Q&A: Miracle and Nature
Miracle and Nature
Question
Hello Rabbi! Following several of your posts that I read, a question came up for me about miracles. I understood that according to your approach, you don’t see any indication that miracles really happen in our day. I understand that the definition you give for a miracle is that if, according to the natural order we are used to and formulate through a physical law, we expect A to happen, and then suddenly, with no explanation captured by the law, we see B happen—then here before us is a miracle. That is, a clear breaking of the laws of nature. So far, I hope I’m describing you correctly. Even if not, I’d be glad to suggest a definition of what a miracle is, one that in my view avoids the overwhelming majority of the problems that come up in the many attempts to describe what a miracle is, what the definition of nature is, and all the problems involved in that whole conception. These thoughts came up בעקבות reading things by your friend and student Moshe Rat. So here it is: I claim that there is no way whatsoever to establish scientifically the existence of anything that breaks the laws of nature. The reason is that at most, if I encounter some unusual reality, what I have to do is simply construct and look for an alternative, more general theory that also includes this particular case. Even if it takes a hundred years, the history of scientific work shows that in the end a convincing explanation is found. So what is a miracle, then? Very simple: here I’m making an analogy to something I know from my own personal world, namely the relation between the will and the body. I know with certainty that when I want something, in principle I can decide with complete freedom to do A or B—even though there is not and cannot be any theory that can in principle explain my free choice (I’m aware of the limitations of some kinds of choices; I’ve read your books on freedom). But in principle we do witness an act that is not bound by a causal chain and nevertheless exists within and affects the causal system. And I’ll allow myself to guess that if we were to freeze the moment of my choice and examine the causal chain, from the standpoint of research we would get all the way back to the Big Bang. So just as my will affects reality, and I don’t see that as a miracle in the ordinary sense, exactly so with the Personality that created reality: there is a relation between His will and reality without this appearing as some special breaking of the laws of reality. Now let’s move to the normative plane and say what a miracle is. A miracle is a situation in which I identify an event in reality that comes my way in a manner that fits the direction and value-laden purpose in which I live and believe. For example: I am standing with the Jewish people at the sea, the Egyptians are behind me, and then a hurricane or something like that starts up and pushes the sea away exactly when we need to escape the Egyptians—then I can suppose that a miracle happened to us! That is, the will of the Creator of the world that we be saved from the Egyptians affects nature in a natural way! (Like every will that affects a body.) It lines up with the exact time when I need to flee from them. In my understanding this is the most successful model for the concept of miracle. And honestly, it fits the concept in its biblical sense best too: a "nes" as a banner and a sign that points to a direction and a value-laden purpose, and not some classic Christian notion of opposition to reason and love of fantasy. What does the Rabbi think of the model? And just in closing, I saw that the Rabbi was very impressed by Daniel Shalit’s “fascinating” book, in your words, Earth and Heaven. This idea is hinted at there in the language of mysticism: that the Tetragrammaton gives life to the name Elohim, which it is clothed within—not erasing it, but being its inner essence. I’d be very happy for a response. Thank you very much!
Answer
Hello,
You are partially right. If I were to see certain things, I would indeed relate to them as a miracle and would not look for an explanation. It is true that if we are talking about a statistical miracle, I would usually attribute it to lack of knowledge of some of the circumstances that prevailed there. I think that if I were to see the sea split with no apparent cause, happening exactly when needed, I would probably attribute that to a miracle.
Your definition of miracle is just another name for nature. It is mere semantics.
Our choice has no explanation and does not need an explanation. An explanation means a scientific mechanism underlying the phenomenon. But choice is a deviation from the natural mechanism, and therefore it does not require an explanation and cannot have one.
The comparison to God’s will affecting reality answers the wrong question. I have no problem with His ability to do that. He created the laws, so He can also deviate from them or suspend them. So I do not need explanations of the kind you offer (the comparison to will). My problem is that in practice I do not see that He does this. And for that, your explanation is of no help whatsoever.
Discussion on Answer
Of course I’d be glad for a response to the previous comment..
And I said that this is a semantic game. You say there are no miracles, and so do I. It’s just that you call some natural processes a miracle. Fine, health to you. Unlike you, I claim that at least once there probably were miracles.
Beyond that, for some reason you also decide that the Holy One, blessed be He, must act according to the laws. Well, in my opinion, no. He chooses to do so, and He can also choose not to.
I understand. Just according to what you’re saying: 1) I can’t manage to understand the meaning of the words, at least from our standpoint: “The Holy One, blessed be He, can act not according to the laws of nature.” As far as I know, we have no way at all to grasp, epistemically, a non-causal reality—except of course for our free choice, which is an unequivocal existential reality!
2) And I didn’t understand what you think about treating a reality that fits a value-laden purpose in a noticeable way as a miracle. Does that seem to you compatible with halakhic definitions regarding the obligation of giving thanks?
1. You are mixing the epistemic plane with the ontic plane. My assumption is that there are laws of nature that the Holy One, blessed be He, created. The fact is that we see regularities in the behavior of nature. Now I assume that He can also deviate from them, since He is the one who created them.
You can ask how we would know that this is a deviation—that is an epistemic question. I already wrote that in my opinion, just as we understand what a law of nature is and manage to identify it through particular cases (even though one could generalize them in many other ways), so too we can understand what a deviation is. You assume that we always see causality, but that is not true. Causality too is our interpretation. If you do not accept our ability to interpret nature, then indeed this discussion is pointless. In my view, we do have the ability to interpret, and we can generalize and arrive at laws of nature from the cases, and therefore we also have the ability to understand when there is a deviation.
