Okay, what’s your specialization, if I may ask?
And also regarding the wonders of creation—some of the laws do have an explanation, no? For example natural selection, which is something that developed gradually into more and more complicated laws according to what gradually came into being.

You may ask, but it probably won’t mean anything to you: quantum phenomena in solid-state systems (mesoscopic systems).
I don’t know what “an explanation” for the laws of nature is supposed to mean. In terms of what would you want to explain them? In terms of more fundamental laws? These are the laws, period. Natural selection doesn’t develop the laws of nature. On the contrary, it operates within them. Creatures evolve, not the laws.

That really doesn’t tell me very much…
So what you’re basically saying is that the laws themselves are simply given, and we as human beings try to describe and understand them. But don’t you think the atheists have some justification when they say there’s no reason to assume that there’s someone who created them, coded them in one way or another, and for now we should remain in a position of not knowing until we understand (or don’t understand)? I mean, in my opinion it’s very logical that there is someone who created or designed it and so on. In my opinion that’s a completely rational position, because you infer on the basis of what you know and see. But on the other hand, there’s also room for what they say—that you don’t have to “choose” that option, and they prefer to remain with the position that whatever can be tested, they test and understand, and whatever can’t remains a question until, if possible, we manage to understand it. And there’s not really a reason to conduct yourself or draw conclusions that change an entire way of life just because it seems logical to me. There’s a difference between something being possible and logical, and believing in it—and even more, conducting your life according to it, which is much stronger than just believing that maybe someone created it.

I said there is no explanation for the laws of nature. They are facts because that’s how things are. Unless there is a law that isn’t fundamental but is derived from another law—but the fundamental laws of nature have no explanation and cannot have one.
The atheists’ question is a different question, unrelated to the previous one. That’s what is called “the God of the gaps.” At the end of the column that went up just a few hours ago (about Popper and Rabbi Akiva), I explained why their claim is incorrect. This is an essential gap that is not supposed to close, and therefore one cannot wait and assume that it will close in the future.

Yes, I know the term (“the God of the gaps”), but in my opinion the central claim is that if we don’t know, then we don’t know, and we shouldn’t assume or propose another solution if it hasn’t been well demonstrated.
They also don’t assume that maybe this gap will be closed in the future. Even if things won’t be understood in the future, their claim still stands, because a sufficient alternative explanation still hasn’t been presented. From their perspective, the fact that we don’t know how or whether these laws came into being (maybe they are eternal) isn’t supposed to give you the option of positing God behind them just because there’s no explanation. It takes much more than just “there’s no explanation.” That’s the claim, in my opinion.

According to this fascinating line of thought, nothing can be proved by negation. Even if you proved that X is not true, who says that “not X” is true? If explanation B is better than A, that still doesn’t mean one should accept B. Maybe A is true? From this point on, we can shut down all of science and philosophy.
So, for example, if you found that two bodies with mass attract one another, who says that two other bodies won’t attract one another? Just as one cannot establish the principle of causality in general, so too one cannot establish the law of gravity in general.
I already have plenty of experience with atheist evasions, elegant to one degree or another, when they encounter logical arguments. That is the way of every religious sect. Apologetics is their guiding light, and no argument will confuse them. What’s especially nice is that they accuse believers of religious fanaticism and closed-mindedness (not always unjustly, of course). Best of luck to us.

Your way of thinking is no less fascinating… but you’re making a straw man, because the logic they propose is not: “if explanation B is better than A, that still doesn’t mean one should accept B.” For the sake of argument, there are explanations and descriptions for the force of gravity, so great—we accept them. It’s good enough, even though we don’t understand everything about it. By contrast, in their opinion, the explanation of God is not enough, because not much can be said about Him. There’s no consistent method, it can’t be measured or tested, there’s no effect to speak of (He doesn’t intervene in the world). That’s very different from gravity, which you don’t see but can test, describe, define—you can see its effect on the world, and you can even use it in various ways for different purposes. So there is room to accept it.
God, according to the claim and the definitions they set, does not meet the criteria required in order to accept Him as an explanation.
And you know what—they also argue something stronger: not only is that not enough to accept it, but even if you do accept it, it creates even more questions. Think about it—another world, another dimension, a whole complete system, where at that point, as they say, you need to stop, because you’ve moved from the stage of explanations to the stage of imagination, and I don’t think they’re big fans of that field…

I’m really not making a straw man. My claim is that there is something that brought about all this good stuff (= the world). The alternative is that there isn’t. The first possibility is not an explanation but a conclusion. I didn’t come to explain anything; rather, this is a conclusion from the fact that something complex exists here, and a complex thing does not create itself. The alternative they choose is that there is no explanation and also not to draw the conclusion. That is exactly the move I described above.
But it seems to me that the positions have been clarified, and everyone can choose.