Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - Jewish Philosophy: Adequate Reason to Believe - Part 2

[Music] the series on reasons to believe First reason we started with is the prediction I call it the gold standard you want a reason to believe something idea Theory proposition hypothesis if that idea Etc makes a prediction and it comes true and not any old kind of prediction what you want is for your idea to make a prediction that other alternative points of view will reject either reject absolutely or say it's just so unlikely it's not reasonable to think it's going to happen and then it comes true that counts as evidence for you because it shows you're in a better position than your competitors may not end the story may not fully prove that you're right but it certainly counts in your favor and that's why making a prediction a prediction of that kind um is an important piece of evidence that was point one are we together up to there okay so then I said that in chapters 28 through 30 of Deuteronomy there's a lot of material predicting a conquest and destruction and Exile worldwide scatter and survival of the culture and the return to the point of origin and I said in that area of text there are three types of statements one type of statement is predicting something that everybody would expect because it's very natural and that doesn't count because your competitive can say of course that's going to happen we of course expect the same thing as you doesn't count for you against them so may be true but it doesn't cut any ice doesn't do you any doesn't give you any benefit in terms of making you more likely that the ideas you are supporting are true then there are very vague statements some of are poetical where it's very hard to pin down you know the sky will be like iron and the Earth will be like copper that means a drought and low productivity exactly how low exactly how long exactly how much little rain it's very vague this is very vague it's hard to pin down and because it's very vague it'll happen often enough so again it's not helpful doesn't count either way doesn't count for or against it's just too vague to be useful evidence what you want is statements which are literal and which describe things which you otherwise would expect not to happen and there are a number of those I went through um a number of them uh that the Conqueror will speak a language you don't understand that he will practice wanton destruction of natural resources and Slaughter the population in a won fashion um that it'll end up in a total Exile that the Exile will end up in Scatter all over the world that we will survive this Exile and come back every one of those predictions is something which from any other point of view is very unlikely it happen some of them are totally unique in all of human history worldwide scatter survival and return is unique in the whole of human history and therefore from any other point of view you would say each one of them is unlikely to happen and the whole string of them together is extremely unlikely to happen and that being the case when it happens it's evidence in our favor and evidence against our competitors that was the next point that I are we together so far still okay terrific now then I said the critic may say listen um your prediction is pretty vague after all you don't mean that the Torah is saying this must happen it for sure will happen no you're presenting this as punishment for Crime presumably if the crime never happens then the prediction doesn't apply that's correct well the critic says please be a little more precise how bad does a crime have to be to justify this prediction what's the trigger condition for the prediction and the disappointing answer that we have to offer is an idea that can't possibly fail then it's something which can't be tested and if it can't be tested is not scientific it's not realistic it's not valid it's not factual it's not descriptive it's just play it's play and it's not serious the whole idea of doing something that's objective is something that can be tested and test means there's got to be some circumstances under which you will admit that there was a failure if there are no circumstances that you admit there's a failure then it's an idea that can't be tested at all and doesn't count and this technique is used not only against our prediction of conquest and Exile and survival and return but it's used against religion generally it's used against intelligent design it's used against the whole pel of ideas all with the same complaint give me a concrete prediction which could go wrong if you don't tell me anything that could go wrong then you're not playing the scientific game when you're dealing with God who knows what what God wants to do who knows what his motives are who knows what his goals are so whatever happens you could always say God had some hidden reason so then it could never go wrong there's nothing that could show that what you're saying is wrong that's not serious it's not factual it's not objective it's not true it's just play that's the attitude that I described and that attitude so far as I've described our prediction so far that attitude applies we have to see whether the attitude is Justified but that attitude applies our prediction is if we fail badly enough enough then this is what will happen but I don't tell you how how how how much is is badly enough so there's no set of circumstances which you could say well you see you failed and you see it didn't happen so you're wrong that could never happen so it means it's a it's a so-called prediction that can't ever be falsified nothing could ever show you that it's wrong and therefore it's not serious that was the complaint that I expressed okay so then I said that this this whole attitude is a mistake this whole attitude is a mistake are you really must you always when you put forward an idea a theory hypothesis a prediction must it always be one which could be shown wrong is that really a Criterion of sound scientific thinking the very fact that I can't be shown wrong means to be just dismissed as non-s serious and and nonsignificant I said no first of all I gave two examples a madeup silly example and then example from real contemporary science and the point of the examples