Discussion with Rabbi Makbili
Peace and blessings.
Very nice discussion, highly recommended.
Question: There is free choice, which is a gift or ability or something that God gave us humans. It is said that God decides to take free choice away from man. Is this called interference with the laws of nature? After all, choice is not within the laws of nature, or is there some kind of space free from them, so with that space God intervenes – is this a change in the laws of nature, or a change at one level that only results in changes in the laws of nature?
If we say that this is not called involvement in the laws of nature (it is indeed involvement in the world, but not one that overrides the laws of nature), can we liken the range of quantum phenomena to a kind of free choice – quantum phenomena supposedly have free choice, but there are percentages that will choose this way and some that will choose that way (and just as a person has a free choice whether to sin or not, and yet there are statistics that he will sin, etc. to say that percentages do not constitute an indication that there is no choice), God supposedly intervenes in their choice and takes the choice away from them. Ditto. If we take this model from the micro to the macro, doesn't this mean that there is a practical divine intervention in the world that does not override the laws of nature?
I hope I was understood.
Thank you very much.
This is just a semantic discussion. It is involvement in nature even if not in the laws of nature. Because our choice is part of the nature of the world (we are part of the world).
Quantum mechanics is part of the laws of nature, but it is not a deterministic law but a statistical one.
Any involvement, whether in quantum mechanics or in human choice, is involvement in nature and its change.
So it's simply a matter of definition.
Is free choice part of nature or a bubble in which the laws of nature do not exist? If I do define it as a bubble, then indeed involvement is possible without violating the laws of nature, and that is, without violating any law of determinism. Do you think my words are correct?
I am not familiar with quantum theory. I would just like clarification, when the Rabbi says that it is a statistical law, what does that mean? As far as I understand, it is not meant that it is just a lack of predictability, but that there is something fundamental here, and so, if I define that something is subject to the supposedly free choice (supposedly) of those particles, then again it can be defined as a non-deterministic bubble and so there is no appropriation of something deterministic here.
You gave definitions here. What could be true or false here?
There is no appropriation of something deterministic, but there is interference with a statistical law. You have changed the distribution and the outcome according to the distribution.
You are playing with words.
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