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In his brilliant opus “Guide for the Perplexed” Rabbi Moshe Maimonides, Rambam, highlights the importance of the applying our sincere reasoning and our own intellect to find and try to get closer to God.

Quoted from Book 3, Chapter 51:

“Those who are in the country, but turned their backs towards the King’s palace (here Rambam continues the ongoing metaphor about groups of people in their search for God, where God is shown as a King and proximity to His Palace is depicted as closeness to God. Continuation will make it clear which group he means by this metaphor, ed.) are those who possess a religion, belief, and thought , but happen to hold false donctrines, which they either adopted in consequence of greate mistakes made in their own speculations, or received from others who misled them. Because of these doctrines they recede more and more from the royal palace the more they seem to proceed. These are worst than the first class (the atheists in this metaphor, ed.), and under certain circumstances it may become necessary for God to slay them, and extirpate their doctrines, in order that others should not be misled.

Those who desire to arrive at the palace, and to enter it, but have never yet seen it, are the mass of religious people; the multitude that observe the Divine commandments but are ignorant. Those who arrive at the palace, but go around it, are those who devote themselves exclusively to the study of the practical law; they believe traditionally in true principles of faith and learn practical worship of God, but are not trained in philosophical treatment of the principles of the Law, and do not endeavour to establish the truth of their faith by proof. Those who undertake to investigate the priciples of religion, have come into the inner chamber; and there is no doubt that these can also be divided into the different grades.But those who have succeded to find a proof to everything that can be proved, who have a true knowledge of God, so far as a true knowledge can be attained, and are near the truth wherever an approach to the truth is possible, they have reached the goal, and are in the palace where the King lives.