was this maybe you have an idea that could never be shown false but you might be able to show that it's true and it might be very unlikely to be true unless something's behind it and then it counts as real positive evidence the emphasis on being able to defeat it to show that it's false making that the only Criterion of what counts as genuine science is a mistake it's too narrow the ability to show that it's true might also make it genuine science now the the silly example that I made up was my cousin George Who by concentrating hard enough can make your coin come up heads every time and when I say concentrating hard enough of course love it's K patch if you start flipping your coin and it comes up Tales a few times and George is sitting there I'll always say well he wasn't concentrating hard enough so I've protected myself you can never show that my my proposition is wrong but suppose on the second attempt Georgia city near concentration you get 120 heads in a row I think that's positive evidence that something's funny about George you know something unique about George I don't think you could dismiss that by saying but look we could never show that it's false so what you don't expect it to come true ever if it comes true against expectation then that's evidence so the mere fact that you can't falsify a prediction doesn't mean it isn't a real prediction isn't real science isn't real information isn't real knowledge it depends in part whether in spite of the fact that you can't possibly show it's wrong whether you can show it's right and it's being right is unlikely let me just give the second example and we can discuss now the real example is something called magnetic monopoles uh you probably know that normal magnets have a North Pole and South Pole there's some weird creature which some theories of the Big Bang say was created in the big bang a particle which is called magnetic monopole it functions like the whole thing is one pole of a magnet I don't know how that works Beyond me but there is a prediction that these things exist by certain models of the big bang and others no and they' like to figure out who's right so they have experiments running now to try to find some of these creatures if one of these experiments triggers and you get a result you'll know you found one and if you know you found one you'll know that these models are out and those models are in that's if one of the experiments we have set up trick suppose none of the experiments we have set up ever triggers what will we know then we won't know anything because maybe they're out there and we haven't found them you can't get a negative result there's no way that you can demonstrate that there aren't any all you can do is demonstrate that there are so this hypothesis there are magnetic manoles is a hypothesis which can't be falsified but it could be verified and it is Bonafide genuine science scientists are doing it right now they're hunting for these things no one has suggested that this isn't bonified science it's some Elementary logical philosophical errors being made because this kind of prediction can't be falsified no one's suggesting that because it's clearly wrong so the fact that there's no way to make a prediction false shouldn't disqualify it as being unscientific you have to ask whether there's some way of showing that it's true if there's some way of showing that it's true then it should count as genuine science and the emphasis on falsity falsifying only on falsifying is is is simply incorrect now as I say when I went to graduate school in the second half of the 1960s we knew this Rudolph carap had made this point 10 years before I went to graduate school and is in the philosophical literature and we all knew this and and somehow it hasn't trickled out but this is Elementary so that's the critique of this whole General attitude that in order to be genuine science whenever you say something there got to be a way to show that it's false that's an incorrect Criterion discussion up to here you want to say something yeah but didn't say you prove that you could prove this that's that's another point no I'm now you're right now I'm I'm working hypothetically even if there were no way to show it's false that wouldn't disqualify I happen to think there's a way to show is false also that's that I depended on at the very end but I I'm just I'm concerned to dis ify the whole Criterion the whole attitude um that you have to be able to show that it's false in order for it to be genuine size and that's just just mistake now it's a separate point I haven't given you this information yet we'll get to it where the very survival of the culture I merely said that no one this has never happened to anybody I think it's much worse than that in the sense that the conditions that we were under would have led to an overwhelming expectation that would disappear not just that no one else has has maintained their identities but we were in very bad position to maintain our identity worse than most so the overwhelming expectation would be that we should have disappeared um the gypsies are a good parallel to us because we're tiny minorities and separated from their Homeland soth and so on and there were thousand years and really in our case you'd have to count 3,000 but that's a long that's a long story I'm just pointing out that that U its uniqueness makes it unlikely and in addition to that there's much more information that makes it very unlikely which makes it a very risky prediction which is very good because then you want then when it comes true it's something which nobody else is going to agree to okay the last thing that I said yesterday interesting that you remember it because I just threw in the last few minutes it was a pretty complicated sh yesterday last thing I said yesterday is maybe in fact our prediction of conquest and exile could be falsified it there would be a way to show that it's wrong or at least to put it under very significant pressure very significant pressure would be very very hard you have a lot of material against it there's a way to do that so I don't need this because I defeated the critic on his own grounds the idea that you have to to show that is false but I think it's true also because the prediction of conquest and exile