A philosophical critique of your concept of providence
There is someone named Rafi Vered who posted on Facebook a few years ago a philosophical critique of your concept of providence. I would appreciate it if you could respond to his critique, thanks in advance:
I’ll start by saying that I like Rabbi Michael Avraham very much. Back when I was in first grade, I came across his immortal book ‘Two Carts and a Hot Air Balloon’ (in the first edition, without margins and with a size 6 font) and read it eagerly (I hold the record for completing three of his books). Later, I even confronted him with Rabbi Kellner (not directly, of course), and I enjoyed the results very much. I, by the way, believe that the two of them are not very far apart in their views on matters of faith. When I was in my first degree, I managed to arrange a study group with the Rabbi, along with two other guys, on matters of philosophy that lasted almost a year, and today, in addition to our being neighbors, I am privileged to hear him quite a bit in the classes he teaches in Lod.
And yet, there are issues on which I definitely disagree with him. A few months ago I was asked (and don’t try to understand why I was asked) a question about Rabbi Michael Avraham’s concept of providence, who explicitly writes:
“In any case, it is unlikely that there is reward and punishment in this world, regardless of the sources of the Sages, since it does not seem to me that there is any involvement of the Blessed One in the conduct of the world. It seems quite clear that the world around us is conducted according to the laws of nature and our free will and without divine involvement.”
This is, more or less, what I answered to that questioner:
The question of providence is certainly a difficult one, and it does clash head-on with the laws of physics as we know them. But before you raise questions about the possibility of providence in the natural world, you should ask a much simpler question that concerns your basic premise: Is there even free choice for humans?
Free choice also contradicts the laws of physics as we know them. A common way to illustrate this idea is with an imaginary creature called Laplace’s elf. Laplace’s elf knows exactly where all the particles in the universe were at any given moment, as well as their exact velocities. Given this information, he is able to instantly calculate where each and every particle will be at any given moment in the future. This is true for distant stars, but it is no less true for humans themselves. That is, since we are ultimately made up of nothing but atoms and elementary particles, we are subject to the same laws of physics. It is those laws that determine how we will behave and what we will do, and not some choice of ours that can break physics.
After all, what is a choice, if not just a collection of electrical signals running along the synapses, transmitting information between neurons? This ‘mental process’ is also just a product of physics, subject to its strict laws. Therefore, the electrical signal running through your brain right now is not a product of ‘free choice’, but of the physical starting conditions that determined in advance what exactly it will do. In other words: just as the movement of the Earth around itself and around the Sun is derived in a single, unambiguous way from the initial state of the universe some 13 billion years ago, so too does every molecule moving inside your skull do so not because you chose it, but because that is what physics has decreed for it from the beginning.
Here everything becomes much simpler: If you believe that a person has free choice (one of the foundations of faith, according to the Darambam) and is able to bend the physics of a goblin to the ground – even though modern science does not allow this – you will believe that God watches over his world and bends physics as he wishes. The revolutionary idea that you have ‘free choice’ that can change the deterministic course of reality seems obvious to you, because you truly and sincerely believe in this illusion that you have the ability to choose. But deep down, it is a miracle.
Providence, quite simply, is the divine response to human choice, so just as providence requires a spoliation of nature, your free choice requires it as well. And just as you can’t see nature bending to free choice (and for some reason, it doesn’t bother you at all), don’t expect to be able to see the effect of providence on the laws of physics.
Belief that anything that cannot be measured scientifically does not exist is simple materialism, and therefore in fact a complete heresy. The Jewish faith claims that there is something above nature that governs reality and sometimes bends the laws of physics: free will and providence. And just as Rabbi Michael Avraham believes in free will (and he does. His book will testify), he can believe in providence.
Discover more from הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Discover more from הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Tell me if I understood you correctly, because in your answer to Yeshi regarding free choice, the laws of physics are indeed broken and bent whenever we choose (meaning that our very choice in any case is a breach of the closed physics complex to us), but when you have before you on both sides of the fence either to give up the experience that you feel you are truly choosing and it is not for her on the one hand, or to give up what we know from science that there are rigid laws of physics that humanity cannot bend in any way (except for God, who can perform miracles at will), then is this exception to the free choice of each and every person? Do you prefer intuitive experience over computational scientific knowledge? (By the way: and the bottom line is that the world is full of billions of people who perform miracles)
No. You misunderstood. We have no knowledge that we cannot deviate from the laws. On the contrary, we have knowledge that we can. It is one of the laws of nature. I don't know what "computational scientific knowledge" is, but I suspect it is a pompous but empty expression.
