Faith – Lesson 18

Table of Contents

• The cosmological proof and the definition of God
• The eternity of the world, necessity, and the distinction between "it always existed" and "the cause of itself"
• Criticism of "the cause of itself" and preference for the formulation of necessary existence
• Maimonides and the status of the claim of the world’s eternity in the Middle Ages and in modern science
• The Big Bang, the beginning of time, and disconnecting causality from the axis of time
• The example of annulment of vows and conditions in Rabbi Shimon Shkop as causality not dependent on time
• Rejecting "the Big Bang is God" and criticizing a physical explanation as an event rather than an entity
• Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason through Richard Taylor
• Moving beyond the physico-theological proof: the uniqueness of the laws of nature, the question of "why," and discussion of other universes
• The claim of "the whole" and Spinoza’s pantheism
• The analogy of the soul, "fills the world," and methodology versus metaphysical truth
• Kant, David Hume, and the principle of causality as a priori and logical
• Similarity to scientific inference, the test of falsifiability, and the status of the theological conclusion
• "God is not an explanation" and the example of footprints

Summary

General overview

The cosmological argument rests on the assumption that things of the kind familiar to us do not come into being by themselves and therefore require a cause, and in order to avoid an infinite regress one must ultimately arrive at an entity whose existence does not require a cause and on which the existence of reality depends—and that is what is called God, defined as "the first cause." The text presents challenges to the argument based on the eternity of the world and on identifying the world as God, rejects the concept of "the cause of itself" as an oxymoron, and prefers the formulation of necessary existence that does not require a cause. It also incorporates modern claims about the Big Bang and the coming-into-being of time, together with an attempt to detach causality from the axis of time. The text adds Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason through Richard Taylor’s example, clarifies the distinction between a "cause" and a "reason," and concludes by comparing the inferential structure of the cosmological argument to scientific inferences, while emphasizing that the conclusion about God is not subject to a test of falsifiability even though the logic is similar.

The cosmological proof and the definition of God

The argument assumes that things of the kind familiar to us do not create themselves and therefore require a cause to bring them into being. The argument proceeds from cause to effect and asks of each cause whether it too requires a prior cause, until one arrives at a link that does not require an external cause to explain its existence. The text identifies such a link with God and defines God here as the first cause of the existence of reality, similar to how every proof assumes some definition of the concept of God—for example, Anselm, who defined God as the most perfect being that can be conceived.

The eternity of the world, necessity, and the distinction between "it always existed" and "the cause of itself"

The ancient challenge proposes the possibility of an eternal world, as Aristotle thought, and then the question "Who created the world?" does not arise, because the world was never created. The text distinguishes between an "eternal world" in the sense of existing all the time and the claim that the world is "the cause of itself" or "necessary existence," and it argues that what always exists is not necessarily necessary existence, so these are different claims. The text presents two versions: one claim that the world is necessary existence in the style of Spinoza’s pantheism, and a more minimal claim that the world always existed even if its existence is not necessary. Both claims are presented as different kinds of attack on the cosmological argument.

Criticism of "the cause of itself" and preference for the formulation of necessary existence

The text rejects the phrase "the cause of itself" as an oxymoron, because a cause is supposed to precede its effect, and a thing cannot bring itself about without already existing. The text prefers the formulation of "something that does not require a cause, whose existence is necessary, necessary in and of itself" instead of speaking about the cause of itself. The text presents this as a more precise framework for the entity that ends the chain of causal dependence.

Maimonides and the status of the claim of the world’s eternity in the Middle Ages and in modern science

The text states that the claim of the world’s eternity was widespread in medieval philosophy, and cites Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed, who says that there is no good proof against Aristotle’s view of the eternity of the world except for the tradition in our hands that the world was created. The text argues that someone who invokes Aristotle in order to cast doubt on tradition cannot then use tradition to answer Aristotle, because the whole discussion is whether tradition is true or not. The text adds that in recent generations this claim has much less room, because in physics it is accepted that the world has not existed forever and that there is a time of the world’s formation in the Big Bang. In that sense, modern science reestablishes the cosmological proof and rules out an eternal universe.

The Big Bang, the beginning of time, and disconnecting causality from the axis of time

The text presents the view according to which in the Big Bang not only the world but also space and time came into being, and therefore "What was before the Big Bang?" is a meaningless question, because "before" assumes a timeline that did not exist. The text offers a reply to an interlocutor who claims that this is "like an eternal world," because there was no time without a world, and rejects that claim on the grounds that the argument rests on the principle of causality and not on temporal priority. The text argues that even if the temporal component of a causal relation does not exist when there is no timeline, the component of bringing-about remains, and therefore one can still ask, "What is responsible for the emergence of the Big Bang?" without describing it as "before" on a timeline.

The example of annulment of vows and conditions in Rabbi Shimon Shkop as causality not dependent on time

The text brings up Talmudic topics of conditions and "from now on, retroactively," and presents Rabbi Shimon Shkop in Kuntres HaTna'im as distinguishing between "it became clarified retroactively" and retroactive uprooting that is effected by a later action. The text cites the topic of "something that has a way to become permitted" and presents the Jerusalem Talmud’s difficulty regarding vows, because a sage’s annulment works retroactively and therefore, seemingly, the vow "never took effect." It then explains in the name of Rabbi Shimon Shkop that the sage uproots the vow retroactively and does not merely reveal that the vow never existed; therefore a vow is considered "something that has a way to become permitted." The text uses this to show the logical possibility of a causal relation in which the cause appears after the effect, and concludes that the principle of causality is not dependent on the axis of time, even though in the physical world causality is usually prospective.

Rejecting "the Big Bang is God" and criticizing a physical explanation as an event rather than an entity

The text rejects the claim that the Big Bang is God and defines that as wordplay, because the Big Bang is a physical event, and an event cannot be a self-cause or an ultimate cause. The text illustrates, rather sharply, that an explanation in terms of a chain of physical events is not sufficient, because the question still remains of the entity that underlies the chain. The text also refers to a "quantum fluctuation" and argues that the moment one speaks about quantum fluctuations of the vacuum, one is already assuming a set of properties and laws of conservation; therefore the quantum vacuum is not absolute "nothing," and the question arises again: who created the world’s quantum nature?

Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason through Richard Taylor

The text presents Leibniz through Richard Taylor’s example of a special glass ball in the forest, and emphasizes that even if it "was always there," a reason is still required for why it is there and why it is as it is. The text distinguishes between a "cause," which depends on temporal priority, and a "reason," which is a broader concept, including a teleological reason or a simultaneous reason that explains why something exists and persists as it does even without the assumption of creation in time. The text connects this to the physico-theological proof, because when the universe or its laws are "special," the question arises, "Why is it this way rather than otherwise?" even if it is eternal.

