Jewish Philosophy: Real Answers for Today's Challenges - Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb

i want to take this opportunity to talk about a problem which i have met many times the last 20 years we have people going off every community in the world including gateshead including mansharam and spring valley and muncie and williamsburg every community in the world has people going off and there's a wide variety of reasons but one thing that can't be said anymore is that these are the ignorant ones or the ones who haven't learned we just heard last week about someone who learned 10 years in yeshiva and went off took his whole family so there can be emotional problems and there can be physical problems but it's not probably ideas these are not um people who never went to each year but understood remember the invest investment and i think that there's a way of handling such problems when they when they start which could very much increase the probability of having a happy outcome so i've i put this together on my blog also but i handed it out and i hope that you'll share it with people because i think i think it can help i'll take you through it then i'll give you an example um what often happens is the one who wants to go off needs an excuse he can't just say it's tiger so he looks for an intellectually respectable excuse and that could be something in science the various sciences hard sciences social sciences psychology or something in philosophy or something in history and he most likely watches some videos on on the internet 30 years ago i would have said ready to read some books but that's i think and he picks up some terminology some jargon and he's quite aware his parents have never heard of this subject before and no clue what the jargon means and he comes home and he stops keeping shabbos and he stops giving cautious and when his parents express dismay and uh and uh often they're angry and they're condemnatory he says you're just ignorant you don't know about the super ego of freud see if you knew about freud then you'd understand why you're living in the middle ages and you don't understand what the real world is about or low temperature superconductivity and electricity or hawking radiation for black holes or as ones living here in the usual line had the audacity to quote girdle's theorem which is the most famous theorem in mathematical logic in the 20th century as his reason for going off and when his father sent it to me i said come let's talk about it i wrote my phd thesis on that theory so we spoke about it for an hour and became clear it has absolutely nothing to do with leaving yiddish kite the real reason is cheeseburgers and other things like that so i said why don't you be honest admit you like cheeseburgers don't pretend don't push it on kurt gordon 1931. so the student has read these things superficially or heard videos about it watch videos about them and he spouts this meaningless jargon to his parents and his parents are upset they're defensive by the way every parent has contacted me about a child they all have one thought in common my child is brilliant i don't know whether that's how they save face he's eating cheeseburgers and he's uh leading irish guys he's leaving the family at least he's smart he sounds smart because he's confronting them with ideas and concepts and terminology was which are totally unfamiliar that's no way to check the other person is smart or not so the parent or the educator reacts with anger or with dismissiveness or with an attack on the person's character that just reinforces his understanding that you people don't want to deal with my reality and you have nothing to say to the issue so therefore you're just coming down hard on me it's called an ad hominem argument you're destroy me rather than responding to the issue and that is reinforces his sense that that what he's doing is obviously intellectually correct so i have a suggestion how to handle these these matters which i think in the vast majority of cases will be successful first of all always treat the child with respect when he presents to you these ideas the reaction should be calm if they have to take a lower event beforehand take the lord again it's worth it you should be able to remain calm thoughtful receptive non-judgmental both of the child's character for sure that's ad hominem that's an attack on the person rather than dealing with the subject and not an attack on the material either don't attack anything say to the child i'm very glad that you're sharing this with me and i really want to understand you understand what you think and why you're doing what you're doing and i wish you would explain to me some of the things you said because they're not familiar to me i don't know what the superego is could you explain it to me so i'll be able to understand you that simple request explain to me the terminology or explain to me the principles that you're using uh will defeat fifty percent of the attacks because he doesn't know what he's talking about he hasn't got a clue he read it he got some sound bites he got it from the people who are dragging our children away by presenting at a veneer and you ask him what does it mean can you tell me the meaning of the concept can you tell me it's background and he'll start to fumble and and and and not be able to answer and then the thing to say is gee i really do want to understand you i do really want to to to be able to communicate with you please get a better understanding and come back to me don't be afraid you're pushing him back to the happy courses that's the way to wean him from it first of all let him realize he doesn't know what he's talking about he hasn't got a clue and he's been sucked in to pledge allegiance without any understanding at all he's the intellectual he's the clever one he's looking for the truth and he doesn't know what he's talking about okay so he goes back and he comes back with a better presentation this time he can explain what the concepts are then you say okay i'm beginning to understand the concepts that you're working with what do you how did you arrive at the conclusion that they're true you know chess is a game with concepts also but it doesn't deal with real life you're telling me that because there's such a thing the superego therefore there was no tower at china how do you get from one to the other how do you make the bridge another 20 25 of the time you won't be able to make the bridge give them the same option let me understand you get it clear articulate so that i can understand it i'm happy to speak to you whenever you have more to tell me please tell me so understand what you're doing that's already 75 percent who have who have been uh serviced that way 25 percent of the time the child will come back spinoza there is a professor of philosophy at the university of united states who's a chandra perishnick he used to be froome he's not swimming anymore and he uses spinoza