A Systematic View of the Relationship Between Evolution and Faith

With God’s help

From the book “To Know Your Way in the Land”

Introduction

As the nineteenth century approached its final third, Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species. Since then and until our own day, the theory has continued to develop and become more firmly grounded, and today there is an almost complete consensus about it among researchers working in the field. At the same time, an unceasing struggle has been taking place between believers in creation (mainly Christians) who oppose evolution and neo-Darwinism, and atheistic neo-Darwinians who oppose religious faith. Many creationists argue that the scientific consensus that has emerged is not meaningful, since this is a believing and captive group, no less—and perhaps more—than those who hold religious faith. Anyone who does not join it is cast out of the field as a heretic. This description is exaggerated, but I think there is nevertheless something to it.

This struggle has reached courts in the United States as well, following lawsuits from both directions. In 1925, in Tennessee, USA, teacher John Scopes was put on trial for teaching evolution in school, contrary to a law enacted that same year (Tennessee belongs to the Bible Belt, a Christian Baptist fundamentalist region in the southern United States). Scopes, who was defended by the legendary attorney Clarence Darrow, was fined a symbolic amount, and in the end did not even pay that. In time, this trial came to be known as the “Monkey Trial”; films were made about it and various books were written. It became a symbol of religion’s suppression of free thought. Interestingly, eighty years later, in 2005 in Pennsylvania, USA, the trend reversed. There a trial was held in which neo-Darwinians demanded that creationist doctrine not be taught in schools, on the grounds that this violated the principle of separation of religion and state practiced in the United States. Their claim was that this was a religious theory, not science, and therefore had no place in schools. Judge Jones accepted their claim. Freedom of thought was once again frozen in America—only this time in the name of science. Have we progressed?

These are only two prominent marks on the timeline of the unceasing struggle between believing creationists and atheistic neo-Darwinians, a struggle that repeatedly slips into ugly channels. It is full of hatred, deceit, tendentious distortions of findings, and mutual vilification. All of this is done by both sides alike. Even if a relevant argument sometimes arises in these debates, one thing you will hardly ever find there is civilized discourse, and even less than that, attentive listening and substantive engagement. As someone who wrote a comprehensive book on this subject (God Plays Dice, Yedioth Sefarim, 2011), and although the flames in Israel are not comparable to what is customary in the United States, I can say from my own experience that there were quite a few responses to my remarks that were not substantive, including slander and prejudice, as well as distortions of the discussion. Quite a few atheists slandered and sharply criticized what I wrote, some of them openly saying they had not troubled themselves to read the book at all (after all, there is no point in reading such corrupt and tendentious literature), and in fact did not understand its principled direction (which is pro-science) at all. From the religious side as well, I received several harsh comments about the supposed “heresy” in my book, since it supports evolution and neo-Darwinism, heaven forbid. Let me just note that in religious education there is a strong aversion to the study of evolution, and it has almost no place in the religious school system. At the same time, in the secular school system and in universities, this subject sometimes attains the status of holy writ. Woe to the person who touches it or criticizes it.

Only a few years ago, at the beginning of 2010, the press reported that the then Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Education, Dr. Gabi Avital, had in the past expressed positions that cast doubt on elements of the neo-Darwinian picture, and had criticized the fact that the education system does not present objections to evolution alongside the teaching of evolution itself. Avital was forced to resign from his position following massive pressure from members of the neo-Darwinian “church.” This is an importation into the Holy Land of the silencing and tendentious education customary in the United States, and it is regrettable.

These reactions on both sides apparently stem from ignorance and fear, and they usually involve scientific or philosophical ineptitude, and of course a great deal of prejudice, conservatism, and an inability or unwillingness to listen and think. These are two fairly fanatical churches conducting a religious war against one another, and “taking no prisoners.”

What is it, then, that so enrages both sides in this debate? What exactly is it about? Why has it been so stormy, without subsiding, for more than a hundred and fifty years? In this article I will not enter the realm of psychology (which, to the best of my understanding, is the central player in this discourse), but I will try, as much as possible, to touch on the foundational assumptions and principles that underlie the issue and the conflicts surrounding it. In this way, I hope to dissipate at least some of the fog of war that envelops it on every side.

This article will not survey different approaches, will not cite, and will hardly resort to sources—neither Torah sources nor scientific ones. My aim here is mainly conceptual and a priori: to clarify the discussion and the principles at its base, and thereby enable the ordinary reader to understand it and form a position on it. Already here I will state in advance that my position is that there is no connection whatsoever between a neo-Darwinian worldview and belief in God—neither positively nor negatively. One can adopt or reject either of them independently of adopting or rejecting the other. Neo-Darwinism should be examined openly and critically with scientific tools, like any other scientific field, and belief in God should be examined in the ways relevant to it, each person according to his own path (this is not a scientific issue). I will conclude with one further clarification. The purpose of this article is not to examine any proof of God’s existence (including the physico-theological proof, which will be discussed here at length), but mainly to describe the role of evolution in this debate. Nothing more. In the sections that touch on the physico-theological proof itself, my aim is only to complete the picture, and therefore at times I will be brief even where, for the sake of the matter, I ought to have elaborated more.

Two planes of collision

There are two main planes on which the debate between believers and neo-Darwinians is waged: 1. The mismatches between the biblical description of creation and what is currently accepted in the neo-Darwinian picture (dating, development, the order in which things appeared, and the like). 2. The very belief in God as creator and governor of the universe is perceived as contradicting the neo-Darwinian scientific conception.

Quite a few have dealt with the first plane (see, for example, Nathan Aviezer’s book In the Beginning He Created and other works), and in the Christian world there is an enormous literature on the subject. As for me, on this issue I anchor myself in the words of Maimonides in his Guide of the Perplexed, II:25, where he discusses the question of the eternity of the world:

Know that our fleeing from the doctrine of the eternity of the world is not because of the scriptural passages in the Torah that state that the world was created, for the passages indicating the creation of the world are no more numerous than those indicating that God is corporeal. Nor are the gates of interpretation closed to us or barred to us regarding the question of the world’s creation. Rather, we could have interpreted them as we did in denying corporeality, and perhaps this would have been much easier. We could have interpreted those verses so as to uphold the eternity of the world, just as we interpreted the verses and denied that He, may He be exalted, is corporeal.

In this passage, as in what follows there, Maimonides determines that if we are convinced by a demonstration (= proof), scientific or philosophical, of some fact, then the scriptural texts are not supposed to affect that conclusion. At most, we will need creative interpretation that reconciles the texts with our factual conclusions.

