Intervention within nature.

Isn't praying for a "change in nature" heresy? After all, it challenges God's leadership and His leadership of nature. He created nature in a certain way because He sees fit.

” Your ways are in the waters, and your path in many waters, and your footsteps are not known”

This is certainly not an argument. It was created with the intention that if we ask, it will change.

“According to scientific knowledge, nature is closed”. Is that true?! Is there any empirical experiment that supports the hypothesis that nature is closed? It seems to me that the closure of nature is an assumption of modern science and does not stem from it, right?

Indeed, like all other laws of nature. Even the claims for which we have empirical confirmation are based on such assumptions. Therefore, this can be argued for all of modern science. The assumption is that what we see reflects the entire legal process, and what we see is completely deterministic.

Chazal said that praying for the amount of grain in the warehouse is a vain prayer, and one should only pray that “blessings may be poured out upon them.” If they intended to divide between deterministic processes (the amount of grain) and random processes (will a blessing be poured out upon them), according to modern science, Chazal believes that one should not pray for anything today, right?
(Unless “blessings may be poured out upon them” refers to success in trade, in which case the prayer is for changing one’s choices to be successful, and this has not changed since then)

D,
Indeed. I have written this here several times. I have proven on the issue of prayer that in the past the sages thought that there was such a thing as intervention in the framework of nature, and today, to our knowledge, this is not true, and therefore the prayer must be updated specifically if we want to continue in the path of the sages.
Incidentally, a prayer for a change of choice is not fundamentally different from a prayer for a change in nature. In both cases, God intervenes and causes the world to deviate from its custom. There was once a thread started by Oren that proposed such a mechanism for divine intervention in the laws of nature.

But what is your justification for claiming that everything is deterministic?
You are harnessing the reputation of science to the claim, but I really don't think it is justified. The only justification is intuition.
If, as you say, today we know that everything is deterministic (beyond quantum), then this is also true as an argument against free will.
But there you actually go beyond the assumption because there you have an even stronger intuition that there is free will.
Nothing has been proven since the days of the sages either. What has changed is that we have discovered that the deterministic assumption is much more scientifically fruitful, but that does not prove that it is true. And this is also true for free will, and as you wrote here to a researcher who asked about the matter, even there the researcher should simply assume determinism because this is the fruitful scientific approach and it is impossible to research otherwise.

I didn't understand this strange chatter.
In your opinion, if someone claims that hexagonal objects made of wood stand in the air and don't fall to the ground, I should tell them: In principle, you're right. Although the more scientifically productive methodology says that objects actually fall to the earth, this has nothing to do with science and facts (just intuition) and the righteous in their faith will live. Well, never mind.
It has nothing to do with the question of determinism. There are no two competing claims about reality there. Even if there is a part of us that is not deterministic, the scientific assumption that is also accepted by me says to observe only the deterministic part of reality/the brain, because that can be studied. There is no (at least for me) assumption that this is all there is.
Beyond that, there is no indication of divine intervention in the world (today), and therefore there is no reason to assume that it exists. But there are indications of free will (an immediate feeling that one experiences it, similar to sensory observation).

If it is clear to you that a person's will changes the flow of electrons in the nervous system and brain and it aligns a line according to his free will – then what’ will prevent him from doing this?

After all, He revealed in His Torah and through His prophets that His eyes ‘are open to all the ways of men, to give to every man his own ways and the fruit of his deeds’ (Jeremiah 2:17, and other sources mentioned in the Book of Genesis 3:17), then He is prevented from doing what every man does when he chooses?

And what has changed today? Visible miracles were rare even in the days of the prophets, but intervention in natural processes that appear to the naked eye as random and can develop into different scenarios – allows them to be tilted by the Creator in the desired direction, without any visible change in the order of Genesis.

Man's scientific progress, which has not been accompanied by corresponding moral advances, and which brings him to a destructive capacity that was not there in ancient times, only requires increased divine providence in the world so that it does not degenerate into chaos, and we are unaware of what humans could do to us without the help of the cycle of causes.

