Review of your book

Hello Rabbi Michi.
I came across a criticism about God playing dice and I couldn’t find an answer to it, and I’m confused.
On the surface, it’s clear to me that the critic is right (it’s simple logic what he’s saying).
Was the rabbi wrong in his words?
 
Quote from the review:

It seems the argument stage is the next paragraph,

Every evolutionary step that creates a non-living mutation leads to a complete break in the process, which interrupts the entire evolutionary chain. In the evolutionary process, we have no [mechanism] that ensures that [the species] will get back on track each time. If at any stage in history a surviving mutation does not occur, the entire process is definitively halted.

What Abraham is talking about is a model of evolution. In this model, almost every mutation creates a non-viable creature, and therefore interrupts the evolutionary lineage it might have led to. Only very rarely does a mutation succeed in creating a viable creature. Therefore,

This is a trajectory of events in which each process has zero chance of not going extinct, and requires the accumulation of all of them one after the other without a single failure in order to reach what is defined as “success.”

I am repeatedly shocked by the low level that apologists allow themselves. There are explicit mathematical models of evolution – why doesn’t Abraham, who has the background to understand them, confront them instead of poor caricatures? Of course, in these models, evolution doesn’t stop just because a destructive mutation occurred in a particular creature.

But even within his model, there is no such result. At the heart of the model is the assumption that mutations will almost always lead to extinction – and therefore, Abraham argues, the entire process will cease. Let’s build a simple model based on this assumption and see if this is indeed the result. But, unlike Abraham, let’s remember that evolution works on populations, not individuals.

Suppose that in generation 0 there is a population of size N0. Suppose that on average each individual produces No offspring. Suppose that there is a chance p that a particular offspring will have a lethal mutation, which will prevent it from producing offspring. If so, in the next generation there will be

N1=(1-p) No N0

Offspring. That is, the population will grow or shrink according not only to the chance of a lethal mutation but also to the average number of offspring. For a species that produces an average of two offspring, the population will shrink only if the chance of each offspring having a lethal mutation is greater than 50%! Needless to say, in nature most newborns are genetically healthy, and lack such a mutation. The conclusion that the abundance of destructive mutations will lead to the destruction of the entire process is therefore absurd. (By the way, most mutations are neutral, and destructive ones are rare, but why let the facts confuse us.)

This model is also extremely poor for understanding evolution, as it does not include its main component – natural selection. It is clear that the moment a mutation is created that increases the number of offspring, it will spread rapidly in the population. Therefore, even if these mutations are rare, they can build on each other. And as mentioned, a high incidence of destructive mutations, even if it existed, would not (necessarily) stop this process.

The important point is that what happens depends on the models, and on the values ​​of the parameters in the models. It is not possible to simply conclude that having a lot of destructive mutations will lead to the halting of evolution or the extinction of the population. To argue this seriously, one must show that this is the case in realistic models. Avraham does not even try to address the real models that biologists use*, and therefore his argument is not even worth a serious response. In real models, there are empirically-based percentages of empirically-based processes, and there is no halting of evolutionary processes there.

Avraham is, among other things, a respected physicist. He would not dare (or could) publish an article (or book) that discusses physical models in such an inaccurate and unserious way. But when it comes to apologetics, anything is allowed. Anything to justify his preconceived beliefs. He allows himself to ignore the real models, and place in their place a skeleton that does not even deserve the title of “scarecrow.”