Moving beyond the physico-theological proof: the uniqueness of the laws of nature, the question of "why," and discussion of other universes

The text sharpens the point that the cosmological proof deals with the mere fact that something exists regardless of its properties, whereas the physico-theological proof would argue that the universe is complex and finely coordinated and therefore requires a guiding hand. The text presents the question of fine-tuning of basic forces and laws as a point about "reason" and not necessarily "cause," and distinguishes between the question whether other universes exist and the question whether other universes could exist. The text declines to expand at this point and refers those claims to the anthropic principle and to the discussion of the physico-theological proof.

The claim of "the whole" and Spinoza’s pantheism

The text presents a claim according to which every object in the world needs a cause, but the whole as a whole is necessary existence, and it presents Spinoza’s pantheistic version that identifies God with the totality of nature. The text rejects this as wordplay and argues that the whole is not something over and above the objects that compose it, and therefore it cannot "create" them; and if there is "something more" in it beyond the particulars, that itself is what is called God. The text adds that presenting the world as an organism with an existence beyond its parts requires some unifying element, like a soul in relation to the body, and by the same logic that "something more" that unifies the world brings us back to talking about God and not about an alternative to the argument.

The analogy of the soul, "fills the world," and methodology versus metaphysical truth

The text cites a passage in tractate Berakhot 5a that compares the soul to the Holy One, blessed be He: just as the Holy One, blessed be He, fills the world, so the soul fills the body. It explains that "fills" does not mean location in coordinates, but manifestation through the body or through the world. The text remarks that vitalism is treated as a "dirty word" in biology, but states that, as a dualist, he thinks there is "something more" beyond matter, and he distinguishes between a scientific methodological claim and the claim about what is actually true in reality. The text applies this distinction also with respect to God, and argues that methodological non-productiveness in science is not equivalent to a metaphysical denial of God’s existence.

Kant, David Hume, and the principle of causality as a priori and logical

The text presents Kant as raising a difficulty about applying the principle of causality to what lies outside experience, and claims that according to Kant causality is learned from observation and therefore applies only within the domain of observation. The text rejects this and argues that the principle of causality is a priori, and that David Hume had already pointed out the problem of deriving it from observation; therefore causality is a logical principle and not a physical one. The text argues that the assumption that "things do not happen without a cause" applies in psychology as well and not only in physics, and that the only exception is when one is dealing with "necessary existence," which is the beginning of the causal chain.

Similarity to scientific inference, the test of falsifiability, and the status of the theological conclusion

The text describes the cosmological argument as a quasi-scientific move in which one infers from entities and phenomena to the existence of a theoretical factor that has not been observed, similar to inferences about the force of gravity. The text states that the difference is that the force of gravity can be subjected to a test of falsifiability, whereas the conclusion of the cosmological argument about God is not a scientific conclusion because there is no experimental way to subject it to a test of falsifiability. The text argues that the move is not certain, just as science is not certain, and that if we trust the tools of scientific inference because they work when they can be tested, there is no reason not to place similar trust in philosophical inference even when there is no test of falsifiability, because falsifiability is a definition of science and not a condition for trusting logic.

"God is not an explanation" and the example of footprints

The text presents a critical claim according to which God is not an explanation, because it hangs the familiar world on an unfamiliar and unintelligible object, and it notes that this is a claim that will return in the physico-theological proof. The text replies that the cosmological argument does not intend to "explain" but to infer a conclusion from the fact that the world exists, similar to concluding from seeing footprints on the seashore that someone probably passed there, even without knowing who he is or what his nature is. The text concludes that the question whether this is an "explanation" is a semantic matter of wording, whereas the inference from the given data to the conclusion is the point of the argument.

Okay. We’re in the middle of, or maybe nearing the end of, the cosmological argument, and schematically speaking this argument is based on the assumption that things we know, things of the kind familiar to us in the world, do not come into being by themselves. They need some kind of cause to bring them into being. And if that’s so, then if we assume that such things exist—and again, without assuming anything about their character, about any properties of those things, that’s the subject of the next argument—this argument assumes nothing about the things that exist except the mere fact that they exist and that they are not of the kind that is its own cause, meaning that they are of the kind of things that require another cause to bring them into being. And then I said that there is presumably a cause that created them, and regarding that cause we can again ask whether it belongs to the same kind of things—meaning, does it too require a cause to create it or not. It could be that it does, and then we’ll go one more step further. But the claim is that if we want to avoid an infinite regress—and I discussed what the problem is with an infinite regress—then in the end we have to arrive at some link in this chain that is its own cause, meaning that it does not require some other cause outside itself to explain its existence. And that is what we call God. And I said that every argument, or every kind of proof, basically assumes a certain definition of the concept of God. In this case the definition is the first cause of the existence of reality. Okay, so the first cause. For Anselm it was the most perfect being that can be conceived; later on we’ll see other definitions. But every such argument assumes some definition of the concept of God. I still want to talk about a few more points that come up in this context, reflections or points that arise around this argument, and afterward we’ll move on to the next argument, the physico-theological argument. One of the oldest objections to this argument, basically, is the objection based on the possibility of an eternal world, as Aristotle thought—that the reality around us is eternal. So if we take into account the possibility that the world is eternal, then that could definitely undermine the cosmological argument, because if the world is eternal then it was never created, and therefore the question of who created it never arises. It always existed, and so the whole question this argument comes to answer—who created our world—does not exist.

Now I need to distinguish here between two concepts. One concept is an eternal world—we’ll talk more about that—but an eternal world means a world that exists all the time, from now backward for infinite time. The parallel claim could be that the world is self-caused, meaning it is a thing that does not require a prior cause for its existence. That is not the same thing. Something that is self-caused is supposed to exist always, always, because if it does not need a cause in order to exist then it exists necessarily, so it always existed, because that necessity is always there; it cannot fail to exist. But the converse is not true. Something that exists always does not mean that it is necessary. Those are two different things. Therefore, if we assume that the world is some kind of necessary existent, that is one kind of alternative to the cosmological argument—meaning that the world is God, Spinoza’s pantheism. And that basically means that the world always existed and is a necessary existent. Fine—so the world is what I called earlier God. That is one claim. If I say that the world always existed, even if its existence is not necessary but it always existed, then that makes the question redundant—it doesn’t answer it, it makes the question redundant—because it means that if the world always existed then the question who created it does not arise; it was never created. These are slightly different shades of objection to the cosmological argument. They’re not the same thing.

I think I already explained that I don’t like the term self-caused, because self-caused means that the thing is the cause of itself—basically, what exists. An external factor for the existence of the thing. To say that a thing is its own cause is an oxymoron; a thing cannot be the cause of itself. Because the cause is supposed to precede the effect, to bring about the effect. If the effect is itself the cause of itself, then who brought it about? Itself? But was it already in existence when it was brought about? It doesn’t—this has no meaning. Those are meaningless words. That’s how ancient philosophy used these words. I like that phrase less. I think the more precise expression is: a thing that does not need a cause, whose existence is necessary, necessary from within itself.

