Could I maybe get a link to the article (or at least its title)? Thanks.

See here in Chapter 10.
https://mikyab.net/Writings/Notebooks on Matters of Faith/Notebook-3-The Physico-Theological Argument/

The article is here: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%91%D7%98-%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%98%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%99%D7%97%D7%A1%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%91%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%95%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%94/

Thanks. I’m an atheist, and I’ve always leaned on the anthropic principle in discussions with smart religious people (who use fine-tuning).

If all that’s needed is two assumptions — (1) that a multiverse exists with different laws, and (2) that there is some chance, however tiny, for life to arise — in order to satisfy the principle of sufficient reason, then I’ll assume them. To me it seems more reasonable that the two assumptions in parentheses are true than that an intelligent being exists and designed a world that allows life. (Wouldn’t it have been simpler for him simply to create the world Genesis-style? Seems a bit more efficient to me than waiting 9 billion years…)

Question: if the multiverse assumption becomes a consensus in physics (because it explains many otherwise obscure phenomena) — correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor, but I think that’s already on the way to happening? — and in the life sciences they find a model that allows life to arise spontaneously, would you raise a white flag on this front? Many thanks!

There’s no such thing as “the spontaneous creation of life.” Life is complex, and if it arises, then by definition the process that creates it (or: the laws that govern its creation) is special among infinitely many meaningless processes.
Here it splits into two possibilities:
If the “model” they find is passive observation of a mechanism that creates life, then we will conclude that such a mechanism was necessarily created by an intelligent hand that legislated its laws.
And if the “model” involves active intervention by researchers who “connect” parts to one another (metaphorically, of course), then that is exactly a demonstration of our argument: a complex thing that is created requires an intelligent hand.
As for the multiverse, see here:
https://mikyab.net/Responsa/Multiverses/
and here:

https://mikyab.net/Responsa/The Anthropic Objection Is Invalid/

Hello.
You can adopt a much simpler assumption (and one no less illogical than yours) in order to defend your atheism: that things don’t need causes.
The claim that such an intelligent being exists is as simple as can be, and every reasonable person assumes it when he encounters something complex: that someone made it. You don’t need to know who that someone is in order to infer that he exists. Your consideration against this is very weak. But even if for some reason we do take it into account, I don’t understand on what basis you determine that this is so implausible that it is preferable to assume a multiverse with no indication whatsoever. That is simply begging the question, and in that way you will never be able to accept the conclusion of any argument. You can always invent some nonsensical alternative. You see a die that lands a hundred consecutive times on six, someone suggests to you that perhaps it is a loaded die. Will you say that it could just be coincidence and reject his conclusion? Probably yes.

Before I answer your question, let me ask you a similar one: when would you raise a white flag? If it turns out there is no basis whatsoever for the multiverse, will you accept the existence of God? Or will you cling to the hope that maybe it will be discovered in the future (as you are doing now)?
As for your question, I definitely would not raise a flag, because the formation of universes is also a mechanism that requires explanation. You can retreat one step at a time, in the style of “turtles all the way down,” but you will never be able to escape the physico-theological argument. But of course, someone entrenched in illogical positions cannot be persuaded in any way.
Now I will add an explanation of why my refusal to surrender and yours are not equivalent. Mine is rational and yours is not. My argument speaks about the laws of science from the outside, and therefore it is not supposed to be answered by scientific discoveries, and I am not supposed to raise a white flag (that is what I called the argument from outside the laws). But you cling to an explanation within the laws, and even when there is no explanation, you still do not give up your assumptions.
This is an irrationality that is very characteristic of people with atheist faith, and that is a shame.

Anonymous,
Regarding the argument “wouldn’t it have been simpler for him simply to create the world Genesis-style?”
That’s a pretty weak argument. First, because you have no idea what the intelligent designer’s goal was; second, because you have no detailed plan for achieving it in some other way; and third, because you don’t know exactly what his abilities are.
It seems you are claiming that he could have created the world exactly as it is but without the prior process. That is of course silly, because there is no way to distinguish between the two situations. If it seems more plausible to you that he created the world in the middle of the process, then just adopt that creationist direction.

Joseph: I didn’t understand how in the first case you concluded that there was an intelligent hand.

Rabbi: It’s true that when a reasonable person sees something complex (like a watch) he thinks someone made it, but evolution taught us that sometimes things that look complex have another explanation, one that doesn’t require a designer. I determine that it’s so implausible based on what you called the principle of sufficient reason: if there were a stone before me and a human being, and I were told that neither has a creator (and of course in this analogy I know nothing about evolution), I might agree to accept that about the simple stone, but not about the human being. Same here: before me I have either a wise God with motivation and moral laws, or a simple multiverse. The second seems far more reasonable to me.

Regarding “you’ll cling to the hope that it will be discovered in the future” — again, you’re the physicist here — isn’t it true that in string theory and quantum mechanics the multiverse has already entered the papers as an option? Even if that were not the case, and the only basis I had for believing in the multiverse were philosophical, I would still hold that belief because it is a (good) alternative to God. You can see that as entrenchment in my position (by the way, I think that’s something you do much more than I do, but never mind), but that is my position and it still seems to me the most reasonable one.

