Does Belief in the Self Require Belief in God? And Can Western Morality Exist Without Either?

John Cottingham’s recent book making the case for theism, In Search of the Soul, did not make a believer of the philosopher John Gray, but it did convince him that its arguments are worth taking seriously. Gray writes in his review:

[Cottingham’s] approach is to argue that theism is suggested by the fact that we experience ourselves as unified, conscious beings—in other words, as having a soul. Not necessarily an immaterial entity, the soul is the part of us that strives to realize what is best in our nature. We do not come to know the soul through any special revelation. We know it by considering the kind of creature we find ourselves to be—a thinking being inhabiting a lifeworld that seems to reflect a mind greater than our own. Once we realize we have a soul, theism becomes a credible way of thinking.

Modestly described as an essay, Cottingham’s short study explores fundamental questions more fully than many much longer volumes, [and] it is forceful and compelling in arguing that the idea of selfhood taken for granted in secular societies makes sense only in the context of a theistic worldview.

Where Cottingham’s arguments have greatest resonance, argues Gray, is in questions of morality:

Our revulsion at the gladiatorial games of ancient Rome does not come from any inbuilt repugnance at the spectacle of human suffering and violent death. There is no sign that those who watched the games felt any such revulsion. Nor is there much evidence from that era that slavery was felt to be inherently wrong. The repugnance we feel for these practices is an inheritance from Jewish and Christian ideas of human dignity and equality.

In this and other cases, what liberal humanists believe to be universal values are relics of particular religious traditions. . . . Without theism, or some Platonic spiritual realm, these supposed objective values are left hanging in the void.

Read more at New Statesman

More about: Atheism, Christianity, Judaism, Morality, Religion

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society