Elia Leibowitz’s Appeal to the Physico-Theological View

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asked 5 years ago

Hello Rabbi,
In the first book you cite Elia Leibovitz’s appeal, which claims that the conclusion that there is a Creator for the world is different from the conclusion that a painting was made by a painter, because in painting our previous experience teaches us that we need to be a painter, but with regard to the universe we have no previous experience.
You explained his words in such a way that he claims that studying the universe is a stance on the unknown, and a stance on the unknown is not legitimate. But as I understand it, his claim is exactly the opposite: the conclusion that there is a creator for the world, just as there is a painter for a picture, is a stance on the familiar. It is a psychological phenomenon in which we take a familiar phenomenon and use it to explain another phenomenon that we have no experience with, and place it on the familiar. And if so, the question is back in place: It is possible that the universe has another explanation that is not familiar to us, just as the phenomenon of the tides has a different explanation than was known in Newton’s day.
Thank you very much.

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מיכי Staff answered 5 years ago

Not true. You are distorting the expression from its conventional meaning (both in my opinion and in general). The stance on the familiar means seeking an explanation for an unfamiliar phenomenon by a familiar mechanism. Leibowitz seeks a familiar explanation and I showed there that science does not work that way. Beyond that, there is and cannot be another explanation for the universe, since the claim that God created it is not an explanation. There are two possibilities, either someone created it or not. If we rule out the possibility that it has no creator, only the possibility that it has one remains. That’s all. Who is the one who created the universe is a different question and this evidence does not enter into it. Therefore, there is no room here for an “other explanation” (beyond the fact that there is an explanation or there is no explanation, there is no third possibility). I also explained this in the book itself.

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ל replied 5 years ago

When we look at details in the world, we are used to seeing that a complex thing was created by a designer, and when we stand before the universe, we encounter a complex phenomenon that we do not know whether or how it was designed, and then we adopt the familiar thinking model that something designed must be created by a designer, just as an airplane is designed by an engineer and a painting is designed by an artist. This is the position on the familiar in the sense of a familiar way of thinking that something designed must have a designer. And if so, the conclusion that there is a designer in the world is precisely the position on the familiar

מיכי Staff replied 5 years ago

This is really strange gibberish. According to this logic, explaining something with arithmetic is also the position on the familiar. The fact that a complex thing did not come into being by itself is a logical principle and not something from the familiar (its origin is not experimental but logical). Just as I use logic and mathematics, so too I use basic logical principles. This is not called the position on the familiar. You can of course call this the position on the familiar too, thus emptying the concept of its content.

הפוסק האחרון replied 5 years ago

There is a third option: that the statement "the world was created" has no meaning.