From: "Robert Comer" 

Thanks Ellen, I'll be reading this in the mourning when I'm not quite so tired!

--
Bob Comer


"Ellen K."  wrote in message
news:4didn19pivbanl2nl7ni4l485v36mfmt80{at}4ax.com...
> The author of the below  is a professor of anatomy and cell biology at
> McGill University who also writes on Chassidic thought.  The article is
> kind of long, but explains very well a number of issues which have been
> raised in this thread.  There are a couple of points which I personally
> would perhaps have expressed differently, but I certainly agree with the
> main thrust.
>
> Something from Nothing
> By Yaakov Brawer
>
> Ever since our father Abraham first recognized the Creator and
> established a personal relationship with Him, his descendants have been
> in conflict with the rest of the world. This discord has assumed a wide
> variety of formats throughout history. The Jews have been in conflict
> with idol worshippers, Hellenists, Christians, Moslems, communists,
> secularists, and so on. Indeed, it would appear that the only limit to
> the number of clashes is the number of identifiable non-Jewish, or more
> accurately, non-Torah world views.
>
> Given the numerous and varied expressions of contention between the
> Torah perspective and other views of reality, it might be assumed that
> there are many grounds for controversy and that the nature of each
> dispute is determined by a unique set of conflicting suppositions. For
> example, one might assume that the roots of the conflict between the
> Torah and Christianity are fundamentally different from those underlying
> the incompatibility between Torah and the concept of biological
> evolution.
>
> If such were indeed the case, it would seem to indicate that the Torah
> Jew is in an intellectually untenable position and that it is only
> stubbornness, perversity, and a debilitating isolationism that spur him
> on in his endless war on multiple fronts. How is it possible for the
> Torah Jew to maintain an immutable, unique view that is in conflict with
> so many systems of thought, produced by so many great minds throughout
> history?
>
> The answer is that the situation is far more simple than it appears at
> first glance. There is really only one bone of contention and there are
> really only two conflicting viewpoints: Torah Judaism and everything
> else. The bone of contention is the principle of something from
> something. which is the unifying, fundamental premise on which each of
> the many components of the "everything else" category is based. The
> antithesis of something from something is the principle of something
> from nothing, which is the foundation of the Torah view of existence.
>
> What does this really mean? Does a single, simple generalization
> accurately describe the essence of Jewish, as opposed to non-Jewish,
> thought; and does it really explain everything?
>
> To begin with, something from something is indeed an all-encompassing
> presupposition that ultimately explains everything that goes on in the
> world. Simply stated, it is the assumption of cause and effect.
> Everything has an antecedent cause to which it can be directly related.
> The antecedent to a chicken is an egg. The antecedent to a house is
> lumber. The antecedent to the lumber is a forest, and so on. Everything
> and every event is the product of a progressive developmental sequence
> of causes. Everything comes from an identifiable something; hence the
> process of something from something. The chain of somethings may be very
> long and the last link may look very different from the first. There is,
> for example, no obvious similarity between an apple seed and an apple
> tree. Nevertheless, the tree is a distant link in a long chain of cause
> and effect from the seed. Moreover, it is the inevitable and predictable
> outcome. The apple seed cannot, for example, produce a goldfish, nor,
> for that matter, a peach tree. The features expressed by a distant
> something in the chain (a tree) are limited by the features that define
> an earlier something (the seed).
>
> The concept that everything comes from something seems obvious, logical,
> and pragmatic. It provides a continuity in time and space without which
> we could not relate to our natural circumstances. Since everything is a
> consequence of an evolutionary continuum of related events, everything
> has a history of which it is the product. On this basis, one can
> interpret the past and predict, and hence respond to, events in the
> future. Thus, the process of something from something serves as the
> rationale for diagnosing and treating disease, playing the stock market,
> or negotiating a treaty with a foreign government.
>
> If this description of the principle of something from something is
> accurate, it is hard to see much wrong with it. There seems little here
> for Torah Jews to get riled up over. On the contrary, when it comes to
> daily life, or professional activities, Torah Jews operate on the
> assumption of something from something just like everyone else.
> Moreover, both the theoretical and the applied aspects of Torah law are
> replete with examples of deductive and inductive reasoning,
> characteristic of the something from something mode of thinking. Torah
> law, in most cases, deals with natural circumstances and assumes a
> natural, interpretable order of events. It presumes nature to be real
> and to behave in a predictable, continuous way.
