Q&A: Where Is the Omnipotence of the Holy One, Blessed be He, Derived From?
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Where Is the Omnipotence of the Holy One, Blessed be He, Derived From?
Question
According to the fine-tuning argument, all we can know is that the Holy One, Blessed be He, is an entity that can create our laws of physics. To assume more than that—such as omnipotence, or even the ability to create universes with different laws—those are assumptions that should fall away under Occam’s razor.
Answer
In principle, that is correct. And indeed it is possible that He is not omnipotent. But a priori, there is no reason to think that His abilities stop דווקא at some specific point. Especially since He Himself tells us that there is no limit to His abilities.
By the way, in my opinion the ability to create universes with different laws does follow from the argument. The explanation that this argument proposes for our universe is that someone chose its laws from among other options. If that had been predetermined, then the question would return regarding the source of the laws for the Holy One, Blessed be He, Himself. Who caused it to be that He can create only such laws?