The Physico-Theological View
Hello Rabbi!
If I understand the physico-theological evidence correctly as presented in the ‘First Testament’, then the proof is from the very laws themselves and not precisely from their content as explained at length in your book. When I studied the Khazari, I thought that this was his very claim in the first article he wrote:
6. The friend said: In this matter of yours, you did not need me to answer you with many things. Do you attribute this wisdom found in the creation of the ant, by way of a parable, to a gnome or to a star or to its ugliness, without the Creator, the All-Powerful, the Poet, who gave to every thing its law, without addition or deficiency?
A. The minister said: And this is what is attributed to the nature of the devil.
A. The friend said: And what is nature?
Heb. The Khazari said: It is a power beyond what we have heard in wisdom, and we do not know what it is, but the wise know it without a doubt.
The author said: But their knowledge of it is as our knowledge. The philosopher defined it because it is the beginning and the cause in which the thing rests and moves, which is in it by its own power and not by its cause.
Witness. The Kuzari said: As if he were saying, because the thing that moves of itself and rests of itself has a cause, in it rests and moves, and that cause is – it is nature.
The author said: This is what she wanted to say with great precision and accuracy and to distinguish between what works by chance from what works by nature, and the things that amaze the hearers, but the benefit of knowing them in nature – this is it.
The Minister said: If so, I see that we have erred in these names and have made them partners with the Creator, in saying: “Nature. Wise, active,” and it is possible that we have come to say: “Creator” due to the taste of their words.
Az. The friend said: So it is. But the elements, the sun, the moon, and the stars have actions in the way of heat and cold, and wetness and dryness, and the things that depend on them, although wisdom is attributed to them only as a labor, but drawing, weaving, sowing, and everything in which wisdom is directed, is not attributed to them, because the wisdom of the All-Knowing One is not attributed to them. And whoever reads those who correct matter with heat and cold of nature, will not be harmed, as wisdom is removed from them, as the creation of a child is removed from a man and a woman by their union, but they help the matter that receives the form of man, from the wise sculptor. And let it not be far from your eyes to see the signs of divine matters, which are honorable in this world of marriage, when the red ones are ready to receive them. And these are the root of faith and the root of bitterness.
In your understanding, is this the simplification of the Kuzari? thanks
