Simon: I cannot speak for anyone else. But as for me, I'm already confused more than enough already. So, if next time you'd like to take more time to make it right before posting, I won't mind that at all. Thanks!
Yeah, I tried fixing it up a bit now, and I read through and it seems coherent, but I couldn't bother rewriting it from scratch (and when I wrote it originally it was meant to have a different focus)
Very well written piece. I do not think Maimonides would hold strongly to his position on the spheres given the science of our time. I think he would just have more fun dealing with the new theological realities that arise! If you are interested - here are some interesting resources: Judaism Demystified with Dr Lenn E Goodman on Maimonides today https://youtu.be/I9ab875Dnhw?si=oOriy3ddlArnWDod
Fully agree! Maimonides was using the best science in his day, but there is no doubt he would forego those positions have he been aware of today's science.
It's always an impossible task to run a univariate analysis in a multi-variate system, and so to wonder what Maimonides would do if he had access to modern scientific understanding is like asking who your grandfather would have married if not for your grandmother. You think you're just adjusting or changing one cog in the system, but since there are so many cogs that interact with one another, it's not a fair assessment.
I would posit that any intelligent Jew, given a proper 2024 science education and the opportunity to grow up unindoctrinated by Judaism, would have a very high likelihood of not missing it and not wanting it and not feeling the need to make excuses for it.
I recently came across a work on divine providence by Kenneth Pinczower entitled: "Divine Providence: God’s Intimate Involvement In Our Daily Lives." He spends 197 pages bringing hundreds of references to support the effects of hashgacha pratis. He brings support from the Talmud, Medresh Rabbah, Rambam, Ramban, Seforno, Vilna Gaon, Baal Shem Tov, Chofetz Chaim and more.
The one thing he fails to do is give any reason at all to believe in any of it. So I emailed him, and he admitted that his book was for someone who already believes.
It's unfortunate that the religious cannot see that their arguments are nothing but circular.
Seeing how there's no good evidence for the existence of a god, he can't be a good candidate explanation for anything, including a force behind nature.
Imagine if instead of spending so much time on worship and service to religion (praying and learning), the devout and pious would redirect their efforts toward a real search for truth and spend all of that time dedicated to clarifying their understanding of logical fallacies and good rationales for belief.
Imagine if instead of שנים מקרא and דף יומי, there was a book club that read the works of Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens and Pinker and deGrasse Tyson and Coyne, and when they were done, they'd start again.
“Even the great Jewish rationalist Maimonides, who believed that God allows nature to run events, nevertheless fell back on God when trying to explain the motion of the celestial spheres.”
This is a misrepresentation of Maimonides. He doesn’t use God to fill in a gap, he proves (with Aristotelian physics as his premises (Guide II Introduction)) that God causes the motion of the spheres. (Guide II chapter chapter 1)
The way he proves it is that he proves that it couldn't move on its own and therefore must be God. If that's not the definition of a gap I don't know what is.
It’s easy to find. I wouldn’t do it justice but basically that before god created the world he had “middle knowledge” of all counter factuals of how the world could be (including free will decisions) and created the world that maximizes wellbeing.
I mostly am Sympathetic to the view that his role in nature was setting everyhthig up at the creation of the world including when the “laws” would be suspended.
I prefer Spinoza’s solution to this question: God and nature are two words for the same thing: the one universal substance of which all physical things and ideas are modes. God is immanent and transcendent, both the first cause, and existing within every cause and moment. Natural laws are God’s laws. This of course goes against traditional images of God, but allows for Judaism and science to brought together in a metaphoric-laden synthesis.
Does this allow for nature to contain any form of teleology? Is god/nature apathetic to moral judgements or good and evil? If yes, this contradicts our current understanding of science. If no, I don't see how can adopt pantheism, as you're simply taking nature and calling it god when it doesn't contain any properties beyond what the materialist accepts.
