Faith – Lesson 20

Table of Contents

• Complexity, specialness, and entropy
• A reservation about God of the gaps and chaos
• The second law of thermodynamics and statistics
• Entropy islands, ecology, and Maxwell’s demon
• Formulating the argument as a logical gap and distinguishing between the world’s functioning and its creation
• The connection to the cosmological argument and the question of the creator’s identity
• Probability versus “a less probable alternative” and the quotation from Sherlock Holmes
• Begging the question, rationality, and criticism of atheists
• A response to Eliya Leibowitz: proof versus explanation, and two kinds of scientific explanation
• The jaundice example and defining rationality as openness to an alternative paradigm
• Questions from the audience: evolution, the multiverse, the age of the universe, and kashrut

Summary

General Overview

The speaker bases the physico-theological argument on the claim that the world displays complexity and order that do not depend on “the eye of the beholder,” and he suggests framing these concepts in terms of entropy and information in order to obtain an objective measure. He distances himself from “God of the gaps” arguments that place God into gaps in scientific knowledge, but argues that his own argument does not rest on a scientific gap, rather on a logical judgment of probability according to which the emergence of immense complexity without a guiding hand is implausible. He then responds to a series of objections: that the argument does not identify the entity by any particular name, that one can argue whether it is one or many, that the laws of nature are not a “being” and therefore do not create, and that this is not a scientific “explanation” but a proof of the existence of a responsible cause. He quotes Eliya Leibowitz and refutes his claim by distinguishing between proof and explanation, and by means of the scientific distinction between “reducing to the familiar” and creating new theoretical entities in times of paradigm crisis.

Complexity, Specialness, and Entropy

The speaker rejects the claim that complexity and specialness are subjective, like reacting to an unusual sequence of die rolls, and tries to define “specialness” in a mathematical and scientific way. He presents entropy through the example of an ideal gas in a closed space and distinguishes between a macroscopic state that describes the distribution of molecules and the multiplicity of possible microscopic states that correspond to it. He states that the more microscopic states correspond to the same macroscopic state, the higher the entropy and the less information the system conveys; therefore, more information means more order and less entropy. He presents this as a quantitative measure of disorder accepted in physics, chemistry, and biology, and emphasizes that its advantage is objectivity that does not depend on the observer’s preferences.

A Reservation About God of the Gaps and Chaos

The speaker qualifies any reliance on scientific principles in order to prove God, because that creates a “zero-sum game” in which, the more science advances, the more God is pushed into the remaining gaps. He agrees with atheists that an argument based on “I don’t know how to explain it, therefore there is God” is not a proper foundation, because gaps are closed through research. He argues that chaos does not provide a basis for a theological argument, because a chaotic system is deterministic, and the difficulty in predicting it stems from sensitivity to initial conditions and from computational limitation, which could shrink with more powerful computers.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Statistics

The speaker clarifies that his use of entropy is not meant to “cash in” on the second law as a scientific proof, but to define complexity precisely. He presents the second law as a statistical-mathematical law according to which a system is usually found in more probable states, and argues that in this sense it is legitimate to infer that when something with very low probability occurs “not by itself,” then the alternative is “one minus the probability.” He describes the scientific formulation, “the second law forbids a spontaneous rise in order,” as a translation of the statistical claim, and distinguishes this from “God of the gaps,” because this is a probabilistic consideration, not a gap in knowledge.

Entropy Islands, Ecology, and Maxwell’s Demon

The speaker presents the claim that life and local order do not contradict the second law, because order in one place can come at the cost of increased disorder elsewhere, like building a city out of stones while increasing the “mess” in the quarry. He adds a general warning about the limits of the ecological struggle in terms of the second law, because creating order will always require an entropic price somewhere else, and he raises the theoretical possibility of “tuning” the damage toward other areas. He returns to Maxwell’s demon and argues that even if the overall system includes an internal “demon,” the information embedded in it is what explains the channeling, and therefore the very creation of “entropy islands” that allow life to arise requires a guiding hand that organizes the process. He formulates the question as a philosophical issue of probability: even if there is a scientific explanation for the entropy balance, it still seems implausible to him that such high complexity arises without direction.

Formulating the Argument as a Logical Gap and Distinguishing Between the World’s Functioning and Its Creation

The speaker states that he is not claiming that the second law “proves” God, but that the immense complexity of the world makes “it happened by chance” unreasonable, leading to the conclusion that the universe is “probably not closed” and that there is a guiding hand from outside, called God. He argues that if there is a contradiction between evolution and the second law, that is a scientific problem that science must solve, and God is not supposed to solve scientific problems. He distinguishes between how the world functions within the framework of its laws and how the world was created as a one-time framework, and presents this as a logical gap rather than a scientific gap.