One may generalize and say that, in the mainstream of Jewish thought, scientific outlooks and conceptions are determined by scientific means. The tension surrounding faith-science confrontations is very low in comparison with what happens in the Christian world. There are some reservations regarding this freedom (the principles of faith also concern several facts: that God created the world, that He gave the Torah, that He exercises providence over what happens, and the like), but these are only a few very basic and general determinations, which themselves admit various interpretations, and certainly do not concern this or that detail. If so, the discussion on the first plane is mainly exhausted by various exegetical considerations regarding Scripture, and I do not see great value in engaging it.

It is precisely the second plane, which on its face appears weaker, that has in recent times come to occupy an ever more central place in this conflict. The phenomenon has expanded mainly following the writings of Richard Dawkins, a British evolution researcher and ardent atheist who never ceases to polemicize against religious faith, and even declares in his books that following the findings of evolution there is hardly any doubt that there is no God. He goes so far as to claim that atheism is a scientific conclusion in every sense of the term. His book The God Delusion, Yedioth Sefarim 2009, as well as his other books on the subject (The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene, and others), created considerable confusion among religious readers, who felt that the most basic principles of their faith had been seriously damaged. From his words it emerges that this is no longer merely a philosophical position, or a clash between beliefs, but a frontal clash between the findings of science and religious faith.

A fundamentalist believer finds himself forced to reject the scientific findings, and perhaps even to claim that scientific research itself is illegitimate (at least in these areas). But a modern believer who places trust in the scientific method cannot live with this sort of contradiction. Therefore, in this article I will focus on the contradiction on the second plane, that is, on the question whether one can accept the findings of evolution and remain a believer.

Why is there any collision at all between these two pictures? Why does a picture that describes the development of life by evolutionary means contradict belief in the existence of a Creator? Why should a particular mode of the universe’s operation—whether evolutionary or otherwise—touch in any way on the question of how the universe came into being and who created and governs it? Do Newton’s law of gravitation or the laws of chemistry threaten faith in the same way? It does not seem so. So what is so special about evolution? In the end I will argue that there is indeed nothing special about it. But to understand the apparent contradiction between evolution and belief in God, and then to understand why it is illusory, we must enter, very briefly, into the neo-Darwinian picture and become slightly more familiar with it.

What is evolution?

The cornerstone of life is the DNA molecule, a molecular chain composed of a sequence of building blocks of four kinds. Our genome is essentially the structure of this chain, and it is responsible for many of the physical and mental traits of the creature that possesses that genome. Every genomic sequence (genotype) has a physical expression (phenotype), whose traits are expressions of its genetic structure. This genetic structure is inherited in one way or another by the offspring, which means there will be a certain resemblance between them and their parents.

Schematically, one may say that the prevalent evolutionary mechanism is based on a chain each of whose links is composed of three elements: 1. the spontaneous emergence of mutations; 2. natural selection; 3. inheritance (genetics).

Suppose there is a given molecular chain. The length of such a chain can range from several dozen links (codons) to thousands. This chain undergoes changes due to incidental influences of temperature and the like, and thus it changes slightly and a somewhat different genome is created from the original. The creature to which this is the genome (the phenotype) will also look different. If, in a given situation, there are several creatures, each of which has a different genetic chain, their struggle with the environment and its resources will leave only those among them that are suited to survive in such an environment. Mechanisms of inheritance ensure that the creatures with the surviving chains will produce offspring bearing the same genome, and thus one link in the evolutionary chain comes to an end. The process now begins again (the emergence of mutations on the basis of the new chain, natural selection, and inheritance), and so on and so forth.

As an example, a pair of researchers from Princeton University, Peter and Rosemary Grant, examined the evolutionary development of the beaks of finches (a kind of bird) on the island of Daphne Major in the Pacific Ocean. They measured beak lengths and other physiological data of the finches over about twenty years, and found that the average length of their beaks increased significantly within a very short time in evolutionary terms. For example, in one of those years there was a drought on the island, and the plants that served as food for the finches disappeared. What remained was a tougher plant, which required longer and stronger beaks in order to crack it and eat its seeds. And lo and behold, the finches very quickly developed stronger beaks that could cope better with the tougher plant.

The evolutionary explanation for this is very simple. The finches with overly weak beaks did not survive (because they had nothing to eat). They died as part of a process of natural selection. Those who remained were the hardier finches, that is, those with the strongest beaks. These, of course, pass on the genome responsible for strong beaks to their offspring. This is a demonstration of an evolutionary process over a very short span of time in evolutionary terms. There was here the emergence of mutations (finches with beaks of varying lengths and strengths), natural selection (the extinction of those with weak beaks), and inheritance (the transmission of the strong-beak trait to offspring). And all this happened over about twenty years—that is, a tiny comma on evolutionary time scales. After that, of course, the process can repeat itself or continue onward.[1]

So where exactly is the collision? The physico-theological argument

So far, everything is all well and good. So where is the collision? What does any of this have to do with belief in God? Truth be told—not much. The fact that there is a theoretical description of a process of development and refinement of life says almost nothing about theological questions. In principle, God can of course create these processes, and can even manage them continuously by operating the biological laws. The fact that we know how to describe the ways these events occur (which may themselves be the modes of God’s action) has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of God’s existence. Therefore it is quite clear that there is no collision at all between neo-Darwinism as such and belief in God. The fact that I know how to explain how a certain system works does not mean that it has no designer or manager. If we explain how a factory operates, or a device such as a washing machine, does that necessarily mean that no one created or manages them? Explanation by means of laws merely describes the mode of action of the creator or manager.

So what is all the noise about? Are everyone here mistaken in so basic a way? It should be remembered that both sides—the fundamentalist creationists as well as the atheistic neo-Darwinians—share the conception that there is a contradiction here. They disagree only over which horn of this dilemma to choose and which to reject. Both agree that one cannot hold both, and therefore believers choose the horn of faith and throw away evolution, while among the atheists the opposite occurs.

The only place where such a collision could ostensibly arise is not at all on the plane of faith itself (as we saw above), but solely on the plane of the ways of arriving at it. Believers can come to faith in God in many different ways. The first camp consists of those for whom tradition brings them to faith. In the second camp are those driven by religious intuitions or religious feelings. In the third, biblical camp, there are those who find in Scripture insights and an influence that cannot be ignored. The fourth, historical camp is made up of those impressed by history (in the Jewish case: the history of the Jewish people, such as its survival and return to its land). The fifth camp speaks of God as the guarantor of morality and proves His existence from morality (this is the fourth proof in the Kantian classification that will be mentioned shortly). And in the sixth and last camp are those who come to faith by means of various philosophical arguments (proofs). Our concern here is only with those who belong to the sixth, philosophical camp.

But even here we have not finished narrowing the focus. This camp, like the others, is divided into several parties—three in number. Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, divided the range of philosophical proofs for God’s existence into three central types: ontological proofs—conceptual a priori arguments that prove God’s existence by means of logical-conceptual analysis; cosmological proofs—which prove God’s existence from the very fact that the universe exists; and physico-theological proofs—which prove God’s existence from the design, fittingness, and complexity of the universe. Once again, we are focusing here only on the third category (the third party), the physico-theological one, and on it alone.

