We touch on Law of Probability and claim it is the most-easily accepted secular proof of Judaism. This is because it is familiar and approachable for the secular mind.
The Jewish Mount Sinai claim of a mass mutually experienced revelation must surely be shredded by Probability. However good we are salesmen there must a limit. Utterly uniquely the Jews are stupid enough to insist on, not an easily claimed private, unwitnessed one to one revelation, but a vast public Hollywood-style massive event – witnessed by millions!!!? OK. Calm down. Let us see what probability does with such an outlandish narrative. How does it analyse with the Jews’ craziest claim.
This is the heart of the matter and must be laid bare. It is the central, most challenging, central piece of the jigsaw. All the chicken soup and kitsch in the world – guilt, Zionism, kosher-style food and kosher hogwash (if that is possible) – all is irrelevant. What about the very central plank of your so-called ‘provable’ heritage?
The Challenge: A Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt
Can it be proven, beyond any reasonable doubt, without a scintilla of blind faith, that the Jews witnessed a supernatural event at Sinai giving them the Torah?
This would establish the existence of the Almighty, and verify the Torah and its contents. If this can be established judicially for a person of intelligence, logic and honesty, then the world becomes a very different place.
But to be plain – if it is not judicially provable, Judaism remains merely an expression of no more than faith – and we are exactly like all other religions – a pure, genuinely-held but blind faith. And a lot of effort has been wasted on this site!!
Yet, scandalously, outrageously, utterly frustratingly – the Jew can indeed prove his case absolutely beyond any reasonable doubt, through the inscrutable, irrefutable Law of Probability. I mean here specifically the laws of chance controlling arithmetic odds that can be mathematically calculated. I absolutely do not mean sloppy, generalized ‘probability’ as in plausibility, credibility, reasonableness or possibility. These prove nothing.
Traditional Proofs Supporting Judaism’s Claims – Sinai.
Before Probability however, I must just for a moment mention the traditional ‘Jewish’ proof – our experience at Mt Sinai – the start of your historical unbroken DNA chain. This is fully supported by the non-Jewish historical, non-Jewish archaeological and non-Jewish societal evidence. These factors prove your unbroken familial succession going back to the claimed event – the Revelation at Mount Sinai. This judicially explains your existence as a – possibly begrudging– Jew. It utterly rejects any faith in an individual’s unwitnessed visions or revelations, or miracles and unsubstantiated material that would not stand up to examination by a court of law. It is indeed judicially invincible – believe it or not. And yes, I do prove elsewhere that there is a perfectly acceptable chain of judicial evidence.
Three separate issues.
Yes, I know I must not muddy three issues. First – there is the historical chain. Perhaps that is proven. Secondly – there is verification that there was a founding event. Call it Sinai. Perhaps that is proven. But thirdly and vitally, there is proof that this event was a supernatural event. If it was not supernatural then we have got nowhere. This is the crux of the matter. Let us see how far we can get.
That Rotten Jewish Lawyer’s get-out clause.
But there is one rider. Yes, there had to be! We need to have free will to be good or bad. Man must earn his rewards. The entire system of freewill is central to Judaism. The early Book of Job discusses this at length. We of course will deal with this elsewhere. So, there must be some doubt, some area of questioning. If every time we were bad a thunder bolt descended there would be no freewill. No freewill means no rewards. So, Sinai must be provable – but not unequivocally.
So there is indeed – as I claim – a very powerful combination of proofs – including Probability – but you must have a area of doubt. You must have a choice to steal that last nougat chocolate when no one is watching. A man in prison with no cigarettes, no drugs, no extra food, no alcohol has not given up his addiction – he has no choice. He deserves no reward for self-control.
Overcoming Skepticism in Secular Judaism
Now, I know that you have a real problem with this. So does every thinking secular Jew. So did I. Surely the whole weakness of every religion is that it cannot be proven? Now you say for freewill purposes – this also partially applies to Judaism. If I have an even slight get-out clause – allowing for freewill, have I not destroyed the great certainty I claim for Judaism. Well, if you think deeply enough – with all due respect – you will see that this is not true. Judaism is not beholden to be absolutely provable to you. It is simply the best way for a Jew to live a full and valuable life. – internally and externally. Many of course lead exemplary lives of service to others – whilst suffering horrifically psychologically. Freewill was part of the system – from the first. There must a sliver of doubt. But only a sliver.
I’ll believe in ghosts when I see one.
