Saturday, April 25, 2009

Gaius Responds

I got an email from the second interviewed kofer, Gaius Octavius, that he wanted to post a follow-up to his interview. Here are his remarks:

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Most of the criticisms of my interview were along the lines of (a) you are boring and/or a square; (b) at thirteen you were too young to become atheist because you could not possibly have understood evolution; and, (c) if you were intellectually honest, you would have asked rebbeim questions. That you didn’t just proves you were looking for a reason to become not frum.


(a) You are boring and/or a square.

I regarded this criticism as the most surprising; it simply never occurred to me that people read blog posts simply for their entertainment value. I would imagine that most of the people who post on these blogs fancy themselves intellectuals and would not admit that they read blogs solely to be entertained. With that said, my life would be very interesting to most people who read Da'as Hedyot. With that said, I am constrained by my desire to maintain my anonymity from writing about it.


(b) At thirteen you were too young to become atheist because you could not possibly have understood evolution.

At the outset, I will admit that when I first believed in the theory of evolution by natural selection, I had a rather primitive understanding of the theory. (As an aside, the same could be said of Charles Darwin, who developed the theory without being aware of Mendelian genetics).

But my decision to believe in the theory of evolution was not just because it made sense to me, but also because I became aware that it was the general conscious of scientists that it was correct. In that sense, I chose to accept one form of authority, scientists, over another form of authority, rabbis. And before becoming aware of the theory of evolution, I was already skeptical of the religious explanations for the natural world, particularly since in learning gemara the amoroim struck me as so primitive.

My explanation for why I accepted evolution without fully understanding it might bother some people who find it not very intellectual. But if you had a medical issue, I suspect that you would readily accept the diagnosis of a western trained medical doctor over a Santeria practicing witch doctor. But using your logic, the fact that you would take a medication without fully understanding how it works is proof that you are just looking for a reason to not believe that Santeria is the true faith. After all, you accept that this medication will be effective without having reviewed any of the clinical studies or read the peer reviewed articles that explain how it works.


(c) If you were intellectually honest, you would have asked rebbeim questions. That you didn’t just proves you were looking for a reason to become not frum.

Firstly, there was nothing that I would have heard had I asked that would have surprised me. While issues of emunah and/or hashkafah were not a formal part of the curriculum, (which was almost entirely gemara), being in yeshiva all day meant that I was frequently exposed to the “party line” on issues of belief.

Further, in the yeshiva environment I was in, it was made clear that having “emunah peshutah” was preferable to “rational belief.” As such, asking questions would hurt the perception of me in implying that I did not have “emunah peshutah.” (And at that time I thought I would remain fake frum.) Further, I never got the impression from my rebbeim that they had anything other than “emunah peshutah” and I believed that they would be uncomfortable with me asking them. In the yeshiva I went to, rebbeim were there to answer questions on the difficult tosfos that you did not understand, not why does Bereshis say that the world was created in six days less then six thousand years ago when science provides overwhelming evidence that it does not.

11 comments:

Acher said...

Gayus,

I will skip (b) and go straight to (c).
I rarely ever put my questions to Rabbis for answers, I knew they had none. But I did investigate the sources, and tried to get answers some other way. What I'm saying is that if you realized the shortcomings of the people, that doesn't necessarily preclude the idea being right. The impression I got, was that you didn't inquire and try to find solutions to your problem. You seemed to make a radical turnaround without fully evaluating all options. That's what bothered me more than anything. The fact that you made the decision at 13, only made it more strange, but the problem for me was what seems to have been a lack of effort.

Now I do have to say that you're probably right that evolution and God should not coexist. Evolution doesn't preclude God's existence, but it makes it mostly superfluous and hence unnecessary. But that's not the point, because it still seems to me (at least that's the sense I got from the interview) that you almost stumbled onto this and happen to be correct.

Freethinking Upstart said...

GO,

>it simply never occurred to me that people read blog posts simply for their entertainment value. I would imagine that most of the people who post on these blogs fancy themselves intellectuals and would not admit that they read blogs solely to be entertained.

hahaha! The most well read blogs are entertaining. Most readers here probably also read XGH and Dovbear which have a high dose of entertainment.

And who said anything about "solely?"

Plus, you don't have to be a letz, but something that shows you are a human and not some logic crunching robot would make reading about you interesting.

Jewish Atheist said...

I think it's perfectly reasonable to become an atheist at age 13.