I didn’t understand you. You say that “even when there is no explanation, you do not give up your assumptions.” Do you, by any chance, have an explanation for God’s existence? How did such an intelligent being “come to be”? If you give me a good one (that seems more reasonable to me than the multiverse), right here and now I’ll raise a white flag and become the first in the line of your followers.

Yishai: You misunderstood me; that wasn’t an argument, just a thought that crossed my mind. I don’t see any point in discussing the fellow’s motivations (I don’t know him).
You say there’s no way to distinguish between the situations — that’s true, but there is a way to decide which of them is more plausible. If you find a fossil and date it to 60 million years, the explanation that “God put it there to test our faith” seems really unnecessary to me compared to the scientific alternative.

Life is very complex (even a simple protein chain), and objectively special relative to the rest of the infinitely many lifeless states.
If there exists specifically a mechanism that leads from dead matter to living matter, then by definition this is a special mechanism (one special one as opposed to infinitely many that are not special).
Why does reality contain specifically this mechanism? (Let us set the multiverse aside.)
That is the issue with the “spontaneous formation of life” — in what sense is it spontaneous? In the sense that no one directly connected with his own hands the nucleotides to the proteins, and the genes and so on to one another, and intentionally created a living chain.
So how did they connect specifically into living matter (as opposed to all the infinitely many other possibilities)? The answer is that there are special laws that caused this.
In abiogenesis research, they assume that the chance of a living protein chain forming through complete randomness is negligible, and therefore the research looks for laws of nature that give a better chance to living sequences than to dead ones.
I will quote from an article by Dr. Iris Frye: (http://telem.openu.ac.il/courses/c20237/lifegenesis-g.htm)

Life — since when?
Another problem is connected with the “timetable” of the process by which life came into being. Until recently, people thought in terms of very long spans of time being available for the emergence of the first living systems. This, as mentioned, supported the claim that a primary key molecule could have formed by chance. It now turns out that the time window during which life apparently emerged was very short relative to the age of the Earth, which formed about four and a half billion years ago. During roughly the first half-billion years, the data indicate that because of very high temperatures and intensive meteorite bombardment, the formation of life or its survival was out of the question (some therefore argue that life developed on the ocean floor). However, according to fossil evidence, living organisms with cell-based bodies already existed about 3.6 billion years ago. In many ancient rocks, layered structures called stromatolites have been found, resembling structures now produced by large bacterial colonies. Fossils of bacteria have also been found in ancient rocks in Australia and Greenland. Some researchers argue, on the basis of measurements of ratios of different carbon isotopes, that carbon-fixing life through photosynthesis existed as early as 3.8 billion years ago. The conclusion is that the time window lasted no more than half a billion years, and some say much less than that — truly a geological “blink of an eye.” It is therefore clear that if we do not want to assume that the origin of life involved some sort of “miracle,” every reasonable scenario must be based on rapid mechanisms with relatively high probability.
End quote.
And now the question arises: why does there exist a mechanism that gives statistical priority specifically to the formation of life, and not to all the infinitely many dead sequences? Or a mechanism that gives equal probability to all of them?
The fact that the programmer of the mechanism decided to assemble life according to laws and not directly by his own hands changes nothing.
It’s like walking into a hall and finding a machine that blows winds in all sorts of directions, and after several hours of such winds, an airplane is formed. Why do the winds specifically favor the creation of an airplane, rather than just being meaningless winds?
Finding laws does not render God unnecessary.
The difficulty will always remain the same difficulty; it will just pop up somewhere else.
Think of a machine that randomly draws letters and outputs the phrase: “To be or not to be.” Does it matter whether it was “chance” and someone intervened in the software at a specific moment? (say, hacked the computer), or whether the computer is programmed for that? If there is a difference, then the second possibility points even more clearly to an intelligent hand.

Joseph: As far as I’m concerned, the anthropic principle answers all that. Maybe it really is wildly improbable, but we know it happened because we are here and alive. There could be countless (or infinitely many) different processes that create different things. In fact, if the multiverse is infinite, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that somewhere a Boeing airplane formed spontaneously. The reason we are here is that the improbable did in fact happen.

Of course — and when I arrive on a planet in some remote galaxy and see an airplane there, the conclusion is that it could have formed despite all the odds. How did it form? Conclusion: there are infinitely many stars/universes, so in one of them an airplane had to form.
In fact, throughout the universe there are airplanes and iPhones floating around that created themselves, since there are infinitely many universes.

Yes, I understand. The problem with you people is that you don’t take it all the way. The laws of nature do require an explanation, but God doesn’t. I can say the exact same thing about God.

The problem with you is that you’re mixing different discussions together.
At first you rejected God with the phrase: “a wise God with motivation and moral laws” — what does morality have to do with anything? So
claim there is no morality. What motivations? Claim that he has no motivation at all. What do these add-ons have to do with the issue?
Same here.
You have to understand that the discussion proceeds in two parts. Assuming one accepts an infinite chain of gods, does the world require a creator (who himself requires a creator, and so on to infinity)? And afterward, if the world does indeed require one, and we are not willing to accept an infinite chain, is it preferable to stop at the world or at God? That is a different discussion.
When you decide that you accept that there is a God provided an infinite chain is possible, we can continue talking.
Until then, the difficulty “Who created God?” is irrelevant.

