Q&A: Where Is There Room for the Holy One, Blessed be He, to Influence His World?
Where Is There Room for the Holy One, Blessed be He, to Influence His World?
Question
Peace to you, honored Rabbi,
By means of the laws of nature, one can calculate the next physical location of each and every particle.
It follows that, given the current state, if we had all the information, we could calculate the future state (perhaps except for human thoughts, and therefore their actions).
So if the Holy One, Blessed be He, nowadays does not perform miracles against nature, what room is there for Him to influence the world? After all, the future has already been determined by the present, and in order to change something one would have to intervene in the laws of nature! a0
For example, praying for a sick person to recover — already today it would in principle be possible to calculate whether this will happen, and indeed our ability is developing over time regarding many illnesses about which in the past people did not know whether the person would live or die.
Possible answers I thought of:
– Statistical biasing at the quantum level — but in order to produce a significant change in the world, so much biasing would be required that it would already be statistically almost impossible; meaning this would amount to tampering with the laws of nature.
– Human thoughts and opinions — if we accept that they are not merely physiological processes, then there is a lot of room to influence things, and since human beings determine the world, one could influence it ‘indirectly.’ This seems acceptable to me, but it would mean that God’s influence is limited to places human beings can reach.
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Hoping that you will “easily resolve my difficulties for me”
Answer
Indeed, you are right. I have written this several times here on the site. As for human thoughts as well, I do not see a difference between them and the laws of nature. Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, decided not to intervene in the laws of nature, so too He does not intervene in human thoughts. a0
Discussion on Answer
I did not write here or anywhere else that our thoughts are deterministic. They are the product of our own decision. But God’s involvement in our thoughts is very similar to His involvement in the laws. He decided that the world would operate according to the laws of nature and according to human choices, and that is indeed what happens. There is no reason to assume that He is involved in either this or that.
The question whether involvement through human beings might reconcile natural order with divine involvement was raised several times by Oren, and that is what I answered him.
Thank you very much! Indeed, after searching the site (by the way, it’s very easy to search the responsa section, but hard to search the columns — even if you have a column number, it’s hard to get there), I found more of your view about God’s non-intervention in the world.
I didn’t find a place where you talk about human thoughts, and it’s hard for me to accept this. If indeed the human being is also deterministic, then what room is there to speak of reward and punishment, or of a demand that the Holy One, Blessed be He, be served? Even if we say that “the Holy One, Blessed be He, wants a certain outcome, and therefore His very speaking to us is the initial domino that eventually brings about the desired outcome,” it comes out that the Holy One, Blessed be He, is deceiving us that we have free choice (“and choose life”) when in fact we do not — something I find hard to accept from One whose seal is truth.
As I understand it, Judaism in general believes in free choice. And if there is room for indeterminism in human choice, could that same “deterministic gap” be used by the Creator? (Even if in practice He decides not to use this possibility, which I am not ruling out.)