Evil in the World: The Big Picture (Column 547)

Does reincarnation contradict the resurrection of the dead?
If a soul has reincarnated from body to body over the generations, who will return at the resurrection of the dead?

Thank you, and more power to you!

One can interpret it in accordance with Rambaman (Mendelssohn), that there was no divine punishment or miracle here; rather, Pharaoh himself hardened his heart, except that all actions are attributed to God in a certain sense, because He is the First Cause. And I would add that the actions attributed in the sacred books to God are those unusual actions whose cause is not understood by us; and so too here, Pharaoh’s stubbornness after seeing so many signs and wonders is a strange and astonishing thing, and therefore it was attributed to God. And similarly: “But the Lord has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day” (Deuteronomy 29:3), and likewise, “For the Lord said to him, Curse David” (2 Samuel 16:10).
Shadal

There is not necessarily a contradiction. After reincarnation, the soul returns to its original body (which has already decayed). But all these are baseless discussions. Up in the air.

Strange things.

You wrote: “Once you already accept that there are constraints even on the Holy One, blessed be He, we arrive again at my thesis. There is no point in stopping halfway and looking for explanations and justifications for events that could definitely be the result of constraints.”

The reason is that your thesis requires assuming a substantial change in God’s relation to the world, far more substantial than what our view of reality requires. There is no doubt that not every detail in events comes directly from God, and there is also no doubt that without a prophet it is difficult to impossible to know which is which, and trying is dangerous. Up to this point I am completely with you. But none of this entails the other extreme. It is certainly possible, as Rabbi Shmuel Ariel says, that the world follows its usual course and God intervenes when He sees fit. Why are innocent people killed as well? Constraints, or reasons unrelated to morality (as you rightly explained regarding a priest’s wife who was raped).

And if such a thing happened to Jews, our duty is to assume normatively (!) that we were not saved because we were unworthy, and to repent. That is all—and of course not to beat someone else’s breast.

The truth is, there is nothing new under the sun. Everything I’ve seen, in books and in posts, is brought in the Book of Job with Malbim’s commentary, and I only got through a quarter of the book. The bottom line there is that the philosophical discussions between Job and his friends are not resolved, until the Holy One, blessed be He, in His own glory, argues philosophically with Job, and Job admits he was mistaken; and indeed, God has not abandoned the earth. But even according to your approach, it seems to me that you skipped a few stages. (At one time I placed my trust in philosophy, but I was disappointed, because there is really no way to come away with anything definite; there is no end to what the mind keeps producing. I read the whole trilogy, and some of your other books and articles, and I found no peace at all, so I went back to being a receiver of tradition. You will call it shelving the intellect, but I will call it an informed decision made by the intellect—a safe and peaceful path.) First explain to me the vague concept of “tzimtzum,” about which all the schools have grown weary of saying anything intelligible. If He is the place of the world and the world is not His place, and He fills all worlds, how can He create something outside Himself, that would supposedly stand on its own, without His providence? If you can crack that for me, we’ll continue. (By the way, a good piece of advice for you: before you point to these contradictions, first examine whether these are logical contradictions or experiential contradictions. I’ll give an example—and give to a wise man and he will grow wiser. As you know, all the objects that appear to us are really a fiction, because all the atoms are moving at such speed that everything appears to us as solid matter. So the contradiction here is between what we experience and what the intellect says—and the intellect is right, not the feeling.)

I don’t understand exactly what you are claiming. You too agree that there is no point looking for explanations for what happens, especially if it is not logical/moral, since there are events that are the result of constraints. And if that is so, then there is no point in looking for explanations for anything. The question of whether to arrive at my approach regarding zero involvement really does not arise from here, and I wrote that. It arises from considerations of common sense, not as a solution to the problem of evil.

There is a mixture of claims here, and I will try to break it down a bit.
1. Regarding philosophy, I wrote several columns about this, and explained there that philosophical disputes are mostly illusory. So one certainly can reach philosophical conclusions.
2. I explained tzimtzum there quite well, and if you have a difficulty you are welcome to raise it here.
3. Both there and here (and elsewhere) I made a very clear distinction between these two kinds of contradiction. So I already took your good advice long ago, before you wrote it. It is hard for me to understand how you missed that if you really read what I wrote. By the way, the contradiction you described here (regarding solid objects) is not a contradiction at all, but simply a difference in resolutions.

I received from my teachers that caricature and satire are the weapons of the weak (intellectually). One who trusts his arguments has no need to place his opponent’s arguments before a distorted mirror in order to mock them. (Though one may excuse it by saying that once Adar enters, joy increases, etc.)

Well then, sir made two mistakes: (a) My talkback was not “outraged.” (If sir, in his holy spirit, saw that my face was red, he misinterpreted it. It was because of the torments of rheumatism.) Even now I am not “outraged” (only tormented by rheumatism as above, thanks to which I have time to read your columns and respond to them…). (b) The caricatured way in which Your Honor presents my position, as though I claimed that the Holy One, blessed be He, behaves capriciously but that “it is permitted to Him because He is the owner.” Not so.

I did indeed claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the owner and therefore “it is permitted to Him,” but not in the capricious sense—rather in the essential sense. One cannot claim of the owner that he is “immoral” when he decides to destroy it, as it says in the famous Midrash that the Holy One, blessed be He, creates worlds and destroys them. Presumably those worlds too had innocent creatures in them, and in any case all living beings end up dying—why? Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, block the way to the Tree of Life? Is it moral to kill a living creature after bringing it into the world? And furthermore, could the Holy One, blessed be He, not have created a perfect world with no evil at all (at least no “natural evil,” in your terminology)? You “bet” that this is impossible even for the Holy One, blessed be He. And on the basis of a “bet” will you put to rest a question about God’s governance? Even if it be merely a “question” and not a “difficulty.”

And let us assume, as you say, that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot create a perfect world. But is this “the best of all possible worlds” (Leibniz)? Voltaire already explained in exquisite detail (in Candide, set to music by Leonard Bernstein of blessed memory) how ridiculous that idea is. Could the Holy One, blessed be He, not at least have given us the same mysterious gene that elephants have (according to the hypothesis, still undiscovered), which prevents them from getting cancer, even though the number of cells in an elephant’s body is many times over the number in a human body, and the statistical probability that one of them will “go crazy” and develop into a malignant tumor is (a priori) greater than in a human? Could He not have given us the stomach of crows, which never breaks down (even if they ate rotten carrion)? Could He not have given us the blood of a mongoose, immune to snake venom? And so on.

You argue that without the possibility of human evil, free choice cannot exist, and the Holy One, blessed be He, for reasons known to Himself (here even you admit that “the ways of God are hidden”…) thought that free choice was more important than preventing suffering. This is a very weak argument, because the question of evil in the world does not necessarily focus on its very existence (which might perhaps be explained by its necessity for free choice), but on its almost unchallenged reign throughout human history. Why does free choice require that “the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth”? What would be lacking in free choice if the natural tendency of most human beings were inclined toward good rather than evil, and most of human history had been good rather than bad?

So I am really not sure that the earthquake in Turkey was the work of the Holy One, blessed be He. It is certainly possible that it was the product of natural processes in the bowels of the earth, and the Holy One, blessed be He, for His own reasons, “merely” did not intervene to prevent it. (The truth is that neither of us really knows! Only you pretend to “know the mind of the Most High” without any basis.) But your “explanation,” that the Holy One, blessed be He, changed His policy at some point and no longer intervenes “so that we will mature,” does not help at all. Standing by while thousands or millions are slaughtered and suffer, when He could by a mere utterance prevent these tragedies without effort and without cost, is morally equivalent to doing them with one’s own hands. In this case He could have prevented the earthquake without our knowing about it (and thus would not have disturbed scientists from discovering regularities in nature, etc.). If it is not moral to “slaughter” children in order to punish the Turks, it is equally immoral to stand by and not prevent the disaster “so that we will mature.” (And perhaps this is even worse.)

