Emuna

Isn't it simply "convenient" for us to believe that there is something above and beyond the material world? It is not just "convenient" to believe that there is a G-d Who sees everything and thus gives meaning to life? Could it be that it is just this "convenience" that causes us to believe in G-d?

How do we know there is a G-d?

Our faith is based on 600,000 adult males who saw with their own eyes and experienced receiving the Torah at Sinai, and transmitted this to the generations afterwards. Why shouldn't we say that, just like other people had folklore and legends that they believed, we also had such tales throughout the period of the Judges and First Temple, and that at the time of Ezra the Scribe, he gathered them all together into one book that we now call the Torah? After all, the Talmud says that during his time, parts of the Torah were forgotten and he reinstated them.

Rav Kook relates to the overlap between the two strongest of drives: for spirituality and procreation to continue the existence of our species, and to the psychological & Kabbalistic partnership between the two. (Rav Kook Ayn Aya Shabbat v, 7)

Often idealists tend not to be practical or pragmatic, but Rav Kook stresses in thought, as well as in his life's work and projects, that if one really takes his idealism seriously, he should really want to implement it! (Ayn Aya Shabbat, v, 9)

When God punishes, it is always educational and beneficial. How much more so regarding the famous human sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden which decreed that livelihood will be earned only through the "Sweat of your brow". Our rabbis teach that God will occasionally even do miracles and change nature, in order to keep this "law of nature" Rav Kook explains why this difficulty to make a living is so inherent, essential and basically "untouchable". (Rav Kook's Ayn Aya Series, Masechet Shabbat v, 4-5)