Against Commanding to Believe

In this paper it is argued that there are both moral and practical problems with obligating people to believe in God. This conclusion having been established, its implications for Judaism are then examined. More specifically, it is argued that the rejection of a commandment to believe in God (unlike a rejection of theism) can be accommodated by traditional Jewish thinking much more easily than might be supposed. For instance, it is shown that there is an influential strand of traditional Jewish thought that eschews a commandment to believe in God. And it is argued that there is a defensible interpretation of kavana such that the principle of mitzvot tzrichot kavana can be satisfied in cases of mitzvot performed by non-believers.