A Case for Existence, A Case for God

The Editor's philosophical argument for existence, for others, and for a higher pattern — written for his children, accessible in the manner of a friendly conversation.

Summary. A staged argument, working from the bare facts of percepts and concepts through the existence of the self, the necessity of other people for sustainable joy, the existence of other people, and the implausibility of either solipsism or a purely undirected universe. The article concludes that some higher pattern must exist and presents Judaism as the oldest and most internally consistent answer. Written for a younger reader; gentle, sequenced, and unhurried.

The Article (Verbatim)

Does the world really exist? How about the universe? Do I really exist? And if I do, does everyone else?

Today's world has a lot going for it. It has a higher standard of living, lower infant mortality rate, higher value of human life, higher standard of freedom, and fewer people living under conditions of war and poverty than at any other time in history. We are at the height of human civilization.

But it doesn't always feel that way, and some things that should be in the "pro" column have definite "cons". We have more idle and leisure time, and access to far more information. These are great, but they've also meant a decline in religious observance, and daily confrontation with not just our local tragedies, but those of the entire world.

And so we ask questions. That's not historically unusual. But we ask a lot of them, and we're less inclined to believe the first answers that come our way. We're also more likely than ever to fixate on bad news than good, and feel the weight of the world on our shoulders. And from there, it's easy to slip into nihilism.

So let's start at the beginning, step back, and look at what we know. Or rather, how we know—or can know—anything.

Boiled down to their fundamentals, we have only two mechanisms for knowledge. To describe them, I'll borrow a pair of terms from an atheist 20th Century philosopher: "percepts", and "concepts". (Or we could go back further, to the medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides, and his "perceptions" and "first intelligibles", and be talking about much the same thing.)

A percept is something we perceive. It is raw data, collected through our sensory organs.

A concept is an idea, connection, or conclusion based on our percepts.

You might walk outside at noon and perceive hot weather; then you'll do it again at midnight, and perceive cold weather. Those are percepts. You very well may then form a concept that the temperature is subject to change.

You'll then perceive differences in available light, sun and cloud positions, and precipitation, correlate those to your perceived temperatures, and further develop your concept into a sophisticated model that can describe and predict these temperature changes based on the constituent concepts of "day and night" and "weather".

From percepts and concepts—the things you observe and the conclusions you draw about them—you form an understanding of the consistency of your environment.

Are you with me so far? Can you admit this much?

If you said "yes", well, that's a very dangerous "yes", because it does a lot more work. By extension, if you'll admit that you perceive, and that you conceptualize, then you must conclude this: I exist. There is no other possibility. If you can observe and reason, then you exist in some form.

Does the world around you actually exist in the way you perceive it? Do other people really exist? So far, you can't answer those questions. All you know is this: I exist.

Now. What about other people? Are you all alone in the universe, with everyone around you just a simulation, an illusion?

To answer that, let's first consider the things you might want, you might actively chase, given that you exist. Again, boiled down to their most basic forms, there are really only two: joy, and pleasure. Why these two? Because, whether you're alone in the universe, or one being among billions or trillions, you will always follow some path of self-preservation, self-interest. And, at its core, self-interest can only be achieved in one of two ways: by a long-term program of consistent joy, brought about by physical and psychological health and wellness; or, by a short-term string of hedonistic pleasures.

Even psychological conditions like self-delusion and masochism contribute, in their ways, to one or the other of these pursuits.

Of the two, the first, the program of joy, contributes to your longer life. Whatever else it may have to recommend it, or recommend against it, that much is objectively true. (It also contributes to the building and betterment of your environment.) The second—pleasure, hedonism—is likely to shorten your life (and degrade your environment).

Take a moment to consider the merits and demerits of each path. Maybe assign a score—possitive and negative—to various behaviors you would class as one or the other. And consider how each behavior contributes, or doesn't, to a long life, and the betterment of your environment—only to the extent that it contributes to your own comfort and long life. For now, forget about philanthropy, altruism, future generations—all of that—and consider only your very own self-interest.