>
> Thus far, there is no argument. The source of the trouble is at a far
> more fundamental level. It involves those events or beings for which,
> according to Torah, there are no precedents, such as Creation and the
> Creator. To put it another way, the controversy is not over nature, but
> rather over the nature of nature.
>
> Even those who are able to ignore the Creator by claiming that He does
> not exist are stuck with the problem of how and why the universe
> (including themselves) carne to be. Although there are many approaches
> to the subject, they all share the common underlying assumption of
> something from something. So, since the universe currently consists of a
> vast number of entities with measurable physical properties organized in
> a unique way, its ultimate source must likewise, in some way, be bound
> by physical characteristics and dimensions. The current appearance of
> any particular aspect of Creation is the product of a history, or of an
> evolutionary chain of events that progressively molded a previous
> something into a contemporary something. For example, animals, including
> humans, are made out of chemicals. It follows, then, by something from
> something, that the origin(s) of all animal species must be simpler,
> less processed collections of chemicals, which in the course of time,
> and in response to natural events, developed in a stepwise, sequential
> fashion into what they are at the moment. It matters not at all whether
> the changes constituting the steps in the chain occurred individually or
> in clusters. The governing principle of something from something is the
> same. Indeed, there are as many variations of the something from
> something theme as there are scientific and philosophic disciplines.
>
> The same fundamental principle is invoked to explain why the continents
> look the way they do, why there is a universal background of microwave
> radiation, why mitochondria contain DNA, and so forth. In short, as
> stated previously, something from something is used to explain
> everything. This does not imply that every explanation is simple or that
> here is necessarily a linear relationship between any set of causes and
> their effects. On the contrary, the relationship may be so complex as to
> defy elucidation. Turbulence or chaotic behavior, for example, is
> unpredictable due to the complexity of elements that feed into the
> system under observation. Moreover, as propounded in the Heisenberg
> Uncertainty Principle, it may be impossible to simultaneously determine
> all the physical properties that define a system. This does not weaken
> the something from something law; it simply indicates that we can't know
> all the somethings.
>
> It is not easy to understand how a world view that leads nowhere and
> ultimately explains nothing became so rooted in the human psyche. The
> principle of something from something is, after all, the downward spiral
> path of infinite regress. No matter how far you extrapolate back on the
> chain of cause and effect, there is yet a prior cause which shares the
> same fundamental limitations as its progeny (i.e., it is defined by
> physical properties).
>
> An objection could be raised. It could be argued that the principal of
> something from something is by no means a globally accepted axiom. On
> the contrary, it is rejected by many if not most people, whose concept
> of reality necessitates the existence of G-d. Many people see an
> expression of intelligence and purpose in nature. This in itself is as
> logically valid as the perspective of the scientific secularist who sees
> no purpose in the chain of cause and effect from which the universe
> presumably evolved. Actually, considering the stunning discoveries of
> the past decade in physics and cosmology, one could easily argue that
> the assumption of intelligence and purpose in Creation is the
> intuitively stronger view.
>
> The problem is that despite the many diverse conceptualizations of G-d,
> underneath it all, He looks disconcertingly familiar. In fact, He looks,
> more or less, like us. It seems that although the recognition of purpose
> and intelligence in Creation supports the concept of a purposeful and
> intelligent Creator, this recognition alone is not enough to overcome
> the seemingly inescapable gravitational attraction of something from
> something.
>
> Our grasp of creative intelligence and our sense of purpose is derived
> from observations of ourselves, since we are the only entities in
> Creation (to which we have access) who possess these qualities. Our
> notions of "creating" are likewise acquired by seeing how we do it.
> There is, after all, no other model to learn from. So, assuming
> ourselves the template, we extrapolate out to G-d. The kind of god you
> end up with, of course, depends on the length and direction of the chain
> of something from something. A short chain of extrapolation would
> produce something like the pantheon of Greek gods, which hardly differ
> from the human paradigm. A longer extrapolation will produce a more
> sophisticated, refined, and less limited concept of Divinity. Also, as
> is necessarily the case in a something from something progression, the
> kind of god you generate depends upon the characteristic features of the
> human template serving as the first link in the chain. The god of
> Ayatollah Khomeini is obviously very different from that of Albert
> Schweitzer.
