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» the Chessmaster
» the Origin of Life
» Search for Alien Life
» Elephant in the Room
» Greetings from The Cosmos
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» the Light is Good
» the Mask of Nature
» Divine wisdom vs Human Wisdom
» the Nature of Reality
» Mysterious World of PLants
» Almost a Miracle
» The Bite of Rationalism
» The March of Science
» Afterword
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** the Mask of Nature **
the torah perspective

Rabeinu Bachye explains in the Duties of the Heart, Shaar Yichud[1] the Torah perspective when observing nature:
When we contemplate the world, it will become apparent that - it is the design of one Thinker, and the work of one Creator. We find its roots and foundations to be similar in its derivatives and equal in its parts, and the signs of wisdom manifested in the smallest of the creatures as well as the biggest testify that they are the work of one Wisdom. If this world had more than one Creator, the form of wisdom would be incongruent in the different parts of the world, and change in its general nature and parts.

Furthermore, we find that it is interdependent for its maintenance and welfare, no part is completed without the help of another part, like the links in a coat of armor, the parts of a bed, the limbs of the human body, or other things which have interdependent parts for their functioning.

Can you see that the moon and the planets need the light of the sun, and the earth needs the sky and the water, and that the animals need each other, and some species feed on other species such as predatory birds, fish, and beasts of the forest - all need each other? And Man's need for everything, and the rectification of everything through man (man gives a higher purpose to everything)...

And the Divine wisdom appears in the tiny creatures as well as the large ones, because the wisdom manifested in the formation of an elephant, despite its huge body, is no more wondrous than the wisdom manifested in the formation of a tiny ant. On the contrary, the smaller the creature the more wisdom and power it appears to reflect, and the more it testifies to the wondrous ability of the Creator.

This teaches that they are all the design of one Designer and Creator, since they are similar and alike in furthering and completing the natural order and maintenance of the world in all of its parts. If there were more than one Creator, the form of wisdom exhibited would be different in some of its parts, and things would not be interdependent. Since the world, despite its being different in its roots and foundations, it is equal in its derivatives and compounds, one can see that its Creator who put it together, its Governor, and Designer is one.
This is what one is supposed to see in nature. The truth is this Divine wisdom is manifest even in the tiniest segment of empty space as the Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman noted (from his book: The Character of Physical Law - Chapter 2 - the relation of mathematics to physics):
"It always bothers me that according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do? So I have often made the hypothesis ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities. But this is just speculation."
If this is so for even the tiniest speck of vacuum space. How much more so, for an electron, or beyond to living organism, whose design is perfectly coordinated from the atomic level up - it all gently points to a single Creator, of infinite wisdom, power, and ability who designed them (and the laws of physics to go with them).

When I was a physics student in university, a certain student wondered in amazement "how does nature solve all the differential equations?" He was puzzled by the mind-boggling complexity of the mathematics involved in nature. For when one studies physics, he quickly runs into extremely complicated mathematics and must make simplified models and approximations otherwise it would be impossible to calculate anything whatsoever.

The answer to his question is that nature is not a mathematical machine running on its own. Rather, it is the handiwork of G-d. He is the one constantly calculating the infinite mathematical equations. Nature is a miracle in disguise. Our purpose in this world is to use our rational faculties to see through this mask.

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Footnotes