Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, author of Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, believes that Jews should surrender their antiquated attachment to a Creator God. Reform Rabbi Andy Bachman believes that "God is the end…the point of our struggle." Jewcy asked them to debate the question "Is God still necessary?" We will post one e-mail from each of them on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
From: Douglas Rushkoff To: Andy Bachman Subject: Groping towards sentience
Dear Andy,
Earlier this year, I posted a blog entry about God that led to a heated discussion in the comments area. “Maybe I’m just getting old, but I no longer see the real value in being tolerant of other people’s beliefs,” I wrote. And then:
Like any other public health crisis, religion must now be treated as a sickness. It is an epidemic, paralyzing our nation’s ability to behave in a rational way, and—given our weapons capabilities—posing an increasingly grave threat to the rest of the world.
People take their feelings about God seriously, and I don’t blame them. I mean, it’s important to consider whether we’re here for any reason, with any ground rules, or connected to anything bigger than ourselves.
It irks me, though, that too many of us (by “us,” I mean sane people) simply tolerate hard-held, literal belief in stuff that’s simply not true. Sure, people are allowed to believe whatever they want and all. But right now, our country and our world are facing some critical challenges; ones that cannot—must not—be answered by evangelists with doomsday predictions.
So I simply got fed up with the anything-goes ontological relativism currently plaguing public and private debate.
No, not all narratives are equally equipped to confront the crises of our time. And the childlike relationship of most Americans to the concept—the character—of God is long overdue for maturation.
A distorted relationship to God leads people to forgive a public health crisis. And it clouds our ability to think, to negotiate, to elect representatives, to conduct policy, to promote human rights, and to help ourselves and others.
As for God’s relevance to Judaism, well, I don’t believe in “God” as such. I think God the character in the early portion of the Torah reflects the way human beings related to God in our infancy. God evolves over the course of those five books, and then through the Tanakh. He becomes more abstract, more a part of the evolution of life itself. Through the prophets, he becomes an internal sensibility, and eventually recedes altogether. However, the Tanakh isn’t a chronicle of God the Creator leaving the scene, but of human beings growing up and developing a more mature and multidimensional understanding of God.
The only thing I really believe in is that there is a natural order to things. I do think, though, that the universe—far from being just cold nature—has the potential to be ethical. And human beings are key players in making it ethical.
I don’t think of God as some creator from the past, but rather as something that might emerge in the future if we play our cards right. God is not sentient, but the universe itself is groping towards sentience. So when Torah tells us that God loves this and doesn’t love that, or will reward this or punish that, it’s speaking more about how to surf the reality we’re attempting to build together. Fuck with your neighbor, and things will go badly. Treat him well, and you will be rewarded. And it’s not some karmic afterlife we’re talking about, but here and now.
Strictly speaking, I’m not promoting a version of atheistic Judaism. In my own schema, God’s like an emerging sensibility—something we can enact rather than something that directs us from above. Technically, a belief in a natural order to our existence is tantamount to the belief in God. It’s just as much an act of faith (though I feel I’ve experienced evidence of the way the universe works). Still, anything but absolute nihilism could be construed as a belief in God.
I don't think Judaism sees God as an "end" as much as a "means." The object of the game is to carry out social justice, and to experience a connection to a greater reality through these acts. Belief in the character of God is a good simple way of provoking this sort of behavior—but it’s not the only way, and it can have very unpredictable results. It’s better for children than adults with agency. I think that Judaism teaches us to become less dependent on the character God as we mature, and we gradually internalize this sensibility and become partners and eventually leaders in the enterprise.
I believe that Judaism and Jews will be healthier when we get over our more primitive attachment to God the Creator. As I see it, the character actually gets in the way of our sense of connection to something greater than ourselves. “I and Thou” doesn’t even broach the subject of “us.” From where I stand, the self is an illusion, worthy of annihilation. Developing a “personal” relationship with a character deity may be comforting, but only concretizes the illusion of a personal existence.
That illusion stands in the way of really connecting with others. We desecrated the gods of Egypt in order to move into a more ethical relationship to one another, and to become players in the evolution of human ethical standards. Judaism wouldn’t endorse a God who stymied our ability to take charge of the human project and make the world a better place.
—Douglas
From: Andy Bachman To: Douglas Rushkoff Subject: Progressive revelation
Dear Douglas,
There is much you say that I agree with and some other stuff that I don’t agree with. And as the rabbis say, “These and those are words of the Living Torah.” Or, as Pirkei Avot put it, “Where two or more sit and study words of Torah, the Divine Presence dwells.”
Our navigation of the very issue of God keeps God in the picture, however it is we may agree to determine what the very terms of God’s nature is, exactly.
In other words, it DOES all depend on what the definition of “is” is!!
Boy, if people could have just listened to that and understood it back in 1998, we might not be in the mess that we’re in today, with the Evangelist-in-Chief messing up the nation and the world.
Politics is a big part of the non-observant world’s jaded view of religion because the insertion of religion into the public/political sphere has been so certain, so determined, and arguably, so destructive.
We now know enough to say that the religious Right has been plotting this power grab for more than a generation—that’s how long change actually takes, and we are now living in their world, by their terms. But this kind of conversation among our own kind is the beginning of a pushback, and I’m very encouraged.
When introducing Michelle Goldberg (author of Kingdom Coming) and Eyal Press (author of Absolute Convictions) at the synagogue, I said to the crowd, “Liberal Jews need to have a serious conversation about the role of religion in American politics, and we have to develop a more nuanced conversation about God in order to even begin to understand what we’re talking about. Because the Right hears God’s voice where we don’t. Abortion and gay rights are just the tip of the iceberg for where we differ with our fellow citizens. How does the body politic square the notion that Judaism’s God allows for abortion but the Christian Right does not? This is not just about civil rights but how religion is defined in the highest heights of civic life.”
In more subtle terms, when you argue that God is “long overdue for maturation,” what you are really arguing for is a sense of progressive revelation that allows for the advance of human civilization based upon the innate (or God-given) ability to improve upon the human condition. Liberal rabbis like me see things like the equality of the sexes or a welcoming attitude toward LGBTs as one obvious example. We refuse to believe that the Voice of God we hear allows for discrimination. It’s that simple.
And there is evidence in the rabbinic literature itself of this kind of progressive revelation, it’s just not beaten over our heads because as radical as the rabbis were, they also had a conservative side—too much change too fast could cause the whole structure to fail.
I always point to Rashi’s midrash at the beginning of Genesis, where he uses the teaching of Rabbi Isaac to ask, “Does Torah really begin with cosmology, or does it begin in Egypt, with the Command to make Pesach before our liberation from Egypt?” In other words, Torah begins not with an unsupportable creationist science but with the notion of communal obligation. Here is the authentic voice of God. Here is where Torah begins.
I do strongly disagree with you when you say: “I don’t think Judaism sees God as an ‘end’ as much as a ‘means.’” If Immanuel Kant were a melammed in cheder, he’d clop you on the wrist for such heresy!
God is the end. That’s the point of our struggle. The mitzvah system is the means to the end. Understanding this is the ultimate challenge of faith. It is what people wrestle with their whole lives—from the most pious to the most skeptical.
Or, as Pirkei Avot says, “Everything is in the hands of heaven but the fear/awe of heaven.” That’s our job. In a way, I do think that is what you are getting at.
—Andy