The Connection to the Cosmological Argument and the Question of the Creator’s Identity

The speaker says the argument resembles the cosmological argument, and therefore the objections to that argument recur here as well. He rejects the objection, “Maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world,” by saying that the argument proves only that there exists some entity responsible for the complex world, and the name of that entity is not essential. He also rejects the objection, “Who says it’s one and not several?” and argues that the argument does not infer characteristics such as unity, infinity, giving the Torah, or moral judgment; it infers only the existence of a responsible cause. He responds to the claim that the laws of nature created the world by saying that the laws of nature are not “beings” but descriptions of behavior, and if someone insists on viewing them as a “being,” then that itself is what he calls God.

Probability Versus “A Less Probable Alternative” and the Quotation from Sherlock Holmes

The speaker formulates the dilemma as only two possibilities: either the world created itself, or something created it. Therefore, if the probability of spontaneous formation is very low, the alternative is almost certain. He argues that the claim “God is even less probable” is mistaken, because it assumes in advance, without basis, that God is improbable, whereas the assessment that complexity without a creator is improbable rests on logic and experience. He quotes Sherlock Holmes from The Sign of Four in order to argue that after ruling out the impossible, whatever remains, even if it is improbable, is the correct possibility, and he applies this to the rule of “one minus p.”

Begging the Question, Rationality, and Criticism of Atheists

The speaker argues that the accusation of “begging the question” does not refute an argument; it points to its logical validity. The real question is whether one accepts the premise that something complex requires a composer or arranger. He claims that when atheists are backed into a corner, they give up causality and probability in order to avoid God, and he presents this as a surrender of rationality. He concludes that if rational thought leads to the conclusion that God exists, then “someone who wants not to believe in God has to be a non-rational person,” and he is willing to accept that someone who admits this is simply choosing irrationality.

A Response to Eliya Leibowitz: Proof Versus Explanation, and Two Kinds of Scientific Explanation

The speaker quotes Eliya Leibowitz, who argues that “intelligent design” is not an explanation because we have no independent knowledge of an intelligence that can design the universe, and that it is only a psychological result of amazement. He responds that the physico-theological argument does not pretend to explain the world, but to prove that a creator exists, and therefore the claim “this is not an explanation” does not undermine the validity of the inference. He adds that in science there are two kinds of explanation: “reducing to the familiar” by means of an existing theory, and “reducing to the unfamiliar,” where one invents theoretical entities in order to unify familiar phenomena, like Newton’s force of gravity. He uses Thomas Kuhn, normal science, and paradigm crisis to argue that central turning points in science are born from paradigm shifts that invent unfamiliar principles in order to explain familiar facts, and therefore the demand for independent knowledge of the explaining entity is not a necessary condition for explanation.

The Jaundice Example and Defining Rationality as Openness to an Alternative Paradigm

The speaker tells a story about curing jaundice using pigeons and about his parents’ reaction, accusing him of irrationality, and he defines rationality as the ability to choose between rejecting a fact and reexamining one’s worldview. He argues that science advances when facts appear that contradict an existing paradigm, and then people look for an alternative explanation instead of throwing out the facts; therefore, stubborn attachment to a paradigm is conservatism, not rationality. He uses this to argue that Leibowitz’s position is conservative: he rejects the possibility of a creator because he does not “know” him, and by doing so he prevents himself from even being able to come to know him when an argument is presented.

Questions from the Audience: Evolution, the Multiverse, the Age of the Universe, and Kashrut

The speaker says he will later get to claims about the multiverse and the anthropic principle, and agrees to discuss the “disassembled watch” argument, but emphasizes that we are dealing with immense periods of time and that there is no necessity to assume “perfection” in the product. He argues that the theory of evolution is not easily falsifiable and gives the example of the peacock and Amotz Zahavi’s theory in order to illustrate how different traits can be justified after the fact as part of survival. He states that on factual questions such as the age of the universe, he tends to accept the scientific estimate of about 14.5 billion years, and he sees many possible ways to interpret the biblical descriptions without fixing on any one of them. He mentions Gerald Schroeder’s calculations about the rate of the flow of time, but expresses doubt. He is asked about “proofs” from the kosher status of animals and birds, and replies that there are interpretive difficulties even in explicit examples such as the camel, the hare, and the hyrax, and therefore he does not see these as proofs.

