Q&A: Gravity
Gravity
Question
Do you think God causes two masses to attract one another at every single moment, or did He create the world that way and simply let it “flow” on its own? Is it even possible to formulate a position on this?
Answer
You can formulate a position in the sense that you may have one intuition or another about it. But in principle the question is not interesting, because there is really no way to decide it. I am not even sure it is well defined. What exactly is the meaning of involvement at every moment in order to sustain the laws of nature, as opposed to having created them in advance? The laws of nature are not entities but modes of operation. So these are God’s modes of operation. If you are talking about the forces and not the laws, then those are entities in every respect, but of course with regard to them as well one can ask whether God recreates them at every moment or not. This is an excellent question for classes in Jewish thought. That whole field deals with questions like these.