God’s involvement in our thoughts

One way or another, there is intervention here. Without intervention, the world would be governed by the laws of nature + human decisions. When God intervenes, even if He does not force the outcome, there is a deviation from natural conduct. This is of course possible, but it is still an deviation. This is how the commentators wrote about the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. Some of them understood that this was only the hardening of the weights, but they left him a choice. —————————————————————————————— Asks: I agree that there is an exception here. It’s just that, as far as I understand, the reason you believe that there is no providence today or that it is very rare is because you see that there are no exceptions to the physical laws of nature in the world. But if we expand the view beyond the exception to the physical laws of nature, it seems that there may be many exceptions in everyday life from the natural process, only that these exceptions cannot be noticed because they occur in the consciousness of humans, and this field is not empirical. In other words, what I’m trying to find out is, is it plausible in your opinion that anomalies like the ones I described are happening nowadays? And if not, why not? —————————————————————————————— Rabbi: In principle, our thoughts and desires are accompanied by physical processes in the brain. But you are right that it is almost impossible to distinguish this empirically, and therefore the intervention is possible there. A similar mechanism is also possible within the framework of quantum uncertainty (although this is only on very small scales). —————————————————————————————— Asks: In general, where do you think initial ideas emerge in our heads? I mean ideas that originate within the person themselves and do not come in response to any external stimulus. Where do these ideas come to our minds? And why does idea X and not Y come from? —————————————————————————————— Rabbi: Regarding this, the sages said that Torah comes to a person in distraction, like a find. The ideas arise in a way that our control over is limited (although not complete). They are the result of our experience and of creativity that has a deliberate dimension along with a random dimension. The choice between ideas is made in a controlled manner and with discretion. As stated in the previous email, it is possible that God, the Holy One, also puts ideas into our heads. —————————————————————————————— Aviad Baron: If so, perhaps it can be argued that there is a certain value to prayer because God may intervene in people’s decisions and thoughts. Suppose I pray for someone’s healing, then it is possible that God will deny the doctor free choice so that the correct steps are taken to heal her..? —————————————————————————————— Rabbi: First, the proposal was not that God would deny someone choice, but that He would bring to mind possibilities that would allow for choices that would not have been made without it. Denying choice is like interfering with the laws of nature. What did we gain from denying choice compared to interfering with nature itself?
In any case, what you say is true even without this move. It is possible that it occasionally interferes with the laws of nature themselves (probably even if it happens it is quite rare and therefore we do not see it), so if you have no way out through nature there is a point in praying. Just do not count on it helping.
To systematically examine this, an experiment must be conducted in a population that was prayed for versus a population that was not prayed for and see differences in the percentage of healing (which is of course forbidden. There is a prohibition against testing God, except with tithes. And even there, in my opinion, it doesn’t work). Several such experiments have been conducted and they are probably problematic (see the appendix to the book God Plays Dice). From my experience, I don’t feel that prayer changes anything. —————————————————————————————— Aviad Baron: I didn’t mean that there was any benefit in this, but simply that unlike the laws of nature where there is seemingly no intervention because everything operates with deterministic law, there is no fixed law and it is not possible to determine with a probability of 1 what his steps will be. Therefore, one could perhaps say that God does intervene there… but this is just a suggestion to make prayer more attractive. —————————————————————————————— Rabbi: As mentioned, I see no difference. The question of whether or not it is possible to determine the future is not at all related to the question of intervention. Even in quantum theory, which is not deterministic in the conventional sense, intervention is “illegal” (although it can happen, as in the normal laws of nature). But any such intervention is an exception, whether an exception to randomness, or to choice, or to natural law. See the chapter on this in the Science of Freedom in the chapter on quantum mechanics.