Last time I devoted most of the time to trying to define the concept of complexity more clearly. The physico-theological argument is basically founded on the idea that the world is complex, special, complex, coordinated. I said there are various formulations; I’m not getting into the fine distinctions between them right now. And I tried to define the concept of complexity, because very often in this context people raise the claim that complexity is in the eye of the beholder. What looks complex and special to you may look simple to someone else. Right? We’re built in such a way that a sequence of one hundred rolls of a die all coming up six looks terribly special. But in fact it’s no less special, no more special, than any other sequence of one hundred die rolls. And if there were someone whose mind was built so that specifically the result 1, 4, 3, 6, 6, 1, 1, 5, 9—I don’t know, keep going to a hundred times—was the special result, then that’s what would be special in his eyes. So yes, the “specialness” is in the eye of the beholder. That’s often the claim in this context. And against that, I tried to define the concept of specialness in a mathematical, scientific—I don’t know what to call it—more precise way, and to show that what we’re dealing with here is actually an objective definition, not something dependent on the observer. For that purpose I introduced the concept of entropy, and I showed or illustrated it through the case of an ideal gas in a certain space, a certain closed space. And the claim was that a special state—when I look at the state of the gas, what I’m really asking myself is how many gas molecules are located at each point in space, right? If you put a coordinate system on it, then tell me how many particles, how many molecules, are located at a given X, Y, Z coordinate throughout the space. That is the macroscopic state of the gas. And I said that every such macroscopic state hides underneath it a great many microscopic possibilities. For example, when I say that all the molecules of the gas are concentrated at X equals 1, Y equals 2, Z equals 5, then really what I’ve said is that underneath that there is only one microscopic state: all the molecules are there. But if I say that half the molecules are there and half are at some other point, X equals 2, 3, 3, then that already hides under it a great many possibilities. Because suppose there are ten molecules of gas altogether in the space. The question is which five are here and which five are there—there are lots of possibilities. How many ways are there to choose 5 out of 10? Right? That’s the number of possibilities here. And so it’s an enormous number of possibilities, thousands of possibilities. Therefore the second state is a state that is less complex; its entropy is higher. Why? Because it has more microscopic states that fit the macroscopic state. In other words—and I explained the connection to information—that basically means that if you tell me this is the macroscopic state, you’ve given me less information than if you tell me the macroscopic state is that all the molecules are located at one point. Why? Because if you give me that information, there are still ten thousand microscopic possibilities open before me, and I don’t know which one is the correct one. Therefore the information you gave me is smaller. By contrast, if you tell me all the molecules are located at one point, then I’m missing no information—I know everything there is to know about the system. In that sense it contains more information. A system with more information is more ordered. Okay? More information, meaning fewer microscopic states that correspond to the macroscopic state—that’s called more information, and that means less entropy. More information means less entropy, or more information means more order, and so on. So that is basically the accepted measure in physics—and not only physics, physics, chemistry, biology—for disorder. Entropy basically measures disorder. And the advantage of this definition is that it offers a quantitative measure of order. That is, it’s not a matter of the eye of the beholder: to me it looks this way and to you it looks that way. Rather, there is an objective definition—and not only objective, but one that explains physical phenomena. Physical phenomena, because the second law of thermodynamics is a law in physics. In other words, I explain phenomena in physics on the basis of this definition of the concept of order. So that means that this definition is not subjective; we see that the world itself operates according to it. That’s the advantage, the advantage of presenting the concept of order or complexity in terms of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics.

But here I want to qualify things a bit, because I myself don’t like relying on scientific concepts and principles in this discussion—what’s called God of the gaps. Right? Very often people prove the existence of God through gaps, gaps in scientific knowledge. When something happens that we don’t know how to explain, that’s a sign that there’s God. A miracle happened—there’s God. Something happened that I can’t explain—there’s God. And that creates a kind of zero-sum game between science and God. Meaning: the more we understand what happens scientifically, the less room there is for God. God always remains in those little patches that we still don’t know how to explain or understand, and gradually His place keeps shrinking. We see that this is often the process that happens in the world. That’s how people feel: that as scientific knowledge grows, there is less room for God, because God belongs to the gaps, to the intervals in scientific knowledge. And in a certain sense, the argument I presented here is also like that. I don’t know how to explain how such complexity came into being in the world, therefore there is God. But that’s a gap in scientific knowledge, and a gap in scientific knowledge cannot serve as a basis for proving the existence of God, because by its nature a gap in scientific knowledge can—and usually does—shrink. Little by little we investigate more, understand more, and then it turns out that what I did now was base the existence of God on a gap, and in the end that gap closes. No God. In other words, ultimately a gap in scientific knowledge ought to lead us to do more scientific research, not draw metaphysical conclusions. That is basically the assumption atheists often raise, and on this point I completely agree with them. I think that proving the existence of God through things that I don’t know how to explain on the scientific plane is not a recommended route. It’s not right—not just tactically, but genuinely. Not because later it may become difficult, because if it becomes difficult later, that already shows that even now it’s not right. Once we also didn’t know what electromagnetism was; we didn’t know the other laws of nature that we know today. So was there more God once? That doesn’t make sense.