I’m still struggling with teleology, but I am inclined to recognize some form of purpose and directionality within nature. Scientists are reckoning with purpose in evolution today under the name “Teleonomy”, which does allow for purposes to exist as things that evolve and organisms direct toward. From this purpose, I believe we can understand some form of objective good within humankind. I don’t think there exists one universal morality (as all species have their own perspectives, and only humans have the faculties for what we properly call ethics), but I do think human ecology can be a path through which we can find ethical ideals that can bring humankind into ethical partnership with God.
Teleonomy is not teleology in terms of inherent purpose, rather it something that arises out of the otherwise purposeless natural 'tool' of natural selection, and is therefore insufficient to ascribe the salient godly qualities (unity, perfection, harmony) that spinoza uses to defend his pantheism. Same with ecology and otherwise emergent properties, these may well lead us to moral realism and value judgements within the perspectives of beings with improved cognitive faculties, but i wouldn't call it god and I wouldn't say that there is any form of providence as these properties are not inherent to existence. (to be a spinozist you have to either believe in natural harmony [along with the other properties he identifies] or in panpsychism which can lead to several similar conclusions.)
I think that emergence and emanation are intertwined, with both describing how the Divine creates the world. I think our disagreement really stems from your bleak image of natural selection as a purposeless tool, whereas I think it is critical to unify our understanding of the relationship between organisms, environment, and evolution. Spinoza’s framing of nature, including both natura naturata and natura naturans, God as both immanent and transcendent in relation to our living world, can help unify this perspective. I’ve been working to unify this perspective with ecological science on my blog.
I hope it is clear why I am arguing that any form of intention or goal is incompatible with determinism. My intention can influence events because I have multiple options in front of me what I should do, and my intention will determine which of the many paths will be taken. However, if determinism is true, that means from the moment of the inception of the universe every event is already predetermined, leaving no room for flexibility to allow god/the universe/fate to guide events in any direction (unless obviously god chooses to suspend nature according to classical theism).
Spinoza, along with many other premodern thinkers, did not see this as a contradiction, because they understood teleology/harmony/values to be inherent in natural law itself, not simply in the objects in the universe, and therefore nature itself is guided by these fundemental principles (could be some of them would've denied determinism as well). If that position is true, one might claim that evolution/ecology etc. were guided by this underlying force of nature/god. However, our current understanding of physics indicates that they are purely abstract apathetic mathematical laws which do not incorporate any such notions into their governing laws, which remove the possibility of any other guiding force in the universe unless you deny determinism.
I am not arguing that values are false, as it can be argued that they arise from the complex relationships in nature which do exist, and I'm a big fan of such an idea. However, I don't see how you can argue that it's inherent in the universe unless you deny determinism (which may be possible) or deny the entire field of physic (even newtons mechanics, which is clearly impossible).
I see what you're saying, and I think the differences lie in how we understand intention and determinism. I don't believe that intention needs to be outside of determinism, nor do I think it must involve a conscious selection among alternatives, as humans experience it. Instead, I think intention or purpose can be embedded within Nature itself, within the God’s constantly unfolding Creation. Just because events unfold according to certain principles doesn't mean they are purposeless or void of meaning.
Spinoza's view allows for a deeper harmony where everything unfolds as it must according to the nature of God or Nature itself. This doesn't negate the existence of values or purpose; rather, these emerge naturally from the relationships between beings and their environment. Evolution, for instance, should be seen not as random and meaningless but as a process that reflects an inherent drive for increasing complexity, integration, freedom and intelligence, even within a deterministic framework.
As for physics, it's true that the fundamental laws are often seen as abstract and value-neutral, but those laws could still be part of a broader, unified system—what Spinoza calls “the order and connection of things”. This order itself should be what we call Divine. What you're referring to as "apathetic" laws may be our limited human perspective on them, but the unity and harmony Spinoza saw in the universe aren't necessarily at odds with physics; rather, they may just be operating on a level that we struggle to comprehend fully.
I think where we diverge is that I see no need to deny determinism to find meaning or intention. These concepts emerge from the very structure and substance of Nature, which, in Spinoza’s view, is God. Evolution and ecology, therefore, aren't just random processes—they are expressions of that deeper unity. I think this approach can lend us a framework for bringing science and spirituality into harmony without contradiction, even if the teleology we arrive at is more subtle and systemic than classical theistic views. Yes, I’m not an orthodox thinker, but our contemporary crises require novel approaches to God and/or Nature.
