0:03 hello and welcome to jigger's place I'm your host Kevin beml and we are here every other Thursday at 5:00 pm Pacific time and it's it's an opportunity as the week is coming to a close to sit back relax have a cocktail and talk about all of those things in life that are so important but don't have really anything to do necessarily with our business and professions the way my other shows do so this this afternoon this evening my
0:38 my topic is what I've been calling the existential question Faith versus reason and I I addressed I've addressed this question often in my roles as a a rabbi in chaplain and uh it's it's part of an ongoing discussion I guess you would call it with uh with one of my uh closest friends um so I thought it would you know this is a kind of thing as as I um somewhat T tongue and cheap call it this
1:13 is a bourbon discussion only uh instead of having bourbon today um I'm G to make something that chat GPT created um called a Divine logic cocktail so right combining the the two aspects of our topic today and for those of you who are on my email list you you saw the uh the the recipe which I have here this is uh another gin based cocktail and uh um in honor of those the
1:50 logic s so as you may know the the the Scots were um one of the uh sort of found ational um groups uh in in the Enlightenment and so the the Gin that I'm using is I believe it's called Karen um karon small bat small batch Scottish gin um made since 1824 I always like things as you know that are old so we have some Scottish
2:25 Jin and uh Jin is is uh because it's a Botanical spirit so it represents nature and reason right and and in this particular case even you know like an Enlightenment version of Reason next is lemon juice and this particular time I'm using Italia this is a pre-made uh lemon juice Italian lemon juice now lemon juice it represents it's for balance and it represents Clarity and and logic okay and then we've got got uh some honey
3:01 syrup that I made which is really just a mixture of 50% honey and 50% warm water mixed together and the sweetness of it hints at at at Faith's um comforting um ability and it's it's its nurturing aspect okay and then um absin that we're going to put in a dash of absin that this absin is is often considered to have kind of a mystical spiritual quality now I'm using hapsburg absinth um this was created by
3:38 Peter fug um I actually um got to know Peter when I was stationed in Germany in um heidleberg he had an abison shop that I happened to find one one I think it was the first or second time it was in heidleberg and um Peter and I had a number of discussions about absinth and and what it's all about um this one is it's called Habsburg L manifik um and it's made I believe in
4:13 Switzerland and it it is it is a a tremendously uh fantastic expression of of absinth um you can get this here in the United States I actually got this this bottle in the United States um and and and Peter is an award-winning um absent uh maker and So you you're never going to do better than than hapsburg and then finally the last ingredients is a sprig of rosemary I didn't have time to get to the store to get a sprig of rosemary so I've got some Rosemary here
4:49 in this Old Shaker that I'll put in um actually when I shake it instead of a sprig is garnish um and it's an herb that symbolically uh historically symbolizes wisdom and Remembrance so you can see all of these ingredients have their their symbolism and so now now we're GNA we're going to put it together here so let's see we're going to start out with and I've got you know ice in the cocktail shaker so we're going to start with um let's see what do we got here yeah 2
5:24 ounces of gin going use this one it doesn't have a two o Mark I think we'll use this one this has two all the way up to the top okay so 2 O of gin um whoa there you go this is a little bit like a gimlet for those of you who know what that is um a gimblet is is sort of like a martini except for instead of verm that
5:59 uses lime juice um we we're like I said we're going to use lemon juice we're going to put in a half an ounce of lemon juice and find the marker here okay yeah okay half an ounce of lemon juice and and I'm going to put in half an oun
6:34 of uh of um of honey syrup Mark again there it is that in there and just a dash of um of absinth go and whoop and then last but not least um a little bit of Rosemary like I said normally you'd put a sprig in I'm GNA um I'm just
7:10 going to grind a little kind of almost like a dash of Rosemary in it okay we're going to cover up our shaker here and you can see it's already starting to frost but um we're going to shake it real well we want to do that for a good you know 10 to 20 seconds to make sure all the ingredients not only mixed together but but they have an opportunity to um for some of the ice to melt and um the water will open up the flavors is as we talked about before I can smell the aisin coming out of this um so that's good I could smell the uh
7:47 the Rosemary when I was putting that in as well just a couple more seconds here okay and we're going to use uh normally you want to strain this into either a CP or a cocktail glass I'm going use a cocktail glass um this time even though I used a coupe last time and it's got kind of a translucent color um and unfortunately you can't see this but the there's kind of a swirl in it's quite beautiful so give this a
8:26 try yum very good all right so I'm gonna go over to the other side
