Last evening I heard a piece on National Public Radio about a twenty-one year old man who has left orthodox Judaism. The piece also included an interview with someone involved in an organization who assist people who have left or are thinking of leaving. The brand of orthodox Judaism involved is often called, in English, ultra-orthodox because they are very isolationistic, shunning most contact with the outside world. (This is in contrast to what are called modern orthodox, who are just as committed to religious observance but see value in certain aspects of modern western thought and culture.) We learn that this man came from a divorced home which is unusual in his community, so his attachment might have been weakened in that way. It was an interest in science that seems to have spurred his break however. (His family allowed the reading only of religious texts.) We know a little of how he lives. He attends college. He eats pork. He does not wear a skullcap. That is about all we are told. We are not told if he still believes in God and prays, or if he tithes, or if he is living a hedonistic or a morally disciplined life.
It seems that for many religious people, especially, perhaps, members of small, intense communities, it is difficult to separate out different strands of their religion, so if they discover one strand that is hard or impossible to credit, they may throw out the whole thing which can easily lead to faddishness and moral debasement. I hope that has not happened, and does not happen, to the subject of the NPR segment.
August 9th, 2011 | 2:51 pm
That’s a problem common to any philosophy or system that claims to be comprehensive and inerrant. (Non-religious example, Marxism.) They can be strong, but brittle – one flaw and they shatter.
Ones that only claim to be ‘best guesses’ or ‘works in progress’ can get bent by shocks, but tend not to crumble.
August 9th, 2011 | 3:23 pm
Can’t be certain, but this seems to be the blog of the young man from the story: http://unpious.com/author/yonadab
August 9th, 2011 | 9:52 pm
i too listened to the story and sighed…. surprise, surprise, another npr story about someone finally seeing the light and leaving the dark ages behind…. how can any intelligent person believe in flying spaghetti monsters? it’s so obviously false!
then there is the npr fundraising lady who brags about its stories “respecting your intelligence.” yep, give us money because we tell you how great you are…. if you agree with us, you must be intelligent!
and what of npr’s idiotic scientism, the turning to “science” for answers to all questions, including the question of whether pregnancy is a disease? since the IOM has pronounced on it, of course pregnancy is a disease. case closed. “science” always wins.
August 10th, 2011 | 3:09 am
According to Joshua Halberstam, a professor at CUNY, ultra-Orthodox Jews who leave the community generally leave Judaism altogether. I read this at http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2011/8/2/main-feature/1/lives-of-the-ex-haredim, which is an article analyzing this same phenomenon.
August 10th, 2011 | 5:38 am
That’s a problem common to any philosophy or system that claims to be comprehensive and inerrant. (Non-religious example, Marxism.) They can be strong, but brittle – one flaw and they shatter.
Ones that only claim to be ‘best guesses’ or ‘works in progress’ can get bent by shocks, but tend not to crumble.
The same is true of any religion or paradigm.
I used to “believe” in science – and I am still recovering from the disillusionment.
Of course we’re not talking about science “the method”. Of course the scientific method is a useful part of gathering knowledge. But we all know that these people who believe in science are not talking about the same method that recognizes its own limitations.
It’s a tiny little jump – from recognizing the conditional nature of a thing to taking it as an article of faith – but that is what religion is: you can’t make sense out of this world unless you take something as an article of faith, the basis from which you can reason out the rest.
I lost my “science faith” when I realized that I do believe there is in fact such a thing as good and bad, and there is such a thing as right and wrong. These beliefs really aren’t compatible with the science-faith. Secondary beliefs – that life is sacred, that the Golden Rule is important, that human beings are equal – could be made compatible with the science-faith, but aren’t the way the faith is practiced right now.
I wonder if NPR would ever do an article on the growing number of people who find that science-the-religion does not lead to happiness, or personal fulfillment – is in fact so brittle it can shatter, because it is as vulnerable to conflict with the real truth as any other ideology. Somehow I do not think they will be ringing me up for an interview any time soon :p
August 10th, 2011 | 8:18 am
andrew –
Since I’ve been taking the bus, I haven’t been listening to NPR so much, but I don’t remember too many stories like that. Can you post some links to other ones, to help establish that there really is a trend?
August 10th, 2011 | 1:02 pm
Blake –
I grant that you have to take something as a basis, but it doesn’t have to be on faith. It can be a very pragmatic decision.
E.g. rejecting solipsism. I concede solipsism’s impossible to disprove. By definition, it can never be falsified. However, it’s inherently self-defeating. Okay, assume your mind is all that exists, all else is illusion. Fine. Then what?
Similarly for things like our ability to reason. It doesn’t have to be taken on faith; instead, it’s pointless to assume we can’t ever reason effectively. If that were true… then what?
So, we can assume our ability to reason effectively, at least some of the time. And we can assume that our sense-data corresponds in some way or another to an external reality. But not ‘by faith’; rather, because assuming the converse is automatically pointless and self-defeating.
I like to keep my ‘axioms’ as few in number as possible, and try to limit them to things where ‘the converse is automatically self-defeating’.
August 10th, 2011 | 3:54 pm
Similarly for things like our ability to reason. It doesn’t have to be taken on faith; instead, it’s pointless to assume we can’t ever reason effectively. If that were true… then what?
Sure we can reason effectively.
Because we’re biologically incapable of not adopting articles of faith and building a worldview based on those articles of faith.
August 10th, 2011 | 5:10 pm
Blake – My contention, of course, is that “accepting a proposition because its converse is automatically self-defeating and pointless” isn’t quite the same thing as “accepting a proposition on faith”.
Do you disagree? If so, why?
August 11th, 2011 | 9:06 am
Thank you, Hadassah, for the link to the J. Halberstam article.
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