Making Bets on Meaning: Peirce's Wagers rather than Pascal's Wager
 Johannes Iemke (Hans) Bakker *
Talk given at the Unitarian-Universalist Congregation of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, on January 18, 2009.
* This is a slightly revised version of the sermon. Due to time limitations the actual spoken address comprised only the first part of this paper. I want to thank Stuart and Sheri Dixon and I would like to remember Louise Colley and Nora Cebotarev.
hbakkerATuoguelph.ca
www.semioticsigns.com
“Loving Kindness is My Religion” – bumper sticker
“It [Christianity] asks no struggles with nature … nor heaps a mountain of difficulties in your path to be encountered at once. It only requires that in a single moment you do a single thing right. This is the whole of religion – the whole of that law by which God guides every moral being to his happiness – one single duty in one single moment. To do this, is to be a Christian.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sermon XVIII, on Matthew 11:30, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Preached eighteen times, between April 27, 1828 and March 20, 1831.
(Emerson 1989: 173-178, quote in p. 175, emphasis in the original.)
I. Meaning in Everyday Life Simple Things:
This talk is about a simple idea. My own label for that idea is Peirce’s wagers, a play on the notion of Pascal’s once in a lifetime wager. I will explain that in a moment. But before getting too complicated let me stick with the simple idea itself. It is an idea about something that everyone agrees with and at the same time everyone disagrees about: meaning.
To fully “comprehend” it intellectually you will also have to “understand” it physically and “be attuned” to it spiritually. Without a body, mind and spirit kind of integrated Gestalt awareness the subtle aspect of this kind of quest for meaning – one single right thing in any one single moment – will be as elusive as a line of poetry by Shakespeare or Robert Frost or the sound of a melody by Bach or John Lennon.
I believe that ultimately the whole of religion and spirituality is as well summarized by doing the right thing at the right time and in the right place as it ever can be by anything. “Love thy neighbor as thy self,” and do not forget, in all that, to also love your self. Faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love (caritas). But the expression of that faith, hope and love is not ONE BIG THING and only ONE TIME. Instead, it is a matter of three steps forward and two steps back. It has to do with “the law o errors” as much as it has to do with anything “set in stone” (Menand 2001 :177-200). It requires compassion for others and for one’s self.
I think that as long as we live fairly normal lives we truly believe that life has meaning, at least in the here and now, and maybe even next week. If we truly feel that there is no meaning whatsoever then we do not bother to get out of bed on a Sunday morning in order to go to a religious service. We also do not bother to go to synagogue on a Saturday or to mosque on a Friday. We do not meditate. We do not do yoga. We do not light incense at a Neo-Confucian temple. We do not honor a Tibetan Buddhist monk or a Korean Buddhist nun. We do not try at least sometimes to be honest.
Even hardened criminals do a lot of things according to societal standards much of the time. It is impossible to commit crimes all day long. With the possible exception of Vice President Dick Cheney and Billionaire Bernard Madoff, most people are fairly honest most of the time. Most people care, at least a little bit, about other people, especially if they view those other people as somehow similar. (It is mainly the people whom we view as entirely “alien” that we are less likely to care about.)
II. Why do Something rather than Nothing?
The only strictly logical conclusion that one can draw if there is absolutely no meaning is to do nothing whatsoever. There is simply no reason to do anything. Why go shopping or cook a meal? Why work? Why play? Why do anything?
Yet we all do things. We all carry out activities. There may be days when we feel we have not accomplished very much. We may spend a whole day in bed because we are sick. Indeed, we may spend months in hospital because we are very sick. But even just being sick and trying to get better is doing something.
III. Be Here Now/ Part and Whole:
Each and every moment of every day we make bets on meaning. That is, we bet that life has meaning rather than no meaning. We feel that life has some kind of meaning that is human. Human meaning is that which is meaningful to human beings. What we tend to feel we really know is this moment, NOW. The present moment feels real. Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) said: “Be here now!” But later he wrote it! When the reader reads Ram Dass’ words that reader is no longer “here” with Ram Dass and it is no longer “now.”
