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Chabad.org » Learning & Values » Questions & Answers » Miscellaneous » Does Everything Have To Make Sense? » Answer #1
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Answer #1 - Michael Katzenelson


This is a very difficult question; it doesn’t seem to make sense.

Let’s try to make to sense of it:

"Everything" probably means everything physical, rather than everything physical and spiritual. Nobody would say that we understand everything in the spiritual. "Make sense", probably means that it is comprehensible, as in being able to know a thing's reasons or character. And "make sense" probably means makes sense to us. We could not say that anything does not make sense to G-d. So, the question that seems to make the most sense is "does everything in the physical universe have to be comprehensible to us?"

We probably do not mean to say that everything has to make sense at once. The answer would have to be "no" for anything that is sufficiently large or complicated. That leaves us with trying to understand any single thing. We probably have to assume this single thing is not related to a lot of other things. Otherwise we’re back to “no” again.

Now, suppose that the reasons and character of our "thing" include things outside of physicality. We do not really understand the spiritual, but we maintain that there is a connection between the spiritual and the physical. So we have to say we cannot really understand any single thing.

Maybe we made sense of the question; it’s not clear how to test the result. But the answer seems to be no.

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Michael Katzenelson, physicist   More articles...  |   RSS Listing of Newest Articles by this Author
Physicist, active in academic research and industry, published in the premier multidiscipline journals and the standard peer-reviewed journals of physics and chemistry. Formerly faculty member at Univ. of Illinois, Materials Research Laboratory, scientist and postdoctoral fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory, National Synchrotron Light Source, Doctorate in Chemical Physics, SUNY Stony Brook.

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Reader Comments
Latest Comments:
Posted: Jan 25, 2007
Making sense of the physical
God created everything and knows all and all its makeup. Man is still learning about the physical world and it's an evolving process. We thought there were nine planets and then we learn there are eight. We are constantly changing the books as we progress with our sciences. But we'll always have questions because we don't have the intellect of our creator.
Posted By Ben Shelkowsky, Pacific Grove, CA

Posted: Jan 17, 2007
Everything makes sense?
Why do you take it as given that everything has to make sense to G_d? Are we Greeks? As the Maharal asserts, intellect is also a creation.
Posted By Tzvi Freeman, Thornhill, ON



 


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