>>>Spinoza’s framing of nature, including both natura naturata and natura naturans, God as both immanent and transcendent in relation to our living world, can help unify this perspective
As Spinoza died in 1677, it's clear that he couldn't have incorporated what we've learned since then into his framework. I am no expert (or even a novice) in Spinoza's work, but what do you imagine that he'd say if he were alive today, to know what we now know?
>>>I think that emergence and emanation are intertwined, with both describing how the Divine creates the world
Without first establishing that the divine exists, can either of these really be said to describe it?
If you read my work, you may come to understand that I see God and Cosmos as coextensive. Our collective coming to know the cosmos is tied to our coming to know ourselves and our coming to know God. Only in alienation do we see all this as separate. Our unity — our literal relatedness with all life — is reason enough to see our sacred relation with the Earth as part-and-parcel with Abraham’s covenant with God.
You are here telling me again what you believe, but I am much more interested in why you believe.
>>>Only in alienation do we see all this as separate.
It seems obvious to me that you're trying here to say something profound, but I don't know what it's supposed to mean.
>>>Our unity — our literal relatedness with all life — is reason enough to see our sacred relation with the Earth as part-and-parcel with Abraham’s covenant with God
Now you claim that it's just so obvious that god exists and we can perceive him. But that is my question. How do you know any of this and what are you observing that we're all missing? I think you're making a type 1 error.
I am agnostic on the question of God (as it’s usually understood, a Holy Being transcendent to lived reality. However, my relation to God (Life, Cosmos, the Whole) stems out of my love for this world. In this love, in this life, I know I am connected, engaged, living together for the sake of the Earth. This transcendental love drives me to affirm this relationship as the love of God/Nature, and through this, I have chosen to affirm God as such.
>>>I’m still struggling with teleology, but I am inclined to recognize some form of purpose and directionality within nature.
This often occurs as a result of denominator neglect. Please allow me to explain.
Take a group of 100 people and have them all flip the single US quarter that we've distributed to everyone prior to this exercise. Let's say 58 of the flip heads and 42 of them flip tails. Take all the quarters away from all the tails-flippers and dismiss them. Repeat the exercise, and on average, you'll have about 1:1 heads to tails and do so until you get to the person who flipped 8 heads in a row, or 10 in a row or 12 in a row...whatever number of flips it took to dismiss everyone who flipped anything that perfect sequence of multiple heads.
If you're unaware of the rest of the group, it seems quite fantastical. I leave it to you to run the statistics with google for various numbers of throws, but if it comes to 10 coin flips, that's 2 to the 10th power, or a 1 in 1024 chance of having gotten all heads. How unlikely and spectacular...unless you are aware that we assembled this crowd of people and are just focusing on the winner.
So, too, all of the species that descend from the original ancestor of a clade are quite numerous. If you consider how may descendants the ancestor would have, and we took care of them and gave them medical care and made sure everyone survived, there would be potentially millions of descendants (depending on the species, some fish lay millions of eggs). Now, if all of the descendants survive, meaning we're essentially removing the selection pressures, we might hardly see speciation, but the idea of this thought experiment is that there would be such variation among the descendants as they fan out, evolutionarily speaking, sort of like have all 1024 people in our coin flipping experiment. What appears like teleology is merely the demise of all the 1023 non-winners.
Once someone begins to a) appreciate the numbers and the science and b) use that to free their mind from pre-suppositionalist indoctrination, it's not any less spectacular, but it's certainly so much less magical and the inclination, as you refer to it, to recognize (really: imagine and desire) purpose invariably dissipates.
>> and the focus may be a bit messy,
>> so I apologize if it’s a bit confusing.
Simon: I cannot speak for anyone else. But as for me, I'm already confused more than enough already. So, if next time you'd like to take more time to make it right before posting, I won't mind that at all. Thanks!