The present moment goes by quickly. We seem to be in the here and now, but suddenly that now is gone and we are in a different here and now. Eventually we are in yet another moment and – if we leave the location we were at – we are not even here anymore! We are sitting in a building listening and then all of a sudden we are back home again, eating lunch. Each little part of the whole seems real, but somehow the whole itself must make sense as well. Yet, as Pascal said (1966: 93 ) “How could a part possibly know the whole?” Indeed, how can the part know the whole? How can I, a mere part of the Universe, know the whole Universe?
And what would “God” be – at least for many of us – if It, She or He is not at least as big as the Universe, or … bigger! (Christian theology demands that we should believe that God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost is outside of the natural Universe altogether, although the Son did join us human beings as both human being and God for a brief thirty three years or so.) It was only very recently that we learned that our galaxy, the so-called Milky Way, is much bigger than anyone had ever thought. Indeed, it is supposed to be as big as the Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest galactic neighbor. Yet the Milky Way and Andromeda are only two galaxies. The Universe consists – in the famous words of Carl Sagan – of billions and billions of galaxies. (I suppose with the recent financial crisis we can now say trillions!)
How can I, a little speck, know “God, which is even bigger than a Universe of trillions of galaxies and – beyond that – even more black holes and empty space!
Well, logically, I cannot. No one can, really. Some people claim they can talk to God. But whenever I gave It a call on my cell phone I get nothing in response. Even prayers to Her do not seem to do any direct good, although they sometimes make me feel better. He does not seem to be doing a terrific job in the Middle East and Africa at the moment.
IV. Higher Power?
The main thrust of my talk is that when we think of the meaningfulness of each moment we also, in a sense, show our belief in some kind of higher spiritual significance, despite the odds. That higher spiritual power could be called any of the names of “God”: the goddess, YHWH, Elohim, El, Isis, Kali, Durga, Gaia, Baal, Allah, Zeus, Ahura Mazda, Boga, Tuhan, Yang Sangh Hidup, Dao, Dieu, Mother Nature, the Great Spirit, the Higher Spiritual Authority, and so forth.
One use of the word “God” that makes the discussion even more complicated is the use of that word to mean “Stalinism” or Soviet Communism. I will leave that usage out of my discussion. However, look at the famous book The God That Failed (Crossman 1983 [1949]). For most people living in Canada the word “God” tends to evoke Christianity, just as the word “Allah” tends to imply Islam and “YHWH” is seen as Jewish (or, an Old Testament word).
There are at least four different kinds of “spiritualities” (Richardson 1996). They have Sanskrit names and can be found in the Bhagavad Gita (Gandhi 1993). They are:
(1.) Unity Jnana (Gk. gnosis)
(2.) Devotion Bhakti (contemplation)
(3.) Works Karma (Gk. praxis)
(4.) Harmony Raja
V. Orthopraxy rather than Orthodoxy?
There is much stress within Christianity about correct belief (orthodoxy) but in Christianity, as in most religions, it is also very important to have correct action (orthopraxy). Indeed, many theologians argue that orthopraxy is far more important than orthodox beliefs. The story of the Good Samaritan is an example from the Christian tradition. The people of Samaria were despised by the Jews of Judah because the Samaritans were not orthodox enough in their beliefs and their ethnicity. Yet it was the Samaritan who stopped to help the man who needed help by the side of the road. In Buddhist thought the idea of correct, moral action based on compassion is one of the eight aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path. One sometimes wonders about people who espouse a religious belief system and act in a clearly unethical manner.
But the idea we have of “God” (in all of her, its or his forms) should be personally meaningful. It is not just a matter of correct actions with regard to the needs of others. It is also a sense of compassion for one’s self. A good friend, Stan Gross, a retired Professor of Psychology from Indiana now living in the Boston area, is very interested in the professional, scholarly concept of “self esteem.” But he remarked to me recently that he felt that the idea of “self compassion” was also of great significance. If we cannot be compassionate about our selves, then what use is it to have a sense of high regard for what we have accomplished? There will always be people who accomplish more, but if we have self-compassion then we can be proud of what we have done. What we have done may seem trivial, but it is nevertheless meaningful. It is meaningful to take out the trash and wash the dishes. It is meaningful to watch a child for several hours or take a dog for a walk. The godliness of the universe is indicated by the meaningfulness of the little things in life. It is not just a matter of feeling a sense of awe when looking at the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls.