But even here we are not finished. This party, like its sisters, is itself divided into different factions. Physico-theological arguments rely on the fact that the universe around us is very complex, or has the appearance of something designed, and infer from this the existence of a designer or assembler. One may divide these kinds of complexity according to scientific disciplines: there are complexities of the inanimate world, described by physics and chemistry. Others belong to the realm of living things and plants, and are described by biology, psychology, anthropology, and sociology. We are dealing only with the faction of arguments that relies on biology. These are the physico-theological arguments that hang on the greatest complexity in the universe—life. From the full theological map, we are focusing only on this faction, the life-sciences faction, from within the physico-theological party within the philosophical camp.

Those who infer the existence of God from the complexity of life are essentially asking how it is possible that something so complex came into being, developed, and continues to develop to this day, without a guiding hand that created it and manages the process. In scientific language, one may say that these processes contradict the second law of thermodynamics, which states that order in a closed system (without external influence) never increases. Entropy is the quantity that expresses the degree of order in a system, and the second law essentially states that in a closed system entropy never decreases (less entropy means more order). A flowerpot placed on a rooftop that falls to the ground shatters into pieces. But none of the readers has likely seen a shattered pot on a roof fall to the ground and reassemble itself into a whole pot. A natural process always moves in the direction of disorder, unless there is someone or something that arranges it. If we regard the entire universe as such a system, then by definition it is a closed system (for there is nothing outside the whole universe), and therefore it cannot be that life would emerge spontaneously within it from a previous state in which there was no life. Physico-theological believers infer from this the conclusion that there was a Creator who created life. This answers the difficulty on both planes: the cosmic system is no longer closed (God, who is an external factor, acts within it, and therefore entropy can decrease). And in addition, life did not emerge from an inanimate state but was created as it is.

Here, and only here, there emerges a point at which the neo-Darwinian challenge can acquire significance. Evolution, and the neo-Darwinian picture in general, essentially undermine the assumption of the physico-theological argument of this kind. Within the framework of the neo-Darwinian picture, the challengers argue, we come to see—both theoretically and empirically—that order and complexity can appear spontaneously without a guiding hand, contrary to the basic assumption of this version of the physico-theological argument. And what about the second law? How, in fact, does neo-Darwinian theory, which denies the involvement of an external factor like God, fit with this physical law? There are various explanations for this (not all of them satisfactory). For example, it is argued that a local decrease in entropy is possible, so long as disorder increases elsewhere, such that the total entropy in the universe does not decrease. In any event, in the final analysis, whatever the explanation may be, evolution is a scientific fact. One cannot deny, the atheistic neo-Darwinians claim, that the development of species (and according to most views, the emergence of new species as well) is something that can happen spontaneously—and indeed has happened and does happen in practice. I will not enter the problems that exist in the theory (there are such problems), because we will immediately see that they are not relevant to our discussion. These must be resolved by scientific means, which will determine whether the theory is correct (as I think it is) or not. As Maimonides teaches us in the passage I cited above, theological disputes are not a reasonable or proper way to decide a scientific-factual controversy.

A bird’s-eye view of the conflict: evolution’s theological irrelevance

As noted, Dawkins argues that the claim that God does not exist is a scientific conclusion. By contrast, those of a religious-fundamentalist position maintain that, from a faith-committed perspective, evolution cannot be true.

But if we summarize what we have seen so far, first of all it is clear that both are mistaken. There is no contradiction at all between belief in God as such and neo-Darwinism, contrary to the agreement of both sides (as noted, both sides agree that such a contradiction exists). As we have seen, neo-Darwinism at most undermines one of the ways of arriving at belief in God, but not necessarily the conclusion itself. Moreover, even among the ways of arriving at belief in God, we saw that the conflict arises only in the philosophical camp (which is only one among many ways to faith). And even in that camp, the conflict exists only in the physico-theological party (which is only one of at least three in Kant’s classification). And even within it, the conflict can arise only in the faction of formulations that base the physico-theological conclusion on the emergence of life, and not on other complexities (of inanimate things). Each such camp, party, and faction is composed of a number of formulations and shades, so the number of ways of arriving at belief in God is very large. It should be remembered that we are not speaking here about science, though we are indeed speaking about facts. Categorically speaking, the existence of God is a factual claim. A believer is not merely reporting emotions and sensations, but making a factual claim: there is a God. The claim may be true or false, but categorically it is a factual claim. And since this is not science (for belief in God predicts nothing and does not stand the test of empirical falsification), here every person may adopt his own path.

If so, even if we accept the atheistic claims, it is important to understand where, at most, they can take us: out of the many ways of arriving at faith, neo-Darwinism disqualifies the path that is based on philosophical arguments of a particular physico-theological kind, and within that, only the formulations that rely on the complexity of life. Evolution may at most neutralize one out of 119 ways to faith. Not terribly significant, is it? This is the first plane on which the theological irrelevance of evolution is demonstrated.

Now let us assume, only for the sake of discussion, the worst possible premise: as though this were the only way to arrive at faith. Even then, neo-Darwinism at most removes the ground from under the proof embodied in such an argument. Does that necessarily invalidate its conclusion (that there is a God)? Certainly not. At most it means that at present we have no proof for God’s existence. And what about someone who does not need proofs? If someone regards the existence of God as a fundamental intuition, no less sound than the principle of causality or induction and the foundations of scientific thought in general (all of which are a priori), or if he arrives at it in one of the other 118 ways, has anything happened to his faith? The fact that some argument is invalid, or that one of its premises turns out to be mistaken, does not say much about the truth of its conclusion. This is the second plane that demonstrates the theological irrelevance of evolution.

It is not clear, then, in what sense neo-Darwinism turns atheism into a scientific claim. After all, it does not even turn it into a true claim. One can embrace neo-Darwinism whole and entire and remain a devout believer. By the same token, it is not clear why fundamentalist believers feel such a powerful need to reject neo-Darwinism out of hand (it is important to note that this is not done only because of collision plane 1, that is, the contradiction with the biblical description). Dawkins, his colleagues, and his opponents must answer that.

In truth, I could have ended the article here. The question has been ignominiously removed from the discussion. And yet, for the sake of readers who belong to the philosophical camp, and within it to the physico-theological party, and within that to the faction that rests its arguments on life, I will continue and show a third plane of evolution’s theological irrelevance. It turns out that even the members of this faction need not resign. As we shall soon see, this faction too—to which I, in all modesty, have the honor of belonging—has an honored place in our philosophical parliament. This is the third plane of evolution’s theological irrelevance, and since evolution deals only with it, I will devote the rest of my remarks to it.