is a prediction of a punishment for a crime punishment coming from God we expect that God suits the punishment of the crime now imagine that what's predicted in Deuteronomy didn't happen something else happened something else which in detail is very very different but in severity is equal roughly equal same ball so to get take an example there it says you'll be conquered and you'll be um uh your armies will be defeated your king will be carried off it'll be exiled and and insecure and travel from pillar the post and always being in Pursuit and all the rest let's suppose that instead of that a local power offers us an incentive to gather all the Jews into one area and all the Jews voluntarily come home to land of Israel and uh there's an incentive to give support to the economy and the Jews are doing very well and then when all the je are at home and all are doing well and they're all been fooled into trusting this power this power surrounds the entire country and sets up walls and puts everyone in concentration camps there's no war there's no Army there's no King there's no Exile no nothing they put into concentration camps and they and they put into work camps and they worked and you know and they worked to enslave labor producing for this Empire and and work to death and life is is bitter and a lot of suffering and Death and All the Rest look at that fantasy of history and you ask consider how much suffering is going on here compare it with what Deuteronomy predicts awful lot of suffering in both cases it's not obvious that Deuteronomy is any worse look roughly horrible they both look horrible so then the critic will say you believe in God you believe that God is just so you believe that if a disaster overtakes you it must be punishment for some crime okay this is what happened they made up the walls put slave camps in Israel and so and so on so you must have done something terrible consider how much you're suffering in this fantasy world suffering is comparable to what it says in Deuteronomy then the crime that you're guilty of must be comparable to the crime that Deuteronomy says you'll get deuteronomy's punishment for and you're not getting deuteronomy's punishment you're getting something very very different well that's not right that doesn't fit your prediction I think if that happened there would be very strong reason to be dissatisfied with the prediction in Deuteronomy I'm not saying it's an absolute defeat there are ways to squeeze out of it but would be very strong evidence against the prediction of Deuteronomy so that being the case the prediction of Deuteronomy is also dangerous it also could be falsified so even if I didn't defeat that whole attitude of looking at at the false side even if I didn't defeat it I could say our predition does qualify because there is a way for it to come out go but I don't need that I don't need that I don't think that's necessary just that's a kind of footnote to say that if necessary I would have another response if someone could respond to my critique of the whole attitude but the whole attitude is a mistake it's a mistake in science mistake in philosophy it's a mistaken social policy is mistaken all across the board and therefore there's no reason to worry about the prediction that we are making okay any other observations that you had you notes um yeah another question you said obviously some of the predictions were more poetic and and metaphorical than other ones how do you know that the prediction you'll be completely wiped out how do you know that that's not poetic you know it doesn't say you'll be completely wiped out if it said that then certainly false we have a prediction that the Jewish people is eternal and that they will never be completely wiped out it says says in Deuteronomy 28: 45 you'll be destroyed you'll be what you'll be destroyed the verse says all of these curses will come upon you and will chase you and will reach you until your destruction until your destruction now the word until both in English and in Hebrew is ambiguous when you say until X you could mean up to X and including X or you can mean until X can mean up to but not including X so for example say um you are qualified until your 18th birthday so on your 18th birthday are you qualified or not well but usually it means not once you become 18 you're disqualified right you're a minor until your 18th birthday it's on your 18th birthday you're an adult you're not a minor anymore right cook until well done that means keep the fire going until it's actually well done until there means until and including well done not up to but not well done so until is ambiguous in English and it's ambiguous in Hebrew also in Hebrew they'll tell you is it does it go all the way to include the next or not here it says ad so the interpretation is these things will will attack you and the curses will reach you and and apply to you until but not including destruction so there's no reason to read this this as um including the absolute destruction especially since the very same text goes on to say that you'll survive and you'll come back so the very same text says that and it's ambiguous the right way to read this is until but not including but good I see that you actually took it out and you read it and you're and and you're dealing with it that's that's the thing to do that's the thing also as you see now you have to ask somebody who knows Hebrew and because the translations often don't pick up nuances like that is it the same thing for chapter 30 verse 18 where it says you'll be lost the riv I'm declaring to you this day that you will be utterly lost you will not lengthen your days on the land which uh you came across the Jordan to inherit so that means you be lost from the land that's what the second half of the sentence says right you're just chopping a sentence in half and taking the half out of the context of the whole the whole sentence you're found when you're in the land of Israel when you're when you're in Exile and subject to the will of other rulers and being chased for pill post that's called being lost lost from the land that's what the verse says good okay so now that's now um let's just ask what do we do with a text that makes a prediction which from every other point of view we would regard to