Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

“What I’ve been studying isn’t going to help me with anything I’m interested in knowing.”

“What are you interested in, besides math?”

“I hardly even know enough to know what I’m interested to know. I’ve only tried to teach myself mathematics. I haven’t had time for much else, with all the studies heaped on me. I know nothing about your field, psychology. I’m interested in your specialty.”

“The psychology of religion?”

“Yes. It interests me very much. So tell me, since this is your area, why do people the world over and in all times have such strong inclinations to believe what they have no evidence for, and to believe it so strongly that they shape their entire lives around it?”

Cass was floored.

“You think religious beliefs have no evidence?”

Azarya laughed. “Wait a minute. I’ve heard about you psychologists always answering a question with another question.”

“That’s a different kind of psychologist. A psychotherapist.”

“Like your mother. She’s more that kind of psychologist. You’re more a scientist, doing research on how people think. I know a little about your work. I’ve asked your mother. She sent me one of your journal articles, ‘Self-Definition and Religious Identification.’ I liked it a lot. I liked the concept of a rigid designator. It made a lot of things clear for me.”

“I borrowed it from the philosophers.”

A rigid designator is a term that designates the same object in all possible worlds which makes it different from a mere description. So, for example, “Pascale Puissant’s husband” is a description that refers to Cass Seltzer, but it didn’t have to. It’s not a rigid designator. There are logically possible worlds in which Cass was currently a bachelor or was currently married to somebody else. But “Cass Seltzer” is a rigid designator, as are all proper names. Rigid designators pick out an individual-that very thing and nothing else. One can even say, “Suppose that Cass Seltzer wasn’t named ‘Cass Seltzer,’” and that proposition has meaning because the first use of “Cass Seltzer” is a rigid designator. Terms that aren’t rigid designators are called “non-rigid designators” or, more whimsically, “flaccid designators.”

“That’s another subject I know nothing about. Philosophy. I loved sitting in on that class. It was all arguments and proofs, almost like math. I’m going to have a lot of catching up to do when I get to MIT.”

“So you’ve decided, then. You’re coming here.”

“I should have said ‘if I get to MIT.’ At one point today it seemed perfectly clear. Professor Sinai had explained something to me that I had been confused about, and the thought came to me, how can you not take the opportunity to study with a gaon like this?” Azarya had used one of the Hebrew terms for “genius”-there are several-to describe Gabriel Sinai. Looking at him, Cass had the vivid memory of that little boy standing on the tish , trying to point his Hasidim’s eyes at the proof that he was seeing, that same smile on his face.

“It was the first time you spoke to somebody who could understand you.”

“Not the first time, no. The first time was Roz and you. But it’s been a while.” He said this softly and with a self-deprecating smile.

“If it makes your decision any easier, you ought to know that I would love for you to live with us if you come to MIT. It will be less strange than if you stay in a dorm.”

“You open your home to me as if I were your son. How can I express how that makes me feel?” He managed to do it, with his eyes and the heat that rose in his cheeks. “Perhaps it will be. But, you know, I don’t think I would feel strange at MIT. I maybe think I would feel less strange at MIT than I feel in New Walden.”

Cass looked at Azarya’s face, which was struck open with his confession.

“For how long has it been like this for you?”

“My Bar Mitzvah. That’s when I remember feeling afraid for my future. That’s when I saw clearly what I mean for the Valdeners.”

“You became a man, according to the tradition.”

“Yes, that’s one tradition I had no trouble with.”

“You still keep all the laws?”

“Yes, why not? I’d have to make a big effort not to, living in New Walden. It’s not the laws that bother me. They’re second nature.” He thought for a moment. “One has to live some way, so why not that way? Professor Sinai is observant, but it doesn’t stop his mind. He’s not a Valdener. He’s not the son of the Valdener Rebbe, with a whole community of people who mention him in their every prayer. It’s foolishness, their prayers, I know that. Still, how can I not feel the burden of so many prayers? Every time I hear how they call me, Azarya ha-kodesh , Azarya the holy one, it sounds like shovels of dirt on a coffin.”

Cass looked at him, taken aback by the note of melodrama. In addition to everything else that Azarya was, he was also an adolescent. Cass found this touching, just as he’d been touched by the small Azarya waving bye-bye.

“The problem is that ‘Valdener MIT math student’ is not a rigid designator. There are many possible worlds in which it doesn’t pick me out.”

“Is ‘son of the Valdener Rebbe’ a rigid designator?”

“Yes. It is. I had to be my father’s son, or I wouldn’t be me. I am Azarya ben Rav Bezalel. It’s a rigid designator. Just as my father is rigidly Rav Bezalel ben Rav Yisroel. It was Rav Yisroel, my grandfather, who came to America in 1933, saving the few Valdeners he could. He built New Walden for them so that they could insulate themselves against the corruptions of America. He tried as best he could to duplicate Valden as it had been before it was destroyed. When you live in New Walden, then the old Valden is always in your mind. You go to the shul in New Walden and you are thinking of the old shul. That’s where the Germans packed all the remaining Valdeners, left behind when Rav Yisroel came to America, before they set it on fire. And my grandfather was rigidly Rav Yisroel ben Rav Eliezer. Rav Eliezer, my great-grandfather, was rigidly Rav Eliezer ben Rav Bezalel. He had an older brother, Rav Azarya ben Rav Bezalel, who died the same year as his own father, and so Rav Eliezer ben Rav Bezalel became the Rebbe. Rav Eliezer ben Rav Bezalel is known as ‘der shvagte Rebbe,’ the silent Rebbe. He had a saying: ‘Man shvagt un man shvagt. Dernoch riet men abisl un man shvagt vater.’ ‘We stay silent and we stay silent, and then we rest a little and we stay silent.’ He’s always been one of my favorite ancestors because of that. I think maybe he was a mathematician himself, to have had such a fine idea of paradox. Rav Bezalel, my great-great-grandfather, was rigidly Rav Bezalel ben Rav Itzikil. Rav Itzikil ben Rav Yosef, my great-great-great-grandfather, was the Borshtchaver Rebbe’s son, but he married the Valdener Rebbe’s daughter, Sura Sima, so Rav Itzikil ben Rav Yosef was the son-in-law of Rav Azarya ben Rav Yisroel, who was my great-great-great-great-grandfather. And Rav Azarya ben Rav Yisroel was a direct descendant of ha-Rav Yisroel ben Eliezer, as he was rigidly designated, but whose many non-rigid designations include der heyliger Ba’al Shem Tov , the holy Master of the Good Name.”

They stared at each other over the dining-room table. Cass wished he were that other sort of psychologist, the kind that knows the right thing to say to a young person caught as Azarya was caught.

“But a name’s being a rigid designator doesn’t make the decision for you, does it?”

“No.” He paused for a while, staring into space. Again, Cass remembered his own exalted vision that night at the Rebbe’s tish , when he thought he’d caught a glimpse of what the world must look like to Azarya. “But if not rigid designation, then what does make the decision?”