What if your entire family and group of friends insisted they had witnessed Myrtle – your family ghost -visiting? And what if they just kept on insisting in this? Obviously, as usual, they were into the magic mushrooms or something. But over time you would allow for ‘something’ to have happened.
The problem is not that ‘you know’ that ghosts do not exist. In pure logic, all you know is that you have not met one – yet. Nor has anyone you trust. The same applies to the supernatural..
Your justifiable automatic cynicism is rooted in the fact that neither you, nor anyone you know of, have had an empirical personal experience of the spiritual or supernatural. Further, how can you even contemplate an invisible Deity who has apparently never manifested Himself – except as told in a 3000 year old Book? And, if He were to be demonstrable, you absolutely correctly add that the utterly chaotic and utterly cruel world He created – ‘in loving kindness’ – needs, with the greatest of respect, a little explaining!
You’re Thankfully Not Dealing With a Missionary
No, I get it – I get it. So, please do not dismiss me as some missionary preacher asking you to hold hands and ‘just believe in blind faith’, ‘feel the presence’, ‘know thine Maker’ – whatever. I am to attempt the exact opposite. But all that is for later.
Now we can return to the Law of Probability. Get out that thinking cap. For the modern cynic, as we have said, it is a more comfortable starting point. This must be, naturally, only a single thread in our argument, but it is a central and powerful one for secular Jews and corroborates the other evidence adduced.
The Sinai Revelation: Judaism’s Core Claim
The apparently utterly laughable, hilariously ridiculous claim to which we shall apply the Law of Probability is that at Sinai in 1312 BCE:
- All the Jews personally and simultaneously witnessed,
- And watched one another witness,
- The Revelation and Giving of the Torah,
- They then immediately followed the Laws,
- Each entire generation passed on that historical event,
- Each generation followed the Laws,
- Each generation can be traced to this day.
What stupid insanity! Fairy tales! What a crazy claim! It really is ridiculous. No one could begin to believe it. We all should have said, ‘No. Never happened!’
Why the Sinai Event Cannot Be a Scam
We elsewhere examine in depth every convoluted way such a ‘lie’, myth, conglomeration of faith narratives and customs, ancient mumbo-jumbo could be promulgated. We really try to prove to ourselves that it was a trick, a mistake or never happened. But a massive kosher scam turns out to be not merely improbable – but, horrifically, impossible.
And if a scam, this claim of a massive, public, simultaneous revelation before an entire nation has never even been attempted in any other religion and has never worked again. Every faith would love to have such ocular, judicially acceptable proof; even some sort of claim like this. But none even hints at this. Because it is so easily utterly defeated. We do not find any religion even suggesting this. No one else has even tried it amongst the thousands of recorded faiths in the world. No one else has dared to claim a Mount Sinai type shared experience. So we must be crazy even to try to foist this on the world. We may be too clever by half but that clever we can’t be.
A Bold, And Unique Claim
Again, this is the single, unique example of such a narrative. It must fail and, quintessentially for you, if a lie, its success itself breaks every one of the Laws of Probability – as below. To believe that this was a one off trick, we learn later that you must also believe that you can throw a die six times showing the number 6 each time, in an unbroken row. We prove below that the chances of you throwing six sixes consecutively or of reading this as a Jew are 50,000 to 1 or 0.00214%. That equals impossibility in practice!
Stop reading immediately!! You are defeating the Law of Probability – unless …. it has defeated Probability (well, you know, those Jews are clever) unless it is tr…. (No, sorry, that’s impossible.) So you – as a surviving Jew reading this – are living proof that – however impossibly – it worked and survived. Otherwise your religion and identity would have disappeared long ago. Other religions survive precisely because their narratives are based on pure unprovable faith in one man’s unwitnessed claims – unwitnessed – which can be neither proven nor disproven. Math and numbers cannot touch blind faith. But Jews claim judicial validity and must be open to scrutiny. So, scrutinize already!
Number Crunching: Applying The Law of Probability to Religion
So now to the number crunching and the implacable, irrefutable Law of Probability. The ‘probability-test’ is widely used when investigating new marketing ideas. There are innumerable applications of this approach. It is a favorite manner of testing truth. After all, the civil courts use ‘a balance of probabilities’ – note ‘probabilities’. It is commonplace of course to use Probability to examine plausibility. This tool is very useful in that it corroborates claims, in an entirely objective manner, without relying on the interpretation of evidence. It provides a rigorous, irrefutable interrogation. Almost every configuration of probability, with a lower case ‘p’, has been used to prove or disprove most faiths – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or atheism – any religion. The application of probability to religion is a very old practice dating back to the 17th century. These tend to center on the existence of any deity as well as the narrative.