My argument is that we cannot say anything about the relation between the Holy One, blessed be He, and morality. First, we do not really know whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to morality (and the same applies to logic; see below), and if so—to which morality? And even if you should say that He is subject to “the morality of the Torah” or “the morality of the Prophets” (what is that?), does that mean that He is obligated by what we are obligated by? Surely we are bound by “You shall not murder,” whereas He “puts to death and brings to life; He brings down to Sheol and raises up.” Your Honor argues that this turns God’s morality into something “definitional.” Suppose so. So what? In my humble opinion that is perfectly fine. The “good” throughout the entire Bible is defined as “what is right in the eyes of the Lord.” Besides, all your pilpul rests on an assumption (half-hidden) that if we do not understand God’s morality, then it does not exist or it is merely definitional. The possibility that we simply do not understand it cannot exist, according to your view, and likewise the possibility that even if He is subject to morality, it is not necessarily our morality. That is, if the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject (or subjected Himself) to morality, then it is necessarily the very same morality to which we are subject (assuming that we are subject at all to an independent morality not deriving from the Torah, a claim of which I am also highly doubtful, but this is not the place to elaborate), or at least to a morality that we understand. All who take in wind have an excess spirit.

Indeed, great men of the world questioned God’s governance. But it is important to listen not only to the questions (which were questions, not conclusions!) but also to the answer that, at least twice, came from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, in His own glory. The first, in answer to Moses’ question, “Show me now Your glory”—which Maimonides and others interpreted as a request for an explanation of God’s governance in the world—the Holy One, blessed be He, answers: “You shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen,” which those commentators interpreted as man’s inability to understand God’s governance fully; these are ancient matters. The second, in answer to Job’s piercing questions, the Holy One, blessed be He, replies: “Gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you inform Me: Where were you when I founded the earth? Declare, if you have understanding!” (Job 38). From the whole divine speech, two points emerge: (a) You cannot understand. (b) I do not owe you an explanation. And that is the whole Torah in a nutshell (see there).

If you like, answer (a) is just another formulation of “the ways of God are hidden,” and what I added in the “outraged” talkbacks is point (b). Here I add that this is not apologetics, but a piercing truth.

By the way, you keep claiming that one cannot say of the Holy One, blessed be He, something and its opposite, since in your view even the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to logic. As stated, I am really not sure of that, but as I noted in one of the aforementioned “outraged” talkbacks, I am also not sure of the opposite, and I have no ordered doctrine on this matter. The reason is that I am certain of only one thing: that we have absolutely no ability to say anything true about the essence and very being of the Holy One, blessed be He—and it is better that I not express here my opinion about the very pretension of doing so. (I did not wake up this morning in a sufficiently combative mood.) I once read that you explained that the contradictions raised by quantum mechanics disappear at larger scales. Fine, let it be so. But the problem is their very existence, at whatever scale. If a particle can be in superposition, and Schrödinger’s cat can be alive and dead simultaneously, then the fact that it can do so only on a microscopic scale neither adds nor detracts. And if the particle and the cat can tolerate a logical contradiction on a microscopic scale, perhaps the Holy One, blessed be He, can tolerate it on an infinite scale as well? I have no answer, and in my opinion there can be no answer at all, since the human intellect is not equipped to deal with such questions. Whoever claims otherwise bears the burden of proof. I was not persuaded from your books that you possess such an ability (apparently not because you are not intelligent, but because, after all, you are human). And the same applies to morality—and give to a wise man and he will become wiser, etc.

Do you see a difference between Maimonides’ position in Guide of the Perplexed III:12 and the position you present here?
https://press.tau.ac.il/perplexed/chapters/chap_3_13.htm

For some reason an inappropriate picture appeared next to my comment; I don’t know why or how to delete it.

Due to lack of time, I’ll answer the replies in fragmented comments of my own.

Regarding my argument of “why lump together minor suffering that does not require intervention with suffering against which a person can do nothing”

This is what Michi wrote:

“Here too one can speak about different degrees of suffering and build a model of intervention only at the severe levels of natural suffering. But again I will answer, as above, that no line can be drawn on the scale of suffering, and there is also no justification for distinguishing between different levels of suffering (or numbers of suffering people). At the principled level, all suffering is unjustified and demands intervention, and therefore involvement to prevent suffering means abolishing the rigid laws of nature.”

I respond to this with several answers:
A. As I wrote in the previous column, we can certainly learn from our experience and draw a line of the “average father” (for any given age of child).
True, it will not be an exact science, but as I illustrated in the previous column—an average father does not help his child with mortgage payments, but rather lets him suffer overtime hours at work and the emotional burden and pressures involved in that (there is suffering here, no doubt).
An “average father,” on the other hand, will indeed do everything he can to rescue his son buried under the rubble of an earthquake.
This is not just theory. It is learning from our experience.

From here it is easy also to infer a reasonable picture of God’s intervention (He being good) when innocents are harmed.

Michi’s answer (“no line can be drawn on the scale of suffering”) represents “intellectual laziness”—fundamentalism—a crazy adherence to his method. Even when a reasonable answer is presented for reasonable divine intervention, he exempts himself from discussing it in one sentence.

B. Also the continuation of the answer—“there is no justification for distinguishing between different levels of suffering”—these too are things that do not fit with what we experience. An average person does indeed ignore another person’s suffering (not necessarily his son’s), up to a certain threshold.
For example—we all feel bad to hear about people whose mortgage payments keep swelling, but almost none of us takes out a loan to help them. On the other hand, every reasonable person will help an old man who collapses in front of him in the street.

And here is yet another simple proof, from our experience as human beings, that there is a reality in which we conduct ourselves with a moral and sensible approach, while at the same time justifying distinctions between different levels of suffering. We are all like that.

C. Michi again takes an easy way out here by writing that presumably God would have had to abolish all the laws of nature. That is not what I asked for.
What is called for is that when there is unreasonable suffering (and I showed that such suffering can indeed be defined), then one would expect God to intervene, whether He maintains some general policy of intervention or not intervening (in severe situations, let Him make an exception).
The laws of nature continue to be rigid, and yet things like crib death or babies dying in an earthquake simply do not exist, because they are miraculously prevented by God (unless there is a prophecy telling us that this baby died because he was the reincarnation of a wicked person—but I do not want to go there).
After all, Michi himself would agree that such a thing is possible morally (of course), and also technically, since God is omnipotent.
And in the past, when He was actively involved, He did do such things—there were rigid laws of nature and God performed miracles all the time, according to Michi’s own view.

More responses to the rest of the arguments to follow.

Dror

1. According to your approach, He can impose judgment without justice (like destroying His house because it is His). Well then, I ask again: what is the meaning of the statements about His goodness? In what sense does He say about Himself that His mercies are over all His works and that He does only justified things? You say you did not mean capricious behavior, and then immediately return to saying that His behavior is capricious. He destroys the house just like that because He feels like it, and that is His right. Even if in your opinion one can say of the Holy One, blessed be He, something and its opposite, does that apply to you as well?
2. I did indeed claim that He cannot create a world without evil. I wrote that, and therefore I do not understand your question. You can of course argue with it, but I did not understand what is new in your question here.
3. The reign of evil in history is your fantasy alone. I deny it. The inclination of the human heart usually tends toward good, except that it has an evil inclination that it sometimes does not withstand. Especially when we are dealing with human evil, which is a product of choice and therefore forced upon God regardless of the laws of nature. The alternative is to create humanity without choice, but then there probably really would have been no point in creating it (as Rabbi Akiva said to Turnus Rufus).
4. Again you err and mislead regarding my intent, in your demagogic way. I do not know the mind of the Most High and am not offering any explanation. I am proposing a possibility that neutralizes the difficulty. It is either true or not, but the burden of proof is on the questioner, not on the one who answers. I explained this more than once, but as is your way, you ignore it.
5. Likewise regarding the difference between doing evil and not preventing it. I am sure that you yourself do not believe this, and I explained the difference very clearly. But as is your way, you ignore it.
6. The Holy One, blessed be He, tells us that He is good, and of necessity the intention is goodness in the sense known to us. Fantasies about goodness in some other sense empty these statements of content.
7. Inability to understand God’s governance is exactly my claim. He has a policy whose aims are hidden from us. But one cannot turn evil into good. Again you ignore things I wrote and offer opposite interpretations of them.
8. The claims about God’s being subject to logic (which are also found in many of the Rishonim) are not claims about Him but about us. I have explained that many times, here too. But I am truly mortally weary of repeating the same things again and again as if a discussion were being held here and not a dialogue of the deaf.
   A full recovery, of body and soul.