A terminological note

The term “creationism” can be used in two senses: a. an approach that believes the world was created by God; b. an approach that rejects neo-Darwinism because of belief in God—this is religious fundamentalism. Likewise, the term “neo-Darwinism” can also be used in two senses: a. a view that advocates the neo-Darwinian scientific picture (described schematically above); b. atheism based on that scientific picture—this is the fundamentalism of the scientistic (though not necessarily scientific) church.

We have seen that the non-fundamentalist meanings fit perfectly well together (I personally accept both). In order for a contradiction to arise between creationism and neo-Darwinism, one must adopt sense b in at least one of the two contexts. The term “creationism” is today used as a pejorative label, but it should not be understood as a reference to belief in divine creation; rather, only to religious fundamentalism. By the same token, the term “neo-Darwinism” (or evolution) is a pejorative label in the religious world. Here too, it should not be understood as a reference to sense a (the merely scientific sense), but to its fundamentalist sense (in the Dawkins style).

In this terminology, what I will try to show from here onward is that the fundamentalist meanings are simply logically mistaken, and therefore there is no need to resort to them. Both assume the existence of a contradiction between faith and neo-Darwinism. As stated, there is no such contradiction, and in fact there is even a considerable consonance. We shall later see that neo-Darwinism even strengthens the physico-theological proof to some extent.

How do we know that spontaneous evolution really exists?

The atheistic neo-Darwinians claim that if we have empirically confirmed the assertion that complexity can arise spontaneously, then the premise of the physico-theological argument of this last faction (that complex things do not arise spontaneously) has collapsed, and with it the entire argument has lost its force.

But now the question arises: how, in fact, do they scientifically prove that evolution occurs spontaneously (without a guiding hand)? Suppose observation does indeed show that such processes occur, like the beaks of the finches on Daphne Major. The believer (who is not a fundamentalist) accepts evolution on the scientific plane, except that he claims God is the one who brings it about (He established the laws of nature, gives them the power to operate, and operates them continuously). If we have seen that the beaks of the finches indeed lengthened, does that necessarily mean this happened spontaneously? Let us recall that the premise of the physico-theological argument is that complex things do not arise on their own (spontaneously, without a guiding hand). As remembered, this is supported by common sense and by the second law of thermodynamics. If we see that such a process occurs, the meaning is simply that God is apparently bringing it about. One may accept this thesis (that God is the one who activates natural processes, and evolution in particular) or not, but there is certainly no challenge here to the physico-theological argument.

The neo-Darwinian challenge is in fact question-begging. It assumes that there is no God, or at least that He does not bring about natural processes, and therefore, when it sees a natural process, this is taken as proof that God is not involved. But in the eyes of the believer, behind all these processes stands God. Therefore, this process itself is also brought about by Him. So what has the neo-Darwinian picture added to the ancient debate over this proof? If one assumes that a complex thing does not occur on its own—the conclusion is that there is a God. And if one assumes a priori that complex things can arise by themselves, then the physico-theological argument never had force to begin with. The scientific findings of neo-Darwinism neither add nor subtract anything here. So where is Dawkins’s “scientific proof” that there is no God? What we have here is an a priori assumption—perfectly legitimate in itself, though plainly unreasonable—that complex things can arise on their own. Nothing more. The claim that complex things can arise by themselves could already have been made in Aristotle’s time. Darwin and modern science added nothing to it. And one who does not accept it will continue not to accept it even after Darwin.

The physico-theological argument: older formulations

The physico-theological argument has received quite a number of formulations throughout history. Two of the best known were offered by the clergyman Paley and the astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. These two poor souls lost their good name because of the mockery and ridicule of atheists down to the present day. None of those mockers is bothered by the fact that both formulations are excellent, and that evolution does not touch them in any way whatsoever.

Paley was a nineteenth-century clergyman, and this was his formulation of the physico-theological argument: when we see a watch lying on the ground, none of us would assume that this complex watch came into being on its own in some natural process. Rather, it is self-evident to us that there is a watchmaker who designed and made it. So too our world, which is far more complex than a watch: it is unreasonable to assume that it came into being on its own in a spontaneous process. Perforce, there is someone or something that created it.

Another formulation of the same argument was offered by the renowned astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, who argued that the probability of the accidental formation of life is lower than the probability that a tornado passing over a junkyard would assemble, out of the parts strewn there, a complete Boeing airplane. Again, his claim is that life is far more complex than a Boeing airplane, and therefore it is implausible that it came into being through a blind chance process (spontaneously). Perforce, there is someone who created it.

Other creationists ask: what are the chances that a monkey jumping on a keyboard would randomly produce the phrase “to be or not to be”? If we speak of an entire Shakespearean sonnet, the chances of course plummet. And regarding the complexity of the world and everything in it, the probability of accidental formation is negligible. This is proof of the existence of an intelligent, creating, and guiding hand.

In discussions of faith in God and evolution, many refer to Hoyle’s argument by the unflattering (though very self-assured) name “Hoyle’s mistake.” The main claim is that the evolutionary process is gradual, and it breaks the emergence of life (“Mount Improbable,” in Dawkins’s terminology) into small stages, each of which has a more reasonable probability of occurring. If, in addition, we take into account the fact that along the way there were countless formation attempts that failed and only a very few that succeeded, we arrive at the conclusion that this process is actually fairly reasonable. There are calculations that show that the resulting probability is still very low, but we will not need them here. This challenge can be rejected even without them.

In an article that appeared in the 1980s in Scientific American, a “decisive” answer to this claim appears (it is so “decisive” that nearly every self-respecting atheistic website on the internet cites it). The author reported a thought experiment, which he also actually carried out. Take the 14-letter Hebrew sequence meaning “to be or not to be.” The probability that a random draw of sequences of that length would produce such a sequence is negligible, since there are 22¹⁴ possible combinations (14 letters, each of which is chosen from 22 letters of the alphabet). At the speed of the computer they used, such a sequence would be expected to appear randomly after about 200,000 years. Let us now perform a different experiment: the author drew the letters one by one, and each time he reached the “correct” letter he froze it and continued drawing the following letters. The computer begins drawing single letters (not sequences). When it reaches the first correct letter, that letter is immediately frozen and saved aside, and the computer continues to draw another letter. When it reaches the second correct letter, that too is frozen, and so it continues onward. The process continues in this way until the computer reaches the full sequence. Guess how long it took the computer to arrive at the full sequence in this manner? Ninety seconds. An entire Shakespeare play came out this way in four and a half days. And the atheists rejoiced immensely.

