 
preserved?  The mere fact that religions may share a word called "soul" 
doesn't mean that they share an underlying concept.  
	To what can one look forward in the future?  Will this physical world 
continue to exist forever as some have it, or will it be radically 
transformed and exist in another form as Judaism has it?  Or, will it be 
totally obliterated as some forms of Christianity have it?  Since religions 
differ on this matter, nothing about it can go into the core.  
	As soon as you pin down religious ideas in detail, you find that the 
differences are radical, and that nothing can be claimed to be shared by 
all religions.  Even the suggestion that perhaps religions share a 
commitment to morality turns out to be superficial in this way.  All 
religions might agree that it is wrong to steal.  But when you ask for the 
concept behind the rule, why one shouldn't steal, you get radically 
different views.  For example, mainstream Hinduism sees stealing as an 
action which reinforces the ego.  The ego is the great enemy of achieving 
nirvana.  Every person's goal in this world is to achieve nirvana which is 
some sort of experiential state for himself, some sort of bliss.  
Therefore, stealing for a Hindu ultimately is pragmatically ruled out.  It 
is bad for you. You are depriving yourself of achieving the greatest 
happiness, the greatest bliss, the greatest tranquillity of which you are 
capable.  The ultimate justification for not stealing is pragmatic.  
	Now, when you take that same rule in Jewish terms, you get an 
entirely different underlying conception.  In Jewish terms, stealing is 
wrong because morality is paramount.  Morality is not justified because it 
contributes to happiness. A pragmatic reason not to steal isn't moral at 
all.  A person who never steals because he believes that there are 
policemen watching him all the time, and he believes that if he steals he 
is going to be put in jail, hasn't begun to become moral. Any kind of self-
serving justification from a Jewish point of view is to misunderstand the 
fundamental concept of morality altogether. A mere behavioral rule does not 
give the core any religious content. 
	So the idea that religions have a common core which could be declared 
true and that the rest is just trappings is a mistake.  The hearts of 
religions, their most fundamental beliefs contradict one another. Therefore 
we are thrown back on the radical position that if we are looking for 
truth, we must be ready to declare falsehood when we discover it.  
	
SUMMARY
The search for truth requires the rejection of falsehood. Religions 
contradict one another, so not more than one can be wholly true; to find 
one wholly true means the others are not. The idea of a common core to all 
religions fails since the contradictions between religions prevents the 
proposed core from having any content.
	
	So then, the question is how should we look for truth?  How should we 
pursue it?  And, if we are looking for the truth and we are to be objective 
and open-minded, shouldn't we give equal time to all of the candidates?  
Shouldn't we take time to familiarize ourselves with not only Judaism, but 
also Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and 
Shintoism (just to mention the major world religions)?  But, to become 
thoroughly familiar with the inner workings of a religion, as I am sure you 
know, is not a trivial matter.  Even with six months for each religion, 
which is probably too short, you are talking about a four year 
investigation.  Most people just don't have the time. Well, I hope to show 
you on general intellectual grounds that we can be objective and open-
minded and yet drastically reduce the scope of the investigation.  
	The method of searching for truth, in my view, is the scientific 
method.  It is the only method which we have. With all its limitations and 
all of its weaknesses, it is the only neutral method we have in searching 
for the truth.  The trouble is, the scientific method is very poorly 
understood. (That includes scientists. The mere fact that you can do 
something does not mean that you understand what you are doing and why you 
are doing it.)  So, I will take the remainder of this section to describe 
to you how the scientific method works in detail, and show you how it 
applies to the study of religion.  And you will see, I hope, that when we 
apply the scientific method, the scope of the investigation can be 
drastically reduced.  
	The first element of the scientific method is that for an idea to be 
taken seriously as true, there must be positive evidence of its truth.  
Whoever offers an idea and claims that it is true, must present positive 
evidence of its truth.  If that sounds obvious to you, consider the 
following.  I want you to meet uncle Paddy from northern Ireland who 
believes in Leprechauns.  I asked him once: "Uncle Paddy, do you really 
believe in Leprechauns,   little green men who scurry behind the furniture 
and eat up the crumbs that you leave on the dining room table at night?"  
And he said: "Yes, absolutely, I believe in Leprechauns."  So I said to 
him: "Uncle Paddy, do you have any evidence for Leprechauns?  Did you ever 
see any?  Did you set up a high speed  camera and catch them in flight?  
Did you ever find wee little foot prints in the dust?"  He said that he had 
no evidence whatsoever.  So I said to him: "Then why do you believe in them 
if you have no evidence?"  
	He answered me: "Can you prove that there are no Leprechauns?  Can 
you refute the existence of Leprechauns?"  Now, I must say that gave me 
pause.  Can I prove that there are no Leprechauns?  How would I do that?  
Then I realized that no, I cannot prove that there are no Leprechauns.  So, 
Uncle Paddy said: "Well    then why are you prejudiced against them?  You 
cannot prove that they do not exist, so you should treat them on a par with 
everything else.  Why do you just dismiss them?"  Now, is Uncle Paddy 
right?  (Try this on your scientist friends and see what kind of an answer 
you get!)  
	Uncle Paddy is wrong, and I will explain why.  I could go on to ask 
Uncle Paddy: "Could you please describe the Leprechauns in which you 
believe.?"  And he will say: "Oh yes, they are three inches tall, little 
green men, and wearing conical hats."  So I ask him: "Uncle Paddy, what 
about four-inch purple Leprechauns     wearing three-cornered hats?  What 
about five-inch Leprechauns, brown, wearing cubical hats?"  "Oh no,"   
Uncle Paddy will answer, "Just my little green men."  So, I will ask uncle 
Paddy: "How did you decide to believe in your Leprechauns and reject the 
others?  Can you prove that the four-inch and five-inch Leprechauns do not 
exist?  What about pixies?  What about trolls?  What about centaurs?  What 
about unicorns?  Surely there is an infinity of alternatives with all sorts 
of imaginative (to use a neutral word) alternatives.  How did you decide to 
believe in these and not those?"  
	Suppose that Uncle Paddy, sensing the weakness in his position, says: 
"Okay, okay, I have decided to become an ultra liberal - I believe in all 
of them!" Then we can make the situation is even worse by making the 
alternatives conflict so that it is impossible to accept all of them. One 
says that pixies are stronger than trolls and the other says the opposite. 
Then Uncle Paddy must choose to reject at least one of the alternatives, 
and that choice will be without reason.  Only positive evidence could 
provide a reason, and  he has no positive evidence. 
	If I am looking for truth, if I am trying to fulfill my 
responsibility to find the truth, I need a reason for my selection.  I need 
a reason for my choice, and in this realm, there is no reason to be had.  
That is why we do not pay attention to ideas without positive evidence.  It 
is correct not to credit ideas lacking positive evidence, and the reason is 
not because we know that they are false.  I will say it again, I cannot 
prove that there are no Leprechauns.  That is not the reason for rejection 
of belief.  The reason is that I have no positive evidence to believe in 
them.  And without positive evidence, it becomes one of an infinity of 
choices for which I have no justification of choice.  So even without 
refuting them, I disregard them when they do not present positive evidence 
because I have no responsibility to accept them.  
	That is the reason for the first wing of the scientific method, and 
believe it or not, this observation, as simple as it is, already suffices 
to rule out some candidates. The Far Eastern religions - Confucianism, 
Taoism, and  Shintoism - offer no positive evidence of truth.  They present 
themselves as noble, beautiful, uplifting, and inspiring ways of life. They 
claim to create harmonious attitudes and feelings of oneness with nature 
and so on.  In other words, they present themselves as pragmatically very 
successful, and in fact they may be pragmatically superb, but they do not 
offer any evidence of the truth of their stories about the world.  They 
don't say that if you practice our rules that you will be healthy, you 
won't have accidents, there won't be famine, or pestilence, or war, or 
earthquakes in your country, or that you will win the universal respect of 
mankind.  They do not make any predictions at all.  They offer no positive 
evidence of truth.  
	Therefore, a realist who is looking for the truth need not go to the 
east and spend six months mastering Shintoism, because there is no positive 
reason to accept it.  Now, I will say it again, I am not claiming that 
Shintoism is false.  I do not know it to be false. I cannot refute it.  
But, it is on a par with Leprechauns.  If they do not offer any evidence 
for the truth, then I, who am searching for the truth have no 
responsibility to take it seriously.  It becomes one of an infinity of 
alternatives and I have no grounds for a choice.  So then, the 
investigation has now been reduced by three-eighths!
	
