TheYeshiva.net - Rabbi YY Jacobson

Basics of Emunah #2: Can Faith and Reason Co-Exist?

What is the Meaning of Faith?

1 hr 34 min

The images in the source sheets are from Eyes that See by Dr. Yaakov Brawer

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Class Summary:

What is faith? Can faith and reason co-exist? What is the distinction between blind faith and visionary faith?

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YF
Yechiel F. -5 years ago
The Miracle of our Eyes.
That demonstration of the Blind Spot, while impressive, is nothing compared to what I experience every day of my life.

When I was a teenager, I was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa. In case you are not familiar with it, it is an eye disease that is normally hereditary and progressive (not in a political sense), and as of now has no known cure. It destroys the retina from the outside edge, inward toward the central vision, resulting in gradually losing the peripheral vision, leaving only a dwindling central vision sometimes referred to as “Tunnel vision". Depending on the rate of progression, one can lose their vision in relatively few years, or stretch it out till late in life.

God was kind to me, and the progression to my eyes has paused for most of my life, baffling the experts, and allowing me to live my life without anyone knowing about my “problem” even though I am now 71. For sake of brevity I am leaving out many interesting details, but suffice to say that I was not totally surprised when about 15 years ago the progression restarted, and my window to the world started closing. But in spite of this, it took me a long time to figure out what really was going on, and that I should no longer be driving a car. And this is what I want to tell you about.

You see the reason I was still driving was because although my eyesight was constricting, I did NOT know that I couldn’t see the things that I thought that I saw. It took me a long while to figure out that my actual sight was about the size of a grapefruit held at about an arm’s length. When I was behind the wheel of the car, or even now when I am being driven around, I think that I see the whole view in the windshield. What is happening is that I have gotten into the habit of “scanning” the scene in front of me, and my brain builds the picture in real time of what it knows should be there, resulting in me “seeing” a large image. But this image that the brain fills in is in high resolution, and if there is a pattern involved as when I walk over carpeting with elaborate weaves, the area surrounding my actual vision is filled in with the proper extrapolated pattern in Real-Time.

This is good, and it is bad. It is good because I am not living in darkness as some pictures seem to depict “tunnel vision”. But it is bad because sometimes I lose concentration and forget that I am limited and tend to bump into things and people and trip over things. Also when I drop something on the floor, I have no idea where it is until I move back and scan the place where I dropped it.

In your lecture about the eye’s Blind Spot, you mentioned that the eyes fill in the empty area of the Blind Spot, But I don’t think that a person with a healthy eyesight could ever fully imagine the Miracle that I have gotten to regard as “normal”.

I hope this brief descriptive gives you enough insight to this Chesed from Hashem that allows me to live a near normal life without thoughts of self pity.

Yechiel F.
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S
Sara -6 years ago
Lisa Wilson
I got it when you told the story of Lisa Wilson.
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Y
yaakov -7 years ago
I was listening recently to shiur you gave about the 5 components of the neshomoh, and how we know if we're in touch with our souls. In Parshas Ki Siso, Hashem tells Moishe that when yidden want their prayers to be heard, they should say rachum chanun vechullu. I was thinking, it's really funny to tell someone, "when I'm angry, say or do this and this, and I'll listen to you". But someone who is really in touch with themselves, knows what will get them out of their anger. Being that our neshomos are a cheilek eloikah mamosh, we should also be so deeply in touch with ourselves. Just a thought.
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J
Jacob -7 years ago
I the first Shiur in this serious available online?
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Joe -8 years ago
“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”
—C.S. Lewis
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