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Q&A: Randomness vs. God (First Cause)

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This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

Randomness vs. God (First Cause)

Question

I recently came across this question:
A person chooses and wants in accordance with the influences acting on him (external, internal, weighing between values). The choice itself is between values that exist in reality. 
If so, what is the divine choice? After all, nothing influences Him. What is that divine choice? Is this simply because of an imprecise definition of “God”?
 
Thank you

Answer

I don’t know what is meant by “values that exist in reality.” A person chooses between values. If you hold ethical realism—I’m with you. But that isn’t essential to the discussion here.
First, who says that God really chooses? Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto writes that it is the nature of the good to do good, which implies that He has no choice. 
Second, I didn’t understand why you brought “influences” into this. A person is indeed subject to influences, but choice is not the result of those influences. God is not subject to influences, but there is no reason He could not choose.
Perhaps what you mean is not that the values influence Him, but that values prior to the choice are required in order for there to be a choice at all (the choice is between them).
And even if He chooses, and even if your intention was that the values need to precede the choice, it still isn’t so simple. Seemingly this takes us into the Euthyphro dilemma: are values good because God commanded them, or did God command them because they are good? According to the second side, they really do precede Him. According to the first side, He chose them arbitrarily.
But in my opinion this dilemma is based on a mistake. He created the world, and once this is the world, the good is defined from within it and within it in a univocal way. But He could have created a different world, and then perhaps the good would have been defined differently. According to this, He chose to create such a world, and consequently those values. Here the choice is, of course, between forests of values—He chooses between worlds and different systems of values.
 

Discussion on Answer

Natan (2019-10-29)

How does your answer solve the Euthyphro dilemma?
Now the question is why He chose דווקא such a world.
You moved from arbitrariness in values to arbitrariness in worlds.

Michi (2019-10-29)

I wasn’t trying to solve the dilemma, only to show that it’s illusory. It isn’t one of two answers, but one possible answer.
As for your question: He chose this world because that’s what He wanted. I see no reason to assume that there is some prior value system from which the preference for this world emerges. Certainly not something accessible to our conceptual system, and therefore there is no point discussing it. In principle, it’s also possible that He cast lots among several options.

Chaim (2019-10-29)

What I really meant was that prior values are required in order for there to be a choice.

“He chose the world because that’s what He wanted” — what does that mean? Is the will in question something arbitrary? The question is simply that if there are no values prior to the choice, it comes out that God initially acted in an arbitrary way (maybe that’s another definition of “that which stops regressions,” which you mention in the book God Plays Dice?)

It’s hard to say that God acts arbitrarily in a random way; on the other hand, you can’t say that there is something prior to God.

Michi (2019-10-29)

I’ll repeat myself one last time.
There are things whose value is intrinsic. Why does human life have value? Just because. It isn’t based on something prior to it. The same could apply to the Holy One, blessed be He.

If that’s hard for you, then don’t say it—or take a calming pill and say it.

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