There are things in chaos—for example weather—that in principle I can’t know what the weather will be in a week and a half. Right? But in chaos—I think I spoke about this once, I don’t remember, maybe I’ll talk about it later. We talked about chaos in some other context. In the past there really were many idols; every topic had an idol, literally. And little by little that declined as a result of lack of knowledge. An idol is God of the gaps. That’s exactly the point. So anyone who wants to get himself into that corner is welcome, but I don’t think I’d want to find myself there. I’ll just answer Professor Turkel: I think chaos is unrelated to the discussion, because chaos is a completely deterministic system. The fact that I can’t predict what it will do in the long term is simply because the calculation is highly sensitive to initial conditions and very complicated. But there is nothing special here. If I had a strong enough computer and a large enough memory system and everything I need, I could tell you even in a chaotic system everything that will happen. It’s only a technical question. In principle, a very difficult technical question, fine, but still a technical question. It’s still a gap, still God of the gap. I can’t calculate, therefore there is God. The fact that I can’t calculate—well, in fifty years there may be a computer strong enough that can. Already today people calculate climate systems over longer ranges than in the past because we have stronger computers. Besides better knowledge, we also have greater computational power. All of Lorenz, right, with chaos in weather—it started with Lorenz—and that whole Lorenz story basically began because they started doing calculations on a computer. That’s how the whole story of chaos really started, because it became possible to begin calculating. Before that you couldn’t do anything. And as computers improve, we more and more disperse the fog of chaos. Of course, the computers need to improve by a factor of two just to gain one step in chaos, so I don’t know how far we’ll get in that process. But it’s still only a technical claim; there is nothing essential here.

But your basic thesis, which always said that there is someone responsible for everything that happens—that’s basically a gap. Right, so exactly to that I’m heading. So the claim, ostensibly, is that what I said here is that the argument as I presented it now is also God of the gaps. Because I’m building the existence of God on some lacuna in scientific knowledge. So what have I gained? I said I’m wary of that kind of argument. I’ll come back to this point later when I discuss evolution, but I’ll note something about it here. Look, there is a tendency, both among atheists and among believing creationists—I don’t know what to call it—to take the name of science in vain. Science has a kind of aura that inspires admiration; we appreciate its achievements. Something said under the heading of science immediately gets a very, very respectful hearing. Therefore there is a tendency among both religious propagandists and atheist propagandists always to use science. Here I want to qualify that. I don’t like this tendency, and I hope I haven’t fallen into it too much. I want to qualify what I said earlier. I don’t really need the second law in order to prove the existence of God in the physico-theological argument. The second law of thermodynamics, right, the concepts of entropy—I used the concept of entropy not in order to gain the second law of thermodynamics, but in order to define more precisely what complexity is. That’s all. I’m merely using it as a definition; I’m not using any scientific result in the course of my argument. I’m using a concept that is well defined there, so I prefer to use the scientific definition, because then nobody can say that complexity is in the eye of the beholder.

I’ll say more than that: what is the second law of thermodynamics? The second law of thermodynamics is actually not really a scientific law. It is a mathematical law, a statistical law. It is a law that says that if you track a system, you will usually find it in states that have higher probability. That’s all. A statement of that kind is a mathematical statement, not a physical one; it is not the result of observation. What is beautiful is that in statistical mechanics they show that what is perceived as a scientific law—what is called the second law of thermodynamics—when translated into statistical mechanics, what I did before with the ideal gas is only one example of this, they show us that this is actually a mathematical phenomenon and not a scientific law. Now, as a mathematical phenomenon it is legitimate to use it to prove the existence of God. When something happens with low probability, that is not a God-of-the-gaps argument, because here I’m saying: look, if the probability is low that it happened by itself, then one minus that probability is the probability that it did not happen by itself. That is not a God-of-the-gaps argument; that is a perfectly logical argument. And when people use the terminology “the second law of thermodynamics forbids a spontaneous rise in order in a system,” right—just like that, without someone being involved in the system, order will not increase but only decrease—we talked about this last time. So that is basically a scientific formulation of this probabilistic statistical law. There is no real use of science here. Therefore I think it’s not God of the gaps, and I’ll get back to this point later.

