ייִדישער מחשבֿה אויף קהלת 2:14

In order to identify anything correctly, one needs definite answers to four basic questions. These are 1) What? 2) From what? 3) From whom? 4) Why? The answers to these four questions will reveal 1) the form, shape of the object of our inquiry; 2) the material it consists of; 3) who has created it; 4) what is its purpose, its function. Once we have been supplied with these answers, and proceeding from the simplest phenomenon, one can advance step by step to more sophisticated phenomena, identify them, understand their function and purpose, and eventually divine their ultimate Cause, i.e. the Creator of the universe. Since, however, we frequently fail to identify some phenomena correctly, and since the answers to all the four questions listed may not have been available, many people have resigned themselves to consider the universe as being the result of some cosmic accident, a mere coincidence. Aristotle already has disproved such a philosophy, employing three arguments. 1) Accidents are by definition exceptions, not norms. How can nature be an "accident" then? 2) Even when accidental happenings do occur, the result is rarely perfection, rather a pronounced lack of perfection. A similar idea is expressed in Solomon's song about the eyshet chayil the woman of valor (Proverbs 31). He asks, "Who can find such a woman?" The emphasis is on the word "find". Such a woman is not the product of some "accident", but the result of a process of very careful cultivation. 3) The fact that almost everything we observe serves a well understood purpose, is surely evidence that it is the result of the most careful planning. It is not accidental, but the work of a Creator, the result of a will. The predictability and order of most natural phenomena both on the ground and in space, prove that they are not products of accidents but of a monumental intellect. Any unexplained phenomenon merely points to the fact that the intellect of its Creator is far superior to that of His creature. There is no compelling reason that the creature must understand everything its Creator has done.

From Scripture: The same can be demonstrated from Scriptures, as it is said, "Lift up your eyes on high and behold, who created these?" (Yeshaya 40:26). And again "When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have established" (Tehilim 8:4). Scripture also said "Have you not known? have you not heard? has it not been told you from the beginning? [have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?]" (Yeshaya 40:21) Further "Hear O deaf, look O blind, that you may see" (Yeshaya 42:18); "Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, since that is the end of all men, and the living will take it to his heart" (Koheles 7:2); "The wise man, his eyes are in his head; but the fool walks in darkness" (Koheles 2:14). "But the path of the righteous is as the light of dawn that shines more till the day is perfect. The way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble" (Mishlei 4:18-19).

And: "Have you seen a man wise in his own eyes? there is more hope for a fool than of him" (Mishlei 26:12), and "the wise man's eyes are on his head but the fool walks in darkness" (Koheles 2:14), which means that he looks at the beginning of his matters, and what passed over him of the matters of his torah and worldly matters, and examines them, and understands the good and the bad of what has happened to him, and strengthens the good and repents from the bad.