If you claim that he legislated the laws of the universe for life, then apparently he had a motivation (to make a universe with life), no?

I don’t understand why stop at God when you can stop at the world. What do we need him for?

Anonymous, your words are empty of content. If I give you a better explanation than the multiverse, you’ll become my follower (I’m blushing from the compliment). The question is what counts as a better explanation? You cling to the claim that there is no better explanation without any justification, and therefore your statement is empty of content.
Well, what I had to say I already said in the third notebook and in the article and in the book. Whoever agrees — fine, and whoever doesn’t — also fine.

1) Motivation? Yes, motivation to create such a universe. It doesn’t have to be something external. What’s wrong with motivation? We know motivations from everyday life, so that’s not strange. As far as I’m concerned, you could say he was bored and decided to create us to relieve the boredom.
2) I already told you that the discussion has to be divided into two parts.
Assuming it is possible to accept an infinite chain of causes, do you agree that it is highly reasonable to assume there is a creator? (who also has a creator, ad infinitum). Answer yes or no and then we can continue.

Rabbi, I clung to the claim that there is no better explanation precisely with a justification: I don’t see why one should assume the existence of an intelligent being when one can do without it. (By the way, speaking of blushing, just so you know — even as an atheist I’ve looked a bit into your books and enjoyed them :])

Joseph: 1. I didn’t say it was bad, only that in my opinion it isn’t plausible. Why assume the existence of some bored omnipotent being when everything can be explained with simpler assumptions?
2. Yes.

Oops, if*

Okay.
If an infinite chain can be accepted, why do you give up your proposal that there is a multiverse and instead go with God? After all, the multiverse is simpler, no?
P.S. Where did anyone argue that God is omnipotent? All that is being claimed is that he has the ability to create a world like ours; that is not necessarily infinite ability.

I assume you meant “don’t give up”? An infinite chain of gods is simpler than the multiverse? I don’t accept infinite regress because it doesn’t seem logical to me (one God would already be preferable).

As for omnipotence, fine, that’s secondary.

I don’t understand.
After all, you answered me “yes” to this question of mine:
Assuming it is possible to accept an infinite chain of causes, do you agree that it is highly reasonable to assume there is a creator? (who also has a creator, ad infinitum). Answer yes or no and then we can continue.

Are you retracting that?

What else could one even assume if there is an infinite chain of causes?

I don’t understand you.
There is a mathematical (and perhaps scientific) problem with claiming that there is a chain of infinitely many causes, but that does not prevent us from considering the question of its existence on the assumption that such a chain is possible.
My point is to see what you think regarding the existence of God if the question “Who created God?” does not exist (because he too has a creator, etc.).

Ah, I understand. Apparently if that question doesn’t exist, then God really is more plausible.

Anonymous,
They’ve already answered you enough here, so I’ll only continue the point I responded to.
You said there are two alternatives: an intelligent designer or a multiverse. You wrote that you prefer the multiverse, and in parentheses you added an explanation for the preference. I rejected the explanation. Of course you have the right to choose whatever you want, even the less plausible possibility that explains nothing (as they answered you here, and that’s not what I’m coming to discuss), but be aware of it.
In one of your later messages you wrote something new — that you don’t see why one should assume an intelligent being if one can do without it. That is an argument beside the point, because it can be argued to the same extent against the multiverse too (why assume a multiverse if one can do without it). The question here is what is more plausible, and therefore the argument has to be directed toward that.
I can raise arguments in favor of God [he is also more compact than another infinity of universes (Occam’s razor), and he is also a sufficient reason unlike the multiverse (which simply enlarges the problem of this wondrous world into a far more complex system, but others here tried to explain that to you and didn’t succeed)]. But that is not the point. The point is that you have no argument in the opposite direction besides the odd argument that you have a better creation plan.

Okay.
Now I ask you (under the assumption of the possibility of an infinite chain of causes):
Why do you prefer to say that the link prior to the world is God and not a multiverse? After all, you claim that the multiverse is simpler than God, no?

Because in that case God has an explanation. Exactly like Paley’s watch and so on. The multiverse is still simpler, but when I already have an explanation for the designer (which in reality I don’t), then it really does seem plausible that he legislated the constants of the universe.

You wrote that the multiverse is still simpler.
If so, why are you so insistent on not assuming that the multiverse created the universe? After all, it too would have an explanation (a multi-multiverse).
That is, in your opinion that the multiverse is simpler than God, it has a clear advantage over God as a candidate for the creator of the universe.
So what makes you choose specifically God as the creator of the universe? There has to be some advantage (in your view) that God has over the multiverse. What is it?
As far as the future question “Who created God?” is concerned, under the assumption that an infinite chain is possible, God too can have an explanation (another link), and so can the multiverse.
If so, what makes you give priority to God over the multiverse?
Don’t forget that this is a God who has “motivation” and all your other arguments.