I read the columns, and they have no connection at all to what I said. I didn’t ask whether the Rabbi’s answer contradicts the concept of omnipotence—about that the Rabbi’s answer is clear. I asked that according to the Rabbi’s view there is change in the Creator, and that is a simple mistake.
I also asked about what is written in the book on page 78 [in the note], that the note doesn’t even get off the ground.

You spoke about Him being above time, and I explained there that this isn’t an answer.

Not an answer to the Rabbi’s answer. The Rabbi answered that God really doesn’t know. The Rabbi solved all the problems here, except that according to the Rabbi God doesn’t know and then knowledge is renewed in Him, but I wrote to the Rabbi that God doesn’t change.

And I also asked about the Rabbi’s question in his book on page 78 regarding Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance at the end of chapter 6 according to my interpretation. But that’s not so important; much more important is that God does not change.

The fact that when He knows, something is indeed newly added in Him—what exactly is the problem with that?
I didn’t see/understand any question.

If God changes, then God enters the boundaries of time, which would require that God need a creator [as I wrote, the entire first part of the Guide for the Perplexed deals with this, that God does not change; see chapter 55], and as Isaiah says: "For I the Lord have not changed."

A common argument and, in my opinion, nonsense. Change in Him is not problematic. And putting Him under time is another slogan I’ve never understood. First, that itself doesn’t seem problematic to me. Second, time can be the way we think about it and not necessarily something in Him himself.

"First, that itself isn’t problematic"—why? Then God is required by creation exactly like the world, since everything that belongs to time had a beginning. By definition, something that lives time cannot be without a beginning. "Second"—I didn’t understand the Rabbi’s intention. What did the Rabbi answer?
And also, what about the verse in Isaiah?

Shmuel A’s words in short, with your permission, Mr. Shmuel.

If He is subject to time, then He must have a beginning, and that contradicts reason, because what was before the beginning? A kind of infinite regress!
And therefore Shmuel A concludes that He is above time, and consequently it is also necessary to say that He does not change, because change depends on time. And new knowledge counts as change.
What is incorrect about this?

How do you know that everything that belongs to time had a beginning? What is something that "belongs to time" anyway? According to Kant, for example, time and space are categories that exist only in us and not in the world. So our view of the world is done through the categories of time, and that includes our view of the Holy One, blessed be He. He made the plague of blood before the plague of frogs. Does that mean He is under time?
In short, as I wrote here, these are empty pilpulim, as is common in Jewish thought.

I simply want to summarize the matter. First of all, regarding the Rabbi’s claims [that is, in the note/the previous comment], the Rabbi wrote:
How do you know that everything that belongs to time had a beginning? Everything has a beginning—how could something not begin?!
But according to this, a serious problem arises: what caused the beginning of that which caused all beginnings?
And by force of these difficulties, all thinkers, believers and non-believers alike, concluded unanimously:
"There was something that does not belong to time, and it is what caused them all."
They only disagreed about what it is or who it is, but we have drifted from the context, so let us return:
That thing, in the Jewish religion, is God. Therefore it follows necessarily that He does not belong to time. The Rabbi continued:
What is something that ‘belongs to time’ anyway? According to Kant, for example, time and space are categories that exist only in us and not in the world. So our view of the world is done through categories of time, and that includes our view of the Holy One, blessed be He. He made the plague of blood before the plague of frogs. Does that mean He is under time?
In short, as I wrote here, these are empty pilpulim, as is common in Jewish thought. End of the Rabbi’s words.
Now, something that belongs to time means that the thing performed a temporal action—thinking, doing, speaking, and the like.
And what the Rabbi brought from Kant is irrelevant to the matter [from this I only understood that the Rabbi did not understand me].
Just because this is not in the world, does it mean that something temporal would not need a beginning? So there is no claim here at all. But in the end, the Rabbi did write the obvious question: "He made the plague of blood before the plague of frogs. Does that mean He is under time?"
And he quoted my words, which I had already written immediately because of the obvious difficulty: "And one should not compare this at all to God’s actions, for those do not cause an actual change, but an addition of knowledge—of that we have not heard." [the last lines of the question]
And to illustrate this more clearly, here is an example: "gravity" [there is indeed a resemblance for those who understand].
For at the second the world was created and the force began to act and pull things, nobody would say the force changed.
Rather, it simply performed an action that is not connected to it!!! Whereas if God does not know and then knowledge is renewed in Him [in Himself], this is a change in God—that on day one He did not know, and on day two He did know—so He has entered time, and everything that enters time needs a creator, etc.
[And for those who want to say He didn’t belong and then entered, they have accomplished nothing, because from the start He knew that this would be so, and they have externalized His thought from Him into something changeable in any case.] Therefore we have nothing to say except that God and His knowledge are one [as Maimonides wrote
in the law we cited], and from eternity He knew everything, not changing, Heaven forbid, as all the major sages of the world wrote. And Maimonides did not write the Thirteen Principles for nothing, given his stature.
If I cannot convince the Rabbi, at least I will convince the public to stick to Maimonides, whose doctrine is precise and clear.