9:06 uh oh hold on one second I get mic feedback Bec from the other camera and uh so I have to remember to turn that one off so we're over here on my uh sofa and uh just uh
9:41 relaxing uh yesterday was I don't know about you but for me yesterday was uh um a busy a busy day I was on the road uh half the day driving um a long distance and going to a meeting and driving back and and all of that and so pardon me I'm really looking forward to uh relaxing now so it's nice all the different flavors come out at different times so hopefully
10:16 you're you're enjoying this cocktail as well so I mentioned you know that the Today's Show is about this longstanding dispute between faith and uh reason and to to look at it historically a little bit so we tend to think of Faith as being something from you know a long time ago Millennia ago back in those uh unenlightened days uh when
10:53 people believed in multiple gods and they believed in miracles and all of these supernatural phenomena and all that kind of thing and then Along came first the Greeks who with Aristotle for example started applying the principles of logic and reason and they came up with this idea that the only things that can be true are those things that can be
11:29 empirically proved and and over time that belief Came In conflict with uh really it came in conflict with uh the Christian church so I'm I'm going to talk about Judaism in a few minutes but but because Jews were always a minority the conflict between between faith and reason tends to play
12:04 out more in Christian philosophy than than elsewhere and so like I said you know during during the Greek and Roman period reasons seem to be holding Sway and then um as Greek and Rome fell Christianity became a much the the dominant philosophy I'm talking of course in the Western World um became the dominant philosophy and especially the like for example the the the the Middle Ages
12:39 they're they're they're off sometimes also called the Dark Ages there was this idea that because the ideas of Greece and Rome were lost that now we had H Humanity had fallen into this time where the they were no longer rational um again there were all these fantastic beliefs so so for example um one of them just a small one that I learned from um the the ladies who work at UH Santa Maria Nolla which is a it's it's originally was an
13:14 apothecary a thousand years ago uh in today's contemporary um not version because it's it's been the same company for literally A Thousand Years um but in the the the modern day company they they make perfumes and things like that so one of the products they sell that's absolutely wonderful is Rose waterer and when I was talking with the um one of the ladies who worked at the store uh this is a number of months ago now um she was explaining to me that originally
13:50 it was thought that Rose waterer would kill diseases which reality is it does not um but it does have um of course a wonderful smell and it has for me anyway a calming uh influence on me and and you know let let let's be honest if if we're sick we tend to be upset anxious if something calms us down while it may not literally heal us it could make it
14:26 easier for our bodies to heal so while it's not the healing agent the perhaps the way it was thought of said back in the Middle Ages nonetheless it it could have a healing impact on us but so but the Middle Ages are considered a time of of irrationality and and eventually we came into the enlightenment in the late 17 early 1800s where again logic and and reason have now become predominant and and that's and and it was the the
15:01 growth and the impact of the Enlightenment that we see ever more so today so people invoke science almost as if it's religion and and without getting into the political side of it people will will say things like you know settled science or that sort of thing well so let's let's be candid there's no such thing as settled science science is the P pursuit of ever
15:38 greater an Ever deeper understanding of the physical world that's what science is and many things that scientists thought they understand understood in former times are Subs subsequently shown to be wrong so let's just take a couple of examples from nutrition so it was thought 20 30 years ago that it was bad to eat fat that fat made eating fat made you fat that turns out not to be
16:13 true even though scientists said at the time there's there's scientific evidence for this in actuality eating foods that have fat in them for example butter helps make us feel sated so we don't eat as much okay what happened when fats started to be eliminated from our from our the foods we ate so people felt hungrier so they ate more calories and
16:51 they gained weight that was one thing that happened another thing that happened was people started eating foods that had a lot more sugar in them and sugar is much more likely to not only make us overweight but cause other health problems like type two diabetes that are not good for our health so the whole you know nonfat Trend I'll call it in in diets which was supposedly scientifically based turns out to be wrong okay same
17:26 with eggs eggs were considered because they were high cholesterol they were considered to be bad but that turns out not to be true eggs are a very nutritious food they're very high in protein they're they're a a low calorie food relatively speaking especially for a protein-based food so eggs are actually healthy even though supposedly the science taught us that eggs were bad for you so these are just a couple of examples where if if we believed if if this idea of