I assume that the physicists and mathematicians among us are rubbing their eyes in astonishment—not at the results, but at the folly of this example. One could have reached this result within a few minutes with pen and paper by a simple probability calculation, and saved the computer time and the energy involved in operating it (not to mention the ecological damage to the forests of Brazil caused by printing the article). This simulation revealed to us the astonishing discovery that if there is an external factor that ensures the correct outcomes, the probability of their emergence rises dramatically. A more sophisticated experiment would do this even better. If we write a program that ensures that the computer directly outputs the sequence “to be or not to be,” then a not-very-complicated calculation will show us that in one round we get the desired result (if not, the unintelligent programmer should be fired immediately).

The physico-theological argument: a reformulated version

Ironically, this foolish experiment not only fails to undermine the physico-theological argument, but actually illustrates very well the problem in the atheistic challenge to it, and indeed constitutes evidence to the contrary—that is, a demonstration in favor of the physico-theological argument. Here is the explanation. The creationist claim is that the probability of the accidental formation of a complex thing is negligible. The neo-Darwinians, by contrast, explain that if one adopts several simple laws of nature, the process becomes reasonable (the slope of Mount Improbable is moderated). The laws of nature that underlie evolution—the laws of physics and chemistry, biology, and especially genetics—create a situation in which this process becomes more probable, exactly as in the computer experiment described above.

So what does this experiment actually show us? It shows that spontaneous formation is plainly improbable (a simple probabilistic fact, of course). What it also shows is that if there is someone who inserts into the computer system laws that ensure that the process will be directed toward the desired goal, the process becomes dramatically more efficient and its probability rises accordingly. That is to say, if there is a guiding hand, then improbable processes become possible and probable. But that is precisely the physico-theological argument itself. The programmer in the case of the computer experiment plays the role of God in the cosmic context. He feeds into the computer laws that cause an obviously improbable sequence or structure to appear very quickly with high probability. Therefore, if we were to see such a computer experiment, in which the sequence “to be or not to be” appears after ninety seconds, and were asked whether this happened spontaneously or through the intervention of a guiding hand, surely we would all answer that there is a guiding hand here. That is exactly what the physico-theological argument does with respect to the emergence of life. Which is what had to be proved.

Let us now continue the analogy, and take a not especially long molecular chain, about 300 codons. The number of possible combinations of such chains is 20³⁰⁰ (since there are about twenty kinds of protein that can appear in each place in the chain), an enormous number by any standard. The question now arises: how did precisely the “living” and self-replicating chains arise spontaneously? The answer is: because of the laws of nature (these are the “constraints” on the drawing that make it so efficient). But now we again ask: how did those laws arise? And once again we arrive at an intelligent factor, or a guiding hand—that is, we prove the existence of a cosmic programmer.

How can intelligent people, leading researchers in their fields, fall into such trivial failures? In my view, this is a combination of a lack of philosophical skill and blatant tendentiousness that distorts the whole matter, as I described above. The solution to this is not to be found in science but in psychology, into which, as noted, I will not enter here.

In fact, this picture leads us to a reformulated version of the physico-theological proof. After the arguments of Hoyle and Paley came the challenges that the laws of nature (evolution) safely lead this improbable process to its goal. They use the laws of nature as an alternative explanation for the process, in place of the creationist assumption about God. But the question now moves to a different plane: instead of asking who brings about the evolutionary process, we now ask what the source is of the special laws of nature that bring it about. In a system of different natural laws, there would have been no evolution. With slightly different values of the physical constants, there would have been no chemistry or biology at all, and certainly no evolution or genetics (this is the argument known as fine-tuning. See early versions of it in Gate I of Duties of the Hearts by Rabbenu Bahya). So who was it, and what was it, that set the values of the constants in such a way that there would be an evolutionary process that moderates the slope of Mount Improbable? That entity, the cosmic programmer, is customarily called “God.” This is the updated formulation of the physico-theological proof.

Inside the laws and outside them

The critical point here is the distinction between an argument that operates within the laws and an argument that operates outside them. There is a process whose a priori chance of occurring is negligible. We now find that it nevertheless operates within a framework of laws, or constraints, that significantly improve this chance (freezing the correct letters, or the laws of nature). This is, in effect, an explanation by means of scientific theory of those seemingly spontaneous processes. The argument within the laws says that the process is now reasonable, for the laws allow the spontaneous emergence of life with a reasonable probability. This is the meaning of the claim that we have found a scientific explanation for these occurrences. The explanation explains them—that is, it renders them reasonable. But the argument outside the laws takes us beyond the laws. It essentially says that the specialness of the laws themselves (and not of the events that those laws explain) is what requires us to posit the intervention of an intelligent factor. In other words, the process is not really spontaneous as it appears. There is a hand guiding it, by means of the laws that govern it.

Paley’s watch argument operates on the same logical basis. The probability that something as complex as a watch arose by chance is negligible. The world and life are far more complex, and therefore the probability of their spontaneous emergence is certainly negligible. The existence of a watchmaker is the obvious explanation, and correspondingly, so is the existence of a creator of the universe. The common rejection of this argument is that our world is not similar to a watch (because a living creature undergoes evolution, unlike a watch).

The same applies to “Hoyle’s mistake.” Hoyle likened the probability of the accidental formation of life to the probability that a storm passing over a junkyard would create from it a complete Boeing airplane. His critics argued against him that he does not understand the laws of evolution and their significance, because they ensure that the process will not be directionless, and thereby greatly improve the chances of its occurrence. An airplane and its parts are inanimate, and therefore we are speaking about an instantaneous occurrence that is plainly implausible (the probabilistic slope is too steep). The perceptive reader will surely notice that the logic of the dispute is the same logic. Within the laws, the challengers are correct, but the arguments of Hoyle and Paley are entirely correct outside the laws.

The anthropic principle

We have seen that the updated formulation of the physico-theological argument is built on the ruins of the atheistic challenge itself. The claim is that the laws of nature act to increase the probability of the “spontaneous” emergence of life (which is not really spontaneous, but only appears so), exactly as the computer program ensured the emergence of the desired sequence in the experiment described above. Had there been different laws, or no laws at all, life would not have emerged. We also saw that the question now arises outside the laws: can these constraints themselves (= the laws of nature) be explained without a guiding hand?

What can atheists answer to the argument outside the laws? Dawkins, in his The Blind Watchmaker, argues that there is a blind watchmaker here (the laws of nature), and essentially there is no need to assume the existence of an intelligent watchmaker in order to explain the watch. As we have seen, evolution may explain how living creatures came into being. But what is the explanation for the emergence of the laws that underlie it? In other words, can the “watchmaker” that created them really be blind? Here a new argument enters the field, known as “the anthropic principle.”