But I’ll strengthen even further what I’m saying now. There are all kinds of claims raised in this discussion, namely that the emergence of life or of a complex world—especially life, life is something with very low entropy, very ordered, very complex—does not really contradict the second law of thermodynamics. Why? Think, for example, of when I quarry stones in a quarry and use them to build a house or a city. Okay? So when I built the city, I created a place that has some kind of order, complexity, coordination, right, something with low entropy. It’s not a natural environment, it’s not an environment with no directing hand. There is something a human being produced here, right, something that can become ritually impure. If I’m talking about something that can become ritually impure, that’s something made by human hands. Nature, a natural thing, cannot become ritually impure. So as if the entropy went down. But on the other hand, the disorder in the quarry went up. Meaning: I organized the order out of the disorder. Order was created in one place at the expense of disorder elsewhere. And the claim is that the second law of thermodynamics says that when I take the whole system—in this case the whole universe—overall entropy does not decrease unless something is involved. But who said that overall the world’s entropy actually decreased? It may be that entropy was funneled into certain regions, so that there are places or regions where entropy is low—where there are human beings, houses, cars, things that are designed and complex—and around them the use—we today, in the age of climate damage and ecology, know that this comes at the expense of the environment. It comes at the expense of the disorder created around it, and that is the second law of thermodynamics. That basically says that overall entropy cannot decrease. So if you create order in one place, it always comes at the expense of other places. And by the way, from here there is a warning to all those fighting for ecology: there is a certain limit to that struggle, because in the end you can’t escape the second law of thermodynamics. If you want to increase order here, it will come at the expense of other things; it is impossible not to harm the world. In other words, of course one can try to do less harm and so on, but whenever you use something it comes at the expense of disorder elsewhere. When physicists look at this as a system, they see that this struggle is quite limited in what it can achieve. Fine—but of course they’re not talking about the whole world, not the whole universe, but more about our planet. And then it may be that I can damage other planets in order to gain order on our planet, and that would be better than damaging our own planet. You can direct the islands of entropy to places that won’t harm us. So from that perspective it sheds a very interesting light on this whole ecological discussion, but I won’t get into that here.

In any case, what I want to say is that if I look with a purely scientific eye, I say: let’s see how this works with the second law of thermodynamics. I can find scientific explanations. I’m not hanging my glory on that route. From here I won’t prove the existence of God, because total entropy in the world may indeed not have decreased; it may simply have been funneled into certain regions at the expense of others. So with the second law I’m fine. But I’m not really using the second law. I ask: in your opinion, what is the actual likelihood that such a thing would happen without a directing hand? A philosophical question, unrelated to scientific knowledge, thermodynamics, and other such things. I say that the likelihood is very low—not talking about probability exactly, I’m talking about plausibility. In other words, the fact that entropy flows to certain regions and thus suddenly life and very, very complex phenomena arise may not contradict the overall entropy balance in the world, but it does contradict common sense. Or in other words, if you remember Maxwell’s demon that I spoke about last time—the Maxwell demon is the one sitting there in the middle of the gas chamber and opening the door only to particles flowing from right to left. And whenever a particle came from the left he shut the door and didn’t let it enter. So in the end all the particles were concentrated on the left side of the container. So order was created here, basically, and there was no outside intervention because I’m looking at the system as the system plus demon. Okay, so how did the increase in order happen without outside intervention? So I said that the information embodied in the demon was what actually violated the entropy balance. Or in other words, what I want to say is that if the gas reaches some more ordered state, there was a demon there that did it.

Now you can also say there, yes, but is it plausible that even minimal complexity, the tiniest complexity, would arise without some agent? What, I didn’t understand? I’m saying: is it plausible that even minimal complexity would arise by a directing hand? Without a directing hand? Minimal complexity? So I’m saying: if the complexity is small, then the odds are greater. Now whether it’s plausible or not plausible—that’s in the eye of the beholder. But if the complexity—say, what are the chances that you get three sixes in a row on a die? They’re small, but it can happen, right? But what are the chances of getting a hundred sixes in a row on a die? Very, very small. It can happen too, but very, very small. Now whether it will happen or not depends on how many times you rolled the die. If you rolled it many, many times, then even a hundred in a row will happen to you at some point. But if you rolled only a few times, then three in a row—that can happen. But a hundred in a row is not plausible. Therefore, if the die was rolled a hundred times and a hundred times I got six, and I have to decide: did this happen by chance, or is the die not really balanced, not really fair? I’ll prefer the second alternative, right? Even though the first is possible, its likelihood is very small. So the issue is this: does the level of complexity increase the chance? No. The degree of plausibility changes according to the degree of complexity. Right. When there is very, very great complexity, the chance becomes so tiny that the claim that this happened by chance is already irrational. Okay, thank you. Fine.

