He’s mistaken there in his whole approach.

He works from the assumption that the deeper we discover things, the closer we get to God. (That is true in the negative sense—that the more one investigates and knows, the farther one gets from idolatry.)

In general it seems he isn’t familiar with the mind-body problem.
And he makes connections between unrelated things in an unreliable way. Even if he had discovered that the universe is made up of fire, wind, and water, he would have found some article (or several) to justify it…

And the most important thing, which it seems he hasn’t internalized, is this:
Everything science discovers is only what kind of world is required in order for us human beings to come into existence.
And that has nothing to do with God. After all, one could easily say that from God’s perspective all possible worlds exist.

Can the Rabbi post his comments on the article?

I’m copying them here, but I’m not going to get into a discussion about it (I unfortunately don’t have time):

With God’s help

Hello Daniel,
I read it, and it was definitely interesting. Though I’m not exactly sure who the target audience is and where this is supposed to be published (the equations, in my opinion, will prevent publication on any reasonable platform). I told you the main points of my comments at Moshe’s engagement party, when you described the ideas to me in general terms. I have an antagonism toward discussions of this type because they are mistaken at the level of their philosophical starting point. In my opinion this suffers from exactly the same failures as the arguments of the atheist opponents (Hawking-Dawkins). Here I’ll spell out the comments that followed from reading it. The last comment really sums them all up. My objection is sharp, but I know you already know me and won’t be offended.