VI. Pascal’s Wager:
I started to think about the idea that each moment we make bets on meaning when I contemplated the literature on Blaise Pascal’s famous wager. Pascal, a mathematician and philosopher, jotted down the idea that if we bet on God’s existence we are better off. That is because if God does exist then we have placed a good bet. But if God does not exist then, Pascal argued, we have not really lost anything. He wrote about this as a Roman Catholic living in France. For him such a bet would be a lifetime wager. Once baptized one is always baptized!
Contemporary philosophers have pointed out that there are several holes in Pascal’s argument. It may not be true that we have not lost anything by believing in God. If we believe in God then that implies we must act like someone who believes in God. During Pascal’s lifetime that required paying a tithe to the Church. Also, Pascal did not specify which God we should believe in. He assumed a Roman Catholic God – and no doubt one who spoke French – but he did not necessarily exclude Elohim (the Jewish Hebrew name for God, aka YHWH), or Allah (the Arabic name for God). To be fair to Pascal, his famous wager may not have been something he spent a whole lot of time thinking about. He was too busy with his mathematics.
VII. Peirce’s Wagers:
Another famous mathematician is Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce was brilliant and he made many contributions to philosophy. He invented Pragmatism and later, when William James modified and popularized it, he called it “Pragmaticism.” He also invented semiotics (“semeiotic”). I have spent a lot of time reading about Peirce and I am starting to actually read Peirce’s writings. They are now coming out in a chronological edition. Peirce believed in the scientific method. But his version of the scientific method was not a simple Baconian form of inductivism. Nor was he simply a proponent of deductivism (as in the so-called Hypothetico-Deductive Method). He said that true science proceeds by using both induction and deduction. But he added a third aspect which he called: abduction. That is, taking a speculative idea and “running with it.” Every crime show portrays abductive reasoning. Indeed, scholars have pointed out that Sherlock Holmes’ approach (seen again on CSI, etc.) is abductive (as well as sometimes including a bit of induction and deduction).
Like a natural, life, social or behavioral scientist, a layperson constantly makes abductions. Where did I leave my income tax forms? Where are the keys to the car? We make decisions and we try to reconstruct situations. The little decisions and reconstructions of the moment are abductions. We are like “detectives.” But we do not try to solve the murder, we try to solve the problem of what to eat or when to go to bed. Why am I feeling so hung over? Could it be because I had six beers last night? Why am I so tired? Could it be because I am only getting five hours of sleep a night, going to bed at one after the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, and getting up at six to commute to work?
Unlike Pascal’s once in a lifetime wager, the bets we make in the Peircian “Pragmaticist” scheme of things are little working hypotheses. If I were to exercise more and eat less I might be able to lose a few pounds. Maybe if I were to talk to my spouse/partner/friend/child a little more pleasantly in the morning then he (or she) might not be as grouchy.
VIII. Credulity (Beliebigkeit): a Slippery Slope:
In a sense, my belief that we construct “God” (in one of her or its forms, or even in His Form) whenever we act with some notion of the meaningfulness of that action, is a slippery slope. We can so easily be deluded. The German word for that is Beliebigkeit. We sometimes choose to believe that something is the case when in fact it is not really true. I know a few Professors, for example, who sincerely believe that their academic, scholarly work is centrally important and will live on in the memories of their students, but it may be the case that they are really not that important after all.
I once said to Professor Gary Allan Fine that I was worried that I might not even be a footnote to history. He said, with obvious delight in the double meaning, “But Hans, you will surely be a footnote to history.” I caught the joke. It was painful. But it was probably true. Probably the most I can hope for is to become a kind of footnote in sociology textbooks. I am certainly grateful to my colleague Linda Gerber for at least mentioning some of my work in the number one textbook for introductory sociology in Canada (Macionis and Gerber 2008), even if the American version of that text does not mention me at all! At least Linda Gerber added three of my publications!