SUMMARY
We search for truth by using the scientific method. The first element in 
the method is to require positive evidence of truth - not merely the 
impossibility of refutation. Positive evidence is necessary because without 
it there is an infinity of alternatives with no reason for choice. Since we 
are trying to fulfill our responsibility to believe the truth, we need a 
reason for our choice. The Far Eastern religions offer no positive 
evidence, so we have no need to consider them in our investigation.
	
	The next aspect of the scientific method is that when a religion, a 
theory, or a hypothesis offers evidence, the evidence must be unique.  It 
must be evidence which that religion, theory, or hypothesis can explain and 
no one else can explain.  Otherwise, it does not distinguish the opponent 
from its competitors.  In science this is described as a crucial 
experiment.  Suppose I have two theories, A and B, such that both agree 
that if you heat up this liquid for ten minutes, it will turn red. Heating 
up the liquid is probably a waste of time, because it will probably turn 
red and I won't know any more than before I did the experiment.  What I 
really want is a case where A says that it will turn red and B says it will 
turn blue.  Then I have something, because no matter what happens, (at 
least) one of the theories is going to be in trouble. (And I say in trouble 
specifically.  It does not mean that it will be false, but it will be in 
trouble because there will experimental evidence against it.)  What you 
want is a piece of evidence which one of the competitors can explain and 
the other cannot.  Then you have a differential between them.  
	Now, there are religions that offer evidence of their truth, but the 
evidence is not unique in this way, and therefore, not relevant for a 
realist who is trying to ascertain which of the alternatives is superior. 
So, for example, Islam.  One of the two main pieces of evidence that Islam 
offers for the truth of its religion is the rapid conquest of Mohammed's 
followers.  Within a century they had conquered all of North Africa, as far 
east as India, and penetrated into Europe.  Their claim is that such a 
rapid conquest is impossible unless G-d helped.  
	Now, how do non-Moslems look at that piece of evidence?  A non-Moslem 
will ask: "Well, what about Alexander?  Alexander conquered roughly as much 
of the world and he died at age thirty-two.  He did it much faster.  Must 
you say that Alexander's gods were helping him?  The Romans controlled more 
of the world and did so for three hundred years.  Must we say that the 
Roman gods are also true and were helping the Roman armies?"  We don't have 
to accept the truth of Islam to explain rapid conquest.  It happens too 
often.  There must be some other explanation for rapid conquest.  Once we 
can explain rapid conquest without appealing to Islam, rapid conquest 
ceases to be evidence for Islam.  Unique evidence is something which one 
theory can explain and other theories cannot explain. 
	[The other piece of evidence offered for Islam, in case you are 
interested, is this. If you master Arabic and read the Koran you will see 
that such a book could not have been written by a human being. Only G-d 
could have written it. I will leave it to you to evaluate this sort of 
"evidence."]
	For another example - now this is a burlesque but it makes the point 
in a dramatic way - there are certain groups which offer what they call 
direct evidence of the truth of their religious beliefs.  They will tell 
you: "We do not ask you to take anything on faith, you do not have to trust 
any scriptures or prophets. Just come and join the ashram, sit cross legged 
on the floor, eat mushrooms, say "om," get up at two-thirty in the morning 
for cold showers, and after a month you are going to feel very different.  
Indeed, we will tell you how you are going to feel, we will predict it for 
you.  Now try it out, we don't even charge rent Follow our rules for a 
month and see if you do not feel exactly the way we describe you are going 
to feel."  
	So the searcher for truth thinks to himself: "Wow, this is terrific.  
No leap of faith.  Nothing irrational.  I am the test of my own experience, 
so I will have the direct evidence.  I will feel it."  So, he joins the 
ashram for thirty days and he sits cross legged, eats mushrooms, takes cold 
showers and so forth, and indeed, after thirty days, he feels quite 
different.  In fact, he feels exactly the way they said he would feel.  
Then he concludes, "Well here it is, I have the truth in my own 
experience."  
	Is that valid?  No, that is not valid at all.  The fact that they 
could tell you how you will feel after thirty days of following their 
regimen means nothing more than they have some practical, psychological 
knowledge.  Maybe they have tried it, and they themselves experienced how 
it feels.  Maybe they had some genuine psychological insight.  What does 
that have to do with the truth of their religious ideas?  Do I as a Jew 
have to deny that if you sit cross legged, say "om," and take cold showers 
you are going to feel the way they say?  I don't have to deny that.  I can 
accept that, and so can a Christian, a Moslem, and an atheist.  Therefore, 
it is not unique evidence.  It is not evidence that only they can explain.  
All of us can agree to this sort of evidence, so it doesn't count for them 
or against anyone else.  It does not help us select them as more likely 
true than any of the other competitors, and therefore it is irrelevant.
	Now, Hinduism and Buddhism both offer evidence of the truth of their 
religions, but the evidence is all in terms of personal experience.  If you 
meditate long enough on the sound of one hand clapping, something will 
happen to your mind.  Indeed, it will.  You will think and feel quite 
differently.  So what?  Does that mean that there is a transmigration of 
soul, or that there is a great  god-head in the sky, or that you are in 
touch with eternal reality, or anything else?  What does one thing have to 
do with the other?  They have discovered that certain mental exercises 
result in certain forms of experience.  Since I as a Jew do not have to 
deny the existence of  sartori - I might not feel that it is very valuable, 
but I do not have to deny its existence - or nirvana, or any other stages 
of mystical experience, their claiming and proving that it exists has 
nothing to do with the truth of their religion.  Only evidence that others 
reject that comes true counts as support for your particular idea.  
	
SUMMARY
The second element in the scientific method is that the evidence offered 
must be unique - explained only by the religion (or other proposition) in 
favor of which it is offered. Evidence of conquest, or evidence in personal 
experience, is not unique. Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism offer evidence 
which is not unique and therefore need not be considered in this 
investigation. 
	