So the claim I want to make is that when I look at a world in which this business somehow proceeds and suddenly life is formed—leave me alone with the second law of thermodynamics, maybe I have a scientific explanation for it. But don’t you see a directing hand here? Such a thing does not happen. Who took all these things and put them into some place where in the end life formed there? At the expense of entropy in other places—fine, okay—but still, who was Maxwell’s demon that directed entropy to a particular place so that life would arise there at the expense of disorder elsewhere? That too requires a directing hand. In order to organize the islands of entropy within our large container—in this case, the whole universe. Therefore I don’t want to be captive to scientific terminology. I don’t want to claim that the second law of thermodynamics proves the existence of God. It doesn’t. What I want to use is the concept of entropy in order to define the concept of complexity, so people won’t tell me complexity is in the eye of the beholder. And now I ask: is it plausible in your view that things this complex came into being on their own without a directing hand? I think not. And if so, then this supposedly closed system—our universe—apparently isn’t closed. There is a directing hand from outside that was involved in the processes. That hand is called God. That is basically the move. So not really—I used the second law of thermodynamics only in order to define the concept of complexity. But all the discussions of whether the second law does allow this or does not allow this—I think they don’t touch the core of the issue.

I’ll say more than that; I return to God of the gaps. After all, if indeed the unfolding of the world—the fact is evolution continues, life continues to improve—does the conduct of evolution really contradict the second law of thermodynamics? If yes, then there is a contradiction between biology and physics. That is a scientific problem par excellence, and it needs to be solved scientifically. Then one of those laws is not correct. I don’t want to claim that those laws are not correct; on the contrary, I use those laws to prove something, so I assume they are correct. Therefore, if there is some problem here with the second law of thermodynamics, that is not a problem in philosophy; it is a problem in physics. And a problem in physics is for physicists to solve. So let them do more research and find what law is in fact correct for our reality, if that one isn’t. Therefore I’m not trying to claim that this law is wrong; I’m not using the law. It’s not relevant. God is not supposed to solve scientific problems for me. If I have scientific problems, I need to do more research and try to solve them. Maybe we’ll succeed and maybe we won’t, but God doesn’t play on that field. He doesn’t come to solve scientific problems for us.

Therefore I will also make a distinction—later as well—between how the world operates and how the world was created. How the world operates is an ongoing process; how the world was created is a one-time event, where the laws themselves were also created, and there it is not so much a scientific question how it happened. Science describes what happens from that point onward. How exactly that thing happened—that is not a scientific question. Again, I’m not talking specifically about the Big Bang. As far as I’m concerned, before the Big Bang there was another state that created it, so I’m talking about that one. What created the whole story—not what goes on inside it. What goes on inside it is the concern of science, but what is the framework within which this whole story unfolds—that is not a scientific question. Therefore here I think this is not a scientific gap but a logical gap. And therefore I think the argument in favor of the existence of God from the force of that gap is indeed an argument I’m willing to hold.

Now I want to move to a few first reflections on this argument, to show you that in certain respects it is very similar to the cosmological argument. That’s also why I introduced the cosmological argument first. A first claim, for example, which often comes up in this context: who says you’ve proved the existence of God this way? Maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world. How do you get from here to God? This argument is of course a misunderstanding, because I’ve already said this several times. The physico-theological argument proves the existence of something that is responsible for the complex world that exists here. Who that something is and what his name is—for all I care, call him Yankele. I call him God, but that’s not what matters—it’s a name. Therefore, if you call him the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I have no problem with that. Call him whatever you want, as long as we reach the conclusion that there exists some entity that created this world, that is responsible for the existence of this world. And if you agree to that, and our dispute is only over what to call it, then why should I care? But the argument that says there is such a thing is not harmed by this counterclaim. It says nothing. Right—it’s not God, it’s his cousin who was also called God, yes, like Shakespeare. Right, so what difference does it make? Fine. I say that every such argument assumes a certain definition of the concept of God. The definition of God here is not the God who gave the Torah at Sinai, or judges us, or judges our deeds, and all those things—that’s the religious God. We’ll get to Him at the end of the road, I hope. But the God I’m talking about here is God in a very abstract philosophical sense, very stripped down, that doesn’t get into all the religious definitions. An entity responsible for the existence of the complex universe we know here, including the life within it and so on. That’s all. What you call this entity—call it whatever you want. Therefore this challenge is simply a misunderstanding.

