Q&A: The Limits of the Almighty — A Story in Two Systems
The Limits of the Almighty — A Story in Two Systems
Question
Hi Michi,
Yesterday I read in the “Transparent Kippot” WhatsApp group a story about Zohar Rahav, who is the father of one of the group’s members, and is essentially a secular person, who dreamed that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was bringing him tefillin. This dream put him under a great deal of emotional pressure. A few months later, during a family occasion, Zohar went to the synagogue on the Sabbath [usually he avoids doing so], and then a Jew came up to him and told him that he was buying him tefillin. And then I got emotional,
Today I decided that I needed to share this matter with you.
As I was opening the computer, I came across a story I had already become familiar with in the past: the mother of Dvir Emanueloff, who was killed in Operation Cast Lead, told how completely by chance she met a baby who was born after Cast Lead and who was named after him.
I don’t want to go into the details of this unbelievable encounter.
And again I am moved to tears, and I go back to writing to you, and this time I ask you: most people who believe in God, [and it makes no difference what their religion is,] will take these two stories to heart. But, “true to my holy habit,” I feel the need to dampen the celebration a bit…
If the people involved in these stories really believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, then according to my worldview they should have asked: is this all that the Holy One, blessed be He, is capable of doing?!
This is the reason that led me to conclude that the speed of God’s action depends on the complexity and mass of the action required of Him.
Causing a person to dream, or bringing together people who are in a limited geographic area, is much more practical than preventing a war or an act of massacre. On this matter I want to add that it is very possible that God is capable of deciding battles by causing a wrong decision on the part of a senior commander in the sector where a decisive battle is taking place.
Here I return to my stories from last week about the only partial validity of the laws of physics, since they are relevant only to 95% of the universe, most of which is dark matter.
And then, in the space of 95% of the universe, there is room for an abundance of beliefs. And there is no room to say that one authority does not encroach upon another.
So have a happy holiday, and may no more fallen soldiers be added to the Jewish people, or בכלל.
All the best
Answer
Happy holiday to you too. By the way, as far as I know, our laws of nature also apply within dark matter.
Discussion on Answer
There is an explanation for dark matter within the framework of our laws of nature, and there is no reason to assume that the laws there are different. Just as we would not assume that the laws on the moon or elsewhere in the universe are different.
Do we need a special reason in order to think that the laws of nature are different in at least part of dark matter?
Is there a reason we can understand why some of the laws of nature repeat this same structure, in which one of the factors is squared? Of course, we remember at least two equations of laws in which one of the factors is divided by 2 before it is multiplied by the square of the second factor. Maybe part of dark matter behaves differently?
I allow myself to compare this to the development of quantum theory, which even Einstein found hard to digest, and to the claim that perhaps, because of the wide distribution of dark matter relative to ordinary matter, we need to be cautious and be prepared for surprises.
I’ll give you two examples of surprises from the natural sciences: Professor Nir Shaviv, who grew up in a home of scientists engaged in studying nature, has been arguing for several years that global warming is not man-made. Rather, it is a cyclical galactic phenomenon. Air pollution should be prevented for health reasons unrelated to the greenhouse effect.
Professor Shaviv, the “mischievous” one, simply is not satisfied with the data relevant to the greenhouse effect; he expanded the searches connected to the history of the earth and found geological evidence of global warming, but these occurred hundreds of millions of years before the appearance of the human species. Of course most scientists disagree with him, but to the best of my understanding they have nothing to hold on to.
And one more thing: about a month ago it was published that thanks to the development of an innovative microscopic testing method, it has finally become possible to examine skin tissues without distorting them, and they found that beneath our skin [which is the largest organ in our body] there is tissue for conducting fluids in our body, which until now had not been identified, and which apparently constitutes an organ in its own right.
This discovery seems puzzling at first glance — after all, dermatologists knew very well how to explain the role of the skin. But the point is that they did not take into account that what they were seeing was only a distortion of the real thing!
To conclude — I hope that the examples and arguments I raised are substantively related to the subject of our disagreement.
All that remains for me is to wish you all the best and a peaceful Sabbath
Hello A.,
I am willing to accept any data, but it does not seem reasonable to me to claim that the laws of nature in dark matter are different when there is no data indicating this. The default assumption is that these are the same laws until proven otherwise.
A peaceful Sabbath
You wrote: as far as I know, our laws of nature also apply within dark matter. The question is whether you know this, or whether you are assuming it. Because as far as I know, as of today there is no way to measure dark matter.
Maybe I was too quick to adopt the words of the fellow from Netanya who gave me a ride to the Netanya interchange. But I think that if this idea is not fundamentally absurd, then it deserves serious consideration.
All the best