Originally, this designation was given to a creationist argument (for an early formulation of it, see Duties of the Hearts there). They point out that in our world there is everything needed for the existence of human beings (anthropos), or for life in general, such as water, air, food, a reasonable temperature, means for clothing and shelter, and the like. It is therefore clear that there is someone who cares for living creatures and placed in the world what they need. The transfer of this argument to the new formulation of the physico-theological argument is self-evident: there is someone who ensured that the laws of nature here would lead to the emergence of life and would allow its continued existence and development.

Almost all atheistic opposition to this argument is a collection of question-begging assumptions. One central focus within it raises an opposing argument, which, ironically, is also called “the anthropic principle,” to borrow the biblical phrase “Would he even assault the queen while I am in the house?” The atheists’ claim is that life can exist only in a place where the conditions that make it possible prevail. Had there not been such conditions here, we would not be here to wonder about it. If so, it is no wonder that precisely where we are, there prevail conditions that make our existence possible.

This popular formulation of the argument is foolish. The question that needs to be answered is: what is the probability that such conditions would prevail here? An analogy for this, brought by another well-known atheist (the physicist Stephen Hawking), is a situation in which a man sentenced to death stands before a firing squad of expert marksmen. They all shoot at him from close range, yet all miss and he remains alive. He wonders how it can be that an entire group of skilled marksmen missed him. Hawking answers him that if they had not missed, he would not be here to marvel at it. Is that a reasonable answer? It is hard to believe that an intelligent person would write such things.

A more precise and careful formulation of the atheistic anthropic principle introduces the number of attempts that were made. If there is a small chance—say one in a million—that an entire group of skilled marksmen would all miss in such a situation, then if enough executions by firing squad have taken place, once in roughly a million times the event is expected to occur. The person who remains alive in that situation would indeed stand astonished at the miracle that happened to him, but this “miracle” has a very simple probabilistic explanation.

Whoever raises this inverted anthropic argument ought to do the same in Paley’s watch example. There he would argue that one should not assume the existence of a watchmaker; perhaps there is a system of repeated attempts at the formation of various strange objects, one of which happened to be an accurate, functioning watch. Thus he would reject the conclusion that there really was a watchmaker in the background. Does that not sound absurd?

What is the analogy to our context? The atheistic claim is that countless attempts were carried out in which various strange systems of natural laws were created, and we live in that place where a system of laws was created that makes our existence possible. This is indeed a more serious challenge, because at least it is not completely absurd logically. But on closer inspection it too fails the test of criticism. We know nothing at all about other attempts, other universes with different laws of nature, or even about a mechanism for the spontaneous formation of such universes and such natural laws. So how plausible is it, nevertheless, to assume the existence of countless such universes, or such mechanisms for the spontaneous emergence of natural laws? Is that more reasonable than the simpler assumption of one entity that created our universe and its laws? Here the atheists lapse into unfounded speculation, whose superiority over the believing proposal is, to put it very mildly, highly doubtful. Moreover, in one of those imaginary worlds with other forms of life and various strange creatures, God could exist there too, could He not?

We are still left with one further possibility, according to which our laws of nature have been here from all eternity. They were never created (the universe itself was created in the Big Bang, but the laws of nature have been here from eternity), and therefore there is no need to find an explanation for their emergence. In my book I argue that this contradicts the principle of sufficient reason. If something very complex and unique stands before us, then even if it has been here from all eternity, some reason is needed for why it is precisely thus and not otherwise. I cannot enter this in detail here, and therefore I will suffice with a simple example. When we see Paley’s watch, we would not be satisfied with the explanation that this watch has been here from all eternity. This would be so even if we had never encountered watchmakers and did not know that they make watches. Matter by its nature decays over time, and a complex object does not form by itself (the second law of thermodynamics).

What does the Sistine Chapel have to do with all this?

In the tenth appendix to my aforementioned book, I deal with an amusing offshoot of this discussion. The subject of the discussion is an article by Elia Leibowitz,[2] one of the most prominent atheists in the debate over faith and science in Israel.

Seeing is believing, and so I will quote Leibowitz in his own words:

The main weakness of the idea of intelligent design lies in the fact that it cannot be seen as any kind of explanation at all for the phenomenon it purports to explain. The central argument underlying it can be presented as follows: no sane person would think that the wondrous paintings painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were produced as a result of random processes, without intention and without intelligence. The same applies to the F-16. How much more so must such an explanation be required for biological systems in the world, whose complexity is incomparably greater.

Yet this inference is based on a nonsensical a fortiori. The supposition that an intelligent being designed the F-16 does indeed constitute a satisfactory explanation for the existence of this complex system, because we know of the existence of aeronautical engineers independently of our acquaintance with the plane itself. The thought that an intelligent human hand painted the Sistine Chapel explains the paintings only because we possess prior knowledge of the existence of creatures capable of planning and executing such paintings.

As for the natural world and the universe, we have no prior knowledge of the existence of an intelligence capable of designing them. Inferring from the existence of the complex and wondrous world to the reality of an intelligent designer is not an explanation of the phenomenon, but a psychological consequence of it.

This argument is strikingly similar to the atheistic critiques of Paley’s watch argument or Fred Hoyle’s Boeing, and therefore suffers from the same failures.

By the same logic, we should have thrown up our hands in the face of wondrous phenomena such as tides or the falling of objects toward the earth, and not infer from them that there exists a new physical force called “gravity,” for none of us had ever encountered it, and certainly not before the law describing it was formulated by Isaac Newton. In other words, if a member of an African tribe were to see a watch lying on the sand before him, would he think that it had been there from all eternity simply because he does not know watchmakers and watches? That is not plausible.

The physico-theological argument is indeed built on the outline proposed by Leibowitz:

Premise A: I see before my eyes the reality of a complex and designed world, one that possesses special properties.

Premise B: None of the factors known to me can create such a world.

Premise C: Such a world did not create itself.

Conclusion: There apparently exists another factor, unknown to me, that created this. Let us call it “God.”

A parallel argument regarding the force of gravity (like any other scientific argument) would be constructed as follows:

Premise A: I see before my eyes unique phenomena (tides, the falling of objects toward the earth, and the like).

Premise B: None of the forces or factors known to me can bring about these phenomena.

Premise C: Physical phenomena must have a cause.

Conclusion: Apparently there is a factor not yet known to me that brings about these phenomena. Let us call it “gravity.”

Is an additional premise required here about a prior encounter with the force of gravity (even before Newton discovered it)? How, according to Leibowitz, are new laws discovered at all? It is not clear to me why, in Leibowitz’s eyes, the first argument appears problematic whereas the second does not. The entire progress of science (the discovery of new laws) is built on arguments of this type.

In the appendix there, I noted that Leibowitz errs in his understanding of the concept of “scientific explanation.” There are explanations that reduce the unknown to the known—explanations given to various phenomena on the basis of a known and familiar scientific theory. And there are also explanations that reduce the known to the unknown, which describe familiar phenomena by means of new theories. I will not enter that topic here.

