Q&A: Matter
Matter
Question
Hi, have a good week.
One of the arguments I heard from atheists about providence / involvement is that since God is outside the universe (if that phrase can even be understood), He has no influence.
Is it necessarily true that something non-material has no influence?
That seems to me like a very shallow argument.
I’d be happy to hear your opinion, since he meant, among other things, things with physical properties.
Answer
Such influence would go beyond the laws of physics. So what? I don’t see an argument here.
Discussion on Answer
He created the laws of nature. Why think there is any problem with His involvement and with going beyond them? I don’t understand the question.
Does something that has an effect necessarily have to be physical?
That is, is God part of the universe or above it? I know that according to Kabbalah there are two conceptions: filling and surrounding.
Let me phrase it as a question: can a person affect God in the same way that God affects the world?
Or is the interaction one-sided, from God toward us?
Similar to Newton’s third law, a reciprocal relationship: just as He affects, or can affect, so too we can.
Neither the “filling” nor the “surrounding” is part of the world. I already wrote that I see no reason to assume that something that has an effect must be physical.
I don’t know what “affect” means. Benefit Him? Yes. See here about perfection and self-perfection.
What does it mean that they are not part of the world?
Yes, you could say, for example, that He can choose whether to suspend the laws of nature. Can we cause Him to do things like that through actions / prayers?
From Maimonides’ words in the Guide, he writes that the degree of His providence that appears in the world corresponds to the degree of a person’s intellect.
And that a person is called a microcosm in relation to reality, which is the macrocosm.
It is God who is not part of the world. Whether He surrounds the world or fills it, He is still not part of it.
We certainly can. The question of whether that actually happens in practice is a different question.
From what I understood from you, in principle it’s possible, but He changed His “policy,” meaning with things like the cessation of prophecy, etc.
As for self-perfection and perfection, do you have a column or a book where you discuss that? If so, I’d be glad to see it.
Exactly. So if you already recognized that, what is there to ask?!
Search here on the site.
One last question just to make sure: in principle, a non-physical thing can create a physical thing.
That is, God can create the universe without being part of it, right?
Since that does not involve any logical contradiction.
Correct. I don’t see any problem here.
So your claim is that God really is outside the universe, and if He intervenes then that really does go beyond the known laws of physics, but there’s no problem with that.
I’ll ask: why?
Is it because He is not bound by the laws of nature?