18:03 settled science were actually correct so then evidently a non-fat diet is good is good and eating eggs is bad but it turns out that those aren't correct because in essence the scientific thinking behind them turned out to not be correct so pardon me so the question is is there actually a conflict between
18:40 faith and reason and I would argue this is my position there isn't a conflict the like so many things in life the the conflict is created by the those who want who who whose highest value is is being right as opposed to seeking truth right so I'll give you an example
19:15 I've talked about my my friend Michael who's an atheist he's been on he was one of my first guests on in the first season of the way to wow shows and Michael would tell you that he's an atheist not an anti theist and the reason he says that is because while he doesn't believe in the spiritual nature of of of human beings he can't disprove it and so he's not going to Advocate against something that
19:52 he cannot prove is wrong so this is one of the reasons why Michael and I have become such close friends and such devoted friends because underlying both of our Natures I I think almost is we we seek to find out what's true so so for example Michael will acknowledge he cannot disprove my my faith in God uh and so the fact that he can't prove it or disprove it does not
20:29 mean that the he therefore defaults to well since I can't prove since you can't prove that God exists he must not exist that's as irrational a belief as me saying well because I have faith in God that that that that is uh that means rationally God exists no I have faith that God exists and I acknowledge I can't prove to you that God exists what I will tell you is I
21:04 believe there are good reasons why God should exist and I have faith that God exists but excuse me I cannot prove to you that God exists now I I have religious friends who say to me oh no I I can I can prove to you that God exists and and they try and and me who believes in God I'm I'm skeptical of their proofs and and I think there's a good reason to be skeptical and that's
21:40 because if indeed God is omnipotent and omniscient and all the qualities that we ascribe to God he could manifest himself in a way that rationally his existence could be proven but he doesn't do that okay he may he did it at Mount Si for the children of Israel and
22:18 Moses but he didn't do it for future Generations so future Generations are reliant on on having faith that what our forefathers knew is correct or probably more accurately what the Bible tells us about what our forefathers knew is correct now I can appreciate some of you who are very religious would say oh my gosh that's you know
22:53 apostasy okay uh perhaps um but but hear me out on this God wants us to have faith he wants us to build what is in essence our faith muscle so that when we hit times in our lives when only faith will get us through we have built up our faith to the point where it will get us
23:30 through and so on a daily basis we have to reaffirm our faith in God's existence and the reality is Faith is stronger than reason reason is subject to change because sometimes the logical path we took to reason out a particular conclusion turns out to be wrong like
24:07 the examples I gave a few minutes ago about nutrition but faith is faith if we have faith we need not ever give up that Faith now people will say well I used to believe in God but I see all the terrible things that happened in the world and I lost my faith okay you did I'm not going to argue with you but we needn't have lost our faith merely because we saw something that
24:42 doesn't comport with what we have faith God is or what we believe God is there is a reason why God allows to bad things to happen in the world it has to do with he wants us to have free will and if believing in God meant that only good things would happen to us we would no longer have free will we would believe in God merely
25:17 because we didn't want bad things to happen to us and so if God had created the world in such a way that belief in him meant only good things would happen to someone that person will lose their free will now I'm simplifying the argument somewhat but hopefully you can hear what I'm saying he so God created the world specifically this is this is my idea God created the world specifically so that
25:52 we can't logically we can't uh through through reason prove that God exists we have to have faith that God exists now let me refute my own argument here for a moment Abraham the Abraham of the Bible what he is famous for is figuring out that go God there there has to be one God he has to be all powerful that was what he figured out
26:27 that's why he's considered uh at least from Jew Jewish and Christian Perspective to be the first Jew because he reasoned out monotheism right well I'm not going to dispute that you know just like I'm not going to dispute that our our ancestors actually encountered God at M SI I'm willing to stipulate that
27:03 Abraham figured out logically that God had to exist but notice the language I'm using that God has to I should say has to exist not had to exist has to exist okay he figured out that God has to exist not that God does exist those aren't exactly the same thing having figured out that God has to
27:41 exist he believed he had faith that God exists and God in essence rewarded Abraham for that by speaking to him by encountering him now we each have kind of the same opportunity now God won't interact with us the same way he did with Abraham or Isaac or Jacob or or uh Sarah rivka Ruck or Leia or Joseph