Rabbi, Rabbi—is it that He created the world, or that He sustains the world? There’s a difference. Created it, because the moment He created it He also sustains it, since He created it with these specific laws, and the laws ensure that it continues to exist as it does. But I’ll get to that point too. Because we might say the world was not created, and then we won’t be able to speak of a creator; we’ll have to speak of something else. About that too I said in the cosmological argument that these are basically arguments that repeat themselves. I’ll get to that too.

The second challenge, which is a cousin of the first, says: yes, but who says there is one? Maybe there are four, or 17, or minus pi. I don’t know. Meaning: who says that—again, it’s the same mistake. Fine, let there be four. What do I care? I’m not talking right now about any specific characteristic of that entity or those entities. I’m only claiming that there must be something like this that is responsible for the existence of the complex world we know. Is it one, four, minus pi, or a complex number—what do I care? I’m not getting into that. As long as we agree that something like that exists—or they exist. Afterwards one can argue that there is Ockham’s razor, and if you proved that one exists, why assume that three exist? Fine, I don’t care. I’m also not all that sure there’s a difference between one and three. How do you define what one God is and what three are? It may be that the three together are what I call God. So He has three parts—so what? It’s not even clear that the difference between one and three is well defined. Fine—three that together create the world, that triad, yes, it already sounds like Christian formulations, that triad is what is called God. So what do I care? I’m not getting into His characteristics right now. Therefore I say this is really a cousin of the previous objection, and it also came up in the cosmological argument, and I’ll answer it in the same way. I basically want to claim that I’m saying nothing about that God whose existence I have proved, apart from the fact that He exists.

Some say: maybe the first link in the chain is the laws of nature, maybe they created the world. And to that, again, I answer as I already did: who created the laws of nature? They are not entities. The laws of nature describe how nature works, so what does it mean to say the laws of nature created the world? Something that is not an entity cannot create anything. Someone who is an entity can create things and do so through, or by means of, laws of nature. The laws of nature describe how He acts. And the laws of nature are not entities. And if you tell me they are entities, then I have no problem—that’s the God whose existence I proved. I said I’m not getting into the question of the nature of this God, apart from the fact that such an entity exists. That’s the whole story.

Rabbi, I didn’t understand. Did the Rabbi say he accepts that there could also be two entities? Or I didn’t understand what the Rabbi’s position was about one entity versus several entities. What? I can’t hear you, you’re cutting out. I didn’t understand what the Rabbi’s position was regarding those who say: who told you this is one entity? Maybe it’s several entities that created things. I said nobody told me; maybe it is several. That’s already the concern of religion, or the concern of other people, I don’t know what. This argument cannot take me beyond what I said: that something exists—or several somethings or whatever—that is responsible for the complex universe before me. Is it one, four? Is it infinite, not infinite? Did it give the Torah? What does it want from us? All those are questions that do not touch this argument. That’s another argument. For all I care, call it the Flying Spaghetti Monster and her cousin. Together they played in the sand one morning and created the world. Fine, I don’t care. But there is something—or several somethings—that are responsible for the existence of this world.

And part of the definition is that it has will? Right. Again, what does “definition” mean? I think it is indeed important here that it is not plausible that this entity is something mechanical. Because if it were something mechanical, then basically there is a machine that created the world, and again I will ask myself: who created the machine? But again, here this already becomes a subtler question. I have a strong intuitive sense about this, because what does it mean? If you say it is a mechanical thing, then basically the question retreats one step back and I remain with the same problem. You’re basically telling me there is a mechanical mechanism that created the world, so that mechanical mechanism is part of the same world I’m talking about—it’s just the previous phase. So what do I care? I’m looking for something of a different kind, something that makes decisions ex nihilo, and that itself does not require explanations, as I said in the cosmological argument, to explain it. Okay? Something that begins the chain of regress so that it won’t be infinite. Everything I said in the cosmological argument I now spare myself from repeating here. Everything I said there is basically true here as well. The claim is essentially, as I said there, that the alternative to this assumption is that there is an infinite chain here, an infinite regress, and that is a failure. Therefore there must be, somewhere in this chain, a link that is the first link, one that does not need earlier links before it to make it up. Otherwise the chain is infinite; it is an infinite regress.

