He has no God

The editor of the journal is Zvi Yanai. Photography: Noam Wind
"Thoughts", Zvi Yanai, is convinced that God does not exist

Roy Gabrieli

Zvi Yanai, 67, former director-general of the Ministry of Science (during Shulamit Aloni's time) and editor of the magazine "Mekhavot", is known to the general public mainly for his Yul-Brinarian bald head, and also, admittedly, for his tough facade. Yanai is the one who earned the honor of being Mr. Science in Israel, or mainly Mr. Popular Science, for his unique ability to control and juggle between the various fields of science while he manages to permeate some of this also to laymen like us.

Although he spices his words with Eisenberg's uncertainty principle and quotes from Isaiah Berlin (not to mention the latest news on high energies and the study of time), Zvi Yanai only completed ten years of study. And if you believe him, then that too was more than enough.
A conversation with Yanai is fascinating because he is a smart and sharp opposition to everything related to religion. The following is the complete guide for the beginning unbeliever: "In terms of science, there is no problem with God, depending on how
catch him There are three main concepts. The first one says that God is involved in the world and is watching everywhere, 24 hours a day. People who survived the attacks say 'what a miracle', they don't notice that people were killed next to them. If God saved these, he is also the one who killed the relatives who were not saved. This is the most accepted concept and it is also the most problematic. As a rationale, I cannot accept these things because they are full of contradictions. The second approach is that God exists, but is only involved in establishing the laws: nature and morality. With such a god science has no problem. I don't care if God determined before the big bang, say, that the electron has 1,800 times less mass than the proton. After all, science does not know why there are such values."

So why are the laws of nature the way they are?

"From this point of view, if the world is governed by certain physical laws that I can act upon, I have no problem with such a God. Science currently has no alternative explanation for these things, so it doesn't bother him. The question is what God has done since he established the laws. Let's say it took him five minutes, since then he's gone. Does not interfere, does not influence and certainly does not need to be taken into account in order to explain events that happen. God is on vacation."

Is there a religious person who can adopt such a concept?

"There are religious scientists, and they tend to go to that God who is not involved in everyday life, but is responsible for the creation of the world. The third option is the one that excludes God altogether
from the world".

So there is no God?

"No, there is a God, but he is not in the world. You can't refer to him either by physical or mental terms. You can't say he's geeky and compassionate, and you can't say he's a jealous and vengeful god. This is a god that is outside the world, and therefore it is impossible to ask anything from him. You can't blame him for disasters either."

God only calls settlers

The only way to reach God, Yanai says, "is through fulfilling the commandments. The mitzvot were determined by humans, by agreement. A certain way of worshiping the Hashem was established, the so-called 'Shulchan Aruch'. All you can do is God's work. Everything else basically attributes to him human qualities and actually turns him into a pagan god."

Maybe I can't perceive God because he is above human perception?

"This is an opinion that Isaiah Leibovich was the main representative of. It is very problematic in terms of our intuitive approach to God, to that figure to whom I pray and try to improve my ways so that he will improve me. It also undermines the whole issue of reward and punishment."

This approach seems to me to be the last refuge of a rational person who also does not want to give up
The faith.

"But then the righteousness was also dropped from the mitzvot. This is exactly the advantage and disadvantage of this approach.
The advantage is that you don't run into any contradiction. You don't have to explain what happened to the four of you
Yeshiva students went to the Mencha prayer at the Western Wall and on the way were killed in an accident. The first perception
My presentation should explain this matter, the second concept should explain how God
Suddenly disappeared, this perception is completely clean. It allows you to explore the world in a way that
Know completely, without any difference between you and a secular scientist, only in one difference: you too
Observant".

According to this idea, the observant of the Mitzvot does not expect anything in return?

"No. You cannot claim from God because you reduce him to the level of a human being. everything
What you can do is fulfill the mitzvot, which are the agreement of the Jewish people."

So what is the advantage of this convention?

"exactly. Who determines that our way of worshiping the name, which is different from other beliefs, is
the right one? You have no communication with him, you know nothing about him because he is outside
We never know exactly what he wants, he doesn't communicate with us. We invented it ourselves
Our hands are tools and laws to express faith. This".

Maybe we will meet him after death. He is not only present in this world.

"No. People whose position Leibovich represents, that is, that God is outside the world, of course
who do not believe there is a heaven. All these descriptions are populist, human,
are intended for your people who cannot grasp such an abstract and ethereal essence as God, therefore
They should be provided with pictorial descriptions. These are the three perceptions, the first of which is problematic
Most of all, she is the one we have to deal with all the time because she comes to me
An expression in our political life. Like those who settle in Judea and Samaria because of this
ordered. There are those out there who have a wireless connection to God that tells them when to step up
Another hill and establish a new settlement. These are also the people who fall into the rational contradictions
the largest. When you describe a God who is in the world, you have to constantly give explanations
Twisted and twisted morally, to justify divine intervention".

Why not believe that God established the laws of evolution?

“If God was involved in this, why would he base Darwinian evolution on
Power, about violence, about constant elimination of the weak?! If it was God he is a geek god
And merciful, he could base it on laws of full cooperation and altruism.
Here there is a problem again."