be unlikely unreasonable and it comes true how then we look at the text the author of the text the source of the text somehow this text accurately predicted the future of something which from any other point of view is very very unlikely it looks like you know what what they call in the stock market insider trading and how did he do so well because he knew beforehand what tomorrow's board decision was going to be for AT&T and that's how he knew to sell or to buy I mean this whoever is behind this text has knowledge of what's going to happen in the future which isn't accessible to anybody else you can have two models of this one is that whoever the author is sort of can see into the future the other model is that whoever the author of the text is makes the future happen the author has the power to make it happen that way that's how he knows what's going to happen because he knows what he's going to do given what we've seen so far and only that both models are available since the second model assumes more one would like more evidence for it but I just want to point out that of course from our point of view it's the second model that's true the reason why this destruction took place and Exile and survival and return is because the author of the text has the power and used the power to make it happen that way that's why it predicts the future but that I can't I can't argue for you now I need other evidence that the author of the text has power like that and we'll see that in in particular yeah Okay so until return though return means like 1948 return okay that's also a good point to to mention um strictly speaking within the context of the Torah return has a a legal definition and definition is the majority of Jews should be living in the land of Israel that has not happened that has not happened so it would be right to protest that what the Torah calls return has not yet happened that's true but I'm now looking at a prediction from the point of view of something which no one would expect to happen on the basis of world history and seeing it happen as an indication that this text knows something about the world which no one else knows so let's say that the text prediction of return has not yet been fulfilled because the majority of Jews still live outside the land of Israel um still no one expects a minority to come back to the original country to the original piece of real estate and to set up an independent government and to resurrect the 2,000 year old language and all the rest nobody expects even that to happen so if you're talking about predicting something that nobody expects to happen that definitely is part of it if you're talking about the exact prediction of the of the Torah it hasn't happened yet I have no reason to think it's not going to Happ happened just hasn't happened yet yeah until until that point in time like if you were going to give this she 100 years ago we wouldn't you know we would you wouldn't be able to make this demon I know you know like we're proof but like you won't be able to to give like this demonstration I guess of of the of the um of the truth of the Torah so to speak well Tru the predict the of the prediction in Deuteronomy well I I think that's not quite right I mean I understand what you're saying and I'm going to acknowledge the point there's a genuine point that you're making the the the argument that I'm making is based on let's say nine separate points and if we had been making this to have the discussion 100 years ago would have been eight points instead of nine that doesn't mean I can't make the argument doesn't mean the argument won't be convincing that this be eight out of Nine the ninth one wouldn't apply that's true and it would that would make it that much weaker but think that eight out of the nine will already be phenomenally strong it was strong enough to carry the conclusion but you're right the ninth point would not be there a convincing argument would be a prediction or something which no one else expects to happen and that would make people sit up and take and take notice and I know no such there's a woman I don't know if she's still alive in the United States named Jee Dixon and she's an astrologer she had a column in hundreds of newspapers and there's also all this fluff you know know this is why you're here and this is why you're there and so for and so on in the era of Richard Nixon when he was president he was under pressure for the tapes and everything else she made a prediction that he will survive this this Challenge and he'll be come out of it a stronger president so I saw that prediction I thought to myself that's good that's good she made a concrete prediction about the future you know which will be tested in the next few months and of course as you know he resigned from office right he did not to come out of a stronger president he he he he had to resign so but that didn't that she didn't give up the newspapers didn't cancel her column she just kept you know writing her stuff you know so very rarely did they make a cont prediction when they make cont predictions often they're wrong and that just shows you that it's not not to be taken seriously yeah you said like if um if someone made a prediction and it was come true in the future then that would make people sit up and think but then that would only be a one-off prediction which has been seem to be right surely another one would Delight it would mean to be more than one to really be take notice of you see what I mean um well all I said was they would sit up and take notice now however if you have this vast body of information and you make only one prediction and that one prediction turns out to be true that would be very significant if this is happen stance if this is just play then you'd expect the the 100 predictions to be forthcoming maybe two would be true and 98 would be false you say okay so by by law of averages you know two two were true but if they made only one prediction I mean there's a wonderful book that came out now about a year and a half ago called Torah and science it's really an encyclopedic work on the status of Science in terms of the Torah and Ric tradition written by one of my teachers m 900 pages long and one of the points that he makes is that in the discussion of the arc