Other forms of life within other laws of nature

Additional atheistic claims raise the possibility that almost any system of laws will create complex beings, except that their nature will differ in each of those systems. Therefore, they claim, there is nothing unique about our system of natural laws and the life with which we are familiar that was created within it. This is essentially another version of the anthropic principle. A simple glance shows that this is a problematic argument. Let us consider a system of laws like the following: if you have a grain of matter at location X, the next state will be the addition of another grain at location X+1. Will anything special arise here after some time? There are even various simulations in which programs of “cellular automata” are run—that is, systems of laws that describe a dynamic of development of systems over time—and they show what complex and interesting creatures emerge in them. These are “captive” examples, since they assume particular systems of laws (in which sufficient complexity is built in). Moreover, the complex creatures that arise in them generally do not endure, but are created for a moment and then disintegrate. These are not especially convincing attempts, and they do not suffice to refute a simple and obviously sound intuition. And beyond all this, these arguments still do not answer the question: from where did this supposedly unremarkable system of laws come? Even a not-special system of laws must somehow come into being—by someone or something.

Further challenges

There are several additional challenges to the physico-theological proof. Up to this point we have not poured any content into the abstract God whose existence we have proved. There are jokes to the effect that by the same token we could just as well have proved the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. How do we know that the entity whose existence we have proved is really God Himself? In principle, even the laws of nature themselves could serve as that abstract basis for the emergence of the world and life. All of this is entirely correct, so long as we are speaking about an entity (whether we call it the laws of nature or the Spaghetti Monster). Beyond its existence and the fact that it created the world and its laws, we have claimed nothing about it. What we have proved is that there exists some entity beyond the world itself that created its laws and brought about the processes within it—and life in particular.

What can be assumed about this factor whose existence we have proved? Nothing beyond the fact that it created the world and its laws (and therefore also governs it, at least through the laws). For our purposes here, this “thin” meaning of the concept God is sufficient. And yet one cannot leave matters entirely empty. Once we have reached the conclusion that there is a God in this philosophical and abstract sense, if a tradition reaches us concerning revelation and the giving of the Torah, or if we have some intuition concerning Him, these things fit together very well. Revelation may pour content into the abstract concept of God to which we arrived by the philosophical route.

God of the gaps

There are creationists who argue against the neo-Darwinians that their explanation for the emergence of life is incomplete. Some point out that evolution begins only once there is a molecular chain with the ability to reproduce itself. But how did we arrive at that first chain at all? This is the problem of abiogenesis. It is important to understand that inanimate things—everything prior to the stage of life—do not undergo an evolutionary process, if only because there is no inheritance in them. Think about houses standing on the shore, and then a storm comes from the sea and washes away all the more rickety houses, leaving only the strong ones. There were mutations here (different and varied houses), and there was also natural selection (only the strong survived). But houses do not bequeath their traits to offspring, and therefore once those houses fall apart we return to the starting point. There is no evolution without inheritance, and therefore there is no evolution of the inanimate. So how was the first molecular chain created?

Another problem to which religious fundamentalists point is the existence of gaps, and sometimes essential gaps, in our understanding of the evolutionary process and of the findings that confirm it (the problem of intermediate links between species, and problems involving other gaps that cannot be bridged evolutionarily and require large—and therefore improbable—“jumps” in the evolutionary process. Here the slope of the improbable mountain is not moderated).

Today there is a considerable effort to try to solve the problem of abiogenesis. The problem of intermediate links is indeed troubling and requires a solution (although it seems there is quite a bit of evidence for such intermediate links, and many argue that this is not an essential problem). But here I want to point to a general point that applies to all problems of this type. Arguments of this sort prove the existence of God from a gap in scientific understanding and knowledge. In the jargon of this debate, this is called “God of the gaps.” But when there is a gap in our scientific knowledge, we must close it through research and thought. God does not play on that field. If we were to relate to every gap in scientific knowledge by dismissing it on the grounds that God offers a sufficient explanation, we would still be living in Aristotelian physics today. Moreover, once we close that gap (as has happened more than once in the past), our faith loses its basis. But that is plainly unreasonable, and therefore it should be agreed that God’s existence cannot be based on, or proven from, a gap in scientific knowledge.

The question is why the formulation we proposed above is not a version of God-of-the-gaps. After all, we saw that because we do not understand who or what created the laws of nature, we must reach the conclusion that there is a God. But this comparison to the problem of God-of-the-gaps is mistaken. The gap under discussion here is essential, and it seems that in principle it cannot be closed. Even if we were to discover how the laws of nature familiar to us came into being, that scientific explanation would be given in terms of a more basic system of laws, and therefore the physico-theological question would shift to it. Who created that more basic system of laws? Thus, this question can never be answered on the scientific plane. It is an essential gap (at least in the scientific thinking familiar to us today).

Moreover, in the end, if and when all the problems are solved and all the gaps are closed, we will still ask who created the laws that underlie those explanations. The proof in its reformulated version will remain standing. It does not depend on gaps, and it will not disappear with their closure. Therefore it is a mistake to rely on gaps within the framework of the physico-theological argument. It is neither correct nor necessary. By the same token, it is a mistake to think that the updated formulation we have proposed for the physico-theological proof suffers from the flaw of God-of-the-gaps.

A concluding note: the strengthening of the physico-theological proof

In my aforementioned book, I argued that the physico-theological proof is not only not refuted by neo-Darwinism, but is actually strengthened by it. I will briefly explain this here.

First, let me say in advance that in neo-Darwinian discourse it is customary to think that two out of the three basic components of the picture—that is, the emergence of mutations and natural selection (as distinct from inheritance)—are random processes. A lion happens, by chance, to arrive at a certain place and meets a chicken and devours it. Thus only the more resilient chickens survive (those that run faster, fly higher, or escape from lions in some other way). There is a drought, and the plants on which the finches feed disappear. There are random changes and deformations in the genome that create different mutations. All these are random processes, and this sharpens the feeling that there is no guiding hand behind the evolutionary processes. Yet apart from my religious faith, as a physicist I object to this description. What is accepted today in physics is that there is no true randomness except in quantum processes that occur on the very small scales of physical particles (single electrons). All the rest of our natural world is deterministic, and even if it contains chaotic components, chaos does not describe randomness but determinism that is hard to predict. The meaning of this is that almost everything I described in this paragraph is not really random. These are deterministic processes through and through; it is simply difficult for us to predict them (will the lion arrive and meet this particular chicken? will there be a drought on Daphne Major? and the like). Relating to them as random processes is very useful on the methodological plane, since it is difficult to handle them with deterministic tools, but it does not reflect actual reality. Thus, when we treat the results of throwing a die, we will not use Newtonian physics but probability, even though there is nothing random in the path of a die—nothing at all beyond Newton’s laws. This is the case for every complex or chaotic system. It is therefore important not to confuse a model that develops a useful methodology with reality itself. On this Pierre-Simon Laplace already said: “Probability substitutes not for causality and real determination, but only for human ignorance.” If so, the evolutionary process too is a distinctly deterministic process (almost entirely, if not entirely), and only its scientific treatment is carried out with probabilistic and statistical tools.[3]