Applying The Law of Probability Correctly
Most start with several assumptions that actually negate the true Mathematical Law of Probability. They use a more general application of ‘probability’: i.e. the thesis starts with the chances of 50:50 that religion is true or with examining propositions and weighting them. But these are almost statements of faith. The great logician Godel, 1906 – 1978, has been used to prove the ‘probability of the Existence’ – but in truth his ‘incompleteness theory’ – even when applied by believers – proves only the need for – not the existence of – a Creator. There is a plethora of such claims of ‘probability’. None that I have read uses the mathematical Law of Probability rigorously or even attempts to do so but rather discusses general likelihood and plausibility. They remain pious – if noble – failures. They prove nothing but simply repeat circular discussions that no court could entertain.
Law of Probability and Pure Faith Religions
The probability of any pure faith religion arising even today and surviving is very high. Billions believe in them – based on pure, unwitnessed narratives. The result is astonishingly good for human civilization around the world. We mention elsewhere Real Judaism’s admiration for their followers – provided they do not try to exterminate us!
And today??? Yes, the remarkable Mormons prove this. Indeed, we observe that Man has religious feelings. Whether in an undiscovered Amazonian tribe or in the Vatican, he has a plethora of unprovable beliefs and a mass of rituals with no practical use. These can survive for millennia. Thus pure faiths are easy to explain. They cannot be proven or disproven and humans are hard-wired to ‘believe’ – even in atheism.
Judaism’s Unique Law of Probability Challenge
Now what of Judaism – that insists it is a non-faith, historical fact-based religion? Modern Jewish minds have also used general probability and Probability in various ways to convince secular Jews to examine their lost heritage. ‘What are the chances of Judaism existing?’ is an old question posed by innumerable lecturers visiting university Jewish Societies. The ultimate example of this perhaps is the gripping tour de force of Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, one of the most recent Jewish thinkers to do this in this context.
He brilliantly uses true Probability in a landmark lecture he gave some years ago. [8th Nov 2012]
As an internationally renowned figure whose books and lectures awaken a world of knowledge, he certainly does not need my recommendation.
A Question For Every Thinking Jew
But really, every thinking Jew should ask, ‘What is the probability that I still exist as a Jew together with my heritage?’ The rather startling mathematical conclusion from Probability is, as mentioned, that you really must not exist. Even more discomforting is the parallel fact – note fact – that the experience at Sinai is also proven to be impossible to fake and doubly impossible to impose on future generations. Yet, it was alive and kicking in your family only a couple of generations back. And they were not ignorant, superstitious half-wits because you inherited their genes.
You may, begrudgingly, have to concede, as we prove elsewhere, some convocation and religious gathering at a Middle Eastern mountain more than 2500 years ago. Who cares? So it happened – a vast Guilt-Fest by the Jews. However, that does not shake your premise that the supernatural Revelation is a myth. Perhaps it is a genuinely believed myth; a brilliant myth; an incredibly-complex and well-supported myth; a myth created by a few cunning geniuses; even an irrefutable myth; but it must be a myth. This is the ultimate truth for the secular Jew – otherwise what on earth is he doing with his life? He must hide behind this fig leaf!
The Logic of Belief in Myths
Nobody believes in purple dragons breathing green fire and devastating Basingstoke. Nobody would believe a prediction that one will do so next Wednesday and nobody will believe that this happened in 1067 at 9 am on the 30th of February. Why? Because no one has ever seen purple dragons breathing green fire. Simple!
Similarly, no one we know has scientific, ocular proof that anyone has ever seen, heard or experienced the Almighty. Ah, for once we agree!
This problem of the lack of any personal experience of the supernatural is a point we must discuss – but it is utterly irrelevant here. We are examining cold hard facts and mathematical probabilities and not your degree of skepticism. In pure logic we must ignore our personal cynical response and any instinctive disbelief. The question before the court is what is the probability of Sinai – however ‘unbelievable’ – being a myth or true in purely mathematical terms.
Calculating the Odds: Four Key Questions
So, to the calculator. Consider four questions: What are the odds in probability of the
Jewish belief i) being unique, ii) being believed, iii) being passed down and iv) being in fact the truth?