Can you hear better now? Yes? Okay? Fine? Good, I’ll keep talking, just tell me if the problem continues. So in short, what I want to say is that one can attack the cosmological argument by way of Aristotle’s conception of the eternity of the world in two shades. One shade says that the world is a necessary existent; it always was. And therefore—it is a necessary existent and therefore it always was. The second claim says: I don’t know whether the world is a necessary existent, but it always was. And I said that it’s not the same thing to say that it is a necessary existent and that it always was. One direction follows; the other direction does not. But the fact that it always was is also enough to attack the cosmological argument. Because if it always was, then it was never created. If it was never created, then the question who created it does not arise. And therefore the whole discussion of the cosmological argument never really gets off the ground.

Now I’ll begin with the second claim, which is the more minimal one. In other words, it is enough to say that it always was, and if it always was then this question does not arise. This claim was very widespread in medieval philosophy. Even Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed discusses it and says that there is really no good proof against Aristotle’s eternity of the world, except for the tradition in our possession that the world was created. But someone who wants to investigate the truth of the tradition and raises Aristotle in order to cast doubt on the tradition obviously cannot use the tradition to answer Aristotle’s argument. After all, the whole discussion is whether the tradition is correct or not. So okay. But I think that in recent generations this claim has less room, because at least what is accepted in contemporary physics is that the world has not existed forever. In other words, there is a time of the world’s formation—the Big Bang—and therefore in this sense the findings of modern science actually restore and reinforce this argument, the cosmological argument. They basically rule out the possibility of a world that always existed. The world came into being at some point, say fourteen billion years ago, and therefore this option of an eternal universe falls away.

Now, this can also be formulated a bit differently. The common conception, again, is that in the Big Bang not only was the world created, but also the space and time within which the world operates were created. In other words, time itself—the time axis—is not infinite. It does not go back to minus infinity; rather it was created at a certain moment and the time axis begins from there onward. In that picture, when one asks what was before the Big Bang, there is no answer because the question is meaningless. The term before presupposes the existence of a time axis. But if the time axis was created in the Big Bang, then there is no point talking about what was before the moment of the Big Bang. Before the moment of the Big Bang, the question would be what was at moment minus one, or minus epsilon. But there was no minus-epsilon moment. The time axis begins at zero. So one cannot talk about what was before.

Now here in the book I put this in the mouth of my interlocutor. He says: fine, if that’s so, then once again it’s like an eternal world. Because there was no time when there was no world. The moment there was time, there was also a world. I don’t agree with that, because he—that imaginary fellow—is identifying temporal priority with causality, with temporal priority. But my problem, my claim that there has to be someone who created the world, is not because of the time axis. It’s because of the principle of causality: that everything of the kind we know has to have a cause. Now the question is: if the time axis begins at a certain point, does what happens at that point not require a cause? I don’t think so. At most, if there is no time axis, then I detach the concept of causality from the time axis. The temporal component of the causal relation—that the cause precedes the effect—will not exist. But the component of producing will still exist, that the cause is what brings about the effect. Even if this is not described in terms of a time axis, the principle of causality still seems to me to remain intact.

I’ll maybe give an example. We have a series of books on Talmudic logic. In the fourth book we deal with the logic of time in the Talmud, and there we discuss issues of retroactive clarification, issues of conditions, various things that become clarified retroactively. So think, for example, about someone who divorces his wife on condition that she not drink wine for two weeks. Okay? So the claim is that when she receives the bill of divorce now, her divorce is in fact conditional. If she does not drink wine for two weeks, then the divorce takes effect; if she drinks wine, then the divorce does not take effect. That is the simple conception. But Rabbi Shimon Shkop, in his essay on conditions at the end of his novellae on tractate Gittin, shows that this is not the correct conception of a condition. The correct conception of a condition is from now on, retroactively—as they say in the yeshivas. From now on, retroactively. What does that mean?

He brings the following example for this. Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky also brings it at the end of his novellae on Makkot. There is a passage in tractate Nedarim. The Talmud says there, on page 59 I think, that terumah is something that has a way to become permitted. What does that mean? In Jewish law there are special stringencies regarding things that have a future way to become permitted—say food on Yom Kippur. Food on Yom Kippur is forbidden, but if I wait until the next day I’ll be able to eat it. So something that has a way to become permitted is a prohibition whose time is limited; a time will come when the prohibition will become permitted. With prohibitions of that type Jewish law imposes certain stringencies. For example, they are not nullified by majority. Such prohibitions are not nullified by majority. According to most opinions this is rabbinic, but never mind. Such prohibitions are not nullified by majority. Why? Instead of eating it while forbidden, eat it when permitted. Why nullify it by majority on Yom Kippur? Wait until the next day and you won’t need nullification by majority because it won’t be forbidden. There’s no point in permitting you this prohibition through nullification by majority if there’s an easy permitted route available: wait one more day. You have something that is set aside on the Sabbath. Okay, an egg laid on the Sabbath, and it got mixed together with permitted eggs. In principle it is nullified by majority and I can eat the mixture. The Talmud says no, it is not nullified by majority. Why? Because there is still a forbidden egg here, and we are permitting you to eat a forbidden egg—wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow you can eat it without any special permissions; it will simply be permitted. It’s no longer set aside tomorrow, on Sunday. So something that has a future way to become permitted has special stringencies; for example even in a rabbinic-level doubt, with something that has a future way to become permitted we do not go lenient. Even with a Torah-level nullification, it is not nullified.

The Talmud says that terumah is something that has a future way to become permitted, or a vow is something that has a future way to become permitted. Why? Because one can go ask about it. If I go to a sage and ask about the vow—leave terumah aside, let’s talk about a vow—I go to a sage and ask about the vow, and he releases me from the vow. Therefore, even a vow that fell into a mixture—something from which I vowed not to eat or derive benefit—and now it is mixed together, so in principle there ought to be nullification by majority and I can eat the mixture. But since this is something that—I can go to a sage who will permit it for me—therefore they forbade me to eat it; it is not nullified by majority. I go to a sage and I permit it.

Now on that, the Rosh already brings the Jerusalem Talmud there and asks: why is this considered something that has a future way to become permitted? If I go to a sage who permits it, then the vow is released retroactively—it never took effect. The permission does not begin from the time of going to the sage, from the moment of the sage’s decision. Once the sage releases the vow, the vow is uprooted retroactively from the start; it never took effect. As though every vow is conditional on the agreement of a sage. If the sage does not agree, then I never vowed. Okay? So the sage’s release acts retroactively. So what does that mean? It means that if I do not go to a sage, then the vow is forbidden forever. If I do go to a sage, then it was never forbidden—not that it is forbidden now and only later a time comes when it is permitted, but that it was never forbidden. So therefore, says the Jerusalem Talmud, this is not something that has a future way to become permitted. Something that has a future way to become permitted is something that is currently forbidden, and tomorrow or after some time there will come a point when it will be permitted. With a vow it is not like that. If I don’t go to a sage, then it is forbidden forever; if I do go to a sage, then it was never forbidden. So what does that have to do with something that has a future way to become permitted? If I go to a sage, then the vow was not forbidden at all.