to push off his students from unicrypt from kids go to that school they take his class and he says because espinoza you shouldn't be frugal i talked to one of those students he couldn't spell spinoza's name he just heard the professor and heard what sounded to be like very clever arguments he couldn't repeat any of them he couldn't articulate any of them i said to him did you ever look up critique of spinoza you can do that with google it's not hard just put in critique spinoza two dozen websites come up no he had not any critiques nothing just heard the babble from the professor and then decided to start eating cheeseburgers you're supposed to be the intelligent one you're supposed to be the clever one so say to him when he comes up with something that's articulate the next thing to ask him is does everyone agree with this you're giving me a picture i begin to understand the picture i see how it hangs together does everyone agree with this picture if he says yes say to him thanks i'm glad to hear that and then you do a little googling or get somebody who knows the next time you meet him and say gee i seem to maybe i'm making a mistake but i seem to have found people who do disagree with this picture it's not exactly uniform universal that everybody accepts it better is that he should do the googling and he should find out for himself because he's been sold the bill of goods they haven't been told uh told him that that's a controversial issue and in all of these cases to preserve friendliness openness non-judgmental you just want to understand i want to understand what you think what you believe where you're coming from what your values are and let his attempt to articulate it to you revealed to himself that there's really nothing there if in the end he gives you a comp comprehensive company has a picture it's well articulated the concepts were defined the argument is laid out he tells you what the basis for it is you say to him thank you i appreciate this i love you and i want to communicate with you let me think about it and then email one of us and we'll give you the information the ability to dare to to to tear it down uh just for your own uh your own perspective one thing that these people all have in common is that they haven't emailed us why not i was a professor of philosophy and my teacher and very close friend ramosha meisman has a phd from mit and mathematics and taught mathematics and university and there are people who are historians and archaeologists there are experts in every field who are from and you're looking for the truth wouldn't you email one of them and ask them about your clever arguments one fellow i heard about last week wrote a 40-page manifesto and he says i've heard of gotham and he's smart but dawkins is smart also and i choose to follow dawkins but he never communicated with me to find out what i would say about dawkins dawk has never said anything about me because he knows nothing about yiddish guy he knows nothing about philosophy nothing about christianity you've heard of dawkins he's a false image here do you know what his position at oxford was he had a chair in the public understanding of science he never was a scientist he's a communicator he's taken as the authority excuse me he's not even trained in it but he defends himself by saying they're two very smart people i choose to follow this one it's not a question of being smart number one it's a question of speaking in your field the minute a person steps outside of his field then he's not trustworthy and that applies on our side as well if you are going to present if a rug is going to present an argument against science it better knows science not just saying that they're silly and superstitious and foolish and they make up then they they have to make up their minds better know the science or better know who to quote and certainly they you know philosophy they know no philosophy and no religion not even christianity which is their religion let alone have to describe so who do you want to speak to someone who knows both sides someone only knows one side and i have a phd in philosophy mathematical logic and i know some total dawkins knows absolutely nothing about religion or philosophy at all are the two sources of equal reliability but the fellow never emailed me never never never made the investigation so it shows that he's not really looking for the truth he's looking for an excuse but our job is not to alienate him as a person to show interest to show concern and depending upon the relationship to show love and and to want to be able to understand in your wanting to understand he will have to struggle with his own understanding and he'll have to confront the fact that he doesn't have an understanding to share because he doesn't understand it now um as i said i've received these these challenges from parents who have already given up one fellow who went to that university united states i corresponded with his parents and some with him and he decided to come and do battle he came with a supporter and he brought with him a stack of philosophy books they booked into a hotel and they had i forgot how many hours it was a day for four days in a row and after each day he ran back to the hotel and looked up in the philosophy books what he could find here and what he could find there he was he was desperate okay his parents put the money into the ship i don't know what happened in the end because a lot of these have emotional core they have an emotional core then often it it won't work but when the person is putting on that philosophical that intellectual veneer and he's pretending that he has something to say i recommend this as a method of dealing with him it will save cases where a right attitude would have been enough to change the change the course that the person has seen seem to choose now let me give you a couple of examples in concrete how this works i'm eating cheeseburgers because science has proved that the world is 13.8 billion years old and you tell me that it's five seven seven nine it's just out of out of reach you know you're you're you're completely out of question it's a big gap between five seven seven nine and thirteen point eight billion you know number of zeros in particular um and science has proved that so you've got to be wrong and since you're wrong i'm checking out so start by asking him how has science provoked it what what is the proof that they offer it's 50 percent of the time you won't have a clue it's just read it that's all but then he may say well there are things happening in the world and they happen at a certain speed and you can see how much has happened and then you can tell by the speed how long it's taken stars are billions of miles away from us so if light traveled to us by the speed of light it has to take millions of years radioactive elements decay that's where radioactivity comes from and we know what it's like when it's pure and now it's fifty percent