Acher,

You seem to be presuming that it's reasonable to undergo an extremely thorough research program on the slight chance that Orthodox Judaism really has come up with a killer answer to evolution but that you've never heard of it. If that's what you want to do -- for example if you're desperate to remain Orthodox -- hey, go right ahead.

But it's absurd to imply that someone who doesn't go through that process is doing something wrong is silly. At this stage, before further study, we already know that basically every well-respected Orthodox Rabbi is dead wrong -- not just ignorant, but WRONG, as wrong as wrong can be -- about maybe the most important scientific discovery ever.

Okay so maybe some Orthodox rabbi or layperson came up with the most brilliant explanation for how evolution actually proves Orthodox Judaism.

But what are the odds of that? And how do they compare to the odds that the situation is exactly what it appears to be -- that Orthodox Jews are emotionally attached to their religion just as members of every other fundamentalist religion are.

Is our 13 year old obligated to thoroughly investigate every other religion? Or just the one that would turn his life upside down if he stopped believing in it?

defenestration said...

JewishAtheist, are you able to answer Colin Paterson's famous question: "What do you KNOW about evolution?" (for reference:
http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od171/colpat171.htm

Jewish Atheist said...

JewishAtheist, are you able to answer Colin Paterson's famous question: "What do you KNOW about evolution?I've got no interest in playing creationist word games.

defenestration said...

JA, If you had said, "I'm not interested in playing along," I would've left it at that. But when Colin Patterson asked his question, he wasn't a Creationist, but rather a top-notch vertebrate palaeontologist.
The question, to be more precise, was "Can you tell me anything about evolution, any one thing, that is true?"

Acher said...

JA,

Here is the deal:
I do think that at the age of 13, or for that matter at any other age, it is sensible to conduct a thorough research on something that one is rejecting. I happen to agree with you that orthodoxy in particular and religion in general has nothing to offer in regard to factual reality. But for someone to just offhandedly come in contact with a theory he admittedly didn't fully understand, and not to investigate whether it does or doesn't invalidate orthodoxy, which happens to be how he was raised, just seems like a bad effort. The interview may not have given off the right impression, maybe he did his due diligence, but I can only judge by what I see.

The Hedyot said...

Acher,

But why is it necessary to require him to do 'due diligence' on a system just because it 'happens to be how he was raised'? Do we expect a young African tribesman to do due diligence to prove that shamanism is ridiculous or can we simply accept that anyone with a bit of brains in his head can reasonably deduce that there is no real merit to this system of thought, and is entitled to reject it without conducting a thorough investigation as to its veracity?

Acher said...

Hedyot,

But the link is not THAT strong. If evolution; than no God, it's not that obvious. My point is not on a specific misstep, I just got the feeling that he found out about the theory of evolution, thought to himself, Aha so God doesn't exist, and that was the end. Didn't ask anyone, didn't look much further. Maybe in reality he did, but from the interview, it sounded like a halfhearted effort.

And I'm not claiming that he must investigate Judaism in it of itself just because he was brought up that way. He should investigate the God v atheism question more thoroughly though, and Judaism is just as good a place to begin as any.

Gaius Octavius said...

<<< The impression I got, was that you didn't inquire and try to find solutions to your problem. >>>

You seem to believe that non-belief is a “problem” for which I should have tried “to find solutions.” But I never believed that to be the case.

<<< You seemed to make a radical turnaround without fully evaluating all options. That's what bothered me more than anything. >>>

Becoming an atheist at thirteen did not dramatically alter my life. I was a regular frum kid other than that I believed what I was learning was false and in many cases offensive to my moral sensibilities. It was many years later that I actually decided to become not frum. That was something that I did evaluate for a while. (Probably too long.)

The Hedyot said...

> I just got the feeling that he found out about the theory of evolution, thought to himself, Aha so God doesn't exist, and that was the end. Didn't ask anyone, didn't look much further.

And how is this different from when a frum kid "finds out" about god from his rabbeim, superficially thinks to himself, "aha, I guess god does exist," and that's the end of it for him? Doesn't ask anyone, doesn't look much further, and just continues to hear the same weak assertions made for the rest of his life.

My point being, why do you assume a frum kid's "knowledge" of god is so strong that it needs a thorough investigation to be refuted?

When people would counter my claim of non-belief in Judaism with, "How much have you really looked into why it's not true?", I'd answer back with, "How much do you think I ever really looked into it that it WAS true?"