Q&A: The Holy One, Human Beings, and the World
The Holy One, Human Beings, and the World
Question
With regard to the claim that there is no divine intervention, based on the idea that there are no gaps in nature, I wanted to ask: after all, we know that a person’s choices and actions affect the state of the world. That is, if according to the deterministic laws of nature X was supposed to happen in the world, then as a result of human free actions Y may happen instead. (A person pollutes and the world warms; a person eats bats, changes the viral balance in the world, and kills thousands of people in a plague; or simply murders and shortens lives that were deterministically supposed to be long.) The deterministic world is constantly and daily changed as a result of human free actions.
Can we not therefore assume that certain changes in the world may also happen as a result of observing or not observing commandments, or—let’s call it—daily intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He?
Answer
What does one have to do with the other? Human choice is part of the natural course of things, and each of us experiences its existence quite clearly. Divine involvement is a different matter. Of course it can happen (is anything too wondrous for the Lord?), but in practice it does not seem to happen.
Discussion on Answer
Yes, I did rule it out. Of course sporadically anything can happen, but in the ordinary course of things there does not seem to be any effect.
The fact is that there are laws of nature that operate. Tylenol reduces fever, and it does not appear that this depends on prayers or commandments, and so too with anything similar.
A fever can also go down without Tylenol.
A fever may also not go down even with Tylenol (a high fever in a severe infection).
Tylenol may be unavailable on a deserted island.
A fever can go up when you drink a lot of strong black coffee. (My aunt did that so the Nazis wouldn’t take her out of the hospital where she was hospitalized in Hungary.)
What does that mean? That if the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that I deserve to die or recover for some reason, it will not happen? Does that mean prayers cannot have an effect?
I don’t see how you reach that conclusion..
I’ve dealt with this so much that there’s no point in going on at length anymore. In short, according to your view it would be impossible to establish laws of nature, because nothing should operate in a consistent way. But there is a natural law that Tylenol reduces fever. How was that established? After all, fever can go down without Tylenol and may not go down with it. That is why there are research methods and statistical tools.
If the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that you deserve to die, that will presumably happen. The question is whether He decides to intervene or not, not whether He can intervene.
For more detail, search the site or see the fuller discussion in my book No Man Rules the Spirit.
And if in the meantime I decide to repent, there’s a chance things will change.
A. At least in your answer you did not rule out the possibility that observing or not observing commandments affects the deterministic course of reality.
B. If a deterministic course can be deflected by human choice, then it can also be deflected by divine intervention. How can you, as a person observing the world, know whether all of ongoing reality is the result of this, or that, or each of them separately, or both of them intertwined?