28:16 or Moses but he will interact with us if we believe if we have faith that he does exist that's the that's the essence of of Faith so that's that's one of the ways that I resolve this conflict between faith and reason but there's another way that I do it so in Judaism Judaism does not believe that there is a conflict between faith and
28:52 reason Jews are sort of um they they were the predic cessors to St Thomas aquinus so St Thomas aquinus one of his um seminal ideas was that there is no conflict between faith and reason if one looks at the talmud which is the central book of Jewish learning one sees that what are called kazal otherwise known as the rabbis
29:29 Rabbi AA Rabbi elazer Rabbi elazer and and and all of the others they engageed in a very deep process of applying logic to the rules that are contained in the Torah now were they always successful in being able to prove through logic that a particular rule in the Torah was
30:06 true and the intellectually honest answer is no they were not okay there are what are known as hook or H hooking what are known as in English is roughly translated decrees okay so let me give you an example of the two different types of rules in the Torah okay one is a mish it's it's like a a law okay
30:41 so one should not murder okay now logically we can understand it's wrong to murder because number one we're extinguishing a life that that is disting extinguished essentially for all time unless we believe in reincarnation number two we're committing a crime that we cannot atone for because the person from whom we need to seek forgiveness is
31:17 gone number three we're destroying part of the social fabric that cannot be recreated and number four we are essentially stealing from other people someone that now cannot be replaced logically then murder must be wrong okay so the the it's one of the
31:52 Ten Commandments you know thou will not thou will not murder or you will not murder we can through logic we can we can prove that and you see this from other philosophers okay let me give you an example of something that cannot be proved through logic okay this is one of the Jewish dietary laws do not eat dairy and meat at the same time okay now over the Millennia there
32:27 have been various reasons given as as to why this is the case now when the Torah it says do not cook the kid in its mother's milk right and so you you can hear it right don't cook something in the liquid that nurtured it that that seems on its face to be just kind of ew okay but but but logically not really okay there's no logical
33:02 reason not to eat dairy and meat together and in fact for those of you who have had beef stroganoff which is a dish essentially made with milk and beef what you find is milk tenderizes beef it makes it more delicious okay not for me cuz frankly I'm not a I'm not really a meat eater but the reality is the enzymes in milk tenderize meat so you would say logically you
33:38 should cook them together okay so why does the Torah tell the the children of Israel not to eat dairy and meat together it's a hoke it's it's it's it's just a rule that God created that has no logical basis that we've ever been able to figure out it's beyond human logic we do it purely to have a relationship with God okay the the example I give excuse me when I finish my
34:15 cocktail the example I give to hopefully relate it to you is making your bed when you were a child right I remember I'd get up get ready for school go have breakfast I'd be eating breakfast my mom would come into the kitchen go make your bed before you leave and I'd say in the beginning I would say mom there's no point in making my bed I'm just going to get in it tonight and she's I don't care go make your bed eventually I learned that for
34:50 whatever reason my mother wanted me to make my bed and if I wanted to be on good terms with my mother I needed to make my bed in other words if I wanted to have a good relationship with my mother I needed to make my bed and the same is essentially true of the hookim or the hookim in the Torah these rules that God has given us that don't have a logical or rational basis we do merely to show go not merely but
35:27 we do them to show God that we want to have a relationship with him that's it now you can say well that's logical okay but doing something illogical you know to have a relationship isn't necessarily very logical because right we get into this all the time with uh you know those of you who are married right your spouse ask you to do something and you think it's illogical and you say I'm not going to do that because it's it's Sil and so you say look it's silly to do that I'm not going to do it right now the reality
36:02 is in many cases you'd be better off to just do it let them have their illogical let them make their illogical request and and you know the probably you know the the least best way to handle it would be to say all right I don't I don't know why you want me to do this but I love you and so I'm going to do it right and acknowledge I it's illogical to me but I care about you I love you I want to have a relationship with you so I'm just going to do it no you know diu as we say
36:38 in Hebrew it's enough so so Jewish um philosophy if you will really is the search for rational reasons behind why God wants us to do all of the things that he asks us to do in the Torah in order to have a relationship with him and yet as much as that process is