Best regards, Sh”z Levinger

I didn't understand anything.
Someone puts forward a scientific hypothesis (very strange). I can do an experiment and disprove it (or be surprised), and I can tell him that I won't even bother because the hypothesis seems completely implausible to me. How does this even relate to someone putting forward an unscientific hypothesis (untestable to empirical testing) about divine intervention?
And I didn't understand what you wrote in the last paragraph that it has nothing to do with determinism. You wrote earlier “The assumption is that what we see reflects the entire legal conduct, and what we see is completely deterministic”.
As for the indication of free choice for this, I did address that. I didn't claim that there is divine intervention. I claimed that science does not contradict this hypothesis at all, but intuition, and that the same intuition also opposes choice, so that according to you the power of this intuition is limited.

This is reminiscent of Shnerv's claim in the book "B'Keren Zavit Parashat B'Shalach" that science cannot identify miracles a priori. After all, even if there is intervention, we will simply shift the average and the variance according to the intervention and claim: This is nature.

The dependence between the prayers of many and the rain of blessings can be seen by watching the articles in the form of a prayer on Channel 7.

In late December 2017, the Chief Rabbinate called on the public to add a prayer request for rain to the prayer, and a prayer gathering was even held at the Western Wall with the participation of thousands, and indeed, January 2018 was filled with rain of blessings, contrary to forecasts that predicted that January would be as rainy as the months before it, which were rainy.

Due to the rain of blessings that fell, the Chief Rabbi ordered the Haredi Lau at the end of January to return to routine and stop the special request for rain. They stopped arousing the mercy of God, and in February 2018 the rains returned and decreased and it was as sunny as before the prayer of the many.

It seems that the Lord is expecting our prayer, and will answer it!

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

Y.D.
I have already argued here in the past that it is impossible to identify a miracle, and I asked for an example of what would convince me that it is a miracle. The rabbi replied that maybe a bullet going through a wall. I argued precisely that if it is a one-time thing, we will think that there is a trick here or something rare that happened, and if it is regular, then we will formulate a law that generalizes it.
Now that you say that Shnarev said this, perhaps Rabbi Michael will listen to the claim and take it seriously. It seems to me that Shnarev is in the group of people whose claims he takes seriously.
Incidentally, this argument is also true regarding prophecy, which is also a type of miracle. It is an intervention by God that changes physical things (in the brain or before, if it is photons or acoustic waves that reach us). A person who experiences a prophecy cannot decide whether it is really a prophecy and not an illusion or a personality disorder, except that he thinks so (just like people with the disorder). This is a claim with a much more problematic implication from a religious perspective.

Another point related to chaos theories. There are many parameters in the world, most of which we are not even aware of. Even if we do not see interference, it does not mean that it did not exist. We simply were not in the area to notice it. It is possible that the ’ changed a small factor that we are not even aware of its importance in the system and the end result is completely different. What we have never seen is a miraculous change that contradicts the laws of nature as they are built on each other – physics -> chemistry -> biology -> human sciences… Anyone who expects water to be heated today should seek other expectations. This has a meaning in going to all the sorcerers and magicians who promise a lot but in reality cannot even deny the entourage of Ma'al. I knew Moshahi when she was given a pill to encourage her to conceive. After the fact, it turned out that the pill was given in fertility treatments by doctors, but since that person lacked any relevant medical or scientific training, he was not at all aware of the risks involved in taking that pill, which require certain tests such as blood pressure and the like. Therefore, I say that it is possible that God intervenes today as well. Prayers may help, but these interventions are not visible to us in the miraculous sense that we were raised on.

So much for the individual. On a general level, there are several events in the twentieth century that historians are still struggling to explain. They can explain in detail how World War I broke out. No one has explained to this day why World War I broke out. One of the historians I respect the most suggested that it broke out against the backdrop of Westerners' boredom with the long peace of the nineteenth century. We can also accept Rabbi Kook's explanation that the war broke out against the backdrop of the wickedness of Europeans... One could go on and on, but anyone who thinks that historians offer a logical explanation for what happened is hard not to see him as a foolish follower of scientism.

