The search for truth about the nature of reality, the meaning of human life, and the foundation of morality lies at the intersection of philosophy, science, theology, and ethics. What are some of the foundational questions?
- Why is there anything rather than nothing?
- Does the universe have an explanation for its existence?
- Can the universe explain its own existence?
- Did the universe begin to exist?
- What must the cause of the universe be like: temporal or timeless, changeable or unchanging, material or immaterial, complex or absolutely simple? Does it transcend or fill space, is it limited or unlimited?
- Is the cause contingent, or is it the necessary sustaining source of all other existence here and now?
- Is the cause impersonal, or is it the source of of our self, our mind, our free-will, and our personhood?
- Is the cause of the universe good, and what grounds objective moral obligation?
- Is there good reason to believe that there was a national divine revelation at Sinai, and what would it show about the truths of the Torah?
- Why is there good and evil, and is there any purpose to it all?
Questions 1-8 ask whether God exists and what His nature must be; Question 9 then asks whether this Creator and Guide has communicated with man, and whether Sinai was such a revelation.
These are among the most profound and hotly debated questions in philosophy and in life itself, with skeptics and theists standing at opposite ends of the spectrum.
A good place to start might be at the beginning:
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹקים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
These first words of Genesis reveal two fundamental things about God: God is, and God acts. If we affirm God as the Creator and Guide of the universe, we may ask both what God is and how God acts. To speak intelligibly about divine action, however, we need a language of causality. What we think about causality influences our understanding of how God acts—and, in part—who God is.
A famous and controversial argument, found in the writings of the philosophers and defended with particular clarity by Rav Saadiah Gaon, may be stated as follows:
Premise 1: Anything that begins to exist has a cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause.
When we unpack the conclusion, we discover that it tells us a great deal about what such a First Cause of the universe must be like.