MAIMONIDES AND THE ATHEIST

Maimonides tried to convince an Atheist that there had to be a God who created the world. When hours of debate proved unsuccessful, the nonbeliever excused himself for a few monents to “take care of some personal business.” When he returned, Maimonides took out a parchment on which was written a beautiful poem with perfect rhyme and meter, expressing brilliant ideas. “What a strange thing happened while you were out of the room!” Maimonides said to his guest. “The ink happened to spill over on my desk and, as it blotted, it created these words by accident.” The man laughed and asked Maimonides why he wanted him to believe such a foolish impossibility. “Why do you reject what I am telling you?” Maimonides asked.”Because,” the man answered, “these words, so carefully thought out with such great sense and meaning, obviously had to be composed by someone with great intelligence. They did not appear here by accident. Somebody had to do it.

“Let your own ears hear what your mouth has said,” Maimonides answered. “If you can’t believe that a simple poem could have come into being by a quirk of fate, how much more so the entire universe, whose wisdom encompasses so much more than these few words and whose profundity surpasses all human understanding.”