Now another problem in addition to Beliebigkeit is the problem of the relationship between “theory” and “practice.” In 1793 Immanuel Kant published a fascinating essay (Kant 1999: 275-309) “On the Common Saying: That May be Correct in Theory, but it is of No Use in Practice.” Some may say that believing that each and every action shows some kind of implicit belief in meaning is mostly just a “theoretical” idea and not really applicable in practice. For those who might make that argument I can only say that good theory makes for good practice. One of my favorite aphorisms is: “There is nothing as practical as a good theory.” Certainly if we have a bad theory we are very likely to act in such a way as to produce bad results. Think of George W. Bush’s apparently sincere theoretical belief that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Think of Ehud Barak’s belief that killing a thousand Palestinians in Gaza will somehow solve the problems of Palestinian animosity toward the nation-state of Israel as it is now constituted.
IX. Six Alternative Theological Worldviews:
In terms of theological beliefs there are only about a half dozen main alternatives. Those are discussed by Randall Collins (1998). (There are, of course, countless variations on these principle themes.) They are: (1.) strict materialist atheism, (2.) polytheism, (3.) pantheism, (4.) panentheism, (5.) simple theism, and (6.) sophisticated theism. There are also those, like Siddhartha Gautama, who claim the question concerning the existence of a “God” has no importance. Siddhartha is called the “Buddha” because he had insight ( buddh, gnosis, jnana, divine wisdom). Maybe he was right.
(1.) strict materialist atheism: It is possible that all talk of “God” and/or “gods” is simply based on ignorance. If that is true then life has no meaning whatsoever on the individual, personal level. Richard Dawkins has that view, yet he is not entirely consistent since he goes to work and writes books. His passion for his so-called “atheism” is actually quite religious. He does not believe that there is no meaning whatsoever.
(2.) polytheism, where there are many “gods” and “goddesses.” That is the empirical reality of belief system around the world. The anthropological generalization is that there are many kinds of political groups and each of those groups tends to hold something as “sacred.” For example, many indigenous societies like the Australian aborigines and Canadian first nations traditionally believed in some kind of clan totem animal.
(3.) pantheism, where the word “God” equals the word “Nature.” In other words, when we use a word like Dieu or Gott we really mean “Nature.”
(4.) panentheism, where God is both transcendent and immanent. This is the belief system that Spinoza put forward. He believed that God is manifested in the Universe as a whole and in the smallest objects known to human beings. Spinoza,of course, lived at a time when the microscope was being invented and Antony van Leeuwenhoek was examining things under microscopes more powerful than anyone else had ever used. No one had ever seen a fly’s wing under a microscope before. Einstein was essentially panentheistic as well. Both Spinoza and Einstein had been brought up in Jewish environments but had rejected Ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, Conservative and Traditional Judaism. Today some Christians, Mulsims and Reform Jews accept panentheism, even when they may not know the word and even when they may not be conscious of the fact that the belief runs counter to traditional Christian, Islamic and Jewish theologies.
(5.) simple theism, where the “God” (or, “gods” and “goddesses”) of one’s own “group” matter most. For the average Roman Catholic, for example, there is something called the Trinity. The formula Father, Son and Holy Ghost represents a theological mystery. No one really knows precisely what those words mean. But nevertheless, for the average layperson who feels that he or she is a Roman Catholic, that formula represents a kind of “Truth.” For many early Unitarians in the United States in the 1820s the only real shift was to drop the Son and the Holy Spirit and only accept the one “God.” That was still fairly simple theism, although certainly not simplistic. It is this kind of belief in God that Dawkins is primarily critical of and he is at pains to disassociate it from panenteism.
and (6.) sophisticated theism, a kind of ecumenical and cross-cultural belief system where all of the above ideas have some relevance. In other words, there are many religious and spiritual people who have some idea of what “God” (or “goddesses” or “gods”) might be, but who are also still tolerant and accepting of those who hold different beliefs. That acceptance is not merely passive and reluctant, but active and supportive acceptance of others and their beliefs. For example, Maimonides, one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of all time, fully accepted the value of Islam. Indeed, he wrote his famous Jewish theology in Arabic!