End of topic.

Shmuel, this is an impressive collection of meaningless slogans, mistakes, and above all one big logical loop. In light of all this, I must say that your certainty is even more amusing.
1. You assume that everything has a beginning. If you assume that, then of course the discussion is over. But that very point is what the dispute is about. The fact that you enlisted all thinkers, believers and non-believers, and also added them to a Greek chorus answering after you in one voice, does not impress me very much. Beyond the fact that this is a disgraceful ad hominem, it mainly testifies to the breadth of your knowledge. If those are all the thinkers you know, your world is unbelievably narrow. But as I said, I’m not really interested in what all your "thinkers" agreed to.
2. If you assume that everything has a beginning, then the Holy One, blessed be He, does too. What then? You will no doubt say that only something that belongs to time has a beginning, but what does not belong to time has no beginning. Then I ask: what is the definition of something that belongs to time? And you answer: something that needs to have a beginning. QED. Amusing.
3. You propose a definition that something belonging to time is something that performed a temporal action (to think, to do, to speak). Is creating the world not doing? Is "And God said" not speaking? (And this need not be done with a mouth.)
At this point you will no doubt slip away into the mysteries of negative attributes, another piece of nonsense from the study hall of Jewish thought.
4. What I brought from Kant is very relevant, and this is only proof that you did not understand me. Kant said that space and time are our categories and do not exist in reality itself. That means there may be beings who do not see the world in terms of space or time. Therefore every claim we make about God is a claim formulated within the framework of our conceptual world, which includes time. Therefore there is no problem at all with our statements about the Holy One, blessed be He, that include time. When I say that He did something or thought or knows, these are my descriptions of Him, and since I think in terms of time they are formulated in language that includes time. By the same token, I can also think of Him as primordial (especially in light of the accepted interpretations of the Big Bang, which of course are irrelevant to all your ‘thinkers’ from the Greek chorus).
At most one could raise here the question whether infinity (concrete and not potential) is a well-defined being. But that is a different discussion, because if it is not defined or is contradictory, then it cannot be applied to God either.
5. Contradictorily, you anthropomorphize the Holy One, blessed be He, by translating the statement that He knows into something being added to His essence. But if you use negative attributes, then you fall here into the pit from which you are trying to rescue me (needlessly, of course).

If someone manages to be persuaded by this collection of strange sentences to cling to Maimonides, his condition (and Maimonides’) is rather bleak.
By the way, on the subject of knowledge and free choice, I argue for a different interpretation of Maimonides and am not coming to disagree with him. But don’t let the facts confuse you. After all, all thinkers, believers and non-believers alike, said with one voice that I disagree with Maimonides.

A. If time had no beginning, we would never get here. It’s like walking on a treadmill—you don’t get anywhere. For example, if I tell someone I’ll meet him after an infinite amount of time, then we’ll never meet, because at every point in time there will be another one after it, endlessly. Therefore time must have a starting point and an endpoint!
And if the Creator of the world began the creation of the world at a certain point in time, that means time itself was created then. If time existed before and had no beginning, we are in an infinite regress.

Likewise, change is something related to time, and whoever is not under the limitations of time has no change. For those under the limitation of time, things appear as change; one who is above time is in the future and the present of those under time limitation with no contradiction in that.

A. Tam, this stale argument belongs in the Middle Ages. Today we are long past the mathematics of infinity, and today it is clear that this description is flawed and contradictory, and therefore leads to paradoxes. But there is a consistent description in which the paradoxes do not exist. Go study.
For example, the x-axis in a Cartesian coordinate system extends to minus infinity and to infinity on the other side. There is no problem defining this consistently. The paradox you described characterizes a picture in which you yourself are standing at the point minus infinity and begin walking to the right. But in a consistent description there is no such point. It is a limit, not a point. As I said, go study.
B. If time itself was created, as the accepted interpretation of the Big Bang also holds, then this whole discussion loses its meaning. God too has a beginning in time, and it is exactly when the time-axis begins. So that is evidence to the contrary.
C. Change is not connected to time in any way (again, a medieval argument). According to Kant, time is our measuring rod for looking at changes and is not found in them themselves. But even without Kant, even if we assume time really exists, this can still be true.
D. I too am in the past, present, and future of those under the limitation of time. I was there yesterday and I will be there (I hope) tomorrow too. These are empty words, and that is exactly what I was talking about.