How did that go? Interesting, isn't it? You don't need any philosophy or religion to tell you that the first path—and based on nothing but your own self-interest—yields a higher score. (Oh, you're a burn-me-out-in-a-spectacular-burst-of-flame-and-glory kind of person? Well, if that's good once, it's better twice, or a hundred times, isn't it? Long life still serves you better!)

Even if you do exist as the sole inhabitant of a lonely and solipsistic universe, it is reasonable to conclude that a longer life in a beautified and better environment is superior to a short life (however pleasurable) in a dirty and degraded environment.

So far, then—in review—you know that:

I can know things only by perceiving them, and then conceptualizing them.

I exist—though I may be the only person in the universe.

My best existence is found in the long-term pursuit of sustainable joy.

Now. How is long-term, sustainable joy achieved? We can answer that by looking at its opposite.

Prison is a terrible place, can we agree? It's full of the constant possibility of violence. You might get bullied in the cafeteria, humiliated, your food stolen. In the yard, you may get shoved and abused. Anywhere, you could get stabbed, choked, beaten, killed. But what is the worst punishment given to the most unruly offenders? Solitary confinement. Being left all alone. Indeed, in most cases, anything over 15 days is deemed "cruel and unusual", and illegal.

In short: you are a social being, and no manner of social abuse or even risk of death is as psychologically catastrophic as being alone.

Your program of long-term, sustainable joy, will involve other people. It cannot but do. It must. And, though it's better than being alone, nobody's long-term good is served by being despised and reviled. How do you inspire love and respect? Typically, by following a simple course of treating other people how you, yourself, want to be treated.

So—again as a simple matter of predicting your own feelings to tally your own joy, and not by the overlay of any prescribed ethical system—you are happiest when a part of your life is making other people happy.

We've come a long way, here, in a very short time, eh? That's because these concepts are short, almost "atomic" in their simplicity—and they're observable, and logically connected by "steps" rather than "leaps".

Now, this one can be just a little bit mind-blowing: Whatever else you might later conclude about your environment and universe, you now know that your best program for life is only achieved through the intimate involvement of other people. If you lived in a universe all alone, but that universe were required to provide—somehow—the illusion of other people to respond to your innate, most basic requirements, where would it find the pattern for those other people, and for social interactions, in order to mimic them? Is it reasonable to conclude that if you lived alone, as the only being in the universe, that you would need other people, and that the universe could find some source from which to copy them? No, it isn't—that's absurd! If you truly lived all alone in the universe, you would be, by nature and inclination, a loner. You would not be a social being. You would be perfectly suited for surviving alone.

You can know that other people exist by the simple expediency that you need them. If you didn't need them, and you lived alone in the universe, they indeed would not exist, but there would also be no reason to simulate them, and no pattern from which to do it.

So, in review, you now know:

I can know things only by perceiving them, and then conceptualizing them.

I exist.

My best existence is found in the long-term pursuit of sustainable joy.

Long-term, sustainable joy is only achieved through the intimate involvement of other people.

Other people exist.

My long-term, sustainable joy requires that I spend part of my life making other people happy.

But what if we're all simulations, inside some alien server farm (or a human server farm)? That question, and its answer, do not change these six things you now know. Why not? For two reasons: You still perceive, and you still conceptualize. Whether what you perceive is a physical form, or an illusory replica of that physical form, does not change the fact that you are perceiving, and you are conceptualizing. Whether you are flesh, bones, and gray matter, or a sentient computer program, does not change this, or any of the five logical steps beyond it. It simply means there is far more to discover about your physical environment. And a simulation of the depth and sophistication of the world and universe you perceive around you could not have come out of a vacuum. It must be based on—modeled after—an ultimate reality. Which means that reality exists, that you are still not alone in it. You are just abstracted from it—which need have no impact at all on your program for living.

For many, this is enough. I needn't fret over my own existence or the existence of others, and I have a general program for living my life. Excellent.

But.

Read this two or three times, really think about it: If you could exist as a simulation only in a reality where a model for that simulation exists—and not in one that included no data or example guiding its design—why would you imagine that you could live in a wholly physical world where no model for its reality exists? Is there any difference? Just because one is bits or qubits and the other protons and electrons, does that change the need for a pattern?

