Belief in God is rational. Everything has a cause. So unless there is a first cause, then you would have an infinite regress. And then nothing could exist. Therefore there must be a first cause. Therefore God, the first cause, exists. QED.
20.3.25
I respect Rav Nahman of Breslov a lot, but his critique of science and philosophy is something I think was better to be left out.
It is hard to say that any one person has all the truth. There is a lot of emphasis on finding one person or path to follow, and to stick with that, -- no matter what. But I find that approach to lack this insight that not everything any one person said was always 100% correct. I respect Rav Nahman of Breslov a lot, but his critique of science and philosophy is something I think was better to be left out. It may have applied to people in in his area, and in his time, but a blanket condemnation of science seems to me to be contrary to the general approach of Musar which started with the book the Chovot Levavaot which is clear about the importance of science in chapter 3 of Shar HaBechina.
But also the Gra, I think, was right about most things- in particular his emphasis on learning Torah. You see this in the results of the generations that held with his approach-strong sense of morality and decency as you can see today in the Lithuanian kind of yeshivot that follow his path. The proof is in the pudding. (The results show the validity of the recipe.)I am not saying the Litvak world yeshiva world is perfect either. But that is the only address to go to learn what is straight un-adulterated Torah,
[on the other hand Rav Nachman's critique about books of philosophy and even books written by the great sages of Israel about world view issues is seriously correct judging by the results we see from anyone that majors in philosophy --as they lose their common sense as a rule.] I myself took the advice of rav nachman about philosophy seriously and because of it, when i needed to go to university to find a way of making a loving, i decided on physics instead. however, i would say that world view issues are important and that some kind of structural arrangement of how the world works is implicit in everyone’s mental framework. So, I did discover Dr Kelley Ross who has a web site friesian.com who finds an approach to faith and reason that makes a lot of sense to me. Also Michael Huemer's writings I found helpful along with Steeven Dutch's writings.
