On the cosmological view and more
Hello Rabbi,
First of all, I thank you for the notebooks, the posts, and the responsa. I can’t say exactly how they helped me, but it seems to me that they provoked me to think a lot. As someone who came with a theology that was much ‘fatter’ than the one presented by the rabbi (Rabbi Kook, Hasidism), the arguments I read forced me to think again, so that even beliefs that I had remained with (and I haven’t remained with all of them, at least for now) were reformulated so that there would be justification for believing in them.
I feel like this is a positive process. A lot of it is thanks to you, and for that I am grateful.
1. You wrote in the second notebook that it is not necessary to say that the principle of causality holds even without time. What is this assumption based on? Are there any examples of cause and effect that do not have a relationship of earlier and later?
2. In your opinion, are there good reasons to accept the Zohar and Kabbalah in general? What is the status of this genre in general in your opinion?
I was unable to find your direct reference to the issue (i.e., why yes/no).
Thank you Raha
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- I don’t remember such a quote. What I argued, as far as I remember, was that causality is not time-restricted. Obviously, we don’t have such examples because we live in a world with time. We can’t have such examples.
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If I may, an anecdote from Kant himself, which contains a simple example of a causal relationship that is not “distilled” time:
Immanuel says that when we place a heavy ball (a weight) on a cushion, the depression that will be created under it will occur simultaneously with the ball being placed.
Another example: a locomotive pulling the train cars.
I answered and for some reason it doesn't appear here. This is an old argument from the time of the Greeks, that usually the relationship between cause and effect is simultaneous (by the way, even in modern physics people oppose the approach of “action at a distance”, i.e., non-simultaneous causation).
But the discussion here is not about whether the cause should precede the effect and to what extent, but whether causality is possible or necessary in a world where there is no timeline. That is not the same question.
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