I believe in a social construction of images of that which is “sacred,” following in the footsteps of David Emile Durkheim’s sociology and anthropology of religion (Nielsen 1999). I believe that Durkheim’s (1912) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is one of the top one hundred books in social science. The recent re-translation (Durkheim 1995) helps to make that book easier to read. But that is a topic for another time.
References and Recommended Reading:
Bakker, J. I. (Hans). 1993. Toward A Just Civilization. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. [See Gandhi 1993.]
Barton, John. 2004. “Beliebigkeit.” Pp. 301-303 in Sherwood (2004). [The Germanic word “Beliebigkeit” refers to (1.) believability, but (2.) naïve credulity, believing whatever you like, or even whatever you would like to believe, even if it may not be entirely true, (3.) believing something to be false when in fact it may be true. Barton plays with the word’s applicability to Postmodern thinking, especially the application of Jacques Derrida’s ideas to the study of Scriptures, especially the Christian Bible(s).]
Bloom, Harold. 2006. “Emerson: the American Religion.” Pp. 95-123 in Bloom, Harold (ed.) 2006. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays. New York: Chelsea House, Infobase Publications.
Collins, Randall. 1998. The Sociology of Philosophies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Belknap Press. [This book is a masterpiece and makes the history of philosophies, theologies and Worldviews much clearer than any other single book.]
Crossan, John Dominic. 1992 [1991]. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco/HarperCollins. [In this controversial book Crossan utilizes findings from history and the social sciences to set the framework for his interpretation of Jesus as a Mediterranean Jewish peasant.]
Crossman, Richard H. 1983 [1949]. The God That Failed. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, Gateway Editions. [This book looks at Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Richard Wright, André Gide, Louis Fischer and Stephen Spender in terms of the initial belief in Stalinist Communism and their disillusionment with that “God.” Professor Lewis Samuel Feuer referred to this book in lectures at the University of Toronto in the 1970s, in part because he also had experienced disillusionment with Stalinist Communism.]
Durkheim, [David] Emile. 1995 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Tr. Karen E. Fields. New York: The Free Press.
Emerson, Ralph Walso. 1989. “Sermon XXX on II Corinthians 4:18; Preached Twice, March 22, 1829 and May 30, 1830, at Second Church, Boston.” The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 1. (ed.) Frank, Albert J. von. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. [Emerson was ordained on March 11, 1829, as a junior minister. The complete edition consists of four volumes. Also see Sermon XVIII.] [See Bloom 2006.]
Frye, Northrop. 1982. The Great Code: the Bible and Literature. Toronto: Academic Press. [Frye presents his own personal encounter with the Christian Bible. He does not utilize theology or Biblical scholarship. That is, he does not try to summarize a scholarly consensus about the Bible. He links the Bible with literature; he does not study the Bible as literature. But most important is the way he talks about three phases in the use of language, borrowing ideas from Giambattista Vico and Roman Jakobson. Cf. p. 229.]
Gandhi, M. K. 1993. Gandhi and the Gita. (ed.) J. I. (Hans) Bakker. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. [This is “Gandhi’s” translation of the Bhagavad Gita and an essay by Bakker on the importance of the Gandhi-Desai-Bhave translation.]
Grodzins, Dean. 2002. American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.
Hubert, Marie Louise. 1952. Pascal’s Unfinished Apology: A Study of His Plan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Reprinted in 1973 by Kenikat Press of Port Washington, N.Y.; Hubert is a nun: Sister Marie Louise Hubert, O.P.]
Israel, Jonathan. 2001. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1781. Critique of Pure Reason. [There are many editions and translations. I prefer the Cambridge University Press edition.]
Kant, Immanuel. 1999 [1996]. Practical Philosophy. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Kelly, Van. 1992. Pascalian Fictions: Antagonism and Absent Agency in the Wager and Other Pensées. Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications.
