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Category Archives: Judaism
What Is Faith in God?
What does it mean to have faith in God? It’s not a simple question. Lately, I’ve been wrestling with The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs, a book that tries to analyze religious belief from a psychological perspective. The author, Solomon Schimmel, … Continue reading
Costs, Benefits, and Beliefs
By N.S. Palmer I’m puzzled. No worries. It’s my normal state. I’m revising the draft of my book Belief, Truth, and Torah. I want to make it engage more fully with arguments from one of our professors at Hebrew College, … Continue reading
Logical Results, Lived Faith
Logic gives us good answers, but is there something the answers miss? At Hebrew College this semester, I’m taking a class whose assignments include Torah readings, Jewish philosophy, and “midrashim” — that is, ancient rabbinic commentaries on various issues. Midrashim … Continue reading
Posted in Jewish Philosophy, Judaism
Tagged Bialik, Binding of Isaac, Kant, Midrash, Midrashim, Ravnitzky, Sefer Ha-Aggadah, The Book of Legends
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Facing Up to Evil
The devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth … — Genesis 8:20 On October 1, multiple terrorists shot a rabbi and his wife who were in the car with their four children. On October 3, a lone terrorist … Continue reading
Seeing Life in Context
As I said the morning prayers today, I realized something: That act sets a context for my whole day. No matter what happens to me today — good, bad, or indifferent — the prayers remind me that it’s not all … Continue reading
Posted in Epistemology, Jewish Philosophy, Judaism, Philosophy
Tagged Astronomy, Faith, Prayer, Science and Religion, Times of Israel
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What Do You See?
Look at the ink blot. What do you see? The ink blot is used in what’s called a “Rorschach test.” The picture is supposed to be neutral, and not to look like anything in particular. What you see in it … Continue reading
Faith Lost and Faith Found
Why do some people lose their faith, while other people find it? It’s not because of differences in intelligence or education. Atheists and theists are often equally smart and educated. Orthodox Jewish Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder and Evangelical Christian geneticist … Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Christianity, Jewish Philosophy, Judaism, Modern Orthodoxy
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In Praise of Sloppy Thinking
By holding the handles, we can manipulate large amounts of information to solve problems, but we avoid getting bogged down in irrelevant details. Even if the underlying details are incomprehensible or inaccurate, the handle can still work. Continue reading
What We Owe to Past, Present, and Future
What do we owe to people who lived in the past and are now dead? What do we owe to people now living? What do we owe to people in generations yet to come? And perhaps most important: What is … Continue reading
Choosing to be Chosen
In most creation myths, an essential part of creating is to divide things from each other, thereby bringing order from chaos. In Genesis, God divides light from darkness, the waters above the firmament from waters below the firmament, and the … Continue reading
The Thousand-Year View 