Question

Hello Rabbi!
If I understand correctly the physico-theological proof as presented in The First Existent, then the proof is from the very existence of laws, and not specifically from their content, as you explain at length in your book. When I studied the Kuzari, I thought this was exactly its claim in the first discourse, where it says:

69. The Rabbi said: By this statement of yours, you have not required me to say much in reply. Do you attribute this wisdom found in the creation of the ant, for example, to a sphere, or to a star, or to anything other than the capable Creator, the ordainer, who gave each thing its law without excess or deficiency?

70. The Kuzari said: But this is what is attributed to the action of nature.

71. The Rabbi said: And what is nature?

72. The Kuzari said: It is a force among the forces, according to what we have heard in the sciences, and we do not know what it is, but the sages know it without doubt.

73. The Rabbi said: But their knowledge of it is like ours. The philosopher defined it as the principle and cause by which a thing rests and moves, insofar as that thing possesses it essentially and not accidentally.

74. The Kuzari said: As if he means that a thing which moves by itself and rests by itself has some cause by which it rests and moves, and that cause is nature.

75. The Rabbi said: That is indeed what he meant to say, with great precision and careful distinction between what acts accidentally and what acts naturally. These formulations may startle the listener, but this is the sum of what they know about nature.

76. The Kuzari said: If so, then I see that we have been misled by these names, and they have made us partners with the Creator when we say: “Nature—a wise agent,” and perhaps according to their approach we ought rather to say: “Creator.”

77. The Rabbi said: Indeed so. But the elements, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars, do have effects by way of heating and cooling, moistening and drying, and what depends on them, without our attributing wisdom to them, only operation. But form, measure, generation, and everything that contains wisdom directed toward purpose, can be attributed only to a wise, capable ordainer. And one who calls those things that prepare matter through heating and cooling “nature” does no harm, so long as he removes wisdom from them, just as he would deny to the man and woman the formation of the child through their union; rather, they only assist the matter that receives the human form from the wise designer. And let it not seem far-fetched to you that traces of exalted divine matters should appear in this lower world when those materials are fit to receive them. This is the root of faith and the root of rebellion.

In your understanding, is that the plain meaning of the Kuzari? Thanks