It is hard for me right now to get into all the details there. If there is a concrete question, I’ll be happy to discuss it. As for the picture, I will ask Oren to deal with it.

I don’t see anything new here. I answered this in my remarks.

In reply to my talkback on the previous column you answered me that the question is why we should be normatively sad about the death of a baby. I don’t understand—even according to your current view (or perhaps I don’t understand what I missed)—why is that sad? After all, even according to the explanation that this is the system of natural laws through which God will achieve the goals He wishes to achieve while causing the minimum suffering, why should one be distressed over the lesser evil? This is the best possible.

Michi, it seems to me that at the center of your theodicy is the attempt to deal with natural evil, but I don’t understand how your argument can get off the ground. What is the problem with assuming the existence of an a priori and rigid system of laws that operates entirely differently from the system of natural laws and yet still affects it (at times)? I do not see any logical impossibility in this possibility. I have 2 examples of such systems: God’s supernatural intervention in the world described in the Bible (which you yourself believe in) and human free will. To conclude, perhaps I even have a third example—the findings of modern physics, especially in the quantum world (probabilistic causality). True, there we know that quantum regularity does not spill over into the macro world, but the point is that the behavior of the quantum world proves at least the existence of a system operating a priori on the basis of a completely different regularity. What matters is that in my opinion this assumption involves no logical impossibility.

In light of this, even I, the little one, can offer God suggestions for improvement. For example, to create time in such a way that under certain circumstances, say a mass disaster, time would stop and give people time to flee. If God—that is, the God you describe—had indeed adopted my suggestions, He could have created the world such that whenever a great disaster was imminent, the metaphysical system (the rigid one!) behind the scenes would go into action. I do not see any logical difficulty here.

If I am right, then your proposal is not merely a “question” but a “difficulty.”

Your answer regarding the “inability to draw a suffering line” is like answering “because that’s how it is.”
Honestly, I don’t see anything in your answer beyond that.
Logic and rationality are on my side.

Let us try to show you and everyone else a bit more from experience, that it is indeed possible to indicate a line of suffering.

What do people complain about and ask “Where is God?” when there is suffering?

When they lose money in the stock market? (In my opinion, no.)
When their child is sick with a fever? (In my opinion, no.)
When tens of thousands of innocent people are buried in an earthquake? (In my opinion, yes.)
When one and a half million children are sent to the crematoria and gas chambers? (In my opinion, yes.)

But I am already close to despairing of convincing you. Apparently intuition, logic and rationality, and learning from experience are not your portion, even when it is fairly clear that right is not on your side.

If I convince some of the readers, at least on this issue, then I have done my part.

Dror

This is my second response to Michi.

It was written:

“In the final analysis, Dror is not offering another solution to the problem of evil. Even if I accept everything he writes (which I absolutely do not), he will have to choose between the following conclusions: either the Holy One, blessed be He, is evil, or conduct that causes suffering to innocents is good. So good luck to him.”

First of all, this is a false dilemma. Please don’t put words in my mouth.
There is a third option: that there are no innocents at all in this whole story (according to Rabbi Eliyahu and Rabbi Yaakov).

The hidden assumption (or not so hidden) in what Rabbi Eliyahu wrote in his article, or in what Rabbi Yaakov wrote here regarding reincarnation of souls, is that there really are no innocents.
Regarding Rabbi Yaakov, it is quite clear that if this is about reincarnations and everything is engineered down to the last comma by the Holy One, blessed be He, then it is completely obvious that there is no issue of innocents here. As for what Rabbi Eliyahu wrote, in the end, together with the claims about the insensitivity in Rabbi Eliyahu’s writing, it is clear that Rabbi Eliyahu meant that justice was done here from God’s perspective, and even the babies who died in terrible suffering are not regarded as innocent, because from God’s perspective (according to Rabbi Eliyahu) there is here a sin of an entire nation (the Turks) against the people of Israel, and because of that even their babies have to suffer from it.

And I will tell you more than that—you yourself agree with such a mode of divine conduct.
You surely know the Book of Exodus, where it is told quite clearly that all the Egyptian firstborn died, because of Egypt’s sins toward the people of Israel.
And I am willing to bet all my money that when you read those verses in the Torah, you follow the Torah reader (or perhaps read them yourself) while seeing that text as sacred text representing the word of God, and detailing His mode of conduct.

Bottom line, I have no idea whether Rabbi Yaakov is right or Rabbi Eliyahu, or perhaps even your method.
I want to say two things:

A. Their method is far more consistent and logical, and presents the Holy One, blessed be He, in a much more positive light than your method.
B. You yourself read, with sparks of holiness beating in your heart, in the Book of Exodus about the deaths of quite a few Egyptian babies (perhaps more than those who died in Turkey). And very soon you will recline at the Passover table (the Seder night) and read the Haggadah with great joy. You will tell your sons about the wondrous miracles God performed—judgments upon all the Egyptian firstborn.
That is to say, there is a problem with you, as someone who reads the Haggadah, criticizing Rabbi Eliyahu’s approach. It is a bit (very) hypocritical.

Wonders of the Creator.

Dror

Destroying one’s own house is not “judgment without justice.” It is “judgment with justice” (because it is his!). One may wonder why and for what purpose—but that is not a question of justice and morality, and on that point, it seems to me, you too admit that you have no answer.

What I asked was: even if we accept your premise that a world without evil is impossible, is this world in fact “the best of all possible worlds” (in Leibniz’s phrase)? To refute Leibniz’s claim, it is enough to point to one possible improvement, and I suggested several (and in my estimation there are many more). That is, not all evil in the world is necessary and stems from the principles you tried to formulate in your column, and as long as there is even a tiny bit of evil that the Holy One, blessed be He, could have prevented in the world without harming the above, your entire column has been of no use whatsoever and we are back to “the ways of God are hidden.”

In my opinion, evil indeed reigns in human history beyond dispute, but a talkback is not the place to survey all of human history in order to prove it. Even so, the Book of Genesis, and in fact the entire Bible, is a chronicle of magnificent divine failures in the struggle against evil. (In contrast to the books of other religions, which only glorify and praise their gods and founders, but this is not the place to elaborate.) Already in the very first section it is told how the experiment failed and the Holy One, blessed be He, was forced to destroy His world. After that come the stories of the generation of the Dispersion, Sodom, God’s despair of humanity and His choosing of Abraham, the stories of the Israelites in the wilderness, the stories of the kingdom of Israel, the division of the kingdom, and so on until the destruction—and of course the oath sworn by the Holy One, blessed be He, not to bring another flood upon the world. Why is there a need for an oath and the covenant of the rainbow if good rules the world and evil is temporary and passing? In general, anyone who knows the economic history of the world even superficially knows that only in the last two hundred years has humanity known real economic growth. Until then, the overwhelming majority of humanity lived in crippling poverty, exploitation, oppression, bondage, and incurable disease. Terrible, horrifying suffering without purpose, apparently. Political history is no better.

As for the burden of proof—obviously it is always on the one making the claim. In my opinion it is utterly absurd to ground the phenomenon of evil in the world on a “possible” explanation, and elaboration is unnecessary (even if the explanation explained anything). As for not preventing disaster—I intentionally focused on concealed prevention of them (such as preventing the earthquake in Turkey), which involves no cost or effort whatsoever on God’s part and therefore would not have harmed the picture of “rigid laws” or interfered with any scientist researching the laws of nature, etc.