37:13 embedded in Jewish practice Jewish philosophy in the final analysis there are things that God asks us to do that are essentially illogical but you know we we have a choice to do them anyway so here's here's the my my my final thought on this and that is I just lost it um
37:50 so wow it really went away oh well that's okay so anyway those are my thoughts on this this you know supposed conflict between faith and reason oh U here here here I got it back so many people uh who who identify themselves as being only rational human beings you know they will tell you that things that there is no such thing as this as as the
38:26 the spirit of of human beings okay and they I don't like if you're if you like me are a fan of The Big Bang Theory you'll remember when um pardon me Sheldon and Amy in the beginning of their relationship well not beginning but partway through their relationship uh Sheldon says he loves Amy and and they have this sort of sidebar discussion that according to the rational World in which they exist love
39:01 isn't a real thing but there's no other way to explain the emotional connection they have between the two of them than love love is a spiritual concept okay and for all the discussions about mutually attractive pheromones and this and that love transcends all of that so I I I would argue that while people who wish to view themselves as solely
39:39 rational and therefore don't believe in such things as love or ascribe them to you know hormonal interactions or whatever okay they should live and be well but I think most of us realize that there is an aspect of the world that supersedes humans ability to comprehend and and we typically refer to that as the supernatural although I think that term has fallen
40:17 out of use I remember this is a while ago now my mother asked me like do you believe in the Supernatural I absolutely do I do for two reasons one is I believe in love and I believe in these these spiritual Concepts and the other reason I believe in the Supernatural is it reminds me to exercise humility the idea that human beings will ever be able to actually explain everything in the world I think
40:55 is a very unwash belief to have because it's a very arrogant belief to have now that isn't to say that if if if you look at yourself as being a solely rational human being that therefore you are arrogant I don't mean that at all what I mean is the belief that there is not there won't ever be something that human being beings can't
41:30 understand makes it more difficult to hang on to our humility and I think humility on the part of a human being is one of the if not the most important traits that we can have and so those things in our society that help us maintain a sense of humility are critical to the
42:05 survival of our society and so the belief in the Supernatural from and when I say the supernatural what I really mean is the belief in God and the things that God has created that we can't as humans can't explain as opposed to you know goblins or whatever um these are it's important for us to acknowledge there are things that humans are unable to explain and we will never be able to
42:42 explain so that's that's my reconciliation if you want between faith and reason I I would love to hear your thoughts about this so after the show posts on YouTube as always you'll see all the links to our social media I invite you to post your comments would love to read them respond to them if you have something private that you want to uh you know communicate to me my
43:17 email address will also be in the show notes and I'm I'm I'm happy to communicate with you that way or through you know for example you know Facebook Messenger or l l in messenger whatever um if it's not something that you want to have public scrutiny so I I hope you you know enjoyed this exploration of this unfortunately sometimes contentious topic I hope you enjoyed a Divine logic cocktail you can see I enjoyed mine because it was gone before the show was over and this is our my last show for
43:53 this week so I hope you have a wonderful evening a wonderful rest of the week and weekend for my Jewish friends out there tomorrow night Friday night starts Yom keeper or what's known as Yom horein uh the holiest day of of the Jewish year although there's some dispute whether the Sabbath is holier than y Kipper but we'll that's for another day I wish you a an easy fast and and a a time of finalizing your your
44:30 your introspection may may God grant you another year of of life good health Prosperity may he return the hostages um to their to their families the hostages in Gaza to their families and may God bring peace to this world world that has been rocked with with that is currently being rocked with with so much war and violence and
45:05 and uh Mayhem and so thank you so much for joining me as always in some ways I feel compelled to say if if you only have time to join me for one show a week I I hope it will be this show because this is really the heart of of what I do it's it's really the heart of what the three pillars of attainment are after and it's an opportunity for us to correct to connect I should say as as
45:40 full human beings rather than human beings who are solely concerned with Business and Professional matters and so I wish you again a good good evening and I sign off as I always do and that's by recogniz ring and and uh and and speaking to my dear friend up in up in heaven up in shamayim Marie darling you you are my bell you continue to be an inspiration to me and I love you very much my friends courage