2. In my opinion this is mere semantics. Halakhically, does one recite a blessing over this when one sees a miracle? Definitely yes, in my opinion, because at least nowadays there are no other miracles. I have already explained this here on the site, and I will elaborate on it in my trilogy. But that does not mean that miracles cannot be defined; rather, it means that nowadays there are no miracles (once, there probably were).
Excellent. Just regarding the possibility of interpreting nature, I still don’t understand. Do you really think we are capable of interpreting nature in a final way? What I think is that we can only get closer and closer to the correct interpretation, and we do not have the ability to encompass the understanding of reality completely..
And that follows simply because the ideal of reality is infinite, since it exists in a divine atmosphere—I mean that God created it—and therefore, essentially, we have no ability to encompass reality. A bit like “If I had known Him, I would have been Him.” Therefore I think there cannot be a final way to decide between nature and miracle, but only between a more or less conspicuous fit with a value-laden purpose. What do you say to that?
Nothing is final or absolute. There is always room for error. But from there to the skeptical nihilism you described is a very great distance. Therefore too, a determination that something is natural, or that it is a miracle, is not absolute or certain. And still we act according to our best understanding. Nothing is certain, yet one should not infer skeptical conclusions from that (as much as that expression is not an oxymoron).
Where did you see in my words even a trace of that cursed nihilistic skepticism? I hate it passionately and oppose it intellectually, and to the best of my knowledge all your significant books were written against it. On the contrary, all I said is that there is no final understanding—and the emphasis is on final—of the cosmos, because the sustaining foundation of all existence is the divine will. And obviously there is an opinion/claim that is more plausible and therefore truer, and an opinion that is less plausible and therefore false..
And as applied to our discussion, this only affects the point that because there is no certain truth, only probable truth, as your books explain at length, therefore there is really no distinction between miracle and nature in the usual sense, but only a distinction between what fits the purpose and what does not. That is the only distinction that can really hold water and be convincing, because it gives a clear criterion for distinguishing between miracle and nature.
After all this, I’m only trying to understand why you insist on saying that you would accept an event as a miracle only because it is something especially exceptional and unfamiliar.
Because my distinction of miracle is more defined and doesn’t take on the difficulties involved in the fine distinctions between natural reality and non-natural reality. Rather, it simply transfers the distinction to the normative plane, and that’s that..
We are repeating ourselves, so I will clarify my point once again, and I suggest that we end with this.
Despite your denials, you are clearly basing yourself on skepticism, and in fact your whole claim is skeptical. Because you do not see a way to characterize laws of nature with certainty, from your perspective one cannot speak of them at all, and therefore one also cannot distinguish between miracle and nature. The same applies to identifying and diagnosing miracles.
In contrast, I claim that there are laws of nature (even if not certain), and the lack of certainty does not prevent me from talking about them and believing in their existence. Therefore I can also identify miracles, which are deviations from the laws.
You are proposing a semantic distinction and calling a certain kind of nature a miracle, and I repeat and say that I have no interest in semantic discussions. There is no point in repeating this again and again.
All right, so thank you for the discussion up to now. 1) Just explain to me why you don’t think that a fit between an event in reality and a purpose is a miracle but rather nature, and that it’s only a semantic difference. After all, in a case where it is really conspicuous, like in the example I gave about the splitting of the Red Sea, that definitely brings me to the conclusion that God’s will probably caused things to come together and help us.
2) Could it be that I’m presenting a neo-Kantian approach in the style of Shlomo Maimon and Hermann Cohen, and you are not?
1. Because if the fit was produced by the laws of nature, then it was not God’s will that caused it but the laws of nature, and the fit to the circumstances is purely coincidental. And if the probabilistic calculation is very highly significant, then it is a miracle (a real one, by my definition) and not nature.
2. I’m not familiar with that. In general, it is not my way to deal with the question of whether some approach fits this or that thinker. What practical difference does it make? One should discuss the ideas on their merits and not the person saying them, in the spirit of ad hominem.
Nachmanides on Parashat Bo, chapter 13, verse 16: “A person has no share in the Torah of Moses our teacher unless we believe that in all our affairs and all our experiences, all of them are miracles; there is no nature or ordinary course of the world in them, whether for the community or for the individual. Rather, if one performs the commandments, his reward will bring him success, and if he transgresses them, his punishment will cut him off. Everything is by decree of the Most High.”
I disagree. I said that a miracle, at least in the Bible, in no way means a deviation from the natural (customary) law. Rather, it means a natural reality that I see as fitting the value-laden purpose in which I believe. Sometimes it will look routine and sometimes less so, but what makes it a miracle is its fit with a value-laden purpose (known to me in advance), not my sense that it deviates from habit and scientific experience! I claim that there is not and cannot be, in any way, at least through our ordinary modes of perception, any documentation of a real breaking of a natural law, because that has no meaning at all! Reality is always there, and it always exists in a way that I understand through causal explanations—except for my own choice, which really is a different kind of reality in that respect. Therefore my claim is that it makes no sense to say that God’s action can deviate from or suspend the laws, because the only way God acts is in sustaining reality with its laws (which means our impression of the ways reality operates). It follows that when I know that God’s will is A, and in reality something happens that noticeably fits A, then I call that a miracle! And about that I would say Hallel or relate to it the way one relates to a miracle!! So for example I would put into such a category many things that even you would not deny happen in our day, like the return to Zion, victory in wars despite the improbability, the survival of the Jewish people—these are miracles! In the sense I explained. According to this, the only difference between the miracles of the Hebrew Bible and those of our day is how visually obvious the fit is between the purpose and reality. So in that way I agree with you that in our day there are almost no miracles that look like deviations from the ordinary, as told in tales of old. My explanation is that miracles, in the sense I explained, simply happen because of God’s will, which affects reality without any change or deviation from the causal sense… right?