I’d be happy for a bit more elaboration on A. Thanks.

To points 1 through 5 I already answered, and also A through D. [And when I wrote “thinkers” I meant the important ones. Anyone who says the world has no beginning is a fool—and in any case that isn’t relevant to us, since we believe in creation.] And by the way, those of the Big Bang also say there was something that caused it, and that needs to be something that does not need a beginning—not belonging to time….]

P.S. The topic seems finished to me; I don’t think I’ll write more about it.

Tam,
I explained it in the body of my remarks. I’ll try to illustrate.
Stage A: Think about the set of natural numbers (the integers from 1 onward). How many are there? Infinity. Now start walking from infinity and go down by one each time. Will you ever arrive, at some time, at any number? No. So the natural numbers cannot be defined that way. By contrast, now start walking from 1 and go up by 1 each time. For any number you give me, I’ll tell you at what time I’ll reach it. So that indeed can be a definition of the numbers. It follows that these two descriptions are not equivalent in some sense.
Stage B: Starting from infinity and downward assumes that there is some concrete number "infinity," and it is like any other number, so one can stand on it and walk backward (or downward). But there is no such number, and therefore the numbers cannot be defined in a descending way from infinity. That is a contradictory and really empty definition.
Now Stage C: Does that mean there aren’t infinitely many numbers, that the number of natural numbers is finite? Absolutely not. Therefore in mathematics it is customary to say that infinity is a limit and not a specific number. To say that there are infinitely many numbers means that the number of numbers is not finite (negative attributes). This is a negative, potential statement, not a positive, concrete one.
For another illustration, see the entry “Hilbert’s Hotel” on Wikipedia.

Thank you.
Just one comment: the difference when I start walking from one is because I have the ability to start by means of a timeline that I decide to start from. But the problem is that if I want to examine, for example, the number of years of the universe, I don’t have the ability to place a line, because there was always something before. So it turns out there is no beginning, and we’re back to the treadmill example, no?
What am I missing? (It seems your explanation didn’t address creation, which does require something not included in time.)
Thanks in advance.

The definition that it has no beginning is exactly the correct definition. Therefore there is also no philosophical obstacle whatsoever to saying that God changes in time and yet He existed all along (that is, He has no beginning). I do not see even the slightest connection between the two.

Please be precise in Maimonides’ wording:
"Permission is granted to every person. If he wishes to incline himself…"

But Maimonides does not write that a person has free choice to wish. Rather: if he wishes.
And that is the whole point. A person does not simply wish out of nowhere, but out of the compulsion of circumstances.

And later: "Do not let this matter pass through your mind, which the fools of the nations of the world and most of the unformed among Israel say—that the Holy One, blessed be He, decrees upon a person from the beginning of his creation to be righteous or wicked."

And indeed there is no decree on a person to be righteous or wicked; rather it happens by force of circumstances, some of which are arbitrary.

And all those who think a person has free choice think so because the inclination to pride delights in this thought, and they do not have free choice not to delight in this thought.

Tam,

As far as I understand, the paradoxes you raised are not really anachronistic ("a stale argument fit for the Middle Ages").
Even if the solution Michi presented is successful—and I believe that is the case—it is a modern mathematical solution (based on a redefinition of the concept of limit within, it seems to me, the invention of infinitesimal calculus). In fact, this is just an attempt to return to the problem of continuity with Zeno’s failed strategy…
In any case, what is required here is a philosophical solution and not a "mathematical" one, and therefore it seems to me that the paradox remains a paradox…
And see a nice explanation supporting this in Ze’ev Bechler’s Three Copernican Revolutions, from page 82 onward.

It is interesting to note that Michi knows Bechler’s approach and agrees with its main points. So it is a bit strange that he does not mention that according to a certain approach—which he apparently actually agrees with—modern mathematics solves nothing.

I also recommend looking at Michi’s brilliant article (articles?) on Zeno’s paradoxes and their connection to the act of repentance. An article precise and clear, but suffering, to the best of my faulty judgment, from a similar problem.