deteriorated and we know how long it takes to interior 850 percent so we can calculate it it takes 12 million years to deteriorate 50 percent and just go on 50 percent it's 12 million years when it started so that's 12 million years um i want you to know that the rambam faced this problem in a much more extreme form we have 13.8 billion against 57.79 he had infinity because the whole of the educated world all the scientists and all the philosophers until 1965 believe the world has no beginning at all it's always been here always and always will be there's no beginning and no end infinite in both directions infinity is bigger than 13.8 billion a lot bigger infinitely bigger and their album wrote an explicit answer to this to this question in the mother the base paragraph which i'm going to tell you and then i'll show you how it applies here as well ramu said i want you to imagine uh a baby boy that's born and a few months after birth his father takes him to a colony where there are only men the boy grows up at some point he asks his father where did we come from we people in this colony where do we come from so his father says to him well there are others who are very much like us but different in some respects every one of us starts out as a tiny miniature inside the abdomen of one of them and we're inside the abdomen of the other for nine months and then we exit and then grow to be the way you see us here so the child says hmm we're inside the abdomen of another human being when we're in there can we breathe can we eat can we drink and of course the answers are no so then the child says well then what you're telling me can't be true you all know as i know that if you don't breathe for four minutes you're dead if you don't drink for two months you're dead you don't eat for six months you're dead you're telling me that we are miniatures inside the abdomen of those others for nine months without breathing eating or drinking you have to be lying it can't be true now says the rambam given what that child sees of the world he's right because he's observing the life of a person after birth a life of a person after birth depends upon breathing eating and drinking without that for extended period of time you're going to be dead but the truth is that when you're in the womb in gestation and pregnancy the fundamentals of life are entirely different they're entirely different you're attached by an umbilical cord an adam biblical court provides the fetus with nutrients and oxygen because we need to eat drinks each week and breathe so the failure in the child's objection is he's starting with a world that he observes and he's generalizing it and saying this world is all there is and if this world is all there is it's always been this way then the story you're telling me can't be true what's the answer the answer is it wasn't always that way thereby tas has a beautiful presentation he tells he says there are over 20 features of a of a fetus which if it were outside the womb would kill it in minutes what happens at birth is all 20 of those features reverse themselves and in a matter of a couple of minutes it's a brand new organism functioning in a brand new way and it lives the fact that you survive birth is a miracle the blood is going the wrong way in the heart and some of the arteries aren't open and the lungs are tiny nubs which have to unfold and open and start to work hemoglobin the hemoglobin molecule changes its form it's not the same form in the fetus as f as after birth the birth trauma triggers a new chemical formation and the molecule changes so it's a different form of existence and the failure of the child is to take what he sees in his colony and assume that it's always been that way it says my management the first six days up until the end of shashi made racist is the gestation of the world it's where the world is in the womb of creation and the laws of nature that we see operating now we're not operating then in the same way it's not that there's no overlapping there's a gigantic discontinuity between them now everything the scientist says to project 13.8 billion or infinity is based on an assumption the assumption is that the way you see the world operating now that's the way it's always been operating but you see you can't go back a billion years or a million years or ten thousand years to check whether 10 000 years ago the world really was operating then when it is operating today you just have to assume that it's always been operating that way now if you assume it's been operating at the way you can draw your conclusion just like the child draws the conclusion that the story of pregnancy is false because we'd be dead but the minute you question that assumption you realize you don't have a proof what you've done is to make an assumption what's called the uniformity of nature and you apply it and say assume everything's always been the same what do we get you get a 158 billion but it's based on an assumption something that's based on a free assumption isn't the proof it's just working out where you're starting from you've decided to start from there and then you draw your conclusion i don't have to roll over and play dead because you made an assumption and drew a conclusion from an assumption the light's been traveling for billions of years because there are billions of light years away you only know the billions of light years away because you assume that all the processes have been the same otherwise they wouldn't be that far away either or that the speed of light has been the same the whole time you don't know that either so the child says that science has proved it try this counter counter response on it or if you can't do it yourself i had we had a boy here last week the week before who got his ba from the university of texas in mathematics and university of texas is very good in math and science and he had this question and i was dead in front of aurora gold the talmudim were there and we argued it out for uh for an hour and he realized that he has no way to to counter this argument there's nothing to say well it's the rumba's argument you know so chances are he's not going to be able to answer um so if the child talks about the 13.8 billion years is either you tell him i'll get you an answer or you can if you can learn as much as i said give it to him and you'll be able to say to him i hear what you're saying but it seems to me that it has this weakness and challenge him maybe you can find me someone who will teach us how to overcome this weakness challenge let him go back to the internet let him email his professors i'm not posting shout outs for you of course you ask your for what you should do but i'm talking about the strategy he'll email his professors as i've given challenges for the last 20 years to my students write your professors and get me an answer i know the literatures i know they can't get me an answer there isn't an answer in the literature [Music] you