[Avodah] sun and moon

[Zev Sero]

On 26/08/2011 4:19 PM, Lisa Liel wrote:
>
> ויום השביעי משבח ואומר: טוב להודות לה'.
>
> Would you actually contend that a piece of time speaks and praises?  I mean, literally?

I don't know.  Shabbos is a king, after all.  But this is not at all
relevant.  I'm talking about the Rambam's *explicit statement* that
the sun, moon, and all the planets and stars, *as well* as the spheres
in which he thought they were embedded, are all not just intelligent
but more intelligent than we are.  RMB has been insisting that the reason
the Rambam said this was because it was required by Aristotelian physics,
and since we know that theory is false we can reject the conclusions that
are derived from it.  But the Rambam himself says the opposite; he says
that the Aristotelian requirement for a motive force is supplied by Hashem,
not by the celestial bodies themselves.  It would *help* that case if he
were to claim the celestial bodies are mere dumb matter.  But he doesn't
claim that, and instead claims for them not only some intelligence but
far more than even the most dedicated Aristotelian would say they needed.
So RMB's conclusion seems to me refuted.


-- 
Zev Sero        If they use these guns against us once, at that moment
zev at sero.name   the Oslo Accord will be annulled and the IDF will
                 return to all the places that have been given to them.
		                            - Yitzchak Rabin