Would The Atheists Be Correct?

Would The Atheists Be Correct?

By Rabbi Pesach Steinberg, July 2022 - 5782

Rabbi Hillel, teach me the Torah on one foot.

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary - go & learn."

Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 31a

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World famous comedian and proponent of atheism, Ricky Gervais, explained to a late night US talk show host about how science & maths trump religion, as follows:

If all human knowledge was erased and we had to start from square one again, we would have science & maths back in a thousand years exactly as we have it today.

But religion would be nowhere to be found.

I thought that was a profound argument and one that I have posed to my family and friends. At first glance it sounds convincing.

As Einstein said, God does not play dice. 1+1=2, the speed of light is constant in a vacuum, a hydrogen atom has one proton, and it usually takes a male & female to reproduce. I would have to agree that science & maths would eventually return in its current format.

Would the atheists be correct? Under what circumstances would religion reappear, if at all?

Torah is a central requirement of Judaism. But if it disappeared tomorrow with no memory of it, a friend suggested that we would need another Godly revelation to start us over again. But I think the Torah, i.e. the 5 books of Moses, would not be the starting point of our religion.

Abraham was the first person to look to the heavens and realise that the contemporary wisdom of his time could not explain the world he lived in. He reasoned that there must have been a single overarching power that was responsible for creation. That power must be unlike anything Abraham was capable of understanding, except to understand that the power existed and pre-dated existence. At that point Hashem reached out to Abraham and religion took a giant leap forward.

Now, I find it curious that there are those who think that they know the correct moral and ethical path regardless of Torah. They think they know right from wrong because 'it's obvious'.

Little do such people realise how privileged they are to have grown up in a Judeo-Christian society. Had they been born 1000 years ago, human sacrifice, nay child sacrifice, was acceptable in many cultures. What 'obvious' morals would have been the norm in those times? Indeed even today many of our practices are dubious or corrupt.

In order for religion to grow it takes time and thought and reflection. But we can learn a lot in one generation or even less. When Cain killed Abel at the dawn of time there is an argument that he did not even know what death was, let alone murder. It had never happened before. Had Cain not come to realise the gravity of his actions, what difference would science & maths have made if we all arbitrarily killed each other?

To my mind the key to unlocking this conundrum is when the convert approached Rabbi Hillel to teach him the Torah on one foot. Hillel answers with a version of the well known phrase "do unto others as you would have done unto yourself".

Torah is a teaching based not from Mt Sinai, but rather from our first human experiences and our acquisition of knowledge based upon our interaction with others. As our interactions grew and repeated so did our wisdom, and our conduct improves organically.

Based on Hillel, I feel well equipped to answer Mr Gervais' proposition that science & maths trumps religion. At the heart of the matter to me is not whether there is a person called a Hebrew or Jew, or even whether there are 5 books of Torah. That was actually the end result, an outgrowth of millennia of progressing to a more cohesive and wiser society.

I do not murder, steal, kidnap or be jealous because I would not want that done to me. I honour my parents because I would want my children to do that to me. I seek the ultimate omnipotent power because everything, including maths & science, came from something.

Mr Gervais I think you have the wrong idea of religion and certainly Judaism. Science & maths are fundamental truths, but are meaningless without having first taken control of our conduct and behaviour. Perhaps that is why so many great empires and civilizations have fallen over the millennia, because their societies lacked refinement and no amount of science & maths could sustain them.

What most of us really want is to be good, do good and strive to do better. I think that is the heart of religion and we care more about that than anything else. But thank you Ricky for making me ponder these thoughts and even inspiring me.

Rabbi Pesach is a mashgiach at Kosher Australia

& author of the new sefer The Rambam Chumash.