The claim that if the Holy One, blessed be He, tells us He is good then it must necessarily be good in the sense known to us—marvels upon marvels, wondrous and astonishing. I rest my case… (But if so, why does He need to tell us? We could have discovered it ourselves by observing His ways. And why, when asked about it, did He answer that we cannot understand and that He owes no explanation?)

As for logic etc.—I did not claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to it, nor did I claim that He is not. I openly admitted that I do not know, and only added that in my estimation no human being can know, because the matter lies beyond human cognitive ability, since as I understand it, discussion of this question involves discussion of God’s essence and being. I understand that the entire topic is not suited to a talkback, but the fact that you are “mortally weary” can be interpreted in several ways. One is that your readership (and I in particular) are not sufficiently clever to understand the depth of your words (I at least take this possibility with all seriousness!). The second is that your formulation needs improvement for readers to understand. The third is that you are not convincing… (and perhaps there are more).

And thank you for the wishes for health (body and soul); I still need them…

You sent there to a link someone asked you about explicit verses where God punishes small children because of adults; I didn’t see an answer to that in the column here, I
What you wrote there on those verses is forced, not so great
But why is it bad for you to force the verses saying that God is good to mean that generally He is good and from time to time He is not good? After all, you keep forcing verses all the time. Unless maybe what’s hard for you is the intuition that He is good in an absolute sense. To me it seems the intuition says that no evil comes from Him and everything is calculated down to the last detail.

I don’t remember what this is about.

I think you already asked this once. I do not understand your argument. Supernatural intervention is not a rigid system of laws. Nor are quanta. Bottom line, one who makes claims against the Holy One, blessed be He, bears the burden of proof. Until you show that there is such a system, there is no difficulty.

As stated, everything was answered.
Unlike the relationship between parents and child, the Holy One, blessed be He, may have reasons not to intervene and to leave people with free choice. Beyond that, I claim there is no difference between small and great suffering at the logical level. If He is supposed to intervene to prevent suffering, that applies to every small suffering just as it does to great suffering. Why should people suffer? And if you accept that there is justification for small suffering, whence do you know there is no justification for great suffering? This is essentially different from directly causing unjustified suffering. Therefore I do not see a principled difference in levels of suffering. And if you say He is compelled to this because of His policy, then I do not see why one cannot say He is compelled to total non-intervention.
Don’t despair. What is needed to convince me is only to raise successful arguments, and especially ones that have not yet been answered.

Dror, what words did I put in your mouth? I told you that according to your position you need to choose between two possibilities. Suppose in your opinion I was mistaken and this is a false dilemma—but where here did I put words in your mouth? Beyond that, I was of course not mistaken.

If in your opinion babies are not innocent, then truly we have nothing to discuss. I answered about reincarnation of souls in a separate section, so there is no point dragging it in here. In general, if you accept their delusions, then what is there to discuss? You are trying to dance at two weddings, both not to identify with them and also to explain that they are right. In your words, that is ‘not a false dilemma.’
And of course if the babies in Turkey are really guilty because of reincarnations and the like, then what room is there for sorrow, and why Rabbi Eliyahu’s sharing in the suffering? Everything is fine. They deserve it.

Suffering of babies in the plague of the firstborn, like at the destruction of the Temple, was also answered. First, who said they suffered? If they did not suffer, that is punishment for the parents and not for them. And even if they did, it could be non-intervention in the general punishment and not direct imposition of punishment on them.

As for the comparisons to the strange methods (?) of Rabbi Eliyahu and Yaakov and to my hypocrisy, let the readers or their reincarnations judge. I am dealing here with arguments, not declarations.

It seems you insist on ignoring what I wrote without giving reasons, and so it indeed seems there is no point in discussion.

This is mere obstinacy. If there is a reason for killing the babies, there is no need to resort to His being the owner. If there is no reason, then that ‘justification’ does not turn the act into a moral one.

Your proposal to improve the world is nonsense. I explained that you need to propose an alternative system of laws, not a local improvement. A local improvement is simply preventing the evil. That is our whole discussion. How many times can one repeat this nonsense?!

Regarding the dominance of evil, that is something hard to decide. But to each his taste. Especially when you raise a difficulty from it.

I did not ground evil in the world on a possibility; I resolved the difficulty regarding the Holy One, blessed be He, by the possibility that He is not evil. The burden of proof is of course on the one who raises the difficulty. Again, I do not understand why these simple points need to be repeated again and again. This is just obstinacy.

According to your approach, when the Holy One, blessed be He, tells us He is good, this is said in a completely different sense of the concept ‘good,’ and of course this is a sense unknown to us. Why throw meaningless declarations into the void?! By the way, perhaps when He wrote in the Torah that He gave the Torah at Mount Sinai, He actually meant that He danced tango in occupied Paris with Himmler; and when He wrote that one must keep the Sabbath, He actually meant standing on one leg on Wednesday, and so on. Truly lofty and magnificent peaks of tendentious and ridiculous obstinacy.

I explained why you are mistaken regarding logic (= this is not a discussion about Him but about us). But with one who is not committed to logic, there is apparently no point wasting my words on him.

And perhaps all this is because you did not go to a doctor. So again, a full recovery.

Unclear Person,
I answered this. If the little ones only died, then it really is punishment for the adults and not for the little ones. If they suffered, then apparently it was only non-prevention and not direct causation.
Your mistake regarding forcing the verses is that there is no such thing as ‘sometimes good.’ One who is only sometimes good is not good. Good means someone who behaves in a good way. Human beings, of course, sometimes fail because of the evil inclination, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is not supposed to fail. Therefore, if He is good, then He is always good.
And regarding your intuition—good for you. You just need to explain how it fits with reality. Good luck.

You write in the column that perhaps there is some purpose that we do not know what it is
And afterwards you object to a purpose that Rabbi Eliyahu proposed
After all, one can reach that purpose without killing babies. Indeed the purpose he proposes is strange (although in the Torah it seems there is collective punishment for a nation), but as for the matter itself, there may be other purposes of which we have no clue, and about them one cannot ask whether they can be achieved some other way. I did not understand why you rejected this path.
In any case it seems that even though you say one cannot learn anything from the Bible, one thing can apparently be learned—that there is no answer to the question of evil.
And the truth is, even that needs no verses, because the answers here—how shall we say—aren’t much.

First, I’m sorry, but an argument of “who says the babies in Egypt suffered” requires the same response:
Who says the babies buried in Turkey under the rubble for days (whether alive for days until death or dying immediately) suffered—maybe a miracle was done for them and everyone who died did not suffer at all—either died immediately without pain or was in a coma for several days?

If you are allowed to use that argument, why would I be forbidden from using it?

I am not, Heaven forbid, belittling your argument, but presenting an identical argument. Decide what you think about it.

You also wrote: “And even if so, it could be non-intervention in the general punishment and not direct imposition of punishment on them.”

This makes the Holy One, blessed be He, appear immoral in my eyes. You argue that He did not punish the innocent babies (or the other innocents), but they were simply harmed “along the way,” and the Holy One, blessed be He, who is omnipotent, did not see fit to exempt them (though He did know how to exempt the Israelites, did He not?).
I find that very difficult.

Second, I am convinced that there were many parents in Egypt who were not active participants in the enslavement of the people of Israel. Why did they deserve the immense emotional suffering of losing their firstborn (and I’m not even mentioning the plagues before that that harmed their bodies and property)? Why here did the Holy One, blessed be He, act against innocents?

Why did He not perform a miracle and strike only the firstborn of Pharaoh’s policemen and of the enslavers themselves?
After all, He is omnipotent, so why did He not act that way?

I felt that you did put words in my mouth, because there is the option that in an absolute sense (God’s morality) everything is measured down to the millimeter. Anyone who wishes is welcome to choose that too (and there are plenty of such people, including leading rabbis). And this is not only in my opinion; it is a very accepted and widespread view among rabbis and believers. Whether you or I accept it or not, we ought to present it as an option.

