[Avodah] Skeptics

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' David Guttmann wrote:
> The problem that I have with RMB approach and also even more
> RRW is how does one know that the experience is not a figment
> of the imagination?

Consider the "world was created yesterday" idea: the possiblility that we were all created this morning, with our memories pre-loaded. There is no way to disprove this possibility. We all KNOW it to be false, because our experiences and memories of yesterday are so real and vivid. Yet when pressed, we must admit that we're unable to prove that yesterday was real. Nevertheless, no one (AFAIK) allows this inability to interfere with accepting those memories as real. No one has any existential crisis over the cognitive dissonance between the apparently-real memories, and the inability to prove their reality.

That, in my opinion, is the crux of the approaches the RDG is questioning. We do have experiences. We remember them clearly. If one of our memories is that of experiencing G-d's reality, we *do* accept it without suggesting it to be imagination, just as surely as we accept the reality of our other experiences.

I can phrase it another way: If a skeptic wants to justify his non-belief in G-d by pointing out that his apparent experiences might be mere imaginations, then he must concede that *all* of his *other* apparent experiences might *also* be mere imaginations.

Akiva Miller