“Computational scientific knowledge” This is indeed my invention through improvisation (which indicates a lack of skill and an inability to express myself in rich language while writing from moment to moment). My intention was to point out something that is contrary to the rigid laws of science, such as the ability of a human being to float in the air and be a bird. In any case, for our purposes, you made a leap of the Oculus Focus. Let's take the parable of the man in the air for example. If I tell you that the people who live in the building next to you have the ability to deviate from the laws of nature, such as floating in the air without wings, you rightly will not believe me until you see with your own eyes (after reliability tests that there is no bias or illusion here) because this contradicts what we know about the rigid laws of nature. Now when I ask you how is it possible, then, to deviate from the physical laws of nature by free choice? You are supposedly telling me that I am here, that I experience this every day (supposedly on the basis of the previous claim that I was here, that I saw the spirits floating in the air), but that is not the same, since an intuitive experience is not equivalent to what is seen with the eyes? (Not even to the "mind's eye" as you like to define it) So if there were no obstacle to your experience, let's say that it most likely reflects this assertion, because why would we give up on this experience for nothing? But here in our case, there is an obstacle called our knowledge that the laws of science cannot be deviated from? So what are you making excuses for me? They can be deviated from by the fact that I experience it this way! That's ridiculous (it's like me telling you that nature is in the hands of the Almighty as written in our sources, and then you ask me if in reality we haven't seen it work (speaking of prayers helping?) and I'll be as smart as you are and say it does work since it's written in the manufacturer's instructions and it overrides what you think in reality). And that's actually what I asked about Didan, why did you decide in favor of your experience, which is why you decided to define it as knowledge equivalent to sensory perception that overrides the other side that is known to us in a tangible, visual way, that there are no deviations from the laws of nature except for miracles of the Almighty who controls nature and created it??
If you tell me, I won't believe you. But if each of us saw this every day, then we would all understand that it is part of the laws of nature. Therefore, it is not true that we know concretely that there are no exceptions except for miracles. If anything, then we have not seen miracles, while we experience choice all the time.
If so, it is only a matter of definition. You define an intuitive experience that is solid knowledge, even if not equivalent to sensory perception, but enough to assume that it is indeed true, and not the placenta that overrides everything we know about the laws of physics in all other sensory realities on the other hand, meaning that if we compare this to a similar well-known example of the vertigo phenomenon of all pilots, where there are also two options, or the placenta of the pilot who feels a real experience just like your feeling of free choice or deviation from the laws of nature, you would define that all these pilots are indeed experiencing something real because an experience overrides our accumulated knowledge of the rigid laws of physics. It is fortunate that you are not a pilot, because then you would decide to follow this true definition of breaking the rules and continue to gallop to the solid ground without being able to greet the other person.
If we wrote all this to prove that people have different intuitions, that's enough. And if we proved that all our insights, including ‘computational science’ are based on such intuitions, that's enough too. The fact that you write with intonation as if you were making some significant claim here, doesn't make it a significant claim. If you want, don't accept your intuitions, and good luck to you.
I'll just comment that to conclude from this that this is a matter of definition alone really indicates a serious problem in understanding.
It is precisely from this mocking answer that there is a correct line that even science ultimately boils down to intuition, and this is indeed a correct definition, except that I divided you between intuition that comes from empirical science after testing that this intuition that is accepted in the world is subject to refutation, on which airplanes and future predictions are also built, and intuition that comes from a subjective experience that there is no way to measure it in itself, external to us, especially since it contradicts the intuition that also exists in us that the laws of physics do not change, and which therefore this intuition is not real, such as the aforementioned intuition, but the placenta as the vertigo experience of pilots. So what did we have here, your beautiful game of definitions and finally my beautiful game against it also in definitions, when I was born with good fortune, a third intuition, and I also brought a fourth intuition of the pilots' experience, when the bottom line is that the settled law actually rejects two of the aforementioned four. As an illusory fiction and so to speak?
Leave a Reply
Please login or Register to submit your answer