Yeah, I tried fixing it up a bit now, and I read through and it seems coherent, but I couldn't bother rewriting it from scratch (and when I wrote it originally it was meant to have a different focus)
Very well written piece. I do not think Maimonides would hold strongly to his position on the spheres given the science of our time. I think he would just have more fun dealing with the new theological realities that arise! If you are interested - here are some interesting resources: Judaism Demystified with Dr Lenn E Goodman on Maimonides today https://youtu.be/I9ab875Dnhw?si=oOriy3ddlArnWDod
Rabbi Samuel Lebens on classical Theism - https://www.samlebens.com/_files/ugd/7cf7e9_b380dffd152441c68bb3c518cbd7ed82.pdf
Fully agree! Maimonides was using the best science in his day, but there is no doubt he would forego those positions have he been aware of today's science.
Thanks for the resources! I'll check them out!!
It's always an impossible task to run a univariate analysis in a multi-variate system, and so to wonder what Maimonides would do if he had access to modern scientific understanding is like asking who your grandfather would have married if not for your grandmother. You think you're just adjusting or changing one cog in the system, but since there are so many cogs that interact with one another, it's not a fair assessment.
I would posit that any intelligent Jew, given a proper 2024 science education and the opportunity to grow up unindoctrinated by Judaism, would have a very high likelihood of not missing it and not wanting it and not feeling the need to make excuses for it.
I recently came across a work on divine providence by Kenneth Pinczower entitled: "Divine Providence: God’s Intimate Involvement In Our Daily Lives." He spends 197 pages bringing hundreds of references to support the effects of hashgacha pratis. He brings support from the Talmud, Medresh Rabbah, Rambam, Ramban, Seforno, Vilna Gaon, Baal Shem Tov, Chofetz Chaim and more.
The one thing he fails to do is give any reason at all to believe in any of it. So I emailed him, and he admitted that his book was for someone who already believes.
It's unfortunate that the religious cannot see that their arguments are nothing but circular.
Seeing how there's no good evidence for the existence of a god, he can't be a good candidate explanation for anything, including a force behind nature.
Imagine if instead of spending so much time on worship and service to religion (praying and learning), the devout and pious would redirect their efforts toward a real search for truth and spend all of that time dedicated to clarifying their understanding of logical fallacies and good rationales for belief.
Imagine if instead of שנים מקרא and דף יומי, there was a book club that read the works of Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens and Pinker and deGrasse Tyson and Coyne, and when they were done, they'd start again.
Indoctrination is really so terrible.
“Even the great Jewish rationalist Maimonides, who believed that God allows nature to run events, nevertheless fell back on God when trying to explain the motion of the celestial spheres.”
This is a misrepresentation of Maimonides. He doesn’t use God to fill in a gap, he proves (with Aristotelian physics as his premises (Guide II Introduction)) that God causes the motion of the spheres. (Guide II chapter chapter 1)
The way he proves it is that he proves that it couldn't move on its own and therefore must be God. If that's not the definition of a gap I don't know what is.
If you haven’t already, I suggest dabbling in molinism to see if you like that middle knowledge approach to divine providence and free will.
Not familiar with it, but would love to hear about it. Care to explain the basics or send me a link?
It’s easy to find. I wouldn’t do it justice but basically that before god created the world he had “middle knowledge” of all counter factuals of how the world could be (including free will decisions) and created the world that maximizes wellbeing.
I mostly am Sympathetic to the view that his role in nature was setting everyhthig up at the creation of the world including when the “laws” would be suspended.
I prefer Spinoza’s solution to this question: God and nature are two words for the same thing: the one universal substance of which all physical things and ideas are modes. God is immanent and transcendent, both the first cause, and existing within every cause and moment. Natural laws are God’s laws. This of course goes against traditional images of God, but allows for Judaism and science to brought together in a metaphoric-laden synthesis.
Does this allow for nature to contain any form of teleology? Is god/nature apathetic to moral judgements or good and evil? If yes, this contradicts our current understanding of science. If no, I don't see how can adopt pantheism, as you're simply taking nature and calling it god when it doesn't contain any properties beyond what the materialist accepts.