Doron, could you please photograph or copy the passage from Bechler (I hope it’s short enough)? I actually remember that the whole book by Bechler is finger-licking good, except for the sections where he attacks mathematics, where in my humble opinion he was talking nonsense.

Ben Nun,

First of all, I’m unable to photograph it; these are long passages. Sorry.

In the distant past I had long discussions with Michi about the affinity between him and Bechler. To my surprise, he made discouraging noises in that direction.

As for Bechler: I too myself have criticism of him, and part of it is even influenced by Michi. But one thing I understand in him (I hope..): he is consistent and tries to ground the whole body of knowledge on the paradigms he formulates (potentialism and actualism).

In any event, my impression is that Bechler understands very well what Michi also understands well (but tends to forget here and there), and that is two things: first, that philosophical method is not a "scientific" method, or a "mathematical" method, or any other "technical" body of knowledge; and second, that philosophical method is in principle prior to those latter methods.
Therefore, even if Bechler failed in his explanations of the mathematical part (I’m not at all sure of that), the very attempt to locate beneath mathematics the metaphysical plane is a successful attempt. Indeed, even a fool like me managed to understand from his words how metaphysical principles underlie infinitesimal calculus.

And regarding what seemed strange to you—that it wasn’t noted that "according to a certain approach that he apparently actually agrees with, modern mathematics solves nothing"—if I understood you correctly, by “agreement with the main points of the view” you mean the attack on Russell’s type theory and the accusation that it merely violently forbids talking about the problems, hiding them under the rug, and doesn’t really solve anything. And from this you also derive an attack on rigorous mathematical definitions (such as the definition of the sum of a series; below I’ll refer to a precise and devastating critique by Gadi Alexandrovich) that they fail to capture the intuitive human concept, and so mathematics basically opened a stadium in another neighborhood and is playing tag there with itself.
But there is a big difference. When one forbids talking, for example, about self-reference, that is a human concept that is perfectly understandable and reasonable, and we see that it generates paradoxes and we look for solutions, not for ignoring them. And that is the criticism of type theory (in my personal opinion, by the way, that is not a successful criticism, and I even composed a few rhymes about it here on the site). But the mathematical terms do not forbid; rather, they truly and sincerely fully expose the most consistent definition, the one that sits best with the heart, and apparently it is a correct understanding. And therefore Achilles and the tortoise really does dissolve like a morning cloud and like early dew that disappears. Moreover, as the owner of this site also pointed out in a certain column where there was discussion of convexity and concavity and equivalence between human psychological conceptualization and mathematical definition, mathematics promises nothing except the connection between assumptions and conclusion, and it really is playing in a stadium of its own—but whoever wants is welcome to join it.

Link to an old and precise post by Alexandrovich (one of several apparently):
https://gadial.net/2008/06/17/infinite_series/

Now that your words have appeared in print, it turns out all my guesses about your opinion went up in smoke to heaven, and behold light fumes rise and descend there.

Ben Nun,

I need to read your first response carefully, think, and then see whether I understand. And only then maybe answer. That still hasn’t happened.

Your second response is too poetic for my poor soul. I understand nothing.

Didn’t happen, of course… with God’s help.

[I wrote there that I hastened to make guesses about your view, and at the same time that you were writing an explanation, I was writing guesses about the previous message. So the guesses were refuted and faded away and are no longer relevant—as if they had gone up in smoke.]

And I’d also be happy if you would explain to me in more primitive language your basic claim. It seems to me that in your view I’m making too crude a logical leap, but I don’t understand what it is.
In any event, to address your metaphor: even if mathematics is playing in a stadium of its own (as I also think), still the analysis of its "moves in the game," that is, the clarification of its "intuitive" meanings, takes place in philosophy’s home stadium. More precisely, it takes place in the home stadium of the philosophy of mathematics.
Therefore this analysis is not subject to mathematical rules.

I have no objection at all to that leap. I just thought you were making a different leap (from criticism of type theory to criticism of rigorous mathematics itself, that both these and those hide something behind them and don’t capture it exactly).

And in general I join your philosophical imperialism.

Philosophical imperialism? I don’t understand.

Not a great term. I meant that I agree with the general idea that the place of philosophy is not pushed aside as a result of any internal knowledge within a specific field. Both here with regard to mathematics and in ancient threads where you argued for philosophical criticism (which echoes Bechler’s words) of logic.