	And finally, the evidence that is offered must be true.  It is fine 
to make predictions, even unique predictions, but if they do not come true, 
then, of course, you are in serious trouble.  Certain Christian sources  
assert that the reason the Jews are in exile is because they have not 
accepted the Christian Messiah. They predict that the Jews will remain in 
exile until they convert. Now, that is the right sort of prediction, that 
the Jews will be in exile until they accept the Christian messiah.  Here, 
at least the logic was right because that is a prediction that no one else 
would credit.  No Hindu would have any reason whatsoever to expect Jews 
will stay in exile until they accept the Christian Messiah.  He would have 
no reason to believe that.  Nor would a Buddhist, a Moslem, a Shintoist, a 
Taoist, a Confucianist, or an Atheist. Certainly Jews will not credit it. 
So that is the right sort of prediction to make: a prediction that no one 
else will credit.
	But, since 1948 (the formation of the state of Israel), that 
prediction has been wearing a bit thin.  All right, in 1948 we didn't have 
Jerusalem.  Since 1967 (Israel conquered Jerusalem in the Six Day War) it 
has been wearing even thinner.  Still, there was always the Soviet Union 
holding on to its Jews making it impossible for those Jews to come.  So 
there was a last ditch hold-out position.  In the last few years even that 
has   disappeared.  (There has been massive Soviet Jewry immigration into 
Israel since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The Jews in Russia are free 
to leave.)  This prediction has simply come out false.  The fact that there 
are Jews who refuse to leave their penthouses in Manhattan in order to come 
to a smaller dwelling in Tel Aviv could not exactly be regarded as a 
punishment.  That is not what the Christian writings predict. They say that 
we will be punished in exile for not accepting the Christian Messiah, and 
that has not happened.   

SUMMARY
The scientific method holds that to be seriously considered for truth, you 
must present positive evidence, the evidence must be unique, and the 
evidence must be true. Judaism is the only religion which meets all three 
conditions. It is the only one which offers positive evidence which is 
unique and which came true. (The evidence is presented in chapters III-VII 
below.) Therefore, as realists, we are faced with only two possibilities - 
either the evidence for Judaism will be enough to convince us that it is 
true, or we will give up the search - give up being realists - and fall 
back on pragmatism.  So the investigation of Judaism is all that is 
necessary to satisfy the responsibility of realism.  

===========================================================================

Chapter III:  Belief and Action:  Criteria for Responsible Decision 

  	The Torah presents itself as a system with a variety of virtues: It 
is beautiful, inspiring, challenging, moral, profound, sensitizing, et 
cetera; and it is also true. Here I am going to deal only with truth.  All 
the rest  is correct, but I'm not going to deal with that.  I am limiting 
myself  to dealing solely with the question of truth.  The responsibility 
to investigate truth is one by which we are bound; it is something that is 
required of us. Here I am going to try to fulfill that responsibility. 	
	 First of all, when I talk about the Torah being true, I am limiting 
myself to the descriptive parts of the Torah.  Some parts of the Torah are 
not candidates for  truth.  There is poetry, all sorts of commands, 
prescriptions,   and so on.  Whether they are true or false is a very nice 
philosophical question, but I am going to side-step it.  We are talking now 
only about the descriptive part of the Torah, that is to say, the portion 
of the Torah which describes facts: This is how the world came into being; 
these historical events took place including perhaps miraculous historical 
events, prophecy, revelation, wars, famines, migrations; this is the nature 
of the human being; this is the nature of the soul; these are the 
predictions for the future, e.g. the coming of the Messiah, what happens 
after death; these are the forces that affect human history; this is the 
way in which G-d interacts with man and so on.  These are all statements 
which are presented as descriptions of facts.  Our question will be: What 
reason is there to accept them as being true?
	However, much experience has taught me that to start an investigation 
into the truth of Judaism is fruitless without agreeing first on our 
standard of truth. Because, when I present considerations, evidence, 
arguments, and justifications, and we don't agree upon the standards by 
which those arguments should be evaluated, we end up arguing at cross 
purposes to one another.
	What standards should we have for verifying these purported truths?  
There is a standard due to Descartes that is subject to much discussion, a 
standard for knowing anything.  Descartes said that to know something means 
to be able to absolutely refute any conceivable alternative.  If I claim 
that I know A, to substantiate my claim to know A I have to be able to 
defeat any alternative absolutely. So that if I claim to know A, you can 
defeat my claim to know A if you can propose another alternative B.  All B 
has to have to qualify is to simply be  possible.  If I can't eliminate B, 
and eliminate it absolutely, then I should withdraw my claim to know A.  
That is the Cartesian standard.
	Now, I am going to reject that standard and I'm going to reject it on 
two grounds.  This will be very important because all of us have to a 
certain extent absorbed the Cartesian standard almost as a matter of 
instinct.  When someone puts forth a claim to know something, or puts forth 
an argument or puts forth evidence, the natural response is to try to 
defeat it based on the Cartesian standard. ("But isn't it still possible 
that something else is true?")  So, it is important for us to agree at the 
outset that we are rejecting the Cartesian standard.  
	The first reason for rejecting the Cartesian standard is that if you 
really live by that standard, you don't know anything!  Any claim to 
knowledge can be defeated by using the strict Cartesian standard.  
Descartes himself worried about this.  How do you know that you are not 
dreaming at the present moment?  What could you do to prove to yourself, 
absolutely, that you are not dreaming right now?  Pinch yourself?  Couldn't 
you pinch yourself in a dream?  Could you prove to yourself that in three 
minutes you won't wake up and find yourself in the twenty-first century 
saying to yourself: "Ah, that's what I get for reading historical books.  I 
dreamt myself back one hundred years to some crazy place with inadequate 
air conditioning," and so on.  Now according to the Cartesian standard you 
don't know that you are awake because here is an alternative, a conceivable 
alternative, that you are really sleeping.  You cannot eliminate it 
absolutely and therefore you do not know that you are awake.  
	[Of course, Descartes thought he could prove that (most of the time) 
we are really not sleeping. But today no one credits his proof - we cannot 
prove that we are not sleeping.]
	Bertrand Russell's example was to ask whether you know that the 
Universe is really more than five minutes old.  Five minutes old.  So you 
say, well of course I remember what happened to me yesterday.  But, the 
suggestion is that you came into existence five minutes ago with those 
memories programmed into your brain.  So you say: "Well look, I have a tape 
of the concert of the Grateful Dead, and this is a forty-five minute tape, 
so there must have been at least a forty-five minute concert to tape it 
from."  The answer is of course no, the world came into existence five 
minutes ago with the tape and its magnetic impressions already  on it.  
"But look, there are partially decayed deposits of Uranium, and next to the 
Uranium itself are the standard decay products in the normal proportions."  
Again, the suggestion is that this happened five minutes ago with the decay 
products placed next to the Uranium with the correct proportions.  So, here 
is a conceivable alternative.  You think the universe is millions, or 
billions of years old. The conceivable alternative that the universe is but 
five minutes old, having come into existence with all those features which 
you think are evidence of greater age. You can't eliminate it absolutely. 
So, according to Descartes then, you don't know that the universe is more 
than five minutes old!
	You can go on with just about everything that you believe, and if you 
have a good enough imagination, you can think up some alternative which you 
can't eliminate absolutely, and you can defeat every claim to knowledge.  
So, the Cartesian standard to knowledge is fruitless.  It is hopeless.  It 
deprives us of everything that we think we know.  Since Descartes started 
this game, for the last 350 years people have been trying to think up a 
different standard, a different criterion for knowledge.  There is no 
accepted answer to Descartes except the judgment that he is surely wrong, 
and that we will someday find an acceptable standard.  That is one reason 
for rejecting the Cartesian standard of knowledge.
	