Is the Jewish Myth Truly Unique?
Good question. Today we know of no religion that has tried the Sinai- type public revelation argument – myth. Let us, temporarily, presume there have been roughly 50000 religions – cults, supernaturally- based thought systems – in the last 4000 years. Today, there are about 8000 – 10000 across the globe. About 40000 have disappeared with little trace. We will examine this number later. None claims more than an unwitnessed – again note unwitnessed – private revelation to a single person – or very small group – by a god, angel, messianic figure or other spiritual visitation. None have a living, traceable familial chain to a mass simultaneous revelation. Only the Jews had the stupidity or chutzpah to try that one. Nearly all faiths however claim any number of publicly-witnessed miracles performed by their protagonist. Sorry – not acceptable to the court of Reason.
What do Miracles Actually Prove?
First, ‘his’ claimed miracles prove only that he is a miracle worker – even if indeed a very special person, uniquely endowed. We learn nothing from miracles that logically could inform the court about other claims. They most emphatically do not prove that he had an unwitnessed interview with a deity who appointed him as spiritual leader of the world. Importantly they do not disprove this either. We must simply have faith in his word. Secondly, no faith has any unbroken link or details about the witnesses who claim to have seen the miracles. Close scrutiny proves this. Thirdly, these are claimed as miracles by a man, not the public appearance of the Deity. Maimonides, as quoted elsewhere, very clearly dismisses miracles as proof. In 1220 he wrote,
‘The Jews did not believe in Moses because of the miracles … If one believes in something because of miracles, he may suspect that they were performed through trickery ….. We believe in Moses because of what happened at Sinai. Our own eyes saw, not a stranger’s, our own ears heard, and not another’s… The Revelation at Sinai is the only real proof that Moses’ prophecy was true and above suspicion …’
Could There Be another Sinai We’re Not Aware of?
But perhaps there could have been a similar Sinai-type myth in unrecorded religions of the distant past which are now extinct and of which we have never heard. Well, there are two alternatives: they have existed or they have not. If they did exist – we know only of one example that survived – Judaism. And if all the others disappeared during the last 4000 years, we can learn first, that by disappearing they considerably reduce the odds of our similar Sinai myth surviving – and secondly, that they disappeared precisely because the story was unsustainable. But we are here??
And, yes, the undiscovered Wunga-Woogu YaTaTa tribe of the Amazon – of whom we do not yet know – may have today, as they roam the jungle, exactly such a belief and eat bagels. Now, I am sure they are very fine people and make excellent bagels, but as we do not yet know of them, I hope you will allow me to ignore them!
4000 Years of Defying the Odds
So, within the past 4000 years, the Jewish myth is the only one of its type to have survived. Thus we can postulate that religious ‘nonsense’ like the Jewish Sinai myth can appear only once in 4000 years and survive – because our unique claim has done so. So our probability equation can reasonably operate in a time span of 4000 years.
What Are the Odds of the Sinai Myth Being Believed?
We discuss this later in the course of this section. It is impossible to promulgate a false chain to the Sinai claim because that claim is about a current fact which can be tested.
Current fact! Which current fact??
Each link is the current fact witnessed and averred to before the court in live testimony. This is the Jew’s report to the court of a fact. That fact is that he heard certain words from his father. This is acceptable human testimony. It is this that each Jew tells the court or rather his son – ‘my father [teacher] told me that his father had told him that his father had told him … …’ We dissect this soon. That ‘current’ fact is only that claim – ‘my father told me …’. You personally herd him and witnessed it. The court accepts this and this acceptance is a precedent. In each generation the same applied and created a judicial precedent. What your father said is not that which we believe – only that he said it.
Is Everybody Simply Lying?
Now, agreed, your grandfather’s statement to your father may not have happened – perhaps Dad is telling you a white lie – but your father’s words to you did happen. You could be a delusionist. But when all Orthodox Jews have the same delusion that their parents made that statement – you have evidential certainty – conjoined by precedent. So each generation can give judicially acceptable testimony before their children.
Each generation has valid testimony. That fact has been true for 140 generations. No generation lied because each saw the passing down of the transmission was a fact. The chain is judicially certain. Tracing this back, the root claim of Sinai itself has full judicial testimony in that all today’s orthodox Jews have the same experience that their parents made that statement. You have evidential certainty in that they all say that they heard it personally. This applies back in each generation. And yes, obviously, this established the chain only, but not – not – the veracity of the initial narrative of the events at Sinai. We rehearse all this very thoroughly.
