Please ask

[rhu]

Noam Chomsky, as a child, was given an unsatisfactory answer from his father about why his grandfather smoked on Yom Tov, and at that moment Noam concluded in "a sudden flash" that, "Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile. He can’t figure these things out. If that’s what it is, I don’t want anything to do with it."

The Greeks had a word for this: chutzpah.

I can't help but contrast this with Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, who was born into what he described as a “not especially religious home” but made the journey in the other direction. He saw inconsistencies, he had questions, but his working assumption was that it was the humans who were missing the point, not the Deity.

So, hey. If you want to know why I do what I do, please ask. And if my answer doesn't make sense, please ask again. Because I would hate to think that somewhere out there, someone is looking at my life and using it to conclude that God is a farce.

Comments

[introverte.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure your tally sheet goes the other way.

[dodajen.livejournal.com]

Hear hear. I like your answers to questions. When I told you and Heather how my cousin had put a kosher turkey in a treif oven one Thanksgiving and how I just couldn't explain to her why we couldn't eat it, you put it very simply: "It's not the presence of kosher, but the absence of non-kosher, that makes the difference." I loved that.

[shaggy-man.livejournal.com]

My reading of Chomsky's conclusion here is not that God is a farce, but that religion may be. I don't think that follows either from the error or self-delusion of one old granddad, but it certainly is a different matter.