Why does Rabbi Eliyahu share in the suffering?
Because he bears the image of the Creator, and even though (according to his view) the offender gets what he deserves, one can still be sad, and apparently although he himself thinks he knows Heaven’s calculations in the case of Turkey, he still does not know them precisely, but only in general terms (the Turks sinned against Israel).

I don’t know rabbis all that well, but unlike how Rabbi Eliyahu presented it, 99.99% of the rabbis who do believe in God’s providence say quite clearly that we do not know Heaven’s calculations at the resolutions Rabbi Eliyahu presented.
But even if Rabbi Eliyahu erred in his assessment of Heaven’s calculations (and the calculations are completely different, as Rabbi Yaakov presented—reincarnations), still the method of accepting that there is Someone directing everything fits in my head better than your method, which holds non-intervention; for me that is no simple difficulty regarding God’s conduct.

By the way, I suggest you read what Rabbi Shach of blessed memory said about the terrible Holocaust. I’ll even leave a link here. I don’t know if it is right or not. But it does present God morally.

https://www.hidabroot.org/article/1122240

Dror

“I claim there is no difference between small and great suffering at the logical level”

This is already taking the discussion of the problem of evil to the highest possible place—why God did not create a world where people only lick honey and eat chocolate all day. But that is not relevant.

The discussion here is in a much more limited place—the assumption that there is suffering permitted by God, and the question what its boundary is (in general) and whether it comes for nothing or not.
Suffering is a matter of sensation (that is also the dictionary definition), therefore the phrase “suffering at the logical level” is not relevant to my point.

If you accept there is justification for small suffering, how do you know there is no justification for great suffering?

I am not claiming there is no justification for great suffering. If once again I go to reincarnations of souls—then for all I care, let Hitler’s soul, may his name be blotted out, be reincarnated in countless German babies who undergo terrible suffering and die in their cribs.

My argument is that great suffering toward innocents is unjustified. And what I am arguing is that there is an option in Judaism according to which no suffering is for nothing. Whoever wants is welcome to accept it.

And if you say He is compelled to this because of His policy, then I do not see why one cannot say He is compelled to total non-intervention.

All natural suffering, whether great or small, is from the Holy One, blessed be He. This is the possible approach that is preferable to yours (whether this approach is correct or not).
It is certainly preferable to a constraint of total non-intervention, because in the method I support as more moral, no one is harmed innocently by natural evil. In your method, by contrast, innocents are harmed time and again because of a logical constraint.

Dror

Hector, even in Malbim’s commentary on Job there is nothing new, and all the significant ideas there are taken from thinkers before him. Malbim merely inserted the views after the fact and arranged the structure (with characteristic artistry and even more characteristic deviousness).
Once it seemed to me that the only idea that appeared new in Malbim is that there is a known argument (Eliphaz; chapter 22) that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not give reward and punishment in this world so as not to weaken free choice and to allow service for its own sake. And Job rejects this (chapter 24), for there are wicked people in remote places, and if the Holy One, blessed be He, were to destroy them, no one would know and it would not harm free choice; so why does the Holy One, blessed be He, not destroy them?! (Therefore there is evidently no providence, etc.). Not that I know much, but from Malbim’s references and from what I searched, I recall finding no precedent for this argument, and perhaps it is Malbim’s own innovation. And this argument of course seems puzzling, for how do we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, really does not destroy those wicked people in remote places? And if they were not to arise, and without providence we would expect them to arise, then that would be a sign and proof of providence—which Eliphaz claims is meant to hide and conceal itself in utter secrecy.
And there is also a sort of side argument against free choice (end of chapter 12), for we see that sometimes whole peoples behave foolishly, and this cannot be if each individual has free choice, because then surely one of them would think of the right path and show it to everyone; therefore there is evidently no free choice but some foreign force compelling them. Besides being a shaky argument in itself, in column 539 it was nicely explained that collective determinism does not contradict free choice in individuals.

What has one born of woman to do among us?

You cannot reach that purpose without killing babies. That is the whole point here. If the purpose is collective punishment, then it is an immoral purpose. I am speaking about non-moral purposes. Beyond that, how can one infer that conclusion from the events? If the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to achieve some other purposes not required by morality, then you also cannot infer that He wanted to punish the Turks. Perhaps He wanted to thin out Asia’s population?
I really do not learn anything from the Bible, contrary to your suggestion and Rabbi Eliyahu’s.
My answers do not exist, and therefore it is hard to discuss whether they are something or not something. What I propose is that there is no question to begin with, so no answer is needed. I argue that there is probably some purpose, and that’s it. Rabbi Eliyahu explains what the purpose is, and there is no basis for that and it is also very illogical. Since I am resolving and not questioning, the burden of proof is not on me.
This is completely simple logic, and I do not understand the difficulty in it. The only alternative is to remain with it unresolved, and when it comes to a difficulty/contradiction and not a mere question, that is not an option.

If you had thought a bit, you would already have answered yourself. We know that the babies in Turkey suffered. We saw it. We really do not know that the babies in Egypt suffered. The angel of death killed them at midnight, in an instant. It is actually very likely that they did not suffer at all. If there were any indication whatsoever that they suffered, there would be room to discuss it, but when there is no indication that they suffered, and in fact it was a death in an instant, so it is likely they did not suffer, and in addition their suffering contradicts God’s goodness, then inferring from here that they suffered is astonishing stubbornness.

I propose that He is indeed omnipotent but there are constraints He cannot deal with. And that is what causes Him not to intervene. I don’t see what is difficult about that, especially since the only alternative is to conclude that He is not good.

I do not know who participated in the enslavement of the Jews and who did not, so it is hard for me to judge. You are making unnecessary assumptions and then pressing difficulties on a flimsy basis. I am proposing solutions to an existing difficulty, for which you have no solution.

As for Rabbi Eliyahu’s sharing in the suffering, I already answered. Does he also share in the suffering of terrorists’ families? Why? Just because here he sees why they deserve it? Then that is just psychology, weakness, and not values. One does not write articles about that.

On Rabbi Shach’s delusional answer I will not elaborate here. I will only say that he interprets it as punishment for the Haskalah; others interpret it as punishment for Zionism; and the Zionists interpret it as punishment for Haredism (opposition to Zionism). That is about what all those strange explanations are worth, and of course none of them answers the suffering of babies and righteous people.

Well, at this point there really is no point continuing. Everything has been explained.

Go finish your pruning and be gone.

From this arena I prove to you that there is no end to philosophical thinking; at some stage one always reaches a dead end. I gave you an opportunity to make me understand: how can One who is the cause of everything and the place of the world, who created and brought forth everything, do something outside Himself? The fact that you sent me to your book does not solve my problem, because there you merely pretend to decide which is the correct approach, but you did not manage to explain philosophically how this is possible. You keep waving around that the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to this and subject to that—how is He not subject to the limitation of Himself? That too is a kind of logical contradiction. I am not asking mountains and hills of you; I am giving you a simple challenge. Try taking all the bombastic arguments and your creativity and start with the ABCs of this, and see how hard it is to arrive at anything. When one gets philosophically entangled, one always ends up at a dead end in the end; therefore I abandoned this crooked path.

I’ll just answer that even if in your opinion you came out reasonably from what I brought from Egypt, of course one can bring several more examples from the Bible—
Innocent babies who drowned in the Flood (for one who takes the story literally).
Innocent babies in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Amalekite babies whom David and Saul wiped out by God’s command.
Babies of the Canaanite nations and the surrounding peoples whom Joshua and Moses wiped out by God’s command.
And other examples as well…

I bet that here you’ll claim that because we saw nothing, surely the Holy One, blessed be He, performed a miracle and all the innocent people who were harmed of course did not suffer more than a moment and no more.

In my opinion, this is apologetics at the cheapest possible level. And in my opinion that is also what any person with integrity and common sense ought to think.