1. pp. 151–152. The question of the origin of matter is not at all nullified. Even if matter is conserved, the initial matter (at the point of the Big Bang) had to come from somewhere. Eternity is not a sufficient answer, because that would be an actual infinity, not a potential one. By the same token, no theory of Hawking and his gang will help here either. Those “explanations” do not answer the right questions. In my opinion, your basic method falls into the same error as theirs. You too, like them, see physics as an answer to philosophical questions. A physical explanation solves the philosophical difficulty of where we came from and how something was created. It solves nothing. The law only describes how it happened. But the question remains: who created the law that caused it to happen? Therefore there is no difficulty to begin with, and in any case the proposed answers have no significance.
2. p. 152. I didn’t understand what difference it makes if you include energy as well. After all, the total mass-energy should be conserved, and the question is where that total came from in the first place (Abraham our forefather: who turns the sphere?).
3. p. 158. A few comments on the prediction you proposed. a. First, you will never know that particles have no intrinsic mass, because there can always be a more fundamental theory in which they do. Are you prepared to stake your head on the claim that the Standard Model is the final model? And vice versa: when you think there is intrinsic mass, there can always be a more fundamental theory that shows there isn’t. (After all, the Standard Model still does not give a complete picture, and does not even claim to describe the strong force as well.) b. Are you committing yourself that if a particle with intrinsic mass is discovered, you’ll take off your kippah? If not, then this is nothing more than a cute homiletic flourish. c. Following comment 2, mass-energy also needs a source. As I said, in my view all these physical explanations change nothing at the philosophical level, and therefore they have no direct spiritual and/or philosophical significance (at least none that I can see). They describe differently what we experience. So what? Here is a consequence: even if these particles do not have intrinsic mass, what we call mass (which you present as the intensity of interaction with the Higgs) itself needs a source. It did not create itself (that is our experience, which led to the formulation of the law of conservation of matter). So what have you gained by descending to a more microscopic model? Our experience still says that cows are not created from the vacuum state of the field (and you yourself chuckled about that). So how were cows created? Why does the move to fields help us at all? You will explain that they are created from interactions of fields. And then I will ask: and how were those fields and interactions created? In particular, interactions that create an organic and harmonious creature like a cow, and certainly like a human being? Rather special interactions, no?
4. End of p. 158. “There is none else besides Him” in your interpretation (that is, contraction in its plain sense, as the Hasidim say) is simply nonsense, pardon me. If there is none else besides Him, then we do not exist. If so, who wrote the article and who is reading it? What are we talking about at all? Even if reality consists of excitations of the field of the Holy One, blessed be He, it still exists. That is what we mean by existing. Therefore mass in everyday experience also exists. Rather, there is a microscopic explanation showing that this is not ordinary rest mass. So what? Moreover, the words of the Shelah do not say at all what you are putting into his mouth. He writes that reality does not exist by its own power, and if the Holy One, blessed be He, were to stop sustaining it, it would cease to exist. What does that have to do with the view of contraction in its plain sense and “there is none else besides Him” in your interpretation? Obviously the Holy One, blessed be He, constitutes everything, but that does not mean that the “everything” is identical with Him, that is, that it does not exist on its own. Think about a power circuit and a control circuit in electricity. The control circuit enables the power circuit to operate—does that mean they are identical? Or that there is no power circuit? This is the same mistake the spiritual supervisors make regarding “my power and the might of my hand,” instead of “it is He who gives you the power to gain wealth” (as in the well-known homilies of Rabbenu Nissim).
5. p. 159. What is the problem with seeing the Holy One, blessed be He, as sustaining massive nature? Why do you have to move to field excitations in order to see that better? Without His sustaining it, it would disappear. Exactly as in your description. The fact that mass does not create itself does not mean that one does not need the Holy One, blessed be He, to maintain it. That fact follows from the simple point that He just keeps holding it in existence all the time. That is how He establishes the law of conservation of matter (assuming there is such a law). Why does moving to fields change anything? Moreover, you yourself say that the law of conservation of mass is an anachronism, so what is the point of building anything on it? (Your argument is built on the claim that mass cannot come into being by itself, but fields and their excitations can.) And beyond that, the Holy One, blessed be He, also created the law of conservation of mass (see above).
General comment: the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, is proven not within the law of conservation of mass (that is, that His existence explains what the law of conservation of mass cannot explain), but from that law itself (because since the law exists, there is apparently someone who grounds it). By the way, that is true of all laws and all discussions of this kind (and this is where Dawkins and Hawking and their gangs are mistaken). The claim that the laws are partial is not proof of the Holy One, blessed be He, but only a scientific gap to be filled by research (god of the gaps), and by the same token the claim that the laws explain everything is not a refutation of His existence. And beyond all that, the laws also prove nothing about Him. What difference do these laws or those laws make to me? These are laws and those are laws, and every system of laws needs a lawgiver. From that standpoint, I see no advantage to a system of field-laws over a system of mass-laws.
6. End of p. 159. The fields constitute the particles—but who constitutes the fields? Why did anything change once you moved from particles to fields? Instead of assuming the inertia of matter (that it does not need anything to constitute it), you are assuming the inertia of the field. I don’t understand what you gained here. Can a field exist without something constituting it?
7. In general, describing a particle as an excitation of a field does not bring it any closer to being created by the Holy One, blessed be He, than a description of its spontaneous formation. The formation of excitations is also a natural process, and in principle either there is a mechanism (even if we do not know it) that creates the excitation, or it is created randomly and spontaneously. Either way, neither of these two models fits deliberate creation by the Holy One, blessed be He. After all, His actions are not spontaneous and random but deliberate and initiated. This reminds me of attempts to explain free will by means of quantum theory. It is simply a misunderstanding. Quantum theory says that in measurement there is a collapse of the wave function to some eigenstate that cannot be predicted with certainty, but that state is determined by the distribution function (the square of the absolute value of the wave function), and it is not given over to the free decision of a human being or of the Holy One, blessed be He. If either he or He determines it, that contradicts quantum theory, just as much as it contradicts classical theory. There is no gain whatsoever in moving to fields and quantum theory over the ordinary massive and classical description. And again, no scientific description (among those known to me) changes anything at the theological and philosophical plane.
8. The conclusion of your article brings me to the summary comment on everything I have said. Throughout the article you identify matter with mass / massiveness, and you see in fields and in light evidence of spirituality. But that is not so. Light and the various fields you described are matter exactly as much as massive particles are matter. There is no difference whatsoever. There is nothing more spiritual about a field than about matter. The metaphor of light is used by the kabbalists to describe the spiritual world because light is abstract matter, but it is still entirely matter. They use it as a metaphor, and you are taking it as a realistic description (light = spirit). That is a mistake. Everything that takes part in the equations of physics is matter: fields, light, mass, and anything else you want. Therefore there is no gain in moving from massive matter to field and light. Spirit is the thing of which our psyche/soul is made, or angels are made (I do not want to speak about the Holy One, blessed be He). All of these do not take part in the laws of physics (although in my opinion there are sometimes interactions between them. But they are sporadic and certainly do not constitute part of the laws), and as such one can see them as spiritual. Fields and light have absolutely nothing to do with all this.

And that is my humble opinion.

Again, thank you for the article,
Michi

8. Why does the Rabbi assume that fields, mass, etc. require a cause? Because in your view they are not abstract enough? But consciousness and will do?
After all, you agree that there is a first cause; the question is where to stop.

Who said anything about whether it requires or does not require a cause?

1. “…Eternity is not a sufficient answer because that is an actual infinity and not a potential one…”
2. “…and the question is where that total came from in the first place (Abraham our forefather: who turns the sphere?)”
3. “Following… mass-energy also needs a source… in my view all these physical explanations change nothing at the philosophical level…”