Q&A: Divine Providence on the TV Program "We'll Meet Again"
Divine Providence on the TV Program "We'll Meet Again"
Question
There is a program on Kan 11 about restoring contact between families in which a rift was created because one of the family members became religious. (As usual on television, the program is pretty distorted, but still funny.) The program is called "We'll Meet Again."
In episode 4, minute 11, there is an attached link.
There is a story there of a rare coincidence; in my opinion it has no reasonable statistical plausibility.
The Haredi man paired with the secular one (that’s how it’s run) tells him about his becoming religious after an accident on a post-army trip to Thailand: he was driving at about 150 kph and crashed into a stationary truck; the car was completely totaled, and he came out whole and unharmed, except for an injury to his big toe, which left him with a scar to this day. The secular man paired with him listens intently to the story and says that about a month earlier he had a similar accident, when he crashed at high speed into a parked car and came out unharmed except for his big toe. The two of them take off their socks, and indeed the injury is visible for all to see.
If there is no providence here, then what is here?!
Another thing mentioned at the beginning of the program in passing: that same fellow, whose twin brother became religious, says that his brother is an identical twin from the same egg, and when his brother fell and split open his chin, he too was left with a scar in the same place. (I once heard about such a phenomenon, and it sounded crazy to me.)
Is there a scientific explanation for the second phenomenon?
The link to episode 4 (minute 11): https://youtu.be/-xH_Zwi7cc4
Answer
If there is no providence here, then there is coincidence. Did you check the probability of such an occurrence and compare it to how many times it has happened? This is the kind of argument that comes from people who do not understand probability and statistics. See the Gedera accident case (search for it here on the site).
Discussion on Answer
There’s a more famous story in which witches overcome gravity and the law of conservation of momentum using only a broom. What are the odds of that happening?
Poser, I don’t think anyone is arguing about the facts here; the question is why these facts!
To innocent Tam: when he told the story, he said that his friends there were injured and he wasn’t. So there was providence for him — and for them what?
I didn’t come to say that I understand the calculations of Heaven, only that it seems more likely to say that such a coincidence would not happen on its own, and I was talking about the meeting of the survivors with damage to the toe for almost the same reason.
Simple, what is he saying?
“If there is no providence here, then what is here?!”
And you said to him: indeed, there is providence here in the same sense as “the world follows its natural course.”
What amazes me is the tendency to interpret דווקא what is perceived in someone’s eyes as an “exceptional” phenomenon as evidence of providence, instead of seeing nature itself, exactly as it operates, in causality and orderly structure (and as we formulate this as “the laws of nature”), as the perfect expression of providence.
All the passengers in the car, both those who were killed and those who survived, were subject to those very same laws of nature. And if exactly the same conditions had held for all the passengers, then all of their fates would have been identical.
I do not accept the concept of “a deviation from nature.” But by way of analogy I will ask: when a person sees two countries, in one the people act according to order and law, and in the other he sees chaos and confusion, what will he say? At which of the countries will he point and say, “It is evident that this is a land under providence”?
Shlomo, see column 276
Shulyata, I read it.
A column with excellent good sense.
Dear Rabbi Shlomo, I repeat and clarify: I do not disagree that nature cries out providence in its perfect expression.
Rather, it is hard for a person to see a tree and marvel at how it grows, etc. etc., because of the habitual familiarity in which we live. Nachmanides already elaborated on this in the portion of Bo regarding open and hidden miracles, and this is not the place to elaborate.
I pointed to two phenomena that have no logical explanation even within what we are used to and regard as nature — for example, the coincidence of the accident together with the injury to the toe. True, in both accidents there was no deviation from the laws of nature, but the timing of these people is, in my opinion, a statistical anomaly that cries out the hidden miracles and says: there is no nature and no coincidence; everything is directed by Heaven.
Another thing I pointed to was the matter of the mark the twin received on his chin when his twin brother split open his chin.
“I do not disagree that nature cries out providence in its perfect expression.”
“True, in both accidents there was no deviation from the laws of nature,”
“… cries out the hidden miracles and says there is no nature and no coincidence”
By my life, I do not understand how one hand can write these three sentences in a single breath.
P.S. It requires consideration whether the very fact that these three sentences dwell together under one roof is itself a deviation from nature…
The laws of nature point to planning, and therefore to a planner.
When something happens in the world that does not depart from the laws of nature, unlike the splitting of the sea, it seems to us that the thing operates according to fixed law and not intervention. When there is a collision of anomalies, even if each one individually has an explanation, that indicates someone pulling the strings.
And I will explain: when an accident happened at high speed and the person came out intact except for a small injury to the toe, we will certainly assume that if we repeat the action with the data precisely, the result will be astonishingly precise, because the world operates according to lawfulness. (Does that lawfulness prove that there is no one pulling the strings? No. One can assume that the laws operate by themselves, after their physical properties were programmed into them.)
When there is a coincidence such as this — that is, two people who experienced an accident in a similar situation and came out with damage to the toe, and they meet at a time when the discussion is about whether there is providence or whether everything is coincidence — the probability is that there is someone pulling the strings.
True, one cannot prove empirically from here that there is someone pulling the strings, but the more plausible probability is that something made sure they would meet, etc. etc. And that is the cry that says there is no nature and no coincidence, and everything, everything is the hand of the one pulling the strings — that is, divine providence.
Regarding the second question, it does not seem likely to me that he has a scar when nothing happened to him. That needs checking.