Either one goes the way of those who want to think according to the method of believers in total providence—there are no innocents, even among the babies.
There are heavenly calculations here (reincarnation of souls, the sins of the nation, the sins of the fathers, or who knows what) that nobody knows exactly what they are.
But whoever wants to accept this method, with all the problems involved in it (it too does not sound brilliant, to put it mildly), is, in my opinion, much more honest than the method you present. And yes, God also comes out of that method completely moral (according to strict justice).

One more important thing in closing
The fact that there are several different approaches and explanations for the Holocaust does not mean they are all mistaken. It could be that one of them is actually right.

Or perhaps it may even be that there is a kernel of truth in all of them.
For example, those who joined the Zionists and as a result cast off the yoke of Torah—certainly worsened the heavenly account.
By contrast, those who did not fulfill the commandment of settling the Land when there was an opportunity—also worsened the heavenly account.
And of course the Reform movement in Germany also worsened the heavenly account.

Bottom line—in all of them there is truth: Satmar, Religious Zionism, Lithuanians. You can accept all the views and stay alive.

Dror

It seems you have also abandoned the path of listening. Good luck to you.

In none of those cases is it necessary that there was suffering. That is in contrast to Turkey, where we know there was.

With Amalek (and perhaps also the Canaanite nations), we are dealing with the law of a pursuer. They were killed on account of what they would become. In a group that raises its children to pursue and murder, one may kill even children.

The fact that there are different explanations for the Holocaust certainly does not mean they are all mistaken; it only means that these explanations are dubious, and that the lesson of the Holocaust, if there was one, was not learned.
Everyone is right despite disagreeing with one another. Wonders of fuzzy logic.

All right, we have really exhausted this.

I did not understand your words—perhaps something with the punctuation or commas.
In any case, the claim was within your own words that there is some non-moral purpose, say, the repair of the Keter, and that is enough. About this you raised many claims, but they are only against Rabbi Eliyahu’s move; they do not rule out the possibility of an unknown purpose, and therefore nothing is difficult. There is perhaps a question, as you call it, but not a difficulty—just as we do not know why pork is forbidden, so we do not know why the suffering of Turks is good.

I have gone to a doctor who charges nothing… and therefore I shall answer telegraphically.

His being the owner “permits” Him to kill babies even in circumstances in which it is forbidden to people like us. That does not mean I understand why He does so, only that He is not a “murderer” and “slaughterer” as you called Him in the previous column. What is so hard to understand?

So you said it is nonsense—fine. But you did not explain why granting humanity blood immune to snake venom or a cancer-suppressing gene is “merely” a local improvement and as such “merely” the prevention of evil, and therefore pointless; nor did you explain whether (and if so how) this is “the best of all possible worlds.” As long as you have not done that, all your pilpul is worthless. (Whether I am “obstinate” or merely a nuisance is irrelevant.)

The entire Bible tells a chronicle of evil that God apparently failed, time after time, to defeat in His war against it, until the prophets promise that good will triumph only at the end of days. It is hard to ignore this and claim intellectual honesty.

Exactly as I said. You resolved the difficulty/question (choose according to your taste) on the basis of a “possibility” that “allows” evil to exist and God to remain good according to your understanding. If that is not a Purim Torah, then I am apparently a Yekke who has never tasted paprika in his life…

Distorting my words will not help, and as stated, satire and mockery based on a reflection in a crooked mirror (which you placed before me) testify to intellectual weakness. Indeed, the Holy One, blessed be He, tells us that He is good. But when the prophets ask Him to explain His (good) governance, they are told that He owes no explanation and in any case no one is capable of understanding. If this is “good in a way we can understand,” then from the outset there is no difficulty at all, and the answer is at the very least puzzling.

The sentence “not about Him but about us” is really not an explanation. Nor did I ask for an explanation (I explicitly noted that I do not expect one within a talkback). True, I can guess what you meant by this “explanation,” but if my guess is correct, then it explains nothing—and again, I did not mean to get into that here beyond a footnote.

And again, thank you for the good wishes.

Perhaps there is a feeling that the debate here among everyone has somewhat exhausted itself, but I flatter myself that my criticism of your remarks comes from a somewhat different direction, and perhaps therefore there is some interest in it.
1. Indeed, I asked you in the past and the answers then, like now, did not satisfy me.
2. It is acceptable to me that God, as we speak of Him, is not free from the bonds of logic. You are completely right here.
3. Now I am not sure that the concept of the rigid system you demand is necessary, but I’ll go along with you and assume that you are right in this too; that is, let us assume it is indeed required.
4. In light of that, why does what you call “supernatural intervention” not count in your view as a rigid system? Just as God created in man two systems (a bodily one subject to the laws of physics and a psychic/spiritual one that is rigid and does not obey them), so too from your point of view one can and in my opinion even ought to assume that God created the natural system similarly. That is, in the natural system He created, disasters occur subject to the usual laws, while in parallel, behind it, He created a metaphysical system able to intervene in special times of distress (which, let us say, God defined for it in advance). Is this not in your view a reasonable solution for one who holds your position? Why not attribute rigid status to such a metaphysical system?
5. If you do not accept this, then truly it is impossible to continue, but then in my opinion your whole move cannot get off the ground. On the other hand, if you do accept it, you will now run into a new problem—as far as we can see and know, if there is such a metaphysical system (with “sensors” for unreasonable suffering), it does not work.
6. Bottom line: in my opinion, if you were faithful to your explanatory line, you would be forced to propose the solution I have shown, but then it would be revealed that your proposal contradicts what happens in reality. Something basic in your explanatory axis is wrong.
7. I will hint at my solution: God is not “good” by definition, but only the condition that makes that good possible. Of course, my proposal clashes with the idea of a God who is personal in essence, as appears in the Bible.

Indeed, in principle it is possible that there is an unknown purpose. My claims that the events are not the work of the Holy One, blessed be He, do not depend on my criticism of Rabbi Eliyahu.
But the thesis of an unknown purpose in itself is problematic. Why can’t the Holy One, blessed be He, create that purpose without harming innocents? Of necessity, you arrive at the conclusion that He too is subject to limitations. But then I do not see what you have gained over my thesis, which also fits better with our perception of reality.
There is a difference between accepting the prohibition of eating pork without understanding it, because of the claim that there is an unknown reason, and doing something immoral because of an unknown reason. In the second case, if there is another solution, I would expect that solution to be chosen.

Killing without a reason is murder in ordinary language. Killing for a hidden reason is indeed possible, but that raises the question why not achieve that same reason without the killing (after all, He is omnipotent)? And if you accept that He is subject to constraints, then I have returned to my own position.

I explained this well. I am speaking about the fundamental laws of nature. They are what determined why our blood composition is as it is. That is a result, not a law of nature. Therefore, if you want to give us different blood, you need to change the laws of nature. Changing blood composition under the existing laws is again intervention in the laws, and that is what you wanted to avoid.
The best of all worlds is defined according to the best among systems of laws, not according to local changes at the expense of the laws.

The Bible tells us nothing about God’s failures. See my replies to Dror.

The fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not explain does not mean that goodness for Him is interpreted differently. Rather, we cannot understand why this is the good. The hiddenness is not evaluative but factual. Otherwise the statements that He is good are emptied of content—which of course you did not answer.

1. In my book God Plays Dice I pointed out that the term “metaphysical” is itself not well defined. In what sense is this system of laws metaphysical? You are only claiming that the system of natural laws is not just the collection of our physical laws but that there are a few more rigid laws as well (which you call metaphysical). Fine. The question remains whether there is such a rigid system or not. Calling it metaphysical does not help you show that such a system exists. Only if you give up its rigidity—but then we are back at the starting point. In any case, its being metaphysical neither adds nor detracts.

As a dualist who believes in the separateness of body and soul (and you yourself define the latter as something that does not operate according to deterministic physical laws), your answer is really puzzling. What here is not well defined, or is essentially different from your own definition of the human soul? There too, God made an “I prepared it in advance” of two systems, and in your view everything is just fine and dandy.
In any case, I tried to follow the principle of charity in interpreting your proposal, and my conclusion was that even if we improve it to the maximum according to its inner logic—which you yourself did not do—that is still not enough. We look at reality and see that the improved proposal does not work in practice…
And so it turns out that your God is bound in advance by laws that have no real logical necessity. As Mordechai, I think, put it—your God is not the master even within His own house.