What Are the Odds of This Myth Surviving for 3330 Years?
This rests on the numbers. One single religion – Judaism – has this story. As mentioned, all, practically, of the world religions au contraire have a statement of blind faith in one man’s unwitnessed claim. This type of narrative is indeed extremely successful and followed by about 4 billion people today. We therefore know that the survival of our ‘publicly experienced myth’ is one single example amongst all the religions that have existed – 1:50000. As this directly informs the odds, we must spend a little time examining how many religions there really have been.
An intelligent atheist site estimates that there have historically been 63,000 faiths and 28,000,000 individual gods. It does this to establish the number of faiths in which atheists do not believe. This puzzled me as all faiths die by the same sword. However, it is a free country. Whether there have been 63,000 or say, 50,000 religions, over the past 4000 years, the argument remains good. Different comparative religion schools of thought seem to concur on this.
Law of Probability Tested: Impossible Odds of Jewish Survival
So the odds that our unique religious story survived are roughly 1 in 50000. Odds of 1:50000 are, as we said, roughly the same as throwing a die six times and each throw showing six. If you saw someone doing just this and were told you had just witnessed a 1 in 46656 chance (call it 50,000 to 1) would you trust him with all your money? No, obviously this guy is a 100% fraud. He just did the impossible. To be accurate, there is a 46656 to 1 chance that he is a fraud. In practice you would be certain not to lend him any money. 50000 to 1 is impossible!
Now, some insist probability must be based on known facts and not estimates. So, even if we base our figures precisely only on the 8000 known religions practiced today and ignore the dead religions, we are talking in terms of Judaism being 1 in 8000 which is 0.0015% or the equivalent of throwing 5 sixes in a row. [Five sixes in a row is actually 7776 to 1.] Still want a bet?
Would You Willingly Make a Losing Bet?
Would you trust a man who throws again and again 5 sixes in a row any more than one who throws 6 sixes in a row?? You are certain to lose. Don’t believe me, take off a decade and try it. Just go somewhere quiet and keep tossing that die. If this were a stage magician’s act, he has done the impossible. He is a 100% fraud. Well, actually, to be fair to the poor innocent fellow, a 99.99786% fraud. Would you trust him? Would you base your life on his word? What about your savings? Half your savings? A hundredth? One penny?
So, let us consider the Jewish claim in pure Probability. It is here alive today and evidently is proven to have been believed for 3330 plus years. The chances of this survival are smaller than throwing six sixes in a row. 1 in 46656 – an impossibility. The odds of Judaism having disappeared are 46656 in 1 – a certainty. You must not exist as a Jew – or post-Jew.
There is no viable chance of Judaism having being passed down. 50000 to 1 over 4000 years equals 0.00214%.
The Odds of It Being True – i.e. Supernatural?
Now, this is the really interesting bit. Even if there were a Sinai event, can there really be any chance that one could establish odds on it having been a supernatural event witnessed by an entire nation? Well, this is going to be painful so I shall go gently. In testing probability, the first task is carefully defining what is being measured – the exact nature of the ‘subject’ being assessed, and which aspect. This is often mundane, as for example, the throwing of dice, choosing a card from a standard pack or noting the number of baseball games that have a similar, comparable feature. Here, with Sinai, precisely what are we examining?
Well, let us peel back the onion skins separately. We have settled the first question. What are the odds of one unique myth being used and surviving against x number of other religions’ lies? 1 in 50,000. Secondly, it is a reasonable presumption that all other religions, rather than resting on pure, blind, [and very admirable] non-judicial faith, would have used that successful Jewish myth if they could have – because remember we are now presuming that all religions are merely scams. So the comparison is reasonable and relevant. None ever has. It is too easily disproven.
Law of Probability Proves You Are Practically Impossible
So, Judaism must have disappeared. It simply must not exist – nor you as a Jew. But, you are here – as a Jew. You prove it survived. It is all your fault. You are 1 chance in 50000. You are 99.99786% improbable.
Man, that’s like mega-cool. And you are not a fraud – are you?
Mazel Tov! You are an impossibility… unless your family’s narrative is true and that of course, is ridiculous because it would mean changing 10 million secular Jewish lives or simply disobeying.
Yet, if we look at the evidence and the Law of Probability … …. (repeat/ repeat/ repeat)
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