>
> Thus, whether a god has (had) a body or whether he (she, they) exists in
> a purely spiritual state is a matter of no consequence. He is a
"he", a
> bigger and better version of man. He is wise, not like man, but very x10
> to the one hundredth power wise. Not only is he good, he is orders of
> magnitude better than the best human. In short, he is defined by
> qualities or properties, and is, therefore, a something. The extent to
> which we cannot know him simply reflects the magnitude of the properties
> that define (limit) him.
>
> If the Creator is a somebody/something, then the law of something from
> something necessarily would govern the creative process. The universe,
> for example, is also a something, the ultimate cause of which is G-d.
> According to this line of thought, the universe exists as well as He
> does.
>
> There exist, therefore, many thingsthe totality of whatever is found in
> the universe (stars, neutrons, petunias ... )as well as G-d Himself. He
> is the biggest and best something, responsible for all the other
> somethings, all of which He can manipulate at will. Nonetheless, they
> share with Him the property of independent existence.
>
> The similarity in thinking between the scientific secularists and the
> Christian fundamentalists is one of the most fascinating ironies of our
> times. Considering, for example, the magnitude and bitterness of the
> much publicized battle between evolutionists and creationists, one would
> naturally suppose that each side embraces a unique doctrine,
> antithetical and inimical to the other. In fact, both schools adhere to
> classical something from something orthodoxy. The creationists are no
> less evolutionary in their thinking than the evolutionists, and the
> evolutionists exhibit no less faith in their selection of initial
> assumptions than do the creationists. The differences between the two
> sides are essentially semantic. The creationists constantly invoke
> miracles to get over the rough spots in their doctrine, whereas the
> evolutionists conjure with events the probabilities of which are less
> than 10 to the negative thirtieth power.
>
> The Torah view of existence predicated on the principle of something
> from nothing is somewhat more difficult to explain than something from
> something for the obvious reason that "nothing" defies description and
> can, therefore, only be appreciated by means of analogy. One very
> useful, albeit imperfect, analogy is creative human thought, an example
> of which is a daydream.
>
> It is not uncommon, at a particularly boring faculty meeting, let's say,
> for one's mind to wander. One may, for example, begin to contemplate an
> upcoming international scientific meeting. In the mind's eye, one
> envisions the convention center and the mobs of participants. One sees
> oneself delivering a spectacular presentation. The applause is
> overwhelming. Hostile journal editors and Medical Research Council
> members are chastened. As the dream progresses one can, at will, insert
> sequences in which competitors are exposed as frauds or incompetents. In
> short, you can fashion reality any way you like.
>
> Indulgence in such pleasant little reveries is common enough, and we
> don't give them much thought. The act of daydreaming or imagining does,
> however, contain some interesting parallels to the process of creating
> something from nothing.
>
> The imaginer, for example, is a creator who has originated a world that
> did not exist prior to his thinking it up. He has produced a place,
> populated it with people and things, and provided a time scale for the
> action. The objection to this analogy is, of course, that the imaginer
> has, in fact, created nothing. It is only a thought. It has no existence
> independent of himself, and it exists only as long as the
> thinker/creator actively chooses to think about it. That, however, is
> precisely the point. It is a something that is made out of nothing.
>
> Moreover, all the objects, people, and events which characterize this
> world are made out of the same thing, namely thought. The only
> antecedent to their existence is the desire of the thinker to think
> them. The beings who inhabit the thought world have no independent
> reality and no intrinsic stability since they must constantly be brought
> into existence and animated by the will of the thinker. If the
> thinker/creator is bored with imagining a particular character, he does
> not have to devise circumstances in which the offending individual dies
> (although he may certainly do so). He simply ceases to imagine him.
> Similarly, the thinker/creator is not bound by any necessities, laws, or
> causes. He can just as easily create a world in which things fall up as
> one in which things fall down. He can assume anything he likes.
> Shakespeare dreamt up King Lear. In order to get King Lear where
> Shakespeare wanted him, namely as a foolish old man, Shakespeare did not
> have to imagine his birth, weaning, adolescence, and middle years.
> Shakespeare's King Lear is not the product of a series of somethings,
> e.g., an indulgent, permissive mother, poor social skills as a teenager,
> and so on. Rather, he is the product of nothing: Shakespeare's
> unfettered creative intellect.
