The more people that believe in a system, the less likely it is to be true.

There is free will in areas that are not obviously areas of good and evil.

Accepting of good or dumb world views is an example. The Rambam has this idea of two areas of human choise. Good and Evil. True and False.  [That is in the "Shemonah Perakim" (Eight chapters of introduction to Pirkei Avot)]

That is free will applies in lots of areas in daily life that have vast ramifications but are not obviously subject to some commandment. They are not areas that seem to be relevant to good or evil but to true of false world views. But accepting a false world view will bring one to great evil. The way a false world view  gets accepted is by seeming to promote good values.


It seems to me I am presented often with rival world view systems that both have some plausibility but one is true and the other false and it is up to me to discern.


The Crowd is to me not conclusive. The fact that a lot of people believe in a system does not seem to me to be any factor for against a system. That is a result of my growing up in S. California where it was a strike against a system if the crowd believed in it. The more people that believe in a system, the less likely it is to be true. On the other hand the consensus of experts seems to be indication of plausibility. (Steven Dutch has a good essay on constitutes an expert.)

So for now let me just say that the matter of finding a true world view is not a trivial matter, but rather of utmost importance because all of ones action from from it.  
This idea of using reason to decide corresponds closely with the approach of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides that the Torah is to bring one to natural law.
I know there are rival schools of thought but this is what I think gets closest to describing reality truly. And this is what I think describes the underlying principles of the Torah. You can see many elements of the system in the Guide of Maimonides.

The reason why life is hard is theodicity. That is the problem of evil. Not just that there is free will, but also often things happen to us that are very bad and we have no control over and there seems to be no reason for.

The reason we talk to God like we talk with a friend is not because every prayer is answered but rather because we hope the accumulation of prayers every day over many years will make an effect.
My Talmud learning partner told me about a farmer who planted the wrong crops every year. Either barley when there was only a market for wheat or visa verse. Once he found some versa in the Torah which indicated to him that everything God does is for the good. So when people would ask what crops he planted, he would say "The right ones." And somehow after that, things started working out for him.

In the Talmud Shabat 63 we find in learning one should finish the book he is learning and then go back over it in detail. It even suggests learning by just saying the words and going on. לעולם ליגרס אינש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר

The idea is that you present the contents of what you are learning to your subconscious, and automatically the process of synthesis takes place while sleeping or while doing other activities during the day.


we see also in Kant:

From the Internet Encyclopedia of philosophy


Kant characterizes synthesis as that activity by which understanding “runs through” and “gathers together” representations given to it by sensibility in order to form concepts, judgments, and ultimately, for any cognition to take place at all (A77-8/B102-3). Synthesis is not something people are typically aware of doing. As Kant says, it is a “a blind though indispensable function of the soul…of which we are only seldom even conscious (A78/B103)”.





I have thought that this would be helpful for Physics and  I found it helpful.  [At some point I decided natural sciences are important to learn based on the Guide of the Rambam. I would have done chemistry and biology also, but I decided if I would spread myself too thin I would not get anywhere. However at at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, I did have to take chemistry also besides my major. 

When do you need ordination from Sinai to make a halachic decision? Actually not often. But it does need to come from the Gemara. One of the advantages of the real authentic Shulchan Aruch  is it gives a clear picture of the sugia in the gemara and how it develops into the halacha. But if one does actually know the Talmud well enough to be a מומחה לרבים  [a expert that has been tested by other experts and never found to make a mistake, and whose decision has been accepted by other experts] then he is allowed to decide cases involving money as long as they are not cases of wounding or theft. These last two need ordination from Sinai.


The idea of the halachic based on דינא דגמרא the law of the Gemara is well established even in the Rambam. The Maharshal  wrote it is better to decide from the Gemara itself even if one is wrong than to decide based on the Rambam even if one is right.

The basic idea is this. The mishna says one needs three people to judge monetary cases and three [later Rava will explain this to mean  people with the authentic ordination from Sinai] in order to judge robbery and wounds. It is late here but in short according to the Torah we need three people with authentic ordination for everything but the sages made an exception for loans and cases of admissions. What comes out is that the requirement for authentic ordination is not required in  MONETARY CASES. So far the gemara has not said anything about more general halachic rulings.

The people that present and teach Kabalah are caught in a delusional world called the Intermediate Zone that gives those who enter it a feeling of great power and insight.

Every wisdom has a אבן ניגף stumbling block in it. That is you can get so deeply into it that you are doing OK and then you trip over the hidden wire. This applies to what is  taught in Humanities and Social Sciences Departments of universities as is clear from that fact that the students of professors in those department lose common sense and  enter in worlds of delusion. But I wanted to bring up the issue of Kabalah which is known to have a similar kind of stumbling bock in it.

The people that present and teach Kabalah are caught in a delusional world called the Intermediate Zone that gives those who enter it a feeling of great power and insight.

But I get the idea people are interested in numinous reality. Maybe I am also. After all I was at two amazing places in NY which were learning Torah the Oral and Written Law- and yet something inside me felt I was missing something. Where does one go to quench his or her spiritual thirst?

I would avoid Sitra Achra {Dark Side} places as much as possible. The Dark Side is seductive and inviting and seems full of light and love and Jewish rituals to make it seem kosher.

One nice thing bout the Kabalah Center is they do concentrate on the Ari alone and avoid all the Sitra Achra Kabalah that came after the Ari.  That is the best option for those interested in that area of study. Besides that I have not seen or heard of any place that deals with the mystic side of Torah that is not simply the Sitra Achra in disguise.


Now I should mention what the Ari was intending was to get a mental picture of the spiritual worlds above and by this to be attached to God. The problem is most people do not get attached to the Side of Holiness by this but rather to worlds of illusion.

And for laymen it is hard to discern who knows what they are talking about and who does not. Even I have this problem when it comes to other things that I have  knowledge of but not enough to tell who really knows it well and who is a quack. But at least in kabalah I do know enough to tell who is from the side of holiness and who is not.

The Gra brings up the point that a case brought before a judge might require a decision based on the pleas but the truth might be elsewhere. In such a case he said the judge must remove himself. This occurred to me when learning the Rambam concerning civil cases. The Halacha might require one decision but the judge might be aware that it is  a דין מרומה. There is something under the surface that is not being presented. See Shir Hashirim on the verse הנה מטתו של שלמה.
If the judge decides like the truth against the law of the Torah then there is the sword on his neck. If he decides like the law of the Torah against the real truth then Hell opens up beneath him.

The basic idea of Paramenides I paraphrase like this "What is must be. What is not can't be"
This was later contradicted by Herculitus who said the very essence of the world is change. Plato resolved this with dividing reality into two realms. The unchanging real world of ideas and the shadow world of changing things. Kant also divided things into the dinge an sich and phenomena. But to him you cant know the dinge an sich."Things in themselves." This was the opposite of Plato.
Schopenhauer accepted there are two separate realms. But to him there is only one Ding An Sich: the Will.
This can help us understand the verse אין עוד מלבדו. That the First Cause, God, is the only thing that must be. Everything can be or might not be. Their existence depends on him. But they do exist. This is how the Rambam explains the creation. He says it is יש מאין  ex nihilo. Not from himself.God willed the world to be. He did not make it from himself, but from nothing.

This idea of something from nothing is so important to the Rambam that he spends a good portion of volume 2 of the Guide to defend it and he says if one does nothing believe in this the the foundation of the whole Torah falls away.  I should mention that to disbelieve this would take more evidence that is available either to reason or to our senses. Also the Nefesh HaChaim cant be used against this because if you look carefully at his language you will see he says that אין עוד מלבדו means there are no other powers in the world besides God