SUMMARY
We are investigating the truth of the descriptive portions of the Torah. 
The first step is to agree on the standard by which evidence will be 
evaluated. The Cartesian standard is: to know anything we must eliminate 
every alternative possibility absolutely. One reason for rejecting this 
standard is that it wrongly implies that we know almost nothing.


	There is another reason which applies more specifically to religion.  
Whatever is the case in making up our minds about theoretical knowledge, 
when we consider life, when we come to making practical choices, we have a 
quite different standard for making those decisions in a responsible 
fashion.  The standard we employ in making responsible decisions is high 
probability vis-a-vis alternatives.  If I have to decide what to do, and I 
know that what I do depends on my circumstances - i.e., what the facts are 
- and I don't know the facts for sure, I investigate until I have high 
probability of one alternative vis-a-vis other alternatives, and then I act 
on it.  If I do so I have acted responsibly, and if I don't do so I have 
acted irresponsibly.  
	This is true for all of my decisions: what profession to master, 
where to live, whom to marry, what to do with my spare cash, how to handle 
my health and so forth.  In all cases, for myself, and especially when I 
owe you something, you expect me to act responsibly with respect to the 
obligation that I have to you.  That is the standard up to which I am held.  
I cannot plead that I didn't have a Cartesian proof and that is why I 
didn't act.  
	So, for example, I borrow your car, and you tell me: "Listen, you can 
use the car, but you should know that the brakes might have a problem.  So, 
if you hear a squeak or something, take it to the garage and have it fixed 
before you have an accident."  Then you go off for a month's trip.  You 
come back and you notice that sitting in front of your house is what once 
was your car.  Now it looks like an accordion - folded.  So you ask me what 
happened, and I say: "Well, I had an accident - the brakes slipped."  You 
say to me: "But, I warned you.  I told you that the brakes might be weak.  
Did they squeak?"  I reply: "Yes, they did squeak."  You ask me: "Well, did 
you take them in to be fixed?"  I reply: "No, I didn't take them in to be 
fixed."  You ask me: "Why not?" and I tell you: "Well, it is still possible 
that the squeak didn't mean that the brakes were weak.  It's possible that 
the squeak was caused by a loose spring or something else.  I didn't have 
any proof that it was the brakes."  
	I don't think that you would be amused!  So I didn't have any proof, 
but the probability was that it was the brakes.  After all, you told me 
that they were probably weak, and we know that weak brakes squeak.  Given 
the information that I had, the alternative with the greatest probability 
was that it was the brakes.  I certainly should have taken it in to get it 
fixed!  When I have a decision to make, the responsible way to make the 
decision is on the basis of the highest probability of truth vis-a-vis 
alternatives.
	Now, the key point here is that religion is both a matter of 
theoretics (Is there a G-d?, Did He reveal himself at Sinai?, Did He create 
the world in such and such a fashion?, What is the nature of the soul?) and 
a matter of decision.  Religion is in part a matter of how one chooses to 
live.  Soon it will be the Sabbath. You will have to decide, shall I light 
up a cigarette or shall I not light up a cigarette.  During the week you 
will have to decide, shall I have a cheeseburger or shall I not have a 
cheeseburger.  These are life decisions.  The criterion for making a life 
decision responsibly is to make the decision on the basis of high 
probability of truth vis-a-vis alternatives.  A person who waits for the 
Cartesian standard to be fulfilled, a person who waits for an absolute 
refutation of all possible alternatives, is a person who is not behaving 
responsibly.  
	Imagine a doctor.  You go to the doctor with a terrible pain in your 
lower right abdomen.  The doctor says: "Is this appendicitis or isn't it 
appendicitis?  Look, it could be an attack of nerves.  It could be an 
ulcer.  It could be psychosomatic.  It could be all sorts of things.  Do I 
have any proof that it's appendicitis?  I don't have any proof.  It could 
be all sorts of things."  Meanwhile, the person dies of a ruptured 
appendix.  What would you say?  We would say that he is irresponsible.  You 
don't wait for any proof if you have high probability of the truth vis-a-
vis the alternatives.  That is what determines responsible action.  
	So, whatever is the case with respect to theoretics, let others worry 
about that.  We are people living our lives and making decisions.  In 
particular, we have to make decisions about religion.  If so, the decision 
needs to be made on the basis of high probability of truth vis-a-vis 
alternatives, and therefore that is going to be our standard.  When I argue 
that Judaism is true, or argue that some particular aspect of Judaism is 
true, I feel I have fulfilled my responsibility if I have argued that it 
has the highest probability of truth vis-a-vis alternatives.  
	For example, I will be arguing in favor of a certain proposition A, 
and I will present my evidence and someone will say: "I see your evidence, 
but isn't it still conceivable that A is still false, even in light of the 
evidence?"  My answer will be: "Yes, it is conceivable. We are not trying 
to defeat every conceivable alternative.  We are only trying to defeat 
other alternatives which are more probable than  A.  It is not enough to 
defeat A by thinking up something conceivable.  That is too easy and is not 
to the point.  What someone has to think up is a competitor to A which has 
more positive evidence in its favor than A does.  That is much more 
difficult." 
	Here is another way of seeing this point. Suppose someone takes the 
position of a skeptic. (Some say that this is what Socrates did.) "I really 
don't know what the truth is. But you say that you do know. Well I am 
prepared to listen. Tell me what you think the truth is, and why you think 
it is the truth. I am prepared to be convinced if you can prove it. I am 
not going to accept what you believe just because you believe it - there 
are too many different beliefs for that. But if you can prove it, I will 
agree." So you present your evidence, your proof, and his response is: 
"That doesn't really prove it because something else still could be true." 
	Now what is wrong with the skeptic? What is wrong is that he puts all 
the burden of proof on you. What we need to do is be skeptical of his 
skepticism! If I present some positive evidence that my belief is true, it 
is not enough for him to merely point out that it might still be false: he 
has to present positive evidence that it is false. The mere fact that it 
might be false is not enough for him to reject it. His absolute skepticism 
- his demand for absolute proof - is unjustified and unreasonable. The 
reason that it is unjustified is that we are looking for evidence which 
justifies action. We should ask the skeptic: "All right - we gave positive 
evidence of truth. If you had to act, would that evidence suffice? Sure, 
what we believe could still be false. But the evidence is strong enough to 
require us to act as if it were true. And if you did not act this way, you 
would be acting irresponsibly. That is enough for us."     
	
SUMMARY
 The second reason for rejecting the Cartesian standard for knowledge is 
that religion is a matter of how we act, and we justify action in terms of 
the highest probability of truth vis-a-vis alternatives. Thus to attack a 
particular proposition for which we provide evidence, it is not enough just 
to present a possible alternative. One must present an alternative with 
greater positive evidence.

	Now there is one natural response to this argument. I will present it 
and rebut it. The one natural response goes as follows: A person says: 
"Look, if I claimed to believe in G-d you could ask me how I know; namely, 
what evidence I have, what proof I have, what kind of justifications I 
have.  If I claim to be an Atheist, you could also ask me how I know; 
namely, how do I know there is no G-d, what kind of proof do I have, what 
kind of evidence do I have?  But, I don't claim anything.  You see, I 
protect myself from demands like that.  I don't claim to know that there is 
a G-d, and I don't claim to know that there is not a G-d.  I am an 
Agnostic.  As an Agnostic, I freely admit my ignorance.  Together with 
Socrates, I claim that I don't know.  Surely you cannot ask me to justify 
that!  What should I justify, not knowing something?  I simply don't know.  
I am at least honest enough to admit that I don't know.  How then can you 
ask me to make justifications, proofs and arguments when I'm simply 
confessing my ignorance?"
	That observation is a mistake, or perhaps I should say that it is 
misleading.  It is true that intellectually, in terms of belief, there are 
three possible positions with respect to any particular assertion.  I can 
either believe A, I can disbelieve A, or I can be in doubt over A and 
neither believe it nor disbelieve it.  That is how it is in terms of 
belief, but, in terms of action, there are not three positions.  There are 
only two positions.  You either act as if A were true or you act as if A 
were false.  There is no middle position.  
	Maybe you can say with respect to the Torah  being true: "I don't 
know, maybe it is true and maybe it isn't true.  I really haven't made up 
my mind.  I really haven't sorted out the issues.  I don't know."  But, six 
days from now you will either smoke the cigarette during the Sabbath, or 
you will not smoke the cigarette during the Sabbath.  There is no third 
middle ground that I'll neither smoke it nor not smoke it.  There is no 
middle ground.  You either live as if it were true or you don't live as if 
it were true which means that you are forced to make a decision.  There is 
no escape from making a choice.  Now, with respect to that choice, you can 
be asked to justify yourself. You could be asked to justify  your action.  
Because it is a choice, the justification  must be based on the highest 
probability vis-a-vis alternatives.  
	To take a simple example, let's say there is an unsubstantiated rumor 
that the Arabs have put poison into the water supply of Jerusalem.  Now, it 
is only a rumor, but it is after all a rumor.  Those types of rumors don't 
surface every day.  You then ask someone what  he thinks about this rumor, 
and he says: "Well, I really don't know, I am an agnostic.  I don't know 
whether it is true or false.  After all, I don't know who started or spread 
the rumor.  It hasn't been substantiated."  As he is telling you this he 
goes over to the sink, draws himself a glass of water out of the tap and 
drinks it down.  Now, he may say that he hasn't made up his mind, but the 
truth is that he must have made up his mind or he wouldn't have drunk the 
water!  
	Your actions commit you to one position or the other position vis-a-
vis the proposition even if you say that you are intellectually neutral.  
Most people, the vast majority of people, use agnosticism simply as a 
dodge.  It is very rare to meet an agnostic who takes precautions.  The 
agnostic eats his cheeseburger on Yom Kippur (the Jewish day of judgment in 
which the Jewish people are required to fast) while at the beach without a 
thought.   His agnosticism is simply a way to protect himself against 
criticism.  "You are asking me to justify myself and I don't make any 
claims and therefore I am free to eat the cheeseburger."  It is not quite 
that simple.  
	If you really don't know whether religion is true or false, that 
ought to show itself in some kind of positive behavior.  Perhaps taking 
some precautions, or perhaps mounting a serious investigation, and in the 
meantime, during the investigation, maybe playing it safe by not eating the 
cheeseburger.  It is very rare to find an agnostic who does this, which 
means that either the agnosticism is just a pose, or it is the result of a 
real intellectual confusion.  The person thinks: "Since I am an Agnostic, 
therefore I do not have to do anything." That is not correct as you see 
from any example where a person would be an agnostic about something that 
made a difference.  If you were an Agnostic about the poisoned water, you 
would not drink it!  
	 It would seem that if one really were a true Agnostic, he would 
logically have to live his life religiously.  Let me bring this point home 
to you as follows.  Some of you may have heard of Pascal's Wager.  He used 
the following type of  analysis. Christianity is either true or false, and 
I don't know.  If Christianity is true and you live it, you go to heaven.  
If Christianity is true and you don't live it then you go to hell. A 
positive infinity and a negative infinity.  If Christianity is false and 
you don't live it, so you get a certain finite benefit - you did away with 
certain unnecessary restrictions on your life.  If Christianity is false 
and you do live it, then you have a certain finite loss - you lived 
according to restrictions which were unnecessary.  So, he said, clearly it 
is to your benefit to live Christianity because the potential benefit is 
infinite, and the potential loss is finite.  Whereas if you don't live it 
the potential loss is infinite and the potential benefit is finite. 
	This argument is correct if you make one assumption and that is what 
Pascal missed.  You have to assume that Christianity is the only possible 
option; that it is the only competitor for your allegiance.  If there are 
other possibilities, such as Islam, Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism, 
Taoism, and maybe even Judaism, the argument works just as well for each of 
them and leaves you with no direction as to what to do.  Every one of these 
promises an infinite benefit or an infinite loss depending on how you live 
vis-a-vis its practices.  
	So, Pascal's argument in its own context is a mistake because he is 
relying on an assumption which he couldn't prove.  But for us this is no 
problem. We are not trying to prove that one should live Judaism without 
evidence. On the contrary! We are trying to fulfill our responsibility to 
find the truth. We do that by finding the alternative with the best 
evidence. Now  I argued above that there are no competitors, in terms of 
evidence, to Judaism.  So, therefore, in terms of religion, it's Judaism or 
nothing.  
	At this point an argument similar to Pascal's comes marching back in, 
and marching in validly.  If there is only one competitor that you regard 
as relevant, because it presents evidence, and that is Judaism, then the 
potential benefits to living as if Judaism is true are infinite, and the 
losses of living it if it's false are finite.  Therefore it is better to 
live it than not to live it. This means that the agnostic cannot avoid the 
hard choice of how to live just because he claims not to have decided to 
believe or disbelieve.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
	[Strictly speaking, the use of Pascal's argument does put the atheist 
at a disadvantage. Just because he does not offer infinite consequences for 
different patterns of behavior, it seems that it becomes obligatory to live 
as if the Torah is true, no matter how poor the evidence is for the Torah's 
truth. This seems like too cheap a victory! There are (at least) two ways 
to block this conclusion. One could question the fixing of consequences:  
why not consider an option which has a god who infinitely rewards directing 
belief and action by absolute proof disregarding the mere balance of 
evidence, and punishes the opposite? Alternatively, one could allow the 
atheist infinite consequences also. For example, he might hold certain 
moral obligations infinitely important. If we execute a Sabbath violator, 
and if the Torah  were not true (G-d forbid), the atheist might hold this 
to be an infinitely bad result. (Remember that in decision theory it is 
subjective evaluations which count. The theory tells you that if you value 
the consequences in this way, then your decision should be that.) Then the 
decision between the Torah and atheism would be made on the same grounds as 
the decision between the Torah and other religions, that is on the basis of 
the best evidence.] 

SUMMARY
The agnostic can be intellectually uncertain and so not need to justify his 
non-belief. But he will have to choose how to live, and he needs to justify 
that choice. A genuine agnostic about religion would be expected to 
investigate and take the precaution of living religiously.  	
 