>
> The metaphor of creative human thought correlates nicely with many,
> although by no means all, aspects of universal creation. The Torah Jew
> does not see intelligence and purpose in the design of the universe, but
> rather, intelligence and purpose are the stuff of which the universe is
> made. People may reasonably expect that unless something very unusual
> occurs, the sun will exist five minutes from now. The Torah Jew knows
> that unless something unusual happens, the sun will not be here five
> minutes or even five seconds from now. The singular event is that the
> sun's Creator must trouble Himself to invest it with existence and endow
> it with definitive properties by thinking it. The facts that the sun has
> a long history and that its present existence is mandated by natural law
> are irrelevant since time and natural law are likewise
"thoughts" which
> require constant attention.
>
> As in the case of the creative thinker, the Creator of the universe is
> alone, and the existence of the universe in no way compromises his
> "aloneness". Moreover, just as thoughts are united with and dependent
> upon the will of the thinker, so are the Creator and His
"thoughts" one.
> The great statement of Jewish faith, the Sh'ma ("Hear, 0 Israel, the
> L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd is One", Deuteronomy 6:4), which is generally
> known to be the ultimate expression of G-d's unity, is understood by
> many to mean that there is only one G-d. Although this interpretation is
> not incorrect, it is trivial, and is, furthermore, entirely consistent
> with the something from something doctrine explained above. The thrust
> of the Sh'ma is not that there is only one G-d, but rather that He is
> all there is. G-d is the only reality. All else, from the totality of
> space to a dead leaf blowing around in a backyard, are His "thoughts"
> and are absolutely subordinate, in form and content, to His conscious
> Will.
>
> Among the many implications of the creation of something from nothing,
> perhaps the most important is the tremendous significance that it
> confers upon our natural circumstances. Since even the most paltry
> events require constant animation by G-d's willed thought, they are
> obviously of great importance to G-d; otherwise He would not continually
> trouble Himself to actively think them. In addition, given the infinite,
> unrestrained, transcendent range of His creativity, the fact that He
> chose to create our finite world, with all its minutia, is nothing short
> of astounding. Nothing, therefore, is trivial. The existence of a speck
> of dust requires the same attention as a galaxy. It follows that the
> speck of dust is as essential to the fulfillment of G-d's supernal plan
> as is the galaxy. There is G-dly potential and an absolute, transcendent
> purpose in everything. Obviously, there is no such thing as
> happenstance.
>
> Another ramification of the principle of something from nothing relates
> to the phenomenology of miracles. There has been much agonizing over the
> "problem" of miracles. All sorts of contrived arguments have been
> proposed to reconcile miracles with natural events. Such arguments claim
> that Mount Sinai was really a volcano, the splitting of the Red Sea was
> the product of a tidal wave, and so on. Even more distressing are the
> tortured apologetics of religious Jewish scientists who attempt to
> reconcile miracles with the natural order by invoking the Uncertainty
> Principle, quantum indeterminacy, and the like. These mental gymnastic
> are, of course, demanded by adherence to a something from something
> world view. From the something from nothing perspective, however,
> natural law is constantly brought into existence by Divine free will.
> Therefore, natural law is not intrinsically more logical or compelling
> than a supernatural event. The Creator can imagine water standing as a
> wall just as easily as He can endow it with what are considered its
> natural properties. In other words, natural events are no less
> supernatural than miraculous events. They are simply much more frequent.
>
> The analogy of creative human thought is only a starting point for the
> discussion of universal creation. The analogy is seriously limited. It
> does not, for example, address the apparent dissociation between nothing
> and something. The world does not look like a collection of thoughts.
> People and things appear to be independent realities. Furthermore,
> according to the argument developed thus far, G-d's unrestrained
> creative intellect is termed the "nothing" by means of which all
> somethings exist. Why should such an exalted emanation from the Creator
> be called nothing? On the contrary, it is a very big something, since it
> is the very life of Creation.
>
> We call G-d's volitional creative intellect "nothing"
because we have no
> direct access to it and, therefore, it is outside the realm of our
> experience. We can't see it, feel it, detect it, measure it, or even
> imagine it. Something that one cannot relate to in any way is
> empirically "nothing". A person could spend a lifetime in this world
> without it ever dawning on him that all is G-dliness. The fact that
> G-dliness is inaccessible to us does not, of course, in any way
> compromise its objective reality. It is nothing only with respect to us.