I’m still struggling with teleology, but I am inclined to recognize some form of purpose and directionality within nature. Scientists are reckoning with purpose in evolution today under the name “Teleonomy”, which does allow for purposes to exist as things that evolve and organisms direct toward. From this purpose, I believe we can understand some form of objective good within humankind. I don’t think there exists one universal morality (as all species have their own perspectives, and only humans have the faculties for what we properly call ethics), but I do think human ecology can be a path through which we can find ethical ideals that can bring humankind into ethical partnership with God.
Teleonomy is not teleology in terms of inherent purpose, rather it something that arises out of the otherwise purposeless natural 'tool' of natural selection, and is therefore insufficient to ascribe the salient godly qualities (unity, perfection, harmony) that spinoza uses to defend his pantheism. Same with ecology and otherwise emergent properties, these may well lead us to moral realism and value judgements within the perspectives of beings with improved cognitive faculties, but i wouldn't call it god and I wouldn't say that there is any form of providence as these properties are not inherent to existence. (to be a spinozist you have to either believe in natural harmony [along with the other properties he identifies] or in panpsychism which can lead to several similar conclusions.)
I think that emergence and emanation are intertwined, with both describing how the Divine creates the world. I think our disagreement really stems from your bleak image of natural selection as a purposeless tool, whereas I think it is critical to unify our understanding of the relationship between organisms, environment, and evolution. Spinoza’s framing of nature, including both natura naturata and natura naturans, God as both immanent and transcendent in relation to our living world, can help unify this perspective. I’ve been working to unify this perspective with ecological science on my blog.
I hope it is clear why I am arguing that any form of intention or goal is incompatible with determinism. My intention can influence events because I have multiple options in front of me what I should do, and my intention will determine which of the many paths will be taken. However, if determinism is true, that means from the moment of the inception of the universe every event is already predetermined, leaving no room for flexibility to allow god/the universe/fate to guide events in any direction (unless obviously god chooses to suspend nature according to classical theism).
Spinoza, along with many other premodern thinkers, did not see this as a contradiction, because they understood teleology/harmony/values to be inherent in natural law itself, not simply in the objects in the universe, and therefore nature itself is guided by these fundemental principles (could be some of them would've denied determinism as well). If that position is true, one might claim that evolution/ecology etc. were guided by this underlying force of nature/god. However, our current understanding of physics indicates that they are purely abstract apathetic mathematical laws which do not incorporate any such notions into their governing laws, which remove the possibility of any other guiding force in the universe unless you deny determinism.
I am not arguing that values are false, as it can be argued that they arise from the complex relationships in nature which do exist, and I'm a big fan of such an idea. However, I don't see how you can argue that it's inherent in the universe unless you deny determinism (which may be possible) or deny the entire field of physic (even newtons mechanics, which is clearly impossible).
I see what you're saying, and I think the differences lie in how we understand intention and determinism. I don't believe that intention needs to be outside of determinism, nor do I think it must involve a conscious selection among alternatives, as humans experience it. Instead, I think intention or purpose can be embedded within Nature itself, within the God’s constantly unfolding Creation. Just because events unfold according to certain principles doesn't mean they are purposeless or void of meaning.
Spinoza's view allows for a deeper harmony where everything unfolds as it must according to the nature of God or Nature itself. This doesn't negate the existence of values or purpose; rather, these emerge naturally from the relationships between beings and their environment. Evolution, for instance, should be seen not as random and meaningless but as a process that reflects an inherent drive for increasing complexity, integration, freedom and intelligence, even within a deterministic framework.
As for physics, it's true that the fundamental laws are often seen as abstract and value-neutral, but those laws could still be part of a broader, unified system—what Spinoza calls “the order and connection of things”. This order itself should be what we call Divine. What you're referring to as "apathetic" laws may be our limited human perspective on them, but the unity and harmony Spinoza saw in the universe aren't necessarily at odds with physics; rather, they may just be operating on a level that we struggle to comprehend fully.
I think where we diverge is that I see no need to deny determinism to find meaning or intention. These concepts emerge from the very structure and substance of Nature, which, in Spinoza’s view, is God. Evolution and ecology, therefore, aren't just random processes—they are expressions of that deeper unity. I think this approach can lend us a framework for bringing science and spirituality into harmony without contradiction, even if the teleology we arrive at is more subtle and systemic than classical theistic views. Yes, I’m not an orthodox thinker, but our contemporary crises require novel approaches to God and/or Nature.