	One last  point.  Some people are disturbed by a false distinction.  
They say: "Look, if it's a matter of limited importance where to invest my 
money, which profession to train in, or perhaps even whom to marry, these 
are all limited decisions.  They are decisions that can be reversed.  I can 
invest $10,000 in AT&T, and if I lose it, it's not the end of my life.  
Hopefully I'll make more money in my lifetime.  If I train for a profession 
and it turns out that there is an oversupply, I can train for another 
profession or move to a country where the profession is needed.  If I marry 
someone and it is a mistake, I can get a divorce  and marry someone else.  
If it is a limited decision, a decision of limited importance, then maybe I 
should make it on the sole basis of high probability vis-a-vis 
alternatives.  But, you are asking me to make a decision about my whole 
life.  This is my whole life, it changes everything that I do, my values, 
my conduct, and so on.  Surely for a decision like that I ought to have 
more than just high relative probability.  For that I ought to have a solid 
proof, or at least something that is very high in probability.  Shouldn't I 
have higher standards when it comes to my whole life?"  
	I think that this is a mistake, for three reasons. First, even the 
decision to lead a religious life-style is reversible.  Some people 
experiment and then decide it is not for them. So that difference between 
this decision and others is not true. Second, living a religious life does 
not entail changing everything else. Religious people have families, 
professions, vacations, computers, etc. etc. Of course, some activities are 
changed, and priorities are different. But then every decision in life 
brings some changes. There may be a quantitative difference here - 
religious living has comparatively many changes. But it is not enough of a 
difference to justify a completely different criterion for making the 
decision.
	  The third reason is this: Even if the stakes are enormous, if they 
are balanced between the two alternatives, then we still use highest 
probability to make our decision. You can see this from the following 
example. Let's suppose you go to the doctor and he does a checkup of your 
physical condition.  He says that there are symptoms here of two possible 
diseases. You definitely have one of the two diseases, but it is not clear 
which one you have. It might be A or B. If you have either disease you will 
need surgery.  If you don't have any surgery, you will be dead in two 
months.  If you have disease A then you need surgery A'. If you have 
disease B then you need surgery B'. If you get the wrong surgery (say you 
have disease A and they do surgery B') then you will also die in two 
months.   So, we have a real dilemma here.  Should we do any surgery,  and 
if so, which?  
	Now let's suppose that given the symptoms, and comparing the symptoms 
with other people who have had the symptoms, it turns out that for people 
in your circumstance there is a 52% chance that you have disease A and a 
48% chance that you have disease B. That is only a six percent difference.  
That doesn't amount to any proof that the surgery is best, or which surgery 
to do.  Would you say "Ah, well, I don't have any proof that  surgery is 
right for me, so therefore I won't take it."  I doubt it!  All the evidence 
tells you that without any surgery you will be dead in two months! 
	Would you say: "But I don't know which surgery to do - I don't have a 
proof which is best?" If the statistics show that surgery A' gives you a 
four percent edge on survival, then the four percent edge, which is all 
that is available to you under the circumstances, is worth grabbing.  Here, 
the fact that it is survival, that it's my whole life, and that it is not 
just a question of relative inconveniences does not change the criterion of 
choice at all.  The criterion of choice is: How can I get a higher 
probability of survival?  The relative probability is only four percent and 
that doesn't matter.  I want that extra four percent probability!
	Sometimes I put it this way.  Suppose that you're hanging over a 
cliff, and that you're holding on to a branch of a tree waiting to be 
rescued, but it is not quite clear that the branch will hold you 
indefinitely.  It is creaking, and there is another branch that you could 
switch to without risk of falling, but it is not clear to you that the 
other branch is stronger.  Suppose that you know something about trees and 
you estimate that the probability of the second branch being stronger is 
maybe three percent greater than the probability of the strength of the 
branch you are holding onto.  Do you say: "Well, it's my life.  Since it's 
my life, I want proof that it is stronger.  I don't make moves with my life 
unless I have proof that it is better."   Of course not.  You have a three 
percent increase on the probability of surviving on the second branch.  YOU 
MOVE!  You purchase a three percent increase in your probability of 
survival.  So, the fact that the stakes are large, in this case the largest 
possible, survival, doesn't change the criterion of choice at all.  The 
criterion of choice is always the same - higher probability of  truth vis-
a-vis the alternatives.
	[Of course, the alternatives and their consequences need to be 
carefully specified for the analogy to work. I am describing both 
alternatives - Torah and atheism - as offering infinite consequences. (See 
previous [ ]) So the analogy works like this: right surgery/right branch 
gets life, wrong surgery/wrong branch gets death;  living according to the 
true religion gets infinite good, living according to the false religion 
gets infinite bad. In this case it is correct to go with the alternative 
with the better evidence even it is only a little better. Sometimes it is 
objected that if there is a balance between the infinite consequences, we 
should allow other differences to affect the decision, e.g. the (finite) 
costs of living a religious life-style. The analogy fails, they say, 
because I have left out the relative costs of the two alternatives. 
Presumably switching branches costs nothing, and the costs of the surgery 
are not mentioned. What if it costs $100, or $10,000, or $1,000,000 to 
switch branches, or to have surgery A' in stead of B': surely there is some 
price at which the added few per cent probability of survival would not be 
worth the cost? This objection admits two replies. First, the decision to 
sacrifice the few per cent advantage may reflect a finite value for one's 
life! People risk their lives for all sorts of trivial reasons! Second, it 
is not clear that the religious life-style has an extra cost. If we take 
the statistics of violence, drug abuse, alcoholism, divorce, suicide, 
illiteracy, etc., it seems that the religious life-style may be a bargain!] 
	
SUMMARY
The fact that the choice of religion affects one's whole life - values, 
behavior, priorities, etc. - does not change the criterion for the choice. 
The reason is that the consequences of making the right or wrong decision 
are equally great. Thus highest probability vis-a-vis alternatives applies 
to the choice of religion just as it does to all other decisions.
	