>
> As it happens, Divinely willed thought is nothing with respect to the
> Creator as well, but for a very different reason. Let us look, once
> again, at the daydream metaphor. Given a lifetime of experience and
> learning, as well as unlimited imagination, how much of the totality of
> the daydreamer is reflected in the daydream? Clearly the
"amount" of the
> individual's creative intellect invested in the daydream is so miniscule
> as to be nothing. Once again, however, this analogy is inadequate
> because the Creator is not a human. The extent to which a person
> transcends a daydream is truly incomparable to the infinite extent to
> which the Creator transcends His Creation.
>
> All of this leaves us with a very disturbing question. If the Creator's
> thought is so far beyond our grasp as to be nothing, and if it is so
> infinitely beneath His essence as to be nothing, does not this preclude
> any relationship between Him and us? Between His Being and our being is
> an endless and bottomless sea of nothing.
>
> Indeed, from our side, He is completely beyond reach. Whatever
> relationship we have with Him can only be established from His side. We
> can only know of Him what He chooses to reveal to us, and remarkably, He
> has chosen to reveal quite a bit. This is the miracle of Torah. Torah
> bridges the immeasurable distance between the Creator and the Creation.
>
> How and why His infinite, essential Will (which reflects Himself) is
> enclothed in Torah, is unknowable. How a five year-old child studying
> Chumash (Bible) with Rashi commentary is able to grasp the ungraspable
> essence of his Creator cannot be explained. How the binding of tefillin
> (phylacteries) on the head and arm unites the essence of the Jew with
> the essence of G-d cannot be understood. How seemingly trivial objects
> such as matzah (unleavened bread) or an etrog (citron) can serve, at
> specified times, as vessels with which to capture Divinity and reveal it
> in time and space is unfathomable. It is, after all, His Torah.
>
> The Torah, then, is at the heart of the something from nothing position.
> All the something from something theorists approach causality from their
> own perspectives and on their own terms. Judaism, which is at odds with
> everyone and everything else, is based on the truth that G-d is not a
> something, and therefore if He is to be approached at all, it must be
> from His perspective and on His terms.
>
>
> http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article.asp?AID=92123
>
> On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:41:55 -0600, John Cuccia 
> wrote in message :
>
>>On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 09:47:33 -0500, "Robert Comer"
>> wrote:
>>
>>>How could it exist otherwise?
>>
>>How could God exist otherwise?  That is, suppose the universe *is*
>>God?  That would help reconcile physics with metaphysics, and ID with
>>evolution (although one could certainly question the IQ of the
>>Designer).  Once you stop thinking of God as something external to the
>>universe, then an eternal universe isn't so unthinkable.
>>
>>>It seems like a scientific copout to say that it's just always been
>>>there,
>>
>>I wasn't saying, I was just asking why you though there had to be a
>>"first" universe.  Eternity goes both ways.
>>
>>>no scientifically verifiable proof, just a leap of faith. (sound
>>>familiar?
>>>)
>>
>>Sure it's a leap of faith.  We will probably always be unable to see
>>beyond the singularity that created the particular instance that is
>>us.
>>>
>>>--
>>>Bob Comer
>>>
>>>
>>>"John Cuccia"  wrote in message
>>>news:bl89n1926kqu5n3kvgsu09uq8o5man3jpo{at}4ax.com...
>>>> Why?
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 06:51:18 -0500, "Robert Comer"
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>There had to be something to begin with.
>>>>>
>>>>>--
>>>>>Bob Comer
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>"John Cuccia" 
wrote in message
>>>>>news:o658n1lofjau2ihqj3enucgo54riposng6{at}4ax.com...
>>>>>> On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:41:27 -0500, "Robert Comer"
>>>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> No, that's just the way it was first
described, then they suggested
>>>>>>>> scalar
>>>>>>>> fields could allow universes to bubble off
each other and now there
>>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>> probably some new theory.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Still the same, where did the first universe
come from -- it had to
>>>>>>>be a
>>>>>>>big
>>>>>>>bang type event if you go by that.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Who says there was a first universe?
>>>>>
>>>
>

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