Q&A: On the Cosmological Proof and More
On the Cosmological Proof and More
Question
Hello Rabbi,
First of all, I want to thank you for the notebooks, the posts, and the responsa. I can’t say exactly how they helped me, but it seems to me that they stirred me to a great deal of thought. As someone who came with a much “thicker” theology than the one the Rabbi presents (Rabbi Kook, Hasidism), the arguments I read forced me to think again, so that even beliefs I remained with (and I didn’t remain with all of them, at least as of now) were reformulated so that there would be justification for believing in them.
My feeling is that this is a positive process. No small part of it is thanks to you, and for that I am grateful.
1. You wrote in the second notebook that there is no necessity to say that the principle of causality also holds without time. What is that assumption based on? Are there any examples at all of cause and effect between which there is no relation of earlier and later?
2. In your opinion, are there good reasons to accept the Zohar and Kabbalah in general? What, in your view, is the status of this genre altogether?
I couldn’t find any direct treatment of the subject from you (that is, why yes / why no).
Many thanks, Reha
Answer
- I don’t remember such a quote. What I argued, as far as I recall, is that the principle of causality does not require time. Clearly we have no such examples, because we live in a world with time. We cannot have such examples.
2. It has significance as interesting spiritual intuitions. I have considerable doubt, in my view, as to how far the foundations there were indeed transmitted from the Holy One, blessed be He, at some point.
Discussion on Answer
I replied, and for some reason it doesn’t appear here. This is actually an old claim going back to the Greeks, that usually the relation between cause and effect is simultaneous (by the way, even in today’s physics they oppose the approach of “action at a distance,” that is, non-simultaneous causality).
But the discussion here is not about whether the cause must precede the effect, and by how much, but whether causality is possible, or necessary, in a world where there is no time axis. That is not the same question.
If I may, an anecdote from Kant himself, with a simple example of a causal connection that does not “require” time:
Immanuel says that when we place a heavy ball (a weight) on a cushion, the indentation that forms under it occurs simultaneously with placing the ball.
Another example: a locomotive pulling the train cars.