	So, we will be looking for a sufficiently high probability of truth 
vis-a-vis alternatives.  Now, the specific strategy that we are going to 
use in verifying the Torah has two facets that I want to explain to you.  
First, some parts of the descriptive portion of the Torah can be 
investigated directly, e.g. statements about historical events. Some of 
them are predictions that were made about times which have already past and 
so can be investigated at present. On the other hand, some of the portions 
of the descriptive content of the Torah cannot be investigated directly: 
what happens to the soul after death; all predictions still to be fulfilled 
in the future, for example, there will be a Messiah one day, haven't 
occurred yet.  Those that can be investigated directly, we will 
investigate. What about the ones that cannot be investigated directly?  
	The answer here is as follows.  We have a single coordinated body of 
information.  Whenever you have a coordinated body of information, some of 
which you can test directly and some of which you cannot test directly, if 
the portion that can be tested directly tests true, then that gives 
credibility to the rest. You do not artificially select, and say: "That 
which I have tested I believe.  The rest of it I haven't tested, so I have 
no reason to accept it."  On the contrary, if the portion that can be 
tested tests true, then it lends credibility to the rest.  
	This is true in any area of life.  So, for example, in science, take 
any theory.  A theory has an infinity of consequences.  You never test any 
reasonable proportion of that infinity! We don't say: "Well, Einstein 
predicted that when light pass the sun, it will be slightly warped.  We 
tested it on fourteen occasions and so we know that on those fourteen 
occasions the light rays bent.  What about the rest of the time when we 
were not looking?  Oh, then I don't have any reason to believe anything 
because I didn't test any of those times."  What we say is that the portion 
which we tested is an indication of the reliability of the rest. Similarly 
with respect to an encyclopedia, or a newspaper, or any other source of 
information: when they tell you things that you directly test, and they 
test true, that gives them a certain credibility.  You then extend that 
credibility to the rest.  
	  Suppose someone says: "I don't believe anything unless I test it 
myself.  I don't trust anybody else's opinion, and I don't trust anybody 
else's research.  I only believe what I saw myself." He will believe next 
to nothing about the world.  I usually ask such a person if he knows who 
his parents are. How do you know? Have you done a DNA test?  Probably not. 
It is pretty expensive and pretty rare. You probably trust them because 
they told you.  But, they could be lying. You didn't fingerprint of your 
mother when you came out!  So how do you know that it is your mother?  It 
is because she told you so many things and usually she is credible.  It is 
still conceivable that you were adopted, but it is very unlikely, and that 
is good enough for you.  
	What about the past in general?  You can't go back and observe the 
revolutionary war.  I'm speaking as an American now, our revolution, the 
one that we won.  You trust it because people wrote books about it.  There 
are maps.  There are letters.  There are artifacts.  That is to say that 
you trust someone else's observations, someone else's reports.  Do you know 
that there is such a place as China?  How do you know?  You were not ever 
in China (most of you anyway).  Do you know the boiling point of Mercury?  
How do you know?  You read it in a book, that is to say you trust the 
author of the book, the scientist who performed the experiment.  
	We are always accepting the statements of other people.  We don't do 
it blindly.  We know that some people lie.  We also know that some people 
are competent in certain areas and incompetent it other areas, and we may 
accept their statements in one area and reject then in other areas.  We are 
selective with respect to what we believe.  But we must extend general 
credibility to a source on the basis of testing some of the assertions of 
that source.  If you don't do that, you will be hamstrung and not know 
anything at all.  
	 This is, in fact, the way in which we operate.  That is how we make 
our decisions in any other area of life.  If I have to decide what to eat, 
what profession to go into, or where to live, that is how I make those 
decisions.  A person who makes decisions in every other area of life on 
this basis, and when it comes to religion says, "Oh no, for religion I have 
different standards. Here I want a much more strict accounting. I want an 
independent proof of every assertion,"  such a person is playing fast and 
loose.  Such a person uses one standard with respect to every other 
decision, but with respect to this decision, he is using a different 
standard.  That sounds like special pleading: he is trying to protect 
himself against the conclusion.  If it were not special pleading, then why 
didn't he use the same set of standards across the board?  Now, I am only 
asking that a person use the same standards with respect to religion that 
he uses with respect to other decisions.  
	
SUMMARY
The descriptive portion of the Torah can be divided into that part which 
can at present be investigated directly, and that part which cannot. If the 
investigation of the first yields sufficient evidence to accept it as true, 
then the second is accepted as credible also on the grounds of belonging to 
the same body of information as the first.


	The other feature, the general outline of how we are going to apply 
this strategy, is as follows.  Let's suppose that you have an area of life, 
and that you think that in this area you know how to explain the phenomena 
that you observe. It could be the behavior of billiard balls on a billiard 
table, certain types of chemical reactions, pictures of particles scattered 
in a cloud chamber, the behavior of missiles and so on.  You have what 
looks to you to be a catalog of all the relevant causal agents for that 
realm.  Then you come across a new phenomenon which seems to belong to the 
same realm, and for which your catalog of agents is insufficient.  Now hear 
me well when I say that the catalog of agents is insufficient.  I don't 
just mean that you haven't figured out yet how to explain it, I mean more 
than that.  I mean that you have an argument which shows that your causal 
agents cannot explain it. What do we do under those circumstances?  
	I'll give you an example.  In the early 1920's, there was an 
investigation of the structure of the atom.  There was a period when people 
thought that the nucleus was composed solely of protons. Now protons are 
positively charged, and the law of electrostatics is that like charges 
repel.  The question was, how come all those protons are sitting buddy-
buddy in the nucleus?  Why aren't they repelling each other all over 
creation?  
	Now, at that time, the only two non-dynamic forces that were in the 
catalog of science were electrostatics and gravity.  Electrostatics are 
pulling them apart.  Could gravity be holding them together?  That  is 
impossible because gravity's order of magnitude is weaker than 
electrostatics.  The standard example is this.  You have a bar magnet, you 
hold it over an iron nail, and as you get closer and closer to the nail, 
suddenly the nail will jump up to the bar magnet.  Now you can look at this 
as a tug of war.  On the one hand you have the bar magnet pulling it up.  
On the other hand, you have the whole earth pulling it down, and the bar 
magnet wins very easily.  That gives you an idea of how much more powerful 
electrostatic forces are than gravity.  
	So, why are the protons sitting together in the nucleus if 
electrostatics are pushing them apart and gravity cannot hold them 
together?  What is the answer? The answer is the only thing it could be.  
There must be another force. The nuclear force.  We have to expand our 
catalog of forces because the forces we have in it cannot possibly explain 
this phenomena.  The phenomenon is reliable, and therefore we must have 
missed some other causal agency which is responsible for this phenomenon. 
That is how we operate in all of life.  It doesn't have to be something as 
sophisticated as science.  For example, so and so was murdered.  I checked 
the butler, I checked the driver, and I checked the delivery man.  They all 
have air tight alibis.  What do I conclude?  It must be somebody else.  
These people couldn't have done it.  I'll have to go look for somebody 
else.  
	Now, we have a similar structure.  We are going to take a look at 
Jewish history.  In particular, we are going to look at unique features of 
Jewish history, features which separate Jewish history from the history of 
all the other nations.  I mean this in a strong sense.  Of course, 
everybody's history is different from everyone else's; otherwise it 
wouldn't be theirs, it would be someone else's!  I mean that Jewish history 
has features which are different from the features which all other nations 
histories share.  There are certain characteristics which all other nations 
have in common, and Jewish history is distinguished from them in those 
respects.  Now, if I look at history and that is what I find, I have to ask 
myself for a causal agency which can explain it.  
	Let me make this vivid for you.  Imagine a Martian visiting Earth and 
being introduced to all the flora and fauna, and in particular being 
introduced to mankind, and studying the history of various civilizations 
and forming certain regularities.  Maybe they won't be very profound, deep, 
or theoretical, but still: this is the way nations react to famine, to war, 
to peace, to success, to failure, to cultural achievement, to cultural 
stagnation, to empire, to dissolution of empire and so on.  Now, the 
Martian investigates the Chinese, the Romans, the Nigerians, the Eskimos, 
the Incas and so on.  Imagine that he has done that for every culture and 
civilization except for the Jews and he has formulated his rules for how 
human beings respond to various life circumstances. 
	Then he comes to investigate Jewish history.  Now, there are in broad 
terms, two possibilities here.  Either he will say, "Oh yes, more of the 
same. What happened to the Jews in the fifteenth century is similar to what 
happened to the Incas in the tenth century.  What happened to the Jews in 
the nineteenth century is similar to what happened to the Chinese in the 
fourth century.  You can see parallels.  Things are pretty much the same." 
Then you would expect Jewish history to be explained by the same forces, 
the same powers, and the same causes that explain everyone else's history. 
That is one possibility.  
	The other possibility is that the Martian will say, "This is 
absolutely unique. It contradicts all my expectations.  It doesn't fit into 
the patterns of other nations and civilizations.  It is something brand 
new."  I am going to argue that it is brand new - that an honest Martian's 
perspective would lead to the conclusion that Jewish history is unlike any 
other nation's history with respect to the way in which they are all alike.
	If so, what must the Martian conclude?  The Martian must conclude 
that there is  something unique that is producing this unique historical 
record.  The kinds of causes that led to the rise, development, and fall of 
other civilizations, all of which have patterns in common, are not 
responsible for the development of the Jewish civilization because it is 
unique in these respects.  So that, he will have to add to his catalog  
agencies, some new agency, call it X, and by looking carefully at the kind 
of uniqueness that we are talking about, he can read off it certain 
characteristics that X must possess, because X has to be responsible for 
this unique phenomena, and therefore, it must have certain characteristics.  
	