Yishai,
And yet no scientific explanation can explain how water (H2O) can burn. On this subject I am much more Aristotelian than modern. Water that burns is simply not water. The chemical structure is probably different in a way that allows combustion. A physical miracle in the sense that the former speak of is simply not possible (unless it really is a miracle). Therefore, if the phenomenon did not occur, such interventions in nature probably simply do not exist.

No one could also explain how waves hitting metal cause electrons to be emitted from it, and only when the waves have a certain threshold frequency.
Until Einstein came along.
If they saw burning water, they would try to isolate the conditions under which this happens, and then hypothesize and test them.
By the way, even today there are unexplained things, for example, that under certain conditions (which are also not entirely clear) two bodies that are identical except for their temperature freeze at different times, with the one that was hotter freezing first. This was already reported by Aristotle, but modern science thought it was just nonsense (after all, Aristotle didn't check the number of teeth and he's just a fool, so why should we check our strange claims), because it makes about as much sense as the sky will burn. I haven't seen anyone claim that it's a miracle yet. There are hypotheses and people are trying to study the phenomenon.

If while praying we remember that
“And the LORD said unto Moses, Why cry unto me, Speak unto the children of Israel, and let them go”
then surely prayer helps.

Sh”l, and did I write that he would be surprised by it? I wrote to Heida that he was not. What I wrote is that in my impression he does not do so.

Yishai, and what I answered you is that (my) intuition opposes divine intervention and not choice (which we experience directly. And whoever claims that this is an illusion has the burden of proof). I also wrote that your distinction between science and intuition is baseless. All science is based on intuition. Therefore, when I write something according to the science we know today, it includes elements of intuition. And I also wrote that sporadic intervention is possible, but on the whole I get the impression that there is none.
By the way, the hypothesis about hexagonal trees is not scientific in your sense. When you do an experiment and it fails, I can never say that it was not a perfect hexagon and therefore fell to the ground. And even if it does not fall, you can always say that it was a coincidence (this is just an intuition that there are fixed laws, not a scientific finding). And yet no one thinks of saying that the determination of these hexagons is not scientific but intuitive (which is true of course, but there is no distinction between the two).
What I wrote to distinguish between choice and divine intervention is that the illusion of divine intervention is not unique to a distinct sector of creation (and some extend it to all of creation all the time), while free will is a distinct part of the brain that neuroscience does not deal with (because their methodology assumes determinism and therefore focuses on the deterministic part of the brain).
It seems to me that this discussion is unnecessary babbling on the philosophy of science (about what Bachler calls actualism).

Sh”l,
With “studies” like this you won't get far. In order to draw conclusions, you need to conduct a systematic study. If you show me that when they prayed, it was always answered in a clear way compared to situations where they didn't pray, you can move from articles in the ”Beshav” to some academic scientific journal.

Y”D. Vishay,
You don't need to prolong it. I myself wrote the things (that it would be difficult for me to see a miracle happen). And yet in practice there will be many situations that if they happen I will admit that it is a miracle, despite your nonsense. If a ball goes through a wall, and if someone appears to me in a dream and tells me what will happen tomorrow, etc. Why don't I make a generalization that includes the exception to a new law? Because I won't (and even if I do, as far as I'm concerned it will be a miraculous law). But this is not only about a miracle that directly contradicts the laws of nature, but even a statistical miracle is possible. For example, if there is a statistically significant regularity that prayer is beneficial for rain (especially Jewish prayer). You can of course argue that prayer is a law of nature. So let it be a law of nature. That is what I call a miracle.
Everything you have written here is nothing more than repetitions of the problem of induction in various forms, and our inability to define which generalizations seem simpler and more plausible to us and which do not. These are again amusing quibbles in the philosophy of science (ancient objections to the ability to establish ad hoc laws, or to notice deviations from them). Apparently you are now in a philosophical mood that brings you back to fundamental arguments in the philosophy of science. To health.

The Kabbalah can freeze the laws of nature, but it can equally change the female into a male or turn back time before the scream.
Chazal understand that most things are not a change in nature but more like pulling help from the one who will make the laws of nature work in their favor.
Therefore, those who believe that nature is closed have no such thing as a prayer that is not a vain prayer (unless we interpret it as turning back time, etc., which are things so basic that God does not touch them).