If it fell into a mixture—let’s make it more concrete—say I vowed not to benefit from a piece of bread, and now it fell into a pile of pieces of bread and got mixed in. Okay? And they tell me: look, this is something that has a future way to become permitted, so you may not eat this mixture; wait, go to a sage and he’ll permit it for you. What is that supposed to mean? If the sage permits it for me, then when I eat it, I don’t need any permissions; there is no mixture of prohibition here at all, and there never was a mixture of prohibition. When the sage permitted it, it turned out that this loaf of bread had never been forbidden to me. So this is not something that has a future way to become permitted. Something that has a future way to become permitted is something that is currently forbidden, and tomorrow there can be a situation in which it will be permitted. There will be a situation—it can be a situation; that’s a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim)—it is enough that there can be a situation in which it is permitted. On that, the Talmud says—or rather the Jerusalem Talmud asks—why then is such a thing called something that has a future way to become permitted? It answers there what it answers.

Rabbi Shimon Shkop explains the Rosh’s answer there, the Rosh who brings the Jerusalem Talmud. He explains it like this: we have an incorrect conception of the sage’s permission. We understand the sage’s permission as something that basically reveals retroactively that our perception of reality was wrong. We were living under an illusion that this thing was under vow, forbidden because of a vow. It turned out we were mistaken; we simply didn’t have the right information. The correct information reached us tomorrow when we went to the sage. But in truth that was already the case today. Okay? Therefore it’s like Aristotle’s claim. Suppose the question is about tomorrow: will there be a sea battle tomorrow? Aristotle says: already today I can tell you that either yes or no. I can give an answer to the future question already today—not a specific answer, but I can say either yes or no. Okay? But it’s obvious that whether it is yes or no is not something that is information existing today, right?

But I’ll say just one more sentence about that because it’s a nice point. There is a philosophical claim called logical determinism. Logical determinism basically says this: suppose today I ask whether there will be a sea battle tomorrow. Okay? So of course I do not know the answer today, and if I wait until tomorrow I will know the answer—either there was a sea battle or there wasn’t. Once I know that answer, then obviously that answer was already true today as well. When I say today the sentence “Tomorrow there will be a sea battle,” if indeed tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then the sentence “Tomorrow there will be a sea battle” is already true today. I don’t know that it is true, but it is already true today. Okay? That is clear, because what is a true statement? A true statement is a statement that correctly describes reality. It correctly describes reality. It says “Tomorrow there will be a sea battle,” and indeed tomorrow there will be a sea battle, so the statement is true. I today cannot know that this statement is true; tomorrow I will know that this statement was already true today. Okay?

But that is seemingly no different from the following claim, say. Suppose I’m abroad and my wife gave birth to a son. Now they tell me that my wife gave birth, but they don’t tell me whether it was a boy or a girl. So I don’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl. I return to Israel a day or two later and it turns out that it was a boy. Was it a boy only from the moment I found out? Obviously it was a boy from the moment he was born. The fact that I didn’t know it changes nothing. The information wasn’t in my hands, but obviously he was a boy from the moment he was born. The claim is that so too regarding the sea battle. In other words, the claim that tomorrow there will be a sea battle is already true today, when indeed tomorrow there will be a sea battle. The fact that I don’t know this information is another matter; I lack information. But the claim is already true today.

Rabbi Shimon Shkop argues that the release of a vow is not like that. We understand release of a vow as the same thing. If the sage released the vow, then in truth already today there is no vow. It’s just that today, before I went to the sage, I cannot know that this is the reality. But that really is the reality. Tomorrow when I go to the sage and he releases it, it will turn out that this was already the reality today; it’s just that today I didn’t know it. The common conception of release of vows—and the same for conditions, someone who divorces a woman on condition that she not drink wine—then if she does not drink wine it turns out that she was already divorced today. If she did drink wine, it turns out that she was never divorced. And it’s all just like the sea battle, like the boy who was born. It’s basically information I cannot know, but it is already really true today. Okay?

Rabbi Shimon Shkop says: not true. That is what is called “the matter became clarified retroactively.” It became clarified retroactively that this was the situation. It became clarified to me retroactively, but it was always the case. It becomes clarified to me retroactively. Rabbi Shimon Shkop says no. What happens retroactively is not the clarification of the information to me, but the formation of the information itself. What does that mean? If I vowed to forbid benefit from this loaf of bread, then this loaf of bread is forbidden to me, period. If tomorrow I go to a sage who releases me, he releases me retroactively. What does that mean? The vow existed until I reached the sage, and the sage uproots it—but uproots it retroactively. Not that the sage clarifies that it never existed. No, it existed, of course it existed, but it was uprooted retroactively. That is what Rabbi Shimon Shkop claims, and therefore, that is how he explains the Jerusalem Talmud, a vow is something that has a future way to become permitted. Because a vow was in fact forbidden until I went to the sage. It’s true that if the sage releases it, he releases it retroactively, but he uproots the vow retroactively. It’s not that he clarifies that I was simply mistaken in an illusion and there never was a vow. There was a vow, but the sage has the power to uproot it retroactively.

Not retroactively—he uproots it from the moment, from the moment he released it? Retroactively. He uproots it retroactively; that’s “from now on, retroactively.” How could one say otherwise? Because if you say otherwise, that’s determinism. That is, if we say that there never was one, then if I go to a sage, that’s already deterministic. According to Rabbi Shimon Shkop I understand it to mean that it’s not deterministic: I really have to go to the sage and then he— No, you’re trying to push me into the place I was trying to avoid before, because what you’re really asking is the question of logical determinism. Logical determinism basically makes that claim. It says: if already today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then that means tomorrow there must be a sea battle; it can’t be otherwise, because otherwise it wouldn’t have been true today. But that is a mistake. I don’t want to get into it because I’ll spend all the time left in the class on it. It’s a mistake. That’s information, not a fact. Information can be formed backward in time; a fact cannot be formed backward in time. The principle of causality does not apply to information. But if you want, I can send you things I wrote on the subject.

