The Hidden God (Haster-Aster Panai: Minimalistic belief)
Statistical studies have been done showing the positive effect of
prayer, and more recently studies which found that this effect did not
exist. Bad things happen to good people and bad things happened
collectively to the religious communities of Eastern Europe. Less bad
things happened to the non-observant people from Eastern Europe who
left to America (leaving their observance behind, and to the Zionists
who left to Palestine). Apologetic reasons can be constructed for the
existence of evil, and for the punishment of the
‘religious’ for the sins of the ‘unobservant’,
but over all, there does not seem to be any observable difference
between a universe run by a God, even a compassionate God, and a
universe which has no God. [Of course we cannot know if a universe
could even exist without a God, and perhaps if it could, if it would
necessarily contain far more suffering and evil than ours contains. But
we feel that we can imagine the existence of a God-less universe, and
we accept this imagination/intuition for comparison sake.]
We do not take all this to mean that there is no God, or no effect to
prayer, no reward to the truly righteous (as opposed to
‘observant’). Rather we will work here under the -
admittedly large - assumption that (until the time of Moshiach):
God is Hidden: there will never be any real proof of the existence of
God etc
Since a proof is a proof only if it is accepted as convincing by
others, a “real proof” to me is a proof accepted by
scientists, philosophers etc
Corollary to this: there will not be any statistical evidence of the efficacy of prayer or this worldly reward for mitzvoth etc.
Caveats:
‘The God of the gaps’: we do not yet have a science of
history, and it may be that historical events in the past could not
have been explained rationally even if we did have such a science.
Maybe the very existence of the Jewish people is a miracle, a proof of
the existence of God. But as long as we do not have such a science we
cannot consider this as a proof. The same for (allegedly) miraculous
incidents in the past.
The effect of consciousness: I
believe that the present-day scientific understanding of the natural
universe is severely lacking in that it does not include a theory of
consciousness. If it ever does, I believe that our scientific view of
the universe will be radically different. It may be that the connection
between the mental realm and that of the physical is far stronger than
that assumed until now in scientific models, and this might change
fundamentally the way that scientific models will relate to mental
events such as prayer, and mental states such as belief etc.
However, will there ever be a time when science has such a complete
theory of everything (including consciousness and all states of it, and
free will if such exists) that it can actually point to events and say
“this is definitely supernatural”, and therefore conclude
that there is a God, an effect to prayer etc? This may be, but it seems
unlikely to me.
It may therefore be that the effect of prayer and mitzvoth on this
world may be greater than that granted by present-day science, but is
nevertheless purely naturalistic (with ‘naturalistic’
expanded to include the mental).
Blessings: It is taught by
Tradition that a blessing on one’s produce can occur only before
the produce is counted: ie God does not generally create observable
unambiguous miracles. One could therefore allow for God to play hide
and seek, allowing prayer and mitzvoth to have effects in the physical
universe except when they are sought for by scientists (a sort of
theological quantum effect); we prefer a unified approach, the
assumption that there is not only no observable effect to prayer and
mitzvoth, but there is actually no effect – except in special
circumstances, when God desires that a miracle occur. (And even then
the miracle may be ambiguous – even at the splitting of the
Re(e)d Sea the presence of the great wind could have been seen as the
explanation.
Of course it could be that prior to the scientific era, things were
different (eg as there were shedim (spirits, demons, ghosts etc once),
so we need not make assumptions regarding the past.
We can NOT get what we ask for
These assumptions therefore imply that even though the ultimate reality
is spiritual and prayer and mitzvoth access this ultimate reality,
prayer and mitzvoth do NOT cause a non-naturalistic effect in the
natural universe. We are NOT necessarily granted things that we are
desirous of in this world as a result of our prayer and doing mitzvoth.
We can NOT attain specific things that we want, in this world, via
praying for them, and by doing mitzvoth for merit - they can perhaps
help us with merit in the next world.
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