Jewish Genius And The Existence Of God -- By: Shawn C. Lazar

Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 29:56 (Spring 2016)
Article: Jewish Genius And The Existence Of God
Author: Shawn C. Lazar


Jewish Genius And The Existence Of God

Shawn C. Lazar

Associate Editor

“I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe, or pretend to believe, that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty Sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.”

–John Adams

Second President of the United States1

I. Introduction

Arguments for the existence of God have progressed beyond the ability of ordinary people to understand them. The scientific and philosophical arguments can be so sophisticated it often takes a PhD in both fields to even understand what is being said, let alone determine which arguments are true.

Is there a practical, easily understood, argument for the existence of God?

I believe there is, and it lies in the Jewish people.

It has been widely observed that the Jewish people are truly exceptional. John Adams noticed it in the quote above. And in his essay, “Concerning the Jews,” Mark Twain made a similar observation:

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one per cent of the human race…Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.

Twain noted that while competing civilizations such as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans “filled the planet with sound and splendor” only to later vanish, the Jew, by contrast,

saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?2

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