The answer, for some, may be, "Time is endless, the universe is vast, the random crashing of thing against thing will eventually result in the beginnings of life, and then evolution will take it from there."

There's a theorem in statistics, the "Infinite Monkey Theorem", that goes like this: "Give a hundred monkeys a hundred typewriters, and give them eternity, and they will eventually randomly reproduce the collected works of Shakespeare." It was recently, for practical purposes, disproven. As a mathematical exercise, it may be true. But as a practical measure, it isn't. Why? Because it requires eternity, and the universe is not eternal.

With an army of 200,000 monkeys (the current monkey population of Earth), there is a 5% chance that a single one of those monkeys would type the word "bananas" in its own lifetime. The odds of any single monkey constructing any coherent sentence (Shakespeare or no) come in at 1 in 10 million-billion-billion.

Thus, within the lifespan of a universe, 200,000 monkeys could not reproduce even a single work of Shakespeare. Very far from it.

But, you are to believe that—well within the lifespan of a universe—the random interaction of celestial bodies have produced the Milky Way Galaxy, our solar system, Earth, everything on it (including the works of Shakespeare), and you, with your hunger for joy, your need for socialization, and your drive to build-build-build and (hopefully) better your environment.

Can such a leap be reasonably taken? Well, it can certainly be taken. It cannot be said to be reasonably taken—that is, taken based on reason. The lifespan of a universe is simply not long enough for random chance (the almost infinite and additive succession of random chances) to produce such a result.

Whether you live directly within the physical environment you perceive, or you live in an abstraction of it, neither could exist without a pre-existing pattern for its formation.

You may certainly choose to believe otherwise. Many people do. But know that to do so is to take a leap of faith, to embrace a dogma—one that is every bit as fantastical as any miracle described in any religious text.

If you choose not to take that particular leap of faith, here is what you know:

I can know things only by perceiving them, and then conceptualizing them.

I exist.

My best existence is found in the long-term pursuit of sustainable joy.

Long-term, sustainable joy is only achieved through the intimate involvement of other people.

Other people exist.

My long-term, sustainable joy requires that I spend part of my life making other people happy.

A higher power or pattern exists that informs the world around me.

Now, what could that pattern be? An active imagination could devise any number of possibilities, and could reconcile a good number of them with what we know (or rather, what we have conceived based on our perceptions) about the universe. One could then rank these ideas, presumably by some rubric that tries to score their comparative probabilities. But in the end, we have no evidence that will give any of them a convincing edge in such a contest.

Have you heard of the Pirahã people of the Amazon? They were unusual for several reasons, including the distinctiveness of their language (which included whistles, but did not include time references, numbers, or colors). The Pirahã may be the closest thing history can offer to an atheist culture. But they were not atheist. They did not believe in a supreme god, and had no creation myths, but they were "animists", and believed that spirits inhabited the rocks and trees and rivers around them. That is to say, they believed in a pattern.

Certainly atheists have existed since antiquity (e.g. Carneades, head of the Platonic academy in the second century BCE) and even atheist societies (e.g. the Epicureans, though even they can more accurately be labeled agnostics). But atheist cultures, civilizations? None.

One might object, "That was simply because science wasn't yet on the scene. What looks to us like religion, was really their proto-science." And this, indeed, seems formidable. Until, that is, one considers this: Our own civilization has science. And our people still cannot survive without faith. Faith in something. When they leave religion, they don't leave faith. They just trade religion for politics, or sports, or diet cults, pickle-ball clubs, celebrity worship, or conspiracy theories.

"There is a God-shaped hole in the soul of man," the saying goes. We are built with a compulsion to connect ourselves with a bigger story, a greater whole. And going back to our earlier question, "Is it reasonable that I am alone in the universe and yet I am a social being?", we could now ask, "Is it reasonable that every civilization in history has yearned to connect with a higher power or pattern, if none exists?" How and why could that have happened, do you think? How could random chance and undirected evolution have produced such a result?

Once again, you could stop here. You could simply be content to know that you exist, that other people exist, that you have a program for living, and that very probably, a higher power or pattern exists. You could apply faith in deciding that knowing what that power or pattern is doesn't matter. Why is it faith? Because you don't know it, and you have access to no evidence which can prove it.