What does this mean for our discussion? Up to the present section, we saw that the conduct of things within the laws may perhaps be accidental, but the framework of the laws ensures that the process is steered to its goal. But now we see that even within the laws there are processes that are fundamentally deterministic. Randomness does not really exist here. It is now very easy to see that the physico-theological proof is in fact strengthened by the neo-Darwinian picture. If the entire universe in its present state had come into being in a single moment, perhaps one could try to speak of a successful one-time accident. And if we were speaking of a world that conducts itself randomly without fixed natural laws, one could still view it as blind chance. But neo-Darwinism (together with the Big Bang, and abiogenesis, if and when it is scientifically deciphered) rules out both possibilities. It presents us with a picture of a long process that takes us, over billions of years, in a deterministic manner by means of highly specific and very clear natural laws, and leads us securely from an initial point of matter in the Big Bang to the complexes of life and the universe and everything in it as known to us today (about fifteen billion years later, according to the dating currently accepted). Does this not point with far higher probability to a directed and pre-planned process—that is, to the involvement of a guiding hand?

Think of a situation in which you left a piece of Plasticine in the corner of a sealed room, and you return to it after 15 billion years and find there a complete zoo with everything in it. Now someone comes and explains to you how this happened, by means of a system of natural laws that took that Plasticine and turned it, in a long deterministic process, into a zoo. Does that not mean that there was someone who established that system of laws with the aim of arriving at the zoo? Does the fact that we have found a scientific description of the process refute the argument that proves the existence of a manager and creator of that process? This sounds quite absurd. In light of the neo-Darwinian scientific description, the physico-theological proof is only strengthened. Believers ought to have jumped at the windfall that neo-Darwinism offers them, instead of fighting it to the bitter end.

Summary

Let us now summarize where matters stand. We have seen that neo-Darwinism does not contradict belief in God, but at most claims to challenge one among the many ways of arriving at faith in Him. More precisely, it attacks the premise underlying theological arguments that belong to one faction within the physico-theological party of the philosophical camp. And even here it only challenges the premise of the argument, but does not necessarily touch its conclusion. But in the final part of the article we saw that it does not even do that. Physico-theological arguments of this sort remain intact even within the framework of the neo-Darwinian picture. As we have now seen, these arguments are only strengthened by the neo-Darwinian picture.

I have been very brief in discussing the various challenges, because the physico-theological argument is not our goal here. It is only a side aspect of the discussion, in which I showed that even the small step that evolution purports to take in the theological context, it does not really take. This article was not concerned with the question whether the physico-theological proof is valid, but with the question of what evolution does to theological discussion in general, and to this argument in particular. For that purpose, what we have done thus far is enough. We have seen that evolution has no theological significance whatsoever, and even regarding the physico-theological argument it does nothing at all—indeed, as we saw in the previous section, it may even strengthen it somewhat.

The conclusion is that one who accepted the physico-theological argument before the nineteenth century can and should continue to accept it afterward as well, and even more emphatically. And one who assumes the plainly unreasonable premise that complex and special things can arise spontaneously did not accept the argument long before the nineteenth century, and likely will not accept it now either. Therefore, whether the challenges presented here are correct or not, evolution has nothing to do with them in any way. Even if they did undermine the argument (and they do not; we have seen that they even strengthen it), it is clear that evolution and neo-Darwinism have nothing to say on the matter.

To sum up: both the fundamentalist creationists and the atheistic neo-Darwinians are mistaken at the same point. As stated, both sides hold that there is a frontal contradiction between the neo-Darwinian picture and religious faith, but unfortunately it is precisely at the point where these adversaries stop attacking each other and agree that both fail. As we have seen, there is almost no connection between the two domains, and certainly no contradiction. Religious education can stop recoiling from studying the subject, and by the same token the atheistic church ought to calm down and allow freedom of thought even on this issue, which is charged (without justification). Free discussion and free thought are a guarantee of scientific and spiritual progress, and both sides try to restrict this through legal and political means, and by means of wild preaching and the blackening of the opponent’s face. Schools should teach neo-Darwinism as well as the criticisms of it, and should cultivate thinking people who form their positions freely and maturely, not by indoctrination in any direction. Even if I think this picture is scientifically correct, or correct in part, there is nothing sacred about it. It must stand up to free criticism from every direction, exactly like any other idea, including belief in God. Both sides would do well to adopt Maimonides’ beautiful words cited at the beginning of the article, which separate facts from agendas and a priori beliefs.

[1] In practice, this does not always happen. Stable changes with a clear direction over generations require more unique conditions. In the years after the drought, enough rain fell on Daphne Major, and as a result the finches’ beaks again became shorter. Although the temporary change in beak length disappeared over time and had no evolutionary significance, a very rapid evolutionary process that actually occurred was nevertheless demonstrated here.

[2] “The American Proof of God’s Existence,” Haaretz, issue of 19.9.2005.

 http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/626542.html

[3] Two comments are called for here to complete the picture.

A. A note on quantum effects. If there is true randomness on the quantum plane, it can affect macroscopic events, and therefore perhaps evolutionary processes really are random. As every physicist knows, this argument is mistaken. Quantum randomness is “smeared out” because of the law of large numbers, and does not appear at all in the macroscopic world—except in very esoteric fields such as superfluids or superconductors. Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment that tries to define a case in which the quantum level would have an effect on the macroscopic world. One can see how remote that possibility is, and how much it requires the intervention of a human hand (a laboratory under very special conditions). It is not plausible that the whole world around us consists of Schrödinger’s cats—that is, that the evolution surrounding us everywhere is a macroscopic product of quantum randomness. It is far more plausible that we are dealing with merely methodological randomness, as I described above.

B. Another note on thermodynamics. Quantum theory and classical mechanics describe micro-physics at temperature 0. At higher temperatures, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics enter the picture, and these handle physics by means of statistical tools. If so, apparently the physics of a temperature other than 0 does contain random elements. But here too this is probably only methodology. We know that the physical processes on the micro level are all reversible and deterministic (on the large scales relevant here). If so, the statistical tools we use stem from constraints of complexity (systems with many particles), and not because reality itself contains true randomness. Admittedly, this question (the relation between the deterministic micro and the statistical macro at temperatures other than 0) is still considered an open question in physics, but it seems to me that this is the way of thinking accepted by most physicists.