Kraemer, Joel L. 2008. Maimonides: the Life and Work of On of Civilization’s Greatest Minds. New York: Doubleday. [Maimonides was essentially an Aristotelian. He benefitted from the Islamic Arabic rediscovery of Aristotle as a thinker separate from Plato. He moves beyond Ancient Judaism and Rabbinical Judaism, and is part of the “classical” stage, but his thinking is still pre-modern, pre modern science, thinking.]
Macionis, John J. 2007. Sociology, Eleventh Edition. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. [This is the “American” edition. See Macionis and Gerber 2009.]
Macionis, John J. and Gerber, Linda M. 2009. Sociology: Sixth Canadian Edition. Toronto: Pearson & Prentice-Hall. [This edited book has twenty chapters.]
Maimonides [Ram Bam]. 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Tr. S. Pines. Chicago.
[Note: In a correct translation it is not the “guide for the perplexed.”]
[The name Maimonides came about by adding a Greek patronymic suffix ( -ides) to the Latinized name Maimon. Jews later called him RaMBaM, Rabbenu Mosheh ben Maimon. Moses ben Maimon is a short Hebrew version of Maimonides’ name. The Arabic is al-Ra’is Abu ‘Imran Musa ibn Maymun Ibn ‘Abdallah al-Qurtubi al-Andalusi al-Isra’il! The Hebrew version appeared in a 12th c translation as Moreh ha-nevukhim.]
Menand, Louis. 2001. “Part Three: Chapter Seven: The Peirces, Chapter Eight: The Law of Errors, Chapter Nine: The Metaphysical Club.” Pp. 150-232 in The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Montagu, Ashley (ed.) 1984. Science and Creationism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nielsen, Donald A. 1999. Three Faces of God: Society, Religion and the Categories of Totality in the Philosophny of Emile Durkheim. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press. [Nielsen argues that Durkheim, a descendant of rabbis, takes an approach that is reminiscent of Spinoza’s panentheism.]
Pascal, Blaise. 1966. Pensées. Tr. A. J. Krailsheimer. NewYork: Penguin.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1998.”The Seven Systems of Metaphysics.” The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 2 (1893-1913). Boomington, IN: Indiana University Press. [This is the Harvard Lecture of April 16, 1903.]
Eco, Umberto. Sherlock Holmes and abduction.
Segal, Robert A. 2006. “Myth.” Pp. 337-355 in Segal, Robert A. (ed.) 2006. The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Sherwood, Yvonne (ed.) 2004. Derrida’s Bible: (Reading a Page of Scripture with a Little Help from Derrida). New York: Palgrave MacMillan. [See Barton 2004.]
Smoley, Richard. 2002. Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition. Boston: Shambala. [This is a very naïve book. Compare this to the typology of ancient, classical and modern thought in …]
Winks, Robin W. 1969. The Historian as Detective: Essays on Evidence. New York:
Hans is working on a book tentatively called Common Era: Religion for All Humanity It starts with many Unitarian and Universalist assumptions. But Hans would like it to be ecumenical. Many U-U members reject one or more faiths as inadequate for themselves personally. Yet, properly understood and interpreted, all religious faiths can be personally meaningful. Of course, each major world religious has also been utilized in ways that run counter to any kind of real religiosity or spirituality.
According to a few trials, Hans is an INTP in terms of the Myer-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI); see Richardson (1996). There are fifteen other personality types in the MBTI. At the very least that means that there must be at least sixteen different ways of understanding, comprehending, feeling, believing, and so forth!
It is fascinating to note that Israel is not a “secular” state with freedom of religion, like Canada, India and Indonesia, but more like a “theocratic” state like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and traditional Tibet. If Israel is a “Jewish” state then one would think it would follow “Jewish” law. It does not follow the Bible (Tanakh) or the laws (Halakha). Zionism is a nineteenth century political ideology and not an ancient political theory. Israel is a “Jewish state” yet it does not clearly adhere to Jewish norms of Ancient, Rabbinical or Classical times. That is the dilemma for many Ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox and Traditional Jews.
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