You could also apply faith to being an atheist. Why is this faith? Because the absence of a higher power or pattern is impossibly improbable, and you don't know there is no such power or pattern, and again, you have access to no evidence which can prove the non-existence of it.

Or, you could apply faith to searching for what that power or pattern might be, and see how that search affects your "long-term program of consistent joy, brought about by physical and psychological health and wellness".

Every course requires faith.

If you decide to search for what that power or pattern might be, where do you start? You could go to the beginning—or as far back as you can. The oldest surviving legal code is the Code of Ur-Nammu, from Sumerian Ur (modern-day Iraq). You'll see proscriptions against theft and adultery, and the prescription of fines against offenders. You could go back a little further, to the Egyptian pyramid texts, or the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, and find religious themes. A little later, and you'll come across the Code of Eshnunna and the Code of Hammurabi, both legal texts. Jump forward 500 years and you'll find the Rigveda from India, an early Hindu hymnal.

And then, according to the Jewish Talmud, and correlation of the Old Testament history with other available histories, you come to the Torah at around 1312 BCE. Some believe the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) to have been delivered by God to Moses at Mount Sinai in its entirety. While this is a valid application of faith, it does seem objectively improbable. More likely (judged strictly by the evidentiary odds), the broad concepts were put into practice at that time, with the compilation of the full text occurring over the ensuing centuries. It doesn't really matter. What matters is this: it was the first time in history that a single God was worshiped, a God who is not hostile to us, but rather values us, created us, and works toward our joy.

The entire system of ethics of the Jewish Torah—which was then borrowed and proliferated by Christians, and formed the basis of Western civilization—is built around the idea that God wants us to succeed, that God has established a pattern, that God prescribes a system for living and that it should be joyous.

And it's hard to consider this next point without conceding—even if you don't think it's an actual "miracle" from God—that it certainly appears to be miraculous: That system from 1312 BCE, the very first system in history to describe a single God that wants us to succeed, and who gave a system of living for the achievement of joy—still survives and thrives today. It is Judaism. It is the world's oldest surviving ethno-religion.

I can know things only by perceiving them, and then conceptualizing them, and I exist. The Jewish Talmud teaches that we are partners with God in repairing the world and in building toward a future state of peace and prosperity. It teaches that we should not simply believe something, but rather, apply our own intellect, and argue a position. Much of the Talmud, itself, is argument. And the Talmud teaches that even the Torah, the most sacred of Jewish texts, contains intentional errors designed to spur us to think about what it contains, and decide what its best application is.

My best existence is found in the long-term pursuit of sustainable joy. The Torah teaches that everything in God's program for living should be done "b'simchah", with joy, because the point of it all is to be joyful!

Long-term, sustainable joy is only achieved through the intimate involvement of other people. Other people exist. My long-term, sustainable joy requires that I spend part of my life making other people happy. The Torah teaches "Ve'ahavta le'reacha kamocha": "You shall love your fellow as yourself." (This passage in the Torah is where Christianity got the idea!)

So we see that these questions we wrestle with, that seem so timely and so new, and so complicated because our modern world is complicated: they've been around for 3,500 years, and people have been answering them and applying their faith toward a system of living that has meaning, community, and joy.

Whatever your path, and wherever you turn for answers and meaning, live with the confidence that you exist, and that your existence matters to other people, and that causing joy brings you joy.

Where Denominations Diverge

The argument is denomination-neutral; it ends in Judaism but does not depend on a particular halachic stance. It would fit equally within Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, or Renewal teaching.

Sources Cited in the Article

Rambam, Moreh Nevuchim — on first intelligibles and the structure of knowledge.

Code of Ur-Nammu (Sumerian, 21st c. BCE).

Code of Eshnunna; Code of Hammurabi (Babylonian).

Torah: Vayikra 19:18 ("you shall love your fellow as yourself").

Talmud Bavli, various — on partnership with God in repairing the world (tikkun); on argument as Torah; on errors that spur thinking.

Further Reading

Rifat Sonsino & Daniel Syme, Finding God: Selected Responses.

Arthur Green, Judaism's Ten Best Ideas.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (for the comparable Christian rhetorical move).