Well, you can't blame God for everything. Humans make wars, don't they?

"Belief in God, which is not harmful to democratic life, should be separated from religion. the religion
She is the one who introduced sick evil into the world, by introducing one truth into everything
that is conducted on earth, and it conducts wars for this purpose. There is no difference in this regard between
the religions and the great ideologies, between Islamic fanatics, Christians or Jews
and the Communists of Mao and Stalin or the Nazis of Hitler. Basically everyone has a denominator
One thing in common: they are sure that they hold the one and only truth in their hands."

In your opinion, religion has been the main cause of wars in history?

"No war has yet broken out because of scientific disagreements, but most wars have broken out because of
Ideological or religious disagreements. In this respect, science has a clean slate."

God is unthinkable
In the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" the author calls the university the "Church of the Mind".
When I give up God and stay only with rationality, I lose a great deal. Can
To be the new religion, at least for a large part of the people.

"Some people see science as a religion. You become addicted to his logic, to the educational process, to the knowledge
New, especially if you take into account that since the scientific revolution of the 17th century until today
The pace of scientific discovery and the advancement of technologies that follow science is so fast.
200 years ago the highest speed was a chariot speed, and today we are leaving
Already from the solar system. No wonder people are attracted to science and see it as a religion. If you ever expected
From fate or from God deciphering the course of your life for you, today you say 'I have a mind
And I'm supposed to make my way.' Of course, this is also complete nonsense. I am aware not only
to the short hand of science, but to the fact that there are holes that science cannot enter. the science
Can't answer the question why I feel missed in my life, why a person I love,
deceased".

Psychology, as a science, cannot give answers to this?

"No. When a disaster happens to a person, science cannot come in and give him an answer. But religion is too
Not a form of comfort, because the coincidences in life hurt the atheist and the religious person
the same size. The religious person gives a convoluted and complicated explanation as to why this happens only to him, and when
The secular person has no answer as to why this happened to him. When a person mourns the disasters and failures
He cannot find an answer in science. I suggest that the rationalist take solace in the completion of the judgment.

"My religion, if you like, is a certain blindness. Knowing that I can't know everything.
If Kant said that true enlightenment is the courage to know, I say true enlightenment
It is the courage to know that you do not know and that you will never know. That's why I accept the randomness
which exists in nature as a natural and reasonable thing. When do you start to worry that something is alive?
Maybe messed up? When all of a sudden randomness leaves your life. I'm starting to get worried
When suddenly in the statistics of life I will get biased results, six-six all the time. It means
that there is some higher power that directs my life and it does so completely arbitrarily,
Because I don't know what his logic is. According to what whims he acts. i can feel
Convenient when the laws of probability tell me that sometimes I will win and sometimes I will lose, sometimes I will be
Happy and sometimes I will be unhappy. Certainty is an integral part of life and this is what gives
We have the opportunity to navigate our lives."

I have a bit of a hard time with this randomness. If everything is a kind of absolute statistics, if
Which neutron would have jumped to the left in the big bang, the earth would not have been formed, the question arises
If everything is the result of probability, of randomness. After all, the chance of this happening is very low
extraordinary.

"The question is how can it be that at the basic level of the material there is uncertainty and yet
You get rules that work and allow us, for example, to send a satellite to rendezvous with a spacecraft
in an exact place. This is a question that has all kinds of answers, but none of them are really satisfactory.
we do not know".

So is there or is there no God?

"definitely not. I can't prove it, but it doesn't upload or download so much,
which simply makes it on the one hand irrelevant, and on the other hand it becomes a difficulty
My logic is very difficult to put up with. The idea that there is some kind of something, some kind of essence
that it cannot be defined, neither as a substance nor in any other definition, that has the name of God
Who is able to create worlds and create laws - all this is so unacceptable
The mind is so contrary to reason, that I think that those who believe in it, even though it is customary to say
'I don't believe, but I respect people of all kinds' - I don't respect. sorry: me
I just don't respect people who believe there is a God, in whatever form it may be."

In response to an issue on God ("Zeman Tel-Aviv", 27.9.2002/XNUMX/XNUMX).

The supplement was fascinating, and included a multicultural observation and analysis on the subject, just a pity
Of the many writers, no scientist can be found, except for Zvi Yanai, whose claims are also more
Philosophical than scientific.

A scientist from the fields of natural sciences would refute all the religious claims regarding the existence of
God.

The big bang, the expansion of the universe, no beginning and no end, evolution, fossils, evil
And good in the world and more... contradict the existence of God in the universe or outside it.

The laws of nature are indeed not substances, Dr. Yuval Steinitz says, but they are actions (thoughts)
Man on the "behavior" of the universe and its derivatives, therefore this "logical" argument has nothing to do with it
to the presence or absence of God.

Zvi Yanai is right, the whole discussion about God is simply not relevant in everyday life.
Randomness is what determines (what is wrongly called - fate), world order and chaos are not
dictated by a higher power.

Dan Yahav, Tel Aviv

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