Either you did not read my remarks or you did not understand them, or I do not understand you. It seems to me I’ve exhausted it.

In the Prophets there are claims about the worst evil one can imagine. Mordechai hinted at this (by the way, apparently he is not a rabbi), namely that they see it happening under God’s auspices. Including harm to innocents.
To innocents. Including severe and immense suffering caused to babies in an explicit verse.

Let us bring a few verses for the benefit of dear readers, from which it can be fairly inferred that there was no mercy on innocents, and severe suffering is described:

“Shall women eat their fruit, the children they have cared for?”
“The hands of compassionate women boiled their own children.”
“Her children have gone into captivity before the foe.”
“My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity.”
“You have slain in the day of Your anger; You have slaughtered without pity.”

And the passage about the babies suffering in hunger and thirst:

“The tongue of the suckling cleaves to his palate for thirst; children ask for bread, and no one breaks it for them.”

But everything is fine—you are allowed to continue with apologetics. It is legal.
So you are invited to try to justify this too.

Dror.

Let us continue with my series of questions.

You wrote

Dror’s request to get defined boundaries for God’s involvement is, of course, ridiculous.

I’ll ask it a little differently—
You wrote that God’s involvement in the world keeps decreasing.
I quote (also from the current article):

“This is a gradual transition… It is true that in earlier periods divine involvement was at a higher dosage…”

According to the site, you accept the theory of evolution, and generally think it is correct (I welcome that).
Do you mean that a billion years ago God was more involved than a hundred thousand years ago?
Or perhaps His more active involvement only began at a certain point in time, and since then it has been diminishing.

If it began only from a certain point in time, I want to know from what point in evolution God’s involvement began.
For example, was it when Homo sapiens already existed (some 200–400 thousand years ago), or sometime before or after?

I’d be happy with a very general answer, in order to try to understand the thesis.
This is not getting down to very small, marginal details or resolutions. It is about wanting to understand your general conception.

Dror

I have no idea. There is no way to know that, and it is also not relevant to the principled discussion. We can see that the involvement is decreasing, and that is according to everyone. Prophecy and open miracles no longer exist according to everyone. So there was some involvement in the past, and I do not know at what rate this changed or changes, or at exactly what stages in evolution He was involved, if at all.
It is like seeing footprints in the sand, and inferring from this that some creature passed here and made them. Must I describe that creature in order to claim this?
Another example is the presumption of prior status. The mikveh was valid a month ago, and now we see that it is lacking. Somewhere in the middle something happened there (the water evaporated, for example, or someone drew some of it out). In order to apply the laws of presumption or to claim that there was a change, do I need to explain at what rate the water evaporated, or whether this change happened all at once, and when and why?

My desire is to understand the method, in order to continue probing it.

Presumably, in periods when God was involved as much as possible, the world was a safer and more tranquil place.

If, for example, you were to say that in your opinion God has been involved from the moment evolution began (after the first cell was created), I would object, since it is known that in the past the inhabitants of Earth underwent several extinctions, including extinctions that wiped out almost everything. Which means that if this were indeed your approach (that involvement extends throughout all of evolution), then one could easily find failures in it.

Even if you argue that the involvement began only from the moment Homo sapiens started walking around here, or even only 6,000 years ago, one can think of possible failures.

That is to say, together with the other difficulties I raised (including an explicit quotation from a prophet holding that innocents suffered quite a lot), in every scenario of the theory of “involvement that keeps fading,” there are more holes than in Swiss cheese after several mice have gone over it.

Dror

Not at all. Today human beings take much greater care of our condition and thereby complete what the Holy One, blessed be He, does not do. The conclusion that the world was once safer is incorrect, nor does it follow from anything I said. On the contrary, because in the past human beings were helpless and at a low moral level, the Holy One, blessed be He, had to intervene more in order to balance that somewhat. And still, there remained quite a lot of evil there. Today the need for His involvement has diminished because the responsibility, the abilities, and the values are ours and in our hands.
I did not see any significant difficulty in what you wrote, but truly I feel we are going in circles.

I will summarize for the readers, so far:

(!) I claim that the method that says everything is from the Holy One, blessed be He, and there really are no innocents—or that at least the reasonable suffering (“a thorn under the foot”) permitted by the Holy One, blessed be He—is a more ethical, logical, and moral presentation of God than Michi’s method.

(!!) I claim that one can define a sensible line for what average suffering is that is also reasonable from a human standpoint.

(!!!) I maintain, based on explicit verses in the Bible, that in the past too “innocent” babies (there are not really innocents—everything is by justice) suffered and were in pain. Michi holds that there is no proof that in the past (when God was more involved compared to today) there was suffering of innocents as there is in our time. Readers are invited to look at the verses I brought from Lamentations (for example).

(!!!!) I claim that in the past as well humanity (or creation before humanity) experienced natural disasters and the deaths of innocents, exactly as today we know about natural disasters and the deaths of innocents in them, perhaps even more so (mass extinctions). Michi claims that even if there were natural disasters during the period of God’s involvement, the number of innocent victims was lower than today (relatively speaking), because the Holy One, blessed be He, would perform miracles, and rescue, for example, some of those trapped under the ruins of the earthquake (but of course not all of them, because there was still room for plenty of natural evil, and there is no need to perform a miracle for everyone, just for some).

I hope I presented the matter correctly and fairly.
Let the readers judge.

Dror.

Just a general remark.
It is hard for me to understand how Rabbi Michi takes it upon himself to interpret God’s actions and intentions and determine that God “changed policy” (as he writes and explains also in volume 2 of his book). How does he know?
The difference, or change, between our period and the biblical period (some 3,000 years) lies in the development of human consciousness, and as a result in man’s understanding of reality and its interpretation. A small child sees a hill as a high mountain…
Nature probably has not changed over these 3,000 years. There were always disasters even if they were not mentioned in the Bible. What was mentioned was only the impression of the people of that period regarding certain events, which they interpreted as “miracles.”
Columbus threatened the natives with God’s wrath and as a sign of it “predicted” that the next day there would be a lunar eclipse. … And so it was. His consciousness was more developed than that of the natives…
As for the rest, go and learn.

Tzvika Gelbfish

My explanations are in the nature of a proposal. The facts are that once there was involvement (if you believe the Torah and the Prophets), and nowadays apparently there is not. Nature indeed has not changed. What has changed is the dosage of God’s involvement.
Of course, if you do not accept the Torah and the Prophets, then you have no reason to resort to such explanations.

A great many things are written in the Bible.
It says the world was created in six days (in the plain sense), and you do not accept that.
It says in the Book of Lamentations about suffering caused to innocents—you do not accept that.

It says in the Bible about God’s involvement—that you do accept. For example, the Revelation at Sinai, the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, the sun standing still at Gibeon, or even things not written, like rescuing some (only some, of course, not all) of the innocents in a natural earthquake.

By the way, it is interesting why not simply do one small miracle from the outset to prevent a natural earthquake that would harm innocents, and instead do many miracles to rescue various innocents buried under the rubble. Very strange. Indeed, the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He, are hidden, as they say.

A rhetorical question—what is the practical difference between what you accept (the sun at Gibeon) and what you do not (six days)?

Everything has to be examined critically to see whether there is a real basis for it.

Dror

Wow. What an expressive talent. I think like you. Good is not equivalent to “pleasant.” Of course the definition of divine good is derived from moral good from another source (from the essence of the Holy One, blessed be He, via His “attributes”), and that is what is defined as good (even though it involves suffering).

Dror, I’d be happy for a link to the discussion you had with the rabbi the previous time.
Thank you very much!

*Doron

Nav0863
Were you asking me for a link?

I have much more to remark both on this column and its talkbacks, and on the next column about democracy and game theory (which, at least in the areas where I understand something, is full of mistakes like a pomegranate—at the level of knowledge, information in foreign jargon—after all, philosophical skill is not everything…), but I have no time or ability (also because of health, etc.).