Anyway, yes—Rabbi Shimon Shkop claims that what happens here is that the sage’s release is the cause that brings about the uprooting of the vow, which is the effect, even though the uprooting of the vow applies even before I reached the sage—it applies retroactively. Here there is a cause that comes later than the effect. Where is the practical implication? Look at an example. Suppose I took a vow and ate the thing forbidden to me. The court heard about it, there are witnesses and warning, and they flog me. Now I go to a sage and he releases the vow, so it turns out that the vow was uprooted retroactively. Does that mean I was flogged for nothing? The answer is no. Because at the time I was flogged, there really was a vow. It’s not that I thought there was a vow and was mistaken. No, it really existed. But if I went to a sage and the sage released the vow, I had already violated the vow before, before I went to the sage. Now I went to the sage and he released the vow. Now I come to the court. Will the court flog me? After all, the transgression was committed before the sage released it. The answer is no. Because from now on it happens retroactively. And the perspective from now on is as if there was no vow retroactively. But that does not mean there is some rewriting of history here. It is only a perspective from now on, how I now see history. Now I see history differently. But at the moment history itself took place, it was as it was. It is not that I had been living in error. The sage’s uprooting is the operative cause of the vow’s uprooting. It’s not that it clarifies information that there simply never was a vow, so there’s nothing to uproot. There is something to uproot. There was a vow, and the sage’s release uproots it. He brings several practical ramifications of this. In the medieval authorities (Rishonim) in several places one can see many practical ramifications of these things.

In any case, for our purposes, the Jerusalem Talmud and the Rosh are now much clearer as to why a vow is something that has a future way to become permitted. We asked: why is a vow something that has a future way to become permitted? If I go to a sage, then it was never forbidden. If I don’t go to a sage, then it is forbidden forever. So in what sense is this something that has a future way to become permitted? Something that has a future way to become permitted is something that is forbidden, and from a certain point onward it becomes permitted. That is never the situation with a vow. Either it is always permitted or it is always forbidden. It is not a prohibition for a fixed period. According to Rabbi Shimon Shkop this is very clear—and that is of course his proof—that this is a prohibition for a fixed period, only after that fixed period it happens retroactively. By the way, lawyers also make such a distinction. There is a difference between retroactive and retrospective and prospective. But that means that morally, let’s call it, someone who violated the vow did something wrong. Right. Of course. Not only morally, halakhically too, until he came to the sage. But after he came to the sage, it’s no longer— But what? With a condition we don’t say it that way. Like a woman—if a man divorced a woman retroactively on a condition, and meanwhile she had relations with another man, we don’t say she is liable for that. That is what Rabbi Shimon Shkop claims, but the point is that the fact that she is not liable can be interpreted in two ways. One can say that she is not liable because it turned out retroactively that she was not a sinner. We simply thought maybe she was a sinner; we were mistaken. And that is retroactive. The retrospective reading—that is the “from now on, retroactively” in Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s terminology—also says the same thing. If you had caught her before the condition was fulfilled, you could kill her as an adulteress. But if the condition was fulfilled and it turned out that she was no longer a married woman—once the condition was fulfilled and it turned out that she was no longer a married woman—then from now on she is not an adulteress. You simply no longer execute her.

But that’s exactly the story with King David according to Rashi—that throughout his life he gave a conditional bill of divorce, and therefore it turns out when Uriah was killed that he wasn’t— And the question is whether that justifies David for what he did, because when he did it he didn’t know that Uriah would die. He knew because he sent him. No, but he sent him after he had already been with Bathsheba. The example is exactly a continuation of what you said before. After all, the Sages always say that anyone who says King David sinned is simply mistaken. On the other hand, Nathan the prophet, with the parable of the poor man’s ewe lamb, explains to King David that he is a great sinner. How do these fit together? The answer is very simple. On the halakhic level he did not sin, because on the halakhic level she was not a married woman; formally in Jewish law she was not a married woman, because the bill of divorce took effect retroactively. On the moral level—exactly what you said before—on the moral level, you cooked up a situation here and solved the halakhic problem for yourself, but there is a severe moral problem here, and for that Nathan the prophet rebukes him. By the way, Nathan the prophet really rebukes him not for adultery but for property—for the poor man’s ewe lamb. It’s not the prohibition of another man’s wife, which is between man and God; it’s a prohibition between one person and another. His problem is not the adultery; his problem is the harm he did to Uriah. What? Okay, for our purposes then, what I basically want to take from Rabbi Shimon Shkop is that if we look at retrospective rather than retroactive—that is, from now on, retroactively. Not merely “the matter became clarified retroactively,” where it simply turned out that reality had been different, but now reality is determined backward in a different way.

Rabbi? Yes. Someone wanted to ask. I wanted to ask: this conditional bill of divorce—from when does it take effect? A few minutes before he dies? What? You can’t say from the moment he dies; once he dies he can no longer divorce. No, a few minutes before he dies? What? Or someone going out to war? It doesn’t matter. From the Talmud there it seems that it is from the moment he gave the bill of divorce. Okay. You can give a bill of divorce—there are mechanisms in Jewish law. “This is your bill of divorce an hour before my death,” “This is your bill of divorce if I die,” yes, “an hour before my death,” and “This is your bill of divorce from now if I die,” okay, or “on condition that I die.” Fine? So there are existing mechanisms in Jewish law. Which of them was there—in King David’s story it sounds like “from now.” Because if it were a moment before his death, then you could never know whether you were permitted to be with her. Maybe he still hasn’t died there at the front. So you can’t know.

Anyway, for our purposes, what I want to bring here from Rabbi Shimon Shkop is that we see here a concept of causality detached from the time axis. Right? Causality in which the cause appears after the effect. Now again, in the physical world of course we do not see things like this. Causality is generally prospective; it works forward. A cause brings about things that happen after it, not things that happened before it. I am only claiming that this is a characteristic of our world; it is not essential to the principle of causality. If someone now comes and says, “So what is the cause? How can it be that the divorce takes effect, or the vow is released, without a cause? After all, I made a vow—how does it suddenly evaporate without a cause?” No, it is not without a cause; it is with a cause. True, the cause comes after the effect, but there was a cause. One cannot say there is no cause here. This means that we are capable, at least on the logical level, of thinking about a causal relation in a way detached from the time axis—and that is why I brought all these parentheses. Meaning that a causal assumption does not necessarily presuppose the existence of a time axis. When we exist within a time axis, then the assumption is that the cause precedes the effect in time. True. But if we suddenly imagine a situation without a time axis, does the principle of causality disappear? No. Something that happens still has to have a cause. The fact that the cause does not happen before it on some time axis because there is no time axis—fine, then there isn’t. But still, the assumption of the principle of causality, that everything must have a cause, seems to me to remain intact. It is not dependent on the time axis.

