Crises of Atheism and Crises of Faith

Aug. 13 2024

There are many people who have lost their faith after witnessing the bad behavior of religious leaders. David Wolpe describes the opposite experience: he lost his youthful unbelief upon learning more about his intellectual hero, the English philosopher and logician Betrand Russell.

Upon reading his autobiography, I realized that this paragon of logic had lived a supremely messy life: multiple marriages, affairs, estranged children—all the wreckage of someone who is personally unwise. And I met people of deep religious faith who were as strong, as deep, and as thoughtful as any others I had known. The older I got, the larger the puzzle of life well-lived. It was clear to me I was missing some pieces.

By contrast, there are others who report losing faith after experiencing tragedy. Wolpe examines why that might be so, since

tragedy gives them no new information. Did anyone not know before they got cancer that human beings get cancer? Or before a loved one dies that people die? Our deepest connection to this world is not reason but relation. People who, in tragedy, lose their faith do so not because they learn something new about God but because their relationship with God changes from experiencing God’s world in a new and painful way.

This year with my students, we studied the thought of the Eish Kodesh, the remarkable rabbi of the Warsaw ghetto, Kalman Shapira. The Eish Kodesh suffered terribly in his lifetime and while not entirely absolving God for his suffering, he wrote that the destruction of the rational mind by extreme suffering left open a channel by which one could reach directly to God.

Read more at Sapir

More about: Atheism, Holocaust, Judaism

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy