Q&A: The Argument from Matter – Yuval Steinitz
The Argument from Matter – Yuval Steinitz
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to know what the Rabbi thinks about the argument of Rabbi Yuval Steinitz (nowadays, apparently, one can be a rabbi and be a heretic…)
His argument goes roughly like this:
Someone who claims that God moves material bodies at each and every moment (that is, that the laws of nature are entities—I saw that the Rabbi accepted this)
claims this on the basis of the determination that matter is incapable of recognizing the laws of nature and enforcing them upon itself. But here is the problem: the law of conservation of matter is itself a law of nature in every respect. Exactly like the law of conservation of momentum and the law of inertia. Is it reasonable, then, to assume that while God must preserve the existence and enforcement of all the laws of nature, the law of conservation of matter is preserved and enforced by itself?
In Descartes’ words: just as God must move the moon from point P1 to point P2 in space, so too He must move the moon from point T1 in time to point T2 in time, in order to make its behavior and state conform to the law of conservation of mass-energy.
And a second argument, from a more logical direction:
A state of affairs that follows logically from another state does not require any force or creation or bringing-into-being, since it is actually equivalent to what already exists, and there is nothing new in it. But every new state—that is, a state of affairs that does not follow in a purely logical way from some other state—must be created ex nihilo. That is, it is a state whose creation requires an investment of force, and force is always spiritual. (Matter is dead.)
The fact that a material body is at a certain point—let us call it T1 in time and a certain point P1 in space, that is, in an overall state of T1P1—does not logically imply that it must be in some other state, say T2P2.
That is, it does not follow logically that that same body will also exist at some other moment T2, and also in some other place P2. Therefore spiritual-forceful intervention is required in order to move the body from state T1 to T2.
And that spiritual force has logical existence (either because of the ontological proof, or because that is how we infer from what we have found here to the unknown).
What does the Rabbi think of these ideas, which appear in his book A Scientific-Logical Missile to God and Back, approximately pp. 68–70?
Answer
I didn’t understand the first one. The fact that something is called a law does not mean it has the same status as every other law. The laws of logic are also called laws.
The second seems reasonable: if something happens, it needs a cause. A law is not a cause unless it is an entity. It may be built into the nature of things, but someone made that too.
Discussion on Answer
If the body stood in the first place and began to move, then an explanation is required (a force). But if it is moving, then its movement does not require force or explanation (that is inertia). And one should look further into the midrash about our father Abraham, who struggled with the question, “Who turns the sphere?”
“Movement” in time does not require an explanation. What does “what is different here?” mean? Does moving in time require a force? Then what is different? By that logic, everything that happens here requires an explanation. So what would happen without explanations and without forces? Would the body move or stand still? Disappear or continue? See Richard Taylor’s book on the relation between time and space (you are making a careless analogy: to move through space means to change place at different times. So to move through time means to change time at different places. Therefore it is actually the same thing—movement is always a spatio-temporal relation).
It really makes no difference whether time exists in the world or only in our minds (I’m not entirely sure that question even has meaning. Though I once pointed out that it has halakhic implications: can one attach a vow to time?). The same question could be asked about space as well, and nobody dispenses with the concept of force because of that. What appears to us as movement in time either does or does not require a cause, whether it is in the world or merely an image in our minds that reflects something in the world.
But all this really seems to me like hair-splitting not worth wasting our time on.
There is a practical difference as to whether the Holy One, blessed be He, creates the world anew at every moment or only moves it at every moment.
But if at point T1 there was matter, there is no reason at all that it should continue to be at point T2 rather than “disappear”!.
Clearly there has to be a force that keeps it alive.
It may be that the definition regarding change of place in time is not the correct definition, but certainly the definition is correct in the context that there is no logical reason whatsoever that the body should continue to exist one moment later.
The points are clear. I’m surprised that the Rabbi doesn’t see them.
That is true—admittedly, not everything called a law has the same status as every other law.
But! These laws too require an explanation.
The Rabbi will certainly agree with me that if he sees a body at point P1 in space and afterward at point P2 in space, he will not assume that the body moved by itself, but that someone moved it.
So too here. At one moment a body exists at point T1 in time, and afterward it moves to point T2 in time—isn’t that a sign that someone moved the body in time?! How is space different from time?
Regarding the second point, I assume you mean that there is no necessity that bodies continue to exist—why don’t they disappear immediately? Rather, this is proof that someone implanted this in them / keeps them alive at each and every moment.
I had a question about Steinitz’s words; it’s strange that the Rabbi didn’t raise it. Does a dimension of time that leads to change even exist at all, or is time only something running around in our minds (subjective).