Therefore, if I say that the world exists for a finite time, no matter how long—fourteen billion years, but still a finite time—then we are back to ruling out the option of an eternal world, because the question still remains: what or who caused the formation of the world fourteen billion years ago? Even if I say that the time axis was created with the bang and therefore one cannot say that this cause was before the bang. There is no such thing as before the bang in that picture, because the time axis starts from the bang. There is no before. Okay. And yet I will still ask not who was before, but what is responsible for the formation of the bang, without describing it on the time axis. Okay? So therefore I think that is the first point that rules out the option of an eternal world.

Now there are others who want to say: okay, but if the Big Bang really is what caused the coming into being of our whole universe, then the bang did it. The bang is God, as they say at the end of Yom Kippur. Right? In other words, the bang itself did it, and that makes the claim about the existence of God unnecessary. But of course that is just wordplay. Why? Because the bang is a physical event. A physical event is not a cause—at least not a self-standing cause. I said earlier, in one of the previous classes, that I gave this example: I slapped someone. So he asks me, “Wait, why did you slap me?” So I told him, “Because my hand hit your cheek.” Fine—but why did your hand hit my cheek? Why did it move? Because my muscle moved it. Fine—but why did your muscle move it? Because an electric current came from the brain to the muscle, which contracted and stretched the muscle. Fine, but why was there an electric current from the brain that did that to the muscle? Because in the brain there was an electric field that activated an electric current, and so on, and you can keep going as far back as you like. In the end, the person who got slapped obviously did not receive an answer. What he is looking for, in the end, is a cause that is not a physical event. He too knows how to analyze the physical events that caused the slap. But he asks: what is the entity standing at the base of this chain of physical events?

Therefore, when you bring me the Big Bang, what you are basically telling me is that this was the first event, and from it the later events and beings were produced. Fine. So that is a chain of events. But I ask: who is responsible for the formation of this chain of events? Here I am looking for an entity, not an event. An event cannot be a cause. An event is a description of the action of the bearer of the cause, yes, of the object that is the cause. And I ask: what is the object responsible for these things? Therefore to say that the Big Bang is God, that it is the cause—that is nonsense. The Big Bang is a moment in time. The Big Bang is an event that happened. An event is not the cause of anything, or at least not an ultimate cause of anything. An event can lead to another event, but I will always ask what the cause of the first event is. Here I am really looking for an entity, or I might even say an intelligent entity, that stands at the base of this whole process. Therefore to say that the bang is the first cause—absolutely not.

The standard answer is that there was what is called a quantum fluctuation, that there was some probabilistic event that happened, which we know from quantum theory happens, that things are created, as it were, from nothing, and it was some probabilistic event that happened once. So I’ll say this: I’ll deal with it in the physico-theological argument, but since you asked I’ll say it in a few sentences. It is obvious that when there is absolute vacuum there are no quantum fluctuations. Once you say there are quantum fluctuations—you mean quantum fluctuations of the vacuum, that particles suddenly arise, particles pop out of nothing in some way—that means that this vacuum has some set of properties. For example, in spontaneous quantum formation the conservation laws are preserved. If there is a particle, then together with it an antiparticle is created. Positive charge, negative charge, so that the total charge remains zero. The total mass is preserved—positive mass, negative mass, and so on. Everything is preserved. Who takes care of that? It is obvious that when we talk about the vacuum state in quantum theory, it is not really a vacuum, not really just a vacuum with nothing in it. It means there are no particles here, but there is a quantum nature to the world. Without there being a quantum nature to the world, particles could not arise, pop out from the vacuum. Now, who created the quantum nature of the world? That is the same as asking who created the particle. The quantum nature of the world is not a cause, because I can also ask about it who created it. I’ll talk about that more at length when we discuss the physico-theological argument, in the next proof.

So the claim that an eternal world is still an option in the time after the Big Bang—that no longer works. But I’ll perhaps say one more sentence, which also takes us toward the physico-theological argument. By the way, these two proofs complement one another; they are not really two completely separate proofs. We’ll talk about that later. Even if the world had been eternal—even if the world had been eternal—that still wouldn’t mean that the question does not arise: who is responsible for there being such a world?

There is an American philosopher named Richard Taylor. He wrote a book that was also translated into Hebrew, Metaphysics. It’s a popular book on metaphysical issues for people interested in philosophy, a kind of introduction to metaphysics. There he brought the following example for what Leibniz called the principle of sufficient reason. The claim is basically this: suppose we are walking in a forest and suddenly we see some large glass sphere there, carved with all kinds of interesting shapes and so on. Fine. I’m walking there with someone else, and I ask the friend walking with me: amazing—who made this sphere? Who put this sphere here? And he says to me: it was always here. No problem. This sphere was always here; no one made it, no one put it here. Does that solve the problem? Richard Taylor, and really Leibniz started this, claims that it does not. Suppose even that the sphere was always here. There is still some kind of entity here for which there has to be some reason for why it is here and why it is as it is, that it is like this. Therefore even if this sphere has existed for infinite time—in the potential sense of infinity, of course, I’m not repeating all the comments I already gave—we still don’t need a cause, because a cause has to precede the effect in time, and here it always existed, so there is nothing prior to it that created it. But we do need a reason—not a cause, a reason. And that reason can be, for example, a teleological reason or a simultaneous reason: something that is constantly responsible for the fact that the sphere is here and is as it is. Not that it created it—that there was a state without the sphere and now it created the sphere. The sphere always existed; there was never a state without it. But there still has to be something that gives a reason for why this strange or special sphere is standing here.

Therefore Leibniz argues that even if we say that the world is eternal, it still needs a reason for its existence. Now here I perhaps want to sharpen this, because it will also clarify the connection to the physico-theological argument. Look: the cosmological argument we are dealing with here is an argument about the mere fact that something exists, regardless of its properties. But in the physico-theological argument we talk about the fact that what exists—the universe—is very special. It is complex, coordinated, special. And therefore there has to be someone who made it; we’ll talk more about that argument there. The principle of sufficient reason is more relevant to the physico-theological argument because, look, I’m jumping ahead, but I want to sharpen the point. Suppose there is in our world a system of four basic physical forces, and it is very, very special, such that without it nothing here would exist, or at least not as it is. So when I ask who is responsible for that system of forces or laws, can someone answer me: no one, it always existed? I think not. Because if that system is very special and exceptional, then even if it has always existed I still ask myself: okay, but why is it actually like this rather than otherwise? There is still room here for the question why. The question why here is not looking for a cause; it is looking for a reason. Okay, that is Leibniz’s nuance. A cause is a particular case of a reason. A reason that exists prior to the effect and brings about the effect—that is called a cause. But the concept of reason is broader. Even where no cause is needed, as with things that have always existed—say the laws of nature have always existed—fine, but why are the constants in the laws of nature exactly such that there is fine-tuning among them, some very precise and delicate coordination among them? That demands explanation even if it has been that way forever. The fact that it has been that way forever is fine, but still, why is it as it is and not just some system of laws with no relation among them, and not special in the way the system of laws we are talking about is special?