Even so, I will make one general remark here. Michi claims that “reality” shows that the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes less in creation, and I wonder what glasses he is wearing. After all, the claim from reality is itself a “theological interpretation” (or atheistic one). It is like the claim that “the Bible says,” when Michi strongly argues that the Bible says what the reader puts into its mouth. This is precisely the heart of the dispute—whether one can see in reality the fingerprints of the Holy One, blessed be He, and whether the matter is comparable to footprints in the sand, as Michi described above, from which we are trying to describe who and what kind of creature walked here. One person will say dinosaur, and another will say the holy Shekhinah…

That is to say, the claim from reality is empty of content. And so too is the claim that nowadays there are no miracles and no prophecy. When the Sages spoke about the end of prophecy, they meant prophets who were commanded to publicize their prophecies and write them down for all generations. Can we be sure that there are no people among us who merited prophetic revelation? (In my life I met some whom I suspected…). It is worth recalling the famous stories about a heavenly voice that pointed out certain sages who were worthy of the divine presence resting upon them as with Moses our teacher and with Ezra, etc. It does not say that they merited no revelation at all, only that they did not merit revelation at so high a level as Moses and Ezra. Can we be sure that there are no such people among us today? On what basis? (Decades ago I knew a humble kabbalist, modest, a giant Torah scholar who fled publicity like fire, who told me that he knew of several people in recent generations who merited revelation. One can mock, etc., but on what basis can one determine with certainty that he was mistaken?)

The same applies to miracles. True, I have not seen the splitting of the sea with my own eyes (only in movies…). But Michi himself said on several occasions (once I even heard it from his holy mouth) that he cannot rule out that nevertheless the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes in a hidden way here and there. If that cannot be ruled out, then the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved falls away. At most one can be agnostic on this question, and all this is only perhaps.

Mordechai, give one example of an error at the level of knowledge (the most serious error in your opinion), and then there will be a basis for your general claim that there are many more.

For example, Michi’s emphatic assertion that the government controls the coalition (and therefore the Knesset) without restraint. This is nonsense that many opposition spokesmen keep repeating until some accept it as true uncritically.

But, on the contrary: the coalition controls the government. Government decisions reflect a political equilibrium (Nash or otherwise—this is not the place to elaborate) of the forces in the Knesset (not only in the coalition). When the equilibrium is disturbed, the coalition falls apart and the government falls. (As far as I recall, there has not been an Israeli government that completed its term, and this is the reason.)

By the way, in the 1990s (if I recall correctly), researchers from the University of Haifa (again, if I recall correctly… I am writing from memory without the ability right now to search the written sources) calculated the Shapley and Banzhaf indices (look them up) of the parties in Israel, and found that the theory works (amazingly…), and all the urban legends about “Haredi extortion” and the like are hot air. The parties (in both coalition and opposition) almost always manage to obtain what is expected according to their relative power as measured by those indices.

As stated, there are other mistakes and errors in the column due to lack of knowledge. But typing causes me pain (that cursed rheumatism), and I think that suffices.

Are you claiming that there is no significant difference between being in the coalition and being in the opposition, because a party almost always manages to obtain what is expected for it according to its relative strength in the Knesset?

Why do you burden me with typing during rheumatism? 😉
I did not claim there is no difference between being in the coalition or in the opposition. What are you talking about?
But I did claim that over time (which needs to be defined, and right now it is hard for me to elaborate as above) parties manage to achieve according to their relative strength, and this includes opposition parties as well. Being in the opposition itself reduces their power, of course, and this is reflected in the above power indices. But opposition parties too can achieve significant accomplishments in various constellations, but this is not the place to elaborate.

The matter is explained more broadly in the Open University course “Political Economy.” (It recently came out in a temporary internal edition; I hope it will soon appear in a permanent edition for the general public as well.)

Yes, if there is one. It was mentioned above that you already discussed this in the past. If you know where, I’d be glad!

I agree so much with your position! In my opinion everything else is just synthetic argument-mongering.

I don’t really remember where… I’ve been commenting on this site for years already, and more than once or twice I’ve argued with Michi about all sorts of things (and also agree with him on lots of other things). In general I think Michi sets forth a correct philosophy but fails to apply it consistently. If the will should arise before me or behind me, I may respond to his current column on logic, and there I’ll argue something related to the idea that God is not good (or evil).

You wrote, “This necessarily brings us to the conclusion that there are constraints to which the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject, and from here to His policy of non-intervention. For example, He decided to destroy the Temple and Jerusalem, but as a consequence there would be children who would suffer the disgrace of hunger.”
I did not understand why you call that “non-intervention.” Is this not a case of an inevitable consequence, and He relates to it?

In your opinion is there no moral problem in killing children without their suffering?

Indeed it is an inevitable consequence. Do you want to summon Him to a Torah court? This whole world was created by Him, and all the consequences (at least the natural ones) are inevitable consequences.

There is a problem, but simply speaking it is not toward the children. After they have been killed, they no longer exist.

So if they are orphans, is it permitted to kill them? And what about their parents—is it permitted for them to kill their children?

Then in what sense is this “non-intervention” and not His action in the plain sense?

That is with respect to the Holy One, blessed be He.

In the same sense that every refraining is non-intervention.

How does this fit with the soul’s remaining? If something continues to exist even after they have been killed, then something bad happened to them themselves, somewhat like what Your Honor elaborated on in the post about fear of death.

In any case, they do not suffer and are not distressed.

I do indeed connect more with your outlook on this than with the other outlooks (after you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of Four)
Only in any case
it still seems, as above, that there are holes, and there is room for simple questions
such as
that if He had created us from the outset, for example, with a strong stomach like a crow’s, it would not have harmed any regularity at all
and if so, since He could have done that and did not, is there not apparently evil here? You didn’t answer this clearly
Thank you

I did not understand how this differs from all the other questions about suffering, which I already answered.

You answered that there is no other possible world, because that would violate the regularity, and you said the questioner has to prove there is such a world, so here I am proposing that world He created with just a small change for the benefit of human beings—a stomach like a crow’s?
What would happen? No regularity would be violated, and if He is the pinnacle of goodness, why not make this better thing?

A very basic misunderstanding of this column. Laws that would bring about a different stomach for man are different laws. This change has many other consequences as well, and you do not know what their nature would be.

Ah okay, if that is the answer, then your proposal is void—to offer a suggestion for a better world—because you will always claim: perhaps there would be consequences whose nature you do not know.
So we have returned to the devout and radical faith that even if something seems bad to us, trust Him—it is the best that could have been for you. Only instead of blind faith, blind philosophy.
Long live the great difference (believers believe He could have done better, for after all He is omnipotent, yet nevertheless this is the best, like a square triangle; and philosophers hold that He is not omnipotent and could not do better because of various constraints).
So do not mislead us and trouble us by asking for another proposal, because after we have labored over it (and found the bird whose stomach would satisfy us), you toss it aside casually.

With misunderstanding at this level, I am truly wasting my time and words in vain.

A—sorry
B—not wasting, there will always be someone among the followers whom this will sharpen things for
C—so if you feel like explaining again, what sort of proposal would you accept, or is there any proposal from a human being about which you would not say this sentence: “this change has many other consequences as well, and you do not know what their nature would be”?
Thank you

I asked in the Q&A a few days ago and, with your permission, I’ll try again to ask in the column.
Similar to Yodai’s question, who asked what could be bad about a stronger stomach, or what could be bad about fire that doesn’t burn human beings—and one can bring endless examples—and you answered that we do not know what negative consequences such a thing would have.
But surely God can establish different laws of nature only in those specific matters—that fire should not burn human beings, and so on—and everything else in the laws of nature would remain the same without change. It is hard to think of negative consequences in the fact that fire would not have the natural ability to control human beings, and only human beings?

I have explained this to exhaustion in several places. Search for evil in the world (natural evil).