this is in discussion of the Ark the Jewish tradition makes only one remark about its structure about its um physical capabilities the one remark that it makes is that it's very stable that's the only remark that it makes well as a matter of fact models of the Ark have been have been created dozens of them since 150 years ago shipyards have been making them and and been testing them and so for and so on the only physical characteristic that has been demonstrated and verified by actual models in the sea is stability it say okay that's the only thing that the talud says about it and the and that's has actually been demonstrated if it had if the Torah had or the tradition had given it a dozen characteristics and wanted tested in 11 11 Haven you say look it's just a madeup tradition and they made up 12 and one came true by accident but it's the only one that you say and that one turns out to be true that's an indication that there's some kind of accuracy here you don't expect if the if the source is frivolous if the source is just made up the source is just fantasy you don't expect the one statement that they make to be right by accident yeah uh in the homish it says that the ark like came to rest on Mount arat and I've like heard and seen things that say that there's like evidence and people eyewitness testimony that it's still up there part of it still up there and um what do you think about that so I I um I don't know what to think about it in detail but I would be surprised it could be it could be but that's a very weak statement anything could be there could be leprechauns also uh where exactly is Mount aror at like in yeah yeah but how how would anybody today identify what the Torah is talking about when it says Ararat because contemporary Turks use the syllables Ararat to refer to a certain mountain range I mean I don't know what the continuity is I've read that it's uh it's like pretty well understood that like this is the mountain and all the locals understand it to be the a certain Mountain yeah but we're talking about a text that was written 3,300 years ago I want to know know what kind of continuity is there between our text which God dictated 3,300 years ago and the Contemporary usage of that term number one number two the Torah describes it as wood certain type of wood certain type of pitch is it expected that that wood with that pitch is going to survive for 3300 years without weathering and storms and cold and heat just destroying it shall I say that it's another miracle that it didn't get destroyed the Torah doesn't indicate that so I'm I'm I have a number of doubts about the about the uh about the thing how is it proved that that's is that old is it carbon dating how well is the carbon dating done I mean there are a lot of questions that could be raised I wouldn't rule it out but I wouldn't rule I wouldn't use their claims to have found it as positive evidence that the story is true and that that actually is the is the arc we require quite a lot to to elevate to the point of of serious positive evidence yeah now how could you even use carbon if there's a concept that science has changed throughout time and there's no way to use science from there's an idea that you can't use a science from today to talk about something say thousands of years ago or millions of years ago there's a gigantic difference between thousands and millions yeah that's the gigantic difference we you're right because I've spoken about this and but what I what I was saying there based on my monties and other sources is that the six days of creation during the six days days of creation our science wasn't operating but from the end of the six days our science is operating now the period of the of the flood is an exception to that that period of time is a period of time in which our science again wasn't operating but from the end of the of the period of the flood the Torah says that the science our science is operating so at that point the Ark survived the flood and I suppose the wood of the Ark continue to exist after the flood was over when the reign of of nature was re reasserted so at that point from then on I would apply the natural laws to what happened so the difference between thousands and millions is crucial in this in this discussion okay that's the first piece of evidence next we we will start to talk about the revolation at Sinai for which I claim there is strong positive evidence that it's a real historical event that it really took place okay yeah last like very quick question um I've heard there's this place in The Old City though I don't know if it's a shop or there is like it's a sort of art place called mikash and they like they've created like vessels of what's going to be in the third base on mikash and it's like fully secure like secure and like they they believe that that's what's going to be in the third Bas of mdash how is that possible so there are two things here first of all there are descriptions of what the third Bas of mes is going to be like there the long passages in Ezekiel and there's material in the oral tradition and what the vessels should look like and so for and so on there are some controversies about the subject but could very well be that they've gotten it right now um everyone who is alive to a is contaminated with tum much mace no that was that was my but you can you can you can purify you can purify people and you can purify vessels as well would you have to to then yes you have to but toling them was was normal there was a m in the in the place of the of the temple and after every holiday they Ted the the the the vessels so that was a standard standard procedure why after the holiday why after the holiday because during the holiday the vast majority of the Jewish population came on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and they came into some of them came into the temple some were kohanim and so and so on and not all of them were pure and there's a law that during the holiday you don't ask any questions you treat everybody as if they're pure but after the holiday you have to take into account the fact that many of them may have not pure and they may have contaminated the vessels so after the holiday they purified the vessels fine okay all right have a wonderful [Music] sh