Again, to go into the details of this argument we’ll do that when we discuss the physico-theological argument. I’m bringing it here only to clarify the principle of sufficient reason. The principle of sufficient reason basically is a principle that applies even to things that exist for infinite time, unlike the principle of causality. If something exists for infinite time, it doesn’t need a cause, because there is nothing that created it—it was never created—but it still does need a reason. At least if it is special. Something that is not special, maybe I don’t know—it always existed and it is like that because why shouldn’t it be like that? There is no reason; it could have been otherwise, but there is nothing special about the way it exists now. But if it is special, like this special glass sphere or our special laws of nature, then that still means there is some guiding or involved hand in the matter even if it existed for infinite time. Because I still need a reason: why is it so special and not just some other banal thing?

Okay, so in that sense the principle of sufficient reason basically completes the refutation of the claim of the world’s eternity. It says that even if we accept the conception that the world is eternal, we still have not avoided asking: why is it as it is and not otherwise, since it is nevertheless special? But as I said, this takes us to the physico-theological argument, so I’m not going to continue with that right now. We’ll get to it when we discuss that argument.

There is a question in physics: are our laws of nature the only ones possible, or could there be another universe with other laws? That’s not known. Okay, so I’m saying—but if this is the only possible one, those are two different questions. In other words, the question whether other universes exist—we’ll also talk about that, because that is one of the claims, the anthropic principle, one of the claims raised as an objection—but we’ll discuss that in the physico-theological argument. And if it is the only possibility for the laws of the world? No, no—that’s what I’m saying. Why this one? Because it’s the only possibility that exists? I’m saying that’s another question. That’s why I’m distinguishing here: you’re asking two different questions. One question is whether other universes exist. The second question is whether other universes could exist. That’s not the same thing. And what I’m talking about now, you could attack not with the claim that other universes exist, but with the claim that other universes could exist—or in other words, our universe is not uniquely special, because other universes could also exist and they too would produce all sorts of interesting things. That is an attack on what I just said. The question whether other universes actually exist is the anthropic principle, and we’ll talk about that later. Okay? But I’m leaving that for the physico-theological argument; we’ll talk about it when we get there.

Maybe one more remark that comes up here in this context. I want at least to complete—I see it’s taking time—I want at least to finish the cosmological argument today. There is a claim that says that the totality of the universe has always existed, meaning it does not need a cause; it is eternal or has necessary existence. Every object in our world really does need a cause for its existence, but the totality as a whole is itself a thing with necessary existence. Again, there are several shades to this claim. One of them is the pantheistic version. Spinoza held a pantheistic conception that basically says he identifies God with the totality of existence. The totality of nature—“God” and “nature” have the same numerical value, as people say—so basically the totality of nature is God; it’s the same thing; that is what is called God.

Now that is of course empty wordplay. I don’t understand these strange sentences, and I assume Spinoza didn’t understand them either. It’s just wordplay. Because what you are basically saying is that there is no God. The natural totality exists—we all agree on that. What you call it, what do I care what you call it? What are you trying to say, that this totality created the objects that constitute it? That is nonsense. There is nothing in the totality beyond the objects that make it up. If there is something more there, then that is what I call God. You want to claim there is nothing more; there is just this totality and that’s it. But this totality does not create the objects that are itself, because then again—who created them? The totality is nothing other than the objects. In mathematics or physics people often talk about global degrees of freedom generating local phenomena, but that is just a manner of speaking—it doesn’t generate anything. The global phenomena are the collection of the local phenomena; they are not something additional. In mathematical language one can speak as if the global phenomena generate—say a wave in the sea. The wave in the sea is the overall phenomenon spread over a large region, not at one particular point, and it generates the motion of a particular water molecule. Okay? Obviously that is just a way of speaking, because the movement of that water molecule is simply part of what we call the wave; it is not something else. It is not that the wave generates it; it is the wave. The wave is the set of water molecules, each of which is moving, and the whole collection together we call a wave. Therefore one cannot speak of the wave moving the water molecule. One can say that the energy of the wave perhaps causes the movement of the water, not the wave. The wave is the collection of water molecules in motion. Therefore to say that the totality creates the objects that compose it is empty words. Spinoza’s pantheism has always seemed to me like hair-splitting with words—just words, saying nothing.

But perhaps one could say something else: that the material totality really doesn’t need some cause. Basically there came into being some chain of local formations that extends back to minus infinity. In other words, every thing or every object in the world has to have a cause. But this chain as a whole—cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect—has itself existed forever and always was. Okay, that is basically the claim. And again I say: if that were so, then we return to an eternal world. And the question whether the option of an eternal world is an alternative—I discussed that earlier. Therefore I think this too is not an option, aside from the question of actual infinity and potential infinity; here too there are several pitfalls one can mention, but I won’t get into that again.

So maybe I’ll formulate it in a different language. There is a Talmudic passage in Berakhot, page 5. The Talmud makes an analogy there between the soul and the Holy One, blessed be He. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, fills the world, so the soul fills the body. Five things are similar between the soul and the Holy One, blessed be He. What does “fills” mean? Suppose I ask you: where are the coordinates of my soul? Can you give me its X, Y, and Z? Where is it located? Pretty obviously not. It is not a material object that has coordinates in space. Therefore, when the Sages say that it fills the body, they do not mean that it is spatially located here, but that it appears in the world through the body located here. But where is the soul itself located? It is not located anywhere; it has no location. And I think the same is true regarding the Holy One, blessed be He. When He fills the whole world, it means that He appears through the whole world, but it is not that He is here. This is not identity, right? Let’s go back a bit to Spinoza’s pantheism.

Now the point is that if we really want to see the world as some kind of organism, as a totality that has existence in itself, not merely a collection of things, that usually only works if there really is something within it that turns the collection of things into a whole, as in a body. In what sense is our body an organism? When we die it is no longer an organism, right? It is just a collection of cells, or molecules, or atoms, depending on what resolution you want to use. But when we die it is no longer an organism. So the fact that the body is an organism is basically dependent on there being something within it that integrates all its parts. We call it the soul; never mind that for now—I’m a dualist—but something integrates all this. There is something in the body beyond the collection of its material parts, because otherwise it would just be a collection of material parts and not an organism, not a single entity. In the same sense, if you want to say that the world as a whole is something more than the particulars or objects that compose it, you are basically saying that there is something else there—spiritual, non-material—like the soul in a body. There is something else there that turns this totality called the world into an organism, into something that has existence in itself beyond the particulars included in it. And once again you are back to talking about God. If you want to talk about a totality that has some kind of existence beyond the collection of particulars—because otherwise it is just nonsense, as I said before—there is something more there, and that something more is God. That is not an alternative; it is the same thing. Therefore I think this is not a real alternative to the cosmological argument.