>>>Spinoza’s framing of nature, including both natura naturata and natura naturans, God as both immanent and transcendent in relation to our living world, can help unify this perspective
As Spinoza died in 1677, it's clear that he couldn't have incorporated what we've learned since then into his framework. I am no expert (or even a novice) in Spinoza's work, but what do you imagine that he'd say if he were alive today, to know what we now know?
>>>I think that emergence and emanation are intertwined, with both describing how the Divine creates the world
Without first establishing that the divine exists, can either of these really be said to describe it?
>>>which does allow for purposes to exist as things that evolve and organisms direct toward
>>>I do think human ecology can be a path through which we can find ethical ideals that can bring humankind into ethical partnership with God
Other than presupposing the existence of the God of Abraham, what could be a reasonable basis for such a conclusion?
If you read my work, you may come to understand that I see God and Cosmos as coextensive. Our collective coming to know the cosmos is tied to our coming to know ourselves and our coming to know God. Only in alienation do we see all this as separate. Our unity — our literal relatedness with all life — is reason enough to see our sacred relation with the Earth as part-and-parcel with Abraham’s covenant with God.
>>>I see God and Cosmos as coextensive
You are here telling me again what you believe, but I am much more interested in why you believe.
>>>Only in alienation do we see all this as separate.
It seems obvious to me that you're trying here to say something profound, but I don't know what it's supposed to mean.
>>>Our unity — our literal relatedness with all life — is reason enough to see our sacred relation with the Earth as part-and-parcel with Abraham’s covenant with God
Now you claim that it's just so obvious that god exists and we can perceive him. But that is my question. How do you know any of this and what are you observing that we're all missing? I think you're making a type 1 error.
I am agnostic on the question of God (as it’s usually understood, a Holy Being transcendent to lived reality. However, my relation to God (Life, Cosmos, the Whole) stems out of my love for this world. In this love, in this life, I know I am connected, engaged, living together for the sake of the Earth. This transcendental love drives me to affirm this relationship as the love of God/Nature, and through this, I have chosen to affirm God as such.
>>>I’m still struggling with teleology, but I am inclined to recognize some form of purpose and directionality within nature.
This often occurs as a result of denominator neglect. Please allow me to explain.
Take a group of 100 people and have them all flip the single US quarter that we've distributed to everyone prior to this exercise. Let's say 58 of the flip heads and 42 of them flip tails. Take all the quarters away from all the tails-flippers and dismiss them. Repeat the exercise, and on average, you'll have about 1:1 heads to tails and do so until you get to the person who flipped 8 heads in a row, or 10 in a row or 12 in a row...whatever number of flips it took to dismiss everyone who flipped anything that perfect sequence of multiple heads.
If you're unaware of the rest of the group, it seems quite fantastical. I leave it to you to run the statistics with google for various numbers of throws, but if it comes to 10 coin flips, that's 2 to the 10th power, or a 1 in 1024 chance of having gotten all heads. How unlikely and spectacular...unless you are aware that we assembled this crowd of people and are just focusing on the winner.
So, too, all of the species that descend from the original ancestor of a clade are quite numerous. If you consider how may descendants the ancestor would have, and we took care of them and gave them medical care and made sure everyone survived, there would be potentially millions of descendants (depending on the species, some fish lay millions of eggs). Now, if all of the descendants survive, meaning we're essentially removing the selection pressures, we might hardly see speciation, but the idea of this thought experiment is that there would be such variation among the descendants as they fan out, evolutionarily speaking, sort of like have all 1024 people in our coin flipping experiment. What appears like teleology is merely the demise of all the 1023 non-winners.
Once someone begins to a) appreciate the numbers and the science and b) use that to free their mind from pre-suppositionalist indoctrination, it's not any less spectacular, but it's certainly so much less magical and the inclination, as you refer to it, to recognize (really: imagine and desire) purpose invariably dissipates.