SUMMARY
If we have method of explaining a type of event and we find an event of 
that type which our method cannot explain, we must expand the method to 
include something which will explain the new event. The methods of 
explaining the history of other nations and cultures will not explain 
Jewish history. Hence something must be added to explain Jewish history. 

	Let me just illustrate for you how a portion of the argument will go.  
I am not presenting the argument, I am not defending the argument, I am 
simply illustrating the methodology.  I will take much longer to present 
the details in a much more comprehensive fashion later.  I am merely 
illustrating so you understand the general method.  Look at the survival of 
the Jewish people over the last 2000 years.  I will argue that it is 
unique.  No nation underwent that kind of historical and cultural pressure 
and survived.  There is nothing remotely approximating what they 
experienced.  It is unique.  If it is unique, then some agency is 
responsible for it. That is the X that is being added to the catalog of 
historical  agents.  
	What must this X be like?  Well, what did it do? For one thing, it 
maintained the existence of a civilization under conditions that should 
have lead to its disappearance. What must such a force be like?  It must 
have some sort of considerable energy or power at its disposal.  This is 
not a small effect. This is maintaining a civilization involving millions 
of people over thousands of years.  
	Secondly, this power must have some considerable intelligence at its 
disposal.  It is maintaining a civilization! It is maintaining a complex 
pattern of human behavior, human belief, certain values, a certain 
literature, a certain world view and so on.  So, this power must have some 
considerable intelligence at its disposal.  Third, this power must also be 
interested, in particular, in this specific civilization.  After all, it is 
only this civilization that this power causes to survive.    
	So, from this unique effect - that is to say, the existence of a 
civilization in conditions under which other civilizations have 
disintegrated - you can infer certain that such a force must have a certain 
amount of power, intelligence, and a commitment to the Jewish way of life. 
Otherwise it would not explain the existence of this civilization. Now 
those are descriptions of G-d.  That is how you can take a unique factor of 
Jewish history,   explain it by postulating a force that is responsible for 
it, and then infer from the unique phenomena some minimal characteristics 
of that force and arrive at a direct conformation of G-d's existence.  
	 	
 SUMMARY
If Jewish history cannot be explained by other methods, then we infer a new 
causal agency. That agency must have certain characteristics to be able to 
explain Jewish history - power, intelligence and a particular concern for 
Jewish survival must be among them. These are descriptions of G-d.  

===========================================================================

Chapter IV:  True Predictions

	We have two conclusions from the last two chapters. (1) To act 
responsibly we must seek the truth and use our best estimate of the truth 
as our basis for action. Action on the basis of pragmatic considerations 
without regard to truth are irresponsible. Similarly, waiting for absolute 
proof before acting is irresponsible. (2) The exact weight of evidence 
required to mandate action cannot be stated precisely (and is even somewhat 
controversial). I will try to show that there is enough evidence to meet 
whatever standard you actually use in making your decisions. So the appeal 
is to consistency: If you stick to your usual standards and act 
responsibly, then you must live according to the Torah.  
	Now we will begin a review of the evidence. I will start with two 
cautionary remarks. First, when I present evidence, the significance of the 
evidence is that it adds to the probability of the Torah being true. To 
respond that it is still conceivable that the Torah is false is quite 
correct,but irrelevant.  The goal is not to remove every conceivable 
alternative, it is to present the Judaism as a more probable alternative.   
	Second, we are now gathering evidence.  To gather evidence means no 
one piece of evidence will carry the case by itself.  This is similar to a 
courtroom procedure.  If you want to convict a murderer, just finding his 
fingerprints at the scene of the crime isn't enough, just finding a similar 
weapon to the one that caused the murder in his house is not enough, just 
having a motivation is not enough, just his having been seen at the place 
of the murder at the time of the murder is not enough.  But, when you put 
them all together, it can be enough.  So, again, it will not be relevant to 
respond that "This piece of evidence is not enough to justify believing 
that the Torah is true."  Of course it isn't.  No one piece of evidence is 
enough.  It is all the evidence together which is enough.  We won't begin 
to sum up all the evidence until the last chapter. The point, then, is for 
each piece of evidence to be seen as relevant, to see that the most likely 
interpretation of the evidence is that the Torah is true.

SUMMARY
The purpose of the evidence is to show that the Torah is more probably true 
than any alternative. Citing merely conceivable alternative is not 
relevant. This conclusion is based on the sum of all the evidence. No one 
piece of evidence can justify the conclusion by itself. 

	 In Deuteronomy 28-30 there is a prediction of what will happen to 
the Jewish people if they don't live up to the standards of  the Torah. It 
predicts conquest accompanied by wanton slaughter of the population: men, 
woman, children, old, young, and so on. It predicts an exile resulting in 
world-wide scatter, and that during this period of world-wide scatter, Jews 
will have no independent government.  One result of the exile is that some 
Jews will be brought back by boat to Egypt to be sold as slaves, and they 
will not be purchased.  Nevertheless, the Jewish people will survive, will 
never completely be destroyed, and will ultimately return to the land of 
Israel.  It also predicts that the conqueror will speak a language that the 
Jewish people don't understand.
	Now as we said in chapter II, what is crucial about this prediction 
is that it should be a unique prediction, namely, a prediction that no one 
else should believe. From no other perspective should such a prediction 
make sense.  Because if it is a prediction that other people can believe in 
or that other people can credit, it no longer functions as a crucial 
experiment. It no longer distinguishes between what you are claiming and 
what others can claim. So, let's ask ourselves about each of the details in 
this prediction, whether it could have been explained by a sociological 
analysis of the times, or by a competing ideology - or whether it is 
something that someone could explain only from the Jewish point of view.
	[Of course, if someone should accept our prediction from our sources, 
then his making that prediction cannot count for him against us! If 
Christians and Moslems accept Deuteronomy 28-30 and predict that the Jews 
will be exiled as a result of their failure to live up to the Torah, when 
that prediction comes true it does not give Christianity and Islam positive 
evidence against Judaism, since they took the prediction from us.]
	I should mention that this prediction was written at least two 
thousand years ago.  Jewish sources say it was written 3300+ years ago.  
Others might disagree as to when the Bible was written, as to how many 
authors it had, how many editors it had and so on, but no one believes that 
the account of the Roman conquest and exile was written after the Roman 
conquest.  
	Now, let's see which of the details of this prediction could have 
been explained by a