Q&A: Question about God Playing Dice
Question about God Playing Dice
Question
Hello Rabbi Michael,
First, I wanted to thank you for an important, fascinating, and enlightening book. I enjoyed reading it מאוד and felt that the book added a great deal for me.
I wanted to ask about one point in the book that I disagreed with, and I’d be happy if the Rabbi could address it: several times in the book, in the discussion of the physico-theological proof, it was explained that the “moderation of the probability slope” that Dawkins presents through evolution is basically meaningless. Even if you look at the probability for each step separately, it is still exactly the same process.
But as I understand it, there is a fundamental difference here (that is, there really is a moderation of the slope) — because according to evolution, schematically speaking, when there is a “good” mutation it survives, and now the species will be composed of individuals with that mutation, and it will remain that way until the next good mutation. In other words, from the moment we reach a good intermediate state, we stay in that state, and the next generations no longer need to start over from the beginning, but rather begin from this starting point.
When I spoke with my brother, he gave me an analogy that I think explains the point very well (I think it will help the Rabbi understand the point, and perhaps agree, or alternatively explain why we’re missing something here): suppose I’m trying to guess someone’s Gmail password, and suppose the password has a known length of 10 characters, and that there are 30 possible letters for each character. If I try to guess it, I would have to go through 30 to the power of 10 possibilities — an enormous number of possibilities.
By contrast, if I start with the first character, and once I guess it correctly the letter is highlighted (that is, the computer reveals to me that this is the correct character), and then I continue guessing the second one (30 possibilities) until that letter is highlighted, and so on — clearly that is much easier (if I’m not mistaken, in that case at most there are 30 times 10 letters total that I would need to type).
The claim is that because of this step-by-step perspective, and with the help of evolution, what happened is more similar to the second case. Because once a certain mutation is beneficial (for survival), it is here to stay, the species “adopts” it, and now we move on to the next correct letter (= mutation). Is the analogy mistaken?
Thank you very much!
Answer
For some reason I missed this question. Here is the continuation that took place by email:
I wrote:
The analogy is not entirely mistaken. In principle, the probability of such a process is the product of the probabilities of the different stages: the probability of reaching stage A, multiplied by the probability (the conditional probability) that given we are at A we will reach B, and so on. It is true that if there were no evolution, then the conditional probability at each stage would be smaller (that is basically what you argued in the question), and still we have here a multiplication of the probabilities of the different stages that yields a very small result.
Beyond that, the conditional probability is greater because of the evolutionary processes you described. But there are laws of nature that ensure there will be an evolutionary process, and they are actually responsible for moderating the slope. I distinguished in the book, and in greater detail in an article on the site, between an argument within the laws and an argument outside them. See the article 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/
And also in the third notebook.
Roy,
Thank you very much for the answer!
I do indeed understand and completely agree regarding the difference between an argument within the laws and an argument outside them, and with many other arguments as the Rabbi elaborated in the book.
My objection was specifically about this issue of moderating the slope as it appears in the book. It is certainly possible, as the Rabbi says, that the probability is still very low even after the moderation. Although from the analogy I mentioned, you can see that the difference between the two situations can be enormous (an astronomical number of 30 to the power of 10, as opposed to a total of only 300 keystrokes). But of course it is not clear how precise the analogy is, and in general it is hard to be precise in these complex matters..
Discussion on Answer
Haim, I think it is mainly because this is a very unusual case, one about which we usually do not have intuition (we are not used to proving the existence of an abstract designer), in the same way that a baby would not assume there is a designer for a watch in the middle of the desert, because he is not used to such inferences.
Fine, but you understand that your analogy about a baby does not reflect us, since if the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted us to arrive at faith in Him מתוך that improbability, then necessarily we are capable of understanding and drawing such conclusions.
And in any case, a random probability for the formation of a self-replicating gene, however low it may be, is still possible. Therefore the proof is, in my opinion, from the complexity associated with it.
I didn’t say that this weakens the proof. We certainly can understand and draw such conclusions. It just doesn’t immediately fit everyone’s intuition. Indeed, if we were all rigorously rational, then as soon as we heard the physico-theological proof we should have believed in God. A baby too ought to understand that there is a watchmaker, but he doesn’t do so for psychological reasons.
Hello Roy,
The Rabbi addressed exactly your question in the third notebook, in the physico-theological proof.
He explains there that this very reality, in which the slope is moderated by some unknown factor that makes sure to freeze the desired results (to highlight the correct character in the password) — that itself indicates that there is an intelligent factor that intentionally designed these laws. Such laws do not just come about blindly.
Hello, honorable Rabbi, and hello Roy.
I would like to emphasize here another possibility that was not discussed in the book, namely that the calculation proposed there refers to a very specific DNA molecule (300 codons long), which is indeed statistically unlikely, but the author ignores the fact that there could be very many possible DNA or RNA codon combinations (and RNA is much simpler) that would create a survivable phenotype. Therefore the probability of a random assembly of a survivable mutation is much higher.
And in any case, it is difficult to determine what level of probability is required in order to assume there is a designer. In everyday life, we make do with a much lower probability in order to assume a designer. But here the situation is different. Is it because of the commitment that comes along with it? (Even if only the moral commitment.) I do not know.