Yes, an entity that acts toward a purpose.

Why only “it would seem so”? Not definite?

Because in principle it’s possible that He created the world not for any purpose. He just felt like it.

I can live with objections like that.
So why do people attack the cosmological proof by saying it doesn’t tell us who the creator is? It adds a lot of information.

I think the Rabbi didn’t sharpen this enough in the booklet—that the proof says there exists an entity that is volitional (or just acts because it feels like it).

I also always understood it like Kobi: that we merely proved there is a different kind of first link, but not that it “chooses” to do something in a teleological rather than causal way (even if it has no purpose in the world).

Friends, it seems I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Pardon me, but these are two bizarre messages—or is there some joke here that I didn’t get.

Kobi,
That’s a matter of taste (whether this is a lot of information or not). But I explained that this attack is irrelevant even if there were no information here at all.
I was supposed to clarify in the booklet that the entity we arrived at has will—or not??? Earth to Kobi, are you with us? Maybe I didn’t get the joke?…

Danny,
You understood like Kobi? He understood the opposite, and I said that.

Head-scratching emoji…

Haha, it’s simple stuff. At first I just didn’t understand it…. And Danny also explained that he didn’t understand it until my question. So if the Rabbi had clarified things, it would have made it easier to understand more quickly (or for Danny to understand at all).

In any case, in my opinion there are two different kinds of objections regarding the need for will:

1. One can speak of some primordial thing that had energetic instability, which caused the Big Bang.
That is, as a general definition: some primordial thing whose orientation was always “forward.”

Although it seems to me that regarding that thing, one would still need a sufficient reason why its orientation was always forward.

2. The Rabbi usually emphasizes that our nature is fundamentally teleological; for example, quantum mechanics has no cause, only purpose. But as the Rabbi emphasizes many times—the quanta themselves are produced through a causal process from prime matter, as the Rabbi mentions in the booklet and in his article in Tzohar.
But with regard to that prime matter, one could say that it operates in a teleological way. And we have no information that it was created. So it seems that it could replace God in the story, no?

The primordial being must have the ability to create a world. The physico-theological proof adds that it should also be intelligent (because without that it’s unclear how such a special world came into being), and then it is also reasonable that it acts for some purpose.

That’s indeed what I assumed. In my humble opinion, two more additions can be made:
1) When we say that the world began in a teleological way, that strengthens the teleological argument.
2) Also, one can make an induction from people’s acts of free choice—that falls under extending from the familiar, that the primordial entity too is not devoid of choice. (It’s not something far-fetched.)

What does the Rabbi think about teleological entities as in the Aristotelian conception?
I mean like when they said that the element of fire strives to reach the heavens because that is the source of its element, and so on and so forth.

Did those objects have free choice, only they didn’t want to go somewhere else? Or were they really devoid of choice and only behaved in a teleological way?

The latter. See Appendix D of God Plays with Dice. That’s clearly also what Aristotle thought.

Rabbi, if you changed your mind, you should put it into the booklet.
In the booklet on the cosmological proof, the Rabbi complicates things for readers with vague concepts like “something within our experience” and “something not within our experience,” whereas according to what you say here it can be explained very simply.
A first cause that has no will would also require an explanation of why it brought about a future event (what is the reason that caused it to do so), and then we enter an infinite regress.
Only a first cause that is *volitional* (possessing free choice) can act without a prior cause, but rather teleologically, facing “forward,” toward a future purpose, and then it’s clear why there is no need to seek a cause that made it do what it did—that is, it is clear why God has no cause.
That makes things simple, and not connected at all to whether it is material or not.
Isn’t that so?

Danny, I too understood that the proof that the first cause is *volitional* (and not, say, some kind of “mechanical” mechanism with the ability to create a world, etc.—that is, not a personality = not something with will) is that the world is not eternal but had a beginning. Meaning, there was a stage in which the first cause did not create a world, and a stage in which it did create a world. If we do not assume free will, we would have to say that the factor causing this change was some other cause, and then we are no longer speaking about a first cause.

It’s just that “volitional” is not identical with “teleological.” Will only means that the creation did not come as the result of some cause external to the creator, or pressures exerted upon him, etc. Rather it came entirely from him, by free will. But perhaps that free will was a whim. Not for the sake of a purpose. What Rabbi Michael Abraham calls “just because he felt like it.”

So these are two separate issues: volitional and teleological, which require separate proofs.

[By the way, at the stage when the first cause had not yet produced effects, it was still not an actual cause, only a potential one. How does that fit with Maimonides’ claim that with God everything is actual, because there cannot be with Him a change from potentiality to actuality? Likewise, when we assume free will we are talking about change in the first cause, from one state to another. Isn’t that a problem?]

I also think that the “will” solution to the question of the change between “creation” and “non-creation” relies on our experience. In our world, we know of no cause for change that depends on nothing outside the creator himself except “free will.” The fact that in our toolbox of concepts “will” is the only solution causes us to say the same thing about the first cause as well, and infer that it is volitional. So in any case there is no escaping this: we are resorting here to, and assuming, something from our experience. Otherwise we can only ask questions without any ability to answer.

Danny, I didn’t claim that God created the world for some purpose, only that the cosmological argument proves that He had free choice, and that really is not written in the booklet.
In the booklet it just says that one must assume there is a first cause different from those familiar to us, but according to what is said here, the reason it does not need a cause is not that it is outside our experience, but that it has free will. The phrase “free will” does not appear anywhere in the booklet.
Apparently our Rabbi thinks everyone is a skilled philosopher.

Netanel,
Every teleological entity acts not because of a cause. That is also true of Aristotle’s stone.
Otherwise it is not teleological but causal.
So I don’t see why you are bringing free choice into the story here?!

I don’t see it either. As far as I recall, I didn’t speak about a volitional entity. In the cosmological argument it is not even necessarily intelligent.

I was responding to Danny… (not to the original question).