I won’t comment here on vitalism, yes? Vitalism in biology today is a dirty word—to say that there is something in our body besides matter, that in biology there is some living substance unlike in physics. But I, as a dualist, think that it is true—only you don’t need it for biological science. Maybe I mentioned that once when we talked about methodological assumptions. Vitalism is not a successful methodological assumption, but in my view it is still true. Those are two different things: to say that methodologically you don’t need it, and to say that it is false. The same goes for God. One can say that the assumption of God is not a successful or fruitful scientific methodology, but that does not mean there is no God. Two completely different things.

Okay, two concluding remarks that I still want to get in. First, Kant himself raises the question of how we apply the principle of causality to things that are outside our experience—God and the world. His assumption is that the principle of causality is learned from observation and therefore applies only to things we have observed. But I don’t think that is correct. The principle of causality is a priori. It does not come from observation, and David Hume already pointed that out. Therefore I think the principle of causality is relevant to everything under the sun. Everything we think about, in principle, is supposed to have a cause. Unless it is a necessary existent, in which case that is the start of the causal chain, as I said earlier. So regarding the question whether causality is only part of our form of thinking about our world and cannot be applied to things outside the world or at the basis of the world—to metaphysics—I don’t think that is right. I think the principle of causality is a logical principle, not a physical principle. A logical principle that things do not happen without a cause. Even in psychology we assume that if something happens it has a cause, though not necessarily a physical cause. And we assume that everything has to have a cause, not only in physics. That is one remark.

The final remark, and with this I’ll finish the discussion of the cosmological argument, is how we should relate to this logical move that I called the cosmological argument. Seemingly, this is basically a kind of move very similar to the moves we make in science. It is a quasi-scientific argument. I see a collection of phenomena—bodies are attracted to the earth—and I conclude that there is probably a gravitational force that produces these phenomena. And no one has seen this gravitational force and apparently no one ever will. It is a theoretical entity. But from events in the world I infer the existence of this thing. That is how science works. In that sense, the cosmological argument is very similar. I see that there are things in the world. I know that these things have a cause that created them; otherwise they would not exist. Therefore I posit the existence of something that none of us has ever seen and never will see, but it must stand at the basis of the phenomena we do see. In that sense this inference is really very similar to any other scientific inference.

What is the difference? The difference is that with the law of gravity I take the product of the inference and subject it to a test of falsification. If I claim there is a gravitational force, I can propose an experiment that tests whether I am right or not. Then I can falsify the law or confirm the law, and that is how science works. In that sense, the conclusion that there is God, the conclusion of the cosmological argument that there is God, is not a scientific conclusion. I have no way of conducting an experiment that would subject that conclusion to a falsification test. But the move that led me to that conclusion is a move completely parallel to a scientific move. In that sense, yes, that is true. Therefore one has to be careful here. Why am I saying this? Because clearly I made some philosophical conclusion here—that maybe there are things without causes; I am assuming that everything has a cause. It is not certain, but it seems terribly plausible to me, terribly logical. Fine. And it is not certain. But what is true? Science also is not certain. You take a collection of phenomena, make a generalization, and form a scientific theory. It is not certain. But that is what you think, presumably, in light of the data; that is where you arrived. In that sense the cosmological argument is admittedly not certain, but it is no weaker than any other scientific argument or scientific inference.

The difference that does exist between them comes after I have reached the conclusion. Can I subject that conclusion to a falsification test? In our context, no. In the scientific context, yes. But the fact that I cannot subject it to a falsification test does not mean that it is not true—quite the opposite. If I use the same tools I use in science, if in the philosophical realm I use the same tools, and those tools work in science, where I can test them, then that means these tools are probably good tools. And if I use them on the philosophical plane, there is no reason not to accept what they yield, even though there I cannot subject it to falsification. Suppose I had arrived at the law of gravity, but that’s it, I’ve already observed all the bodies in the universe; there is no more experiment I can do to subject it to falsification. I would still accept the law of gravity. The ability to subject this law to falsification is not a condition for my trust in the law. It is what defines it as a scientific law. The law is scientific because it can be subjected to falsification. In that sense, belief in God is not a scientific claim; it cannot be subjected to falsification. But my trust in that claim stems from my trust in the logic that led to it, in the inference that leads to it. And in that sense this inference is very similar to scientific inferences I make in other contexts. Therefore, if I trust the scientific generalizations I make, I see no reason why I should not give the same trust to theological generalizations. And therefore in that sense I think there is a move here that has a scientific character. I am not claiming that the claim that God exists is a scientific claim. It is not. But the philosophical path that led me to it is a path that, all in all, also serves me in every other scientific context.

Okay. A remark: the claim that there is another universe that is independent—in principle it cannot be tested. If it is independent, that means there is no way to test it. So even in science there are things I cannot test in principle. Yes, correct. The assumptions of science—the principle of causality, for example—is hard to test. Although in quantum theory they do try to test it. Maybe one more remark anyway that I want to make here. Maybe I mentioned it, but I don’t remember anymore. There is a claim raised against the cosmological proof, and people say: God is not an explanation. “You hang the familiar on the unfamiliar,” as the Sages say. In other words, you take our world, which after all is familiar to us and we understand it and know how it works, and you suspend it on an object unfamiliar to us, unintelligible to us, and one we have never seen. So what have you accomplished? In what sense have you given me an explanation by grounding the familiar world on an unfamiliar object? So God is not an explanation.

I’ll answer that too in the physico-theological argument, but here too I’ll already say one thing about it. I didn’t mean to explain anything. The cosmological argument does not offer an explanation for the existence of the world; it infers a conclusion from the fact that the world exists. Suppose I see footprints on the seashore, yes, like Winnie-the-Pooh. I see footprints—maybe I mentioned this; I don’t remember anymore—footprints on the seashore, right? And Winnie-the-Pooh says, looking at the footprints: apparently someone walked here. Who is that someone? Why does he have these particular footprints? I have no idea. But if there are footprints, then apparently someone walked here. So people will tell him: that is not an explanation. Here, I see the footprints, and you invent for me some creature no one has seen and you cannot say anything about it, and you claim this explains the existence of the footprints. That is not an explanation. The answer is that maybe it is not an explanation—that’s already a semantic question—but I do have a proof that someone passed here. I’m not trying to explain the footprints; I’m inferring from the existence of the footprints the conclusion that someone passed here. Whether that conclusion indeed follows from them, whether it counts as an explanation of the existence of the footprints or not—that’s a matter of taste. We’ll discuss that more in the physico-theological argument. It’s connected to the Brisker approach of Rabbi Soloveitchik, that one does not ask why. Yes. There is something to that.

Okay, so I’ve finished the cosmological argument. Does anyone else want to comment? Fine, then Sabbath peace—goodbye, happy Hanukkah. Sabbath peace, happy Hanukkah.