Another objection speaks of begging the question. They raise another refutation: you are really begging the question. You say that every complex thing must have a composer, so implicitly you assumed the existence of God. Which is of course true; every logical argument begs the question. We discussed this when we talked about the ontological proof. But begging the question is not an accusation, contrary to what many people think. Begging the question simply means that this argument is a logically valid argument. And now what I have to ask you is: do you agree that a complex thing must have a composer? If you do not agree, then say you do not agree. Why do I care whether it begs the question or not? If you agree with that premise, then you also have to accept the conclusion I offer, that there is God. If you don’t agree with that premise, then let’s argue about it. But what difference does it make whether it begs the question or not? Now I think everyone, in his own reason, understands that a complex thing does not arise by itself. Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, everything I talked about earlier. But if someone says, I don’t accept that, then I have nothing to say to him. Fine, so be it.

The point is that very often in these debates, when atheists are pushed into a corner, you suddenly see that little by little they shed from themselves all the principles of rational thinking. They give up causality, they give up probability, they give up everything—everything—just so there won’t be God. So as far as I’m concerned, if adopting rational thought leads to the claim that God exists, I rest my case. And whoever wants not to believe in God must be an irrational person. If I’ve proved that, I’m set; I have no problem. I cannot argue with irrationality. What I can show is that not believing in God means being irrational. That’s what I can show. If someone tells me, look, I don’t mind being irrational—fine, be healthy. It’s a little strange when these statements come from someone speaking in the name of science and rationality, and accusing believers of departing from rationality. And then, in order to ground his own rationality, he says: maybe the principle of causality is not true, and probability—it may be this happened by chance even though there is no chance it happened by chance. Suddenly everything is possible. All rational thinking is thrown in the trash just in order not to adopt the existence of God.

Now this leads me to the next refutation, because that same atheist will tell me—these refutations are almost built one on top of the other—that same atheist will now tell me: yes, but as an alternative, you’re right that it’s really implausible that this world came into being by itself, this complex world came into being by itself. But the alternative—that there is God—is even less plausible. Whenever you examine your alternative, it isn’t enough to show that it’s implausible. The question is whether the second alternative is more plausible. Right? Just as Peres used to ask: what is their alternative? Right, of the right wing. And the answer was: there isn’t one. There is no alternative. And if there is no alternative, or the alternative is worse, that doesn’t mean I’m supposed to adopt your less-bad alternative, because it too is bad. It may be that one should do nothing. So often when we make decisions, it’s enough for people to show us that this option is not good or not plausible, and automatically you’re supposed to accept the second option. You forget that you have to check whether the second option improves your situation.

Therefore many people raise in this context the refutation: you are right that it is implausible that this world was created by chance, but in my eyes it is also implausible that there is God—even less plausible. Therefore I prefer the first option over the second. But that too is a mistake. A big mistake. Because I haven’t said anything about the concept of God. I’ll formulate it differently now. Not whether there is or isn’t God. Was this world created by itself, on its own, randomly, or was it created by something? Let’s not call it God, because that biases the discourse. Fine? Was it created by itself or not by itself? Now here there are two possibilities. If the probability of the first is p, the probability of the second is one minus p. There is no third possibility. Either something created it or nothing created it, right? There is no third possibility. Now I don’t know how to assess the probability of the existence of God. But I can assess the plausibility—not probability, but plausibility—that a world this complex arose spontaneously. Very small. Consequently the chance of the existence of God is one minus that small thing. That’s almost one.

Rabbi, Rabbi—but does that atheist even admit that the world was created? Because he can claim that the Rabbi has to prove that the world was created. Maybe the world wasn’t created at all. I already talked about that. I also spoke about it in the cosmological argument. There’s the Big Bang and infinite regress. So many things that came up there also come up here. I’m not repeating all of them; I’m returning only to the nuances that are renewed in this argument. I’m saying he can say that he believes in all the laws, only that it was never created; it always existed, and that’s that. I understand, I understand. So I mentioned that a little in the cosmological argument, and I’ll get to it here too, later. In just a moment.

One more thing. I once asked—actually two things. One, is this similar to the anthropic principle? And two, physicists talk about the multiverse. There are other possibilities. It depends on the person. I’ve read books that say the likelihood of God is so tiny that I’m willing to accept the multiverse; it’s more plausible. And then go argue what is more plausible and what is less plausible. So I’ll get to the multiverse arguments and the anthropic principle. I’ll get there after we talk about evolution, and I’ll show there why I think it’s nonsense. But slowly, because I still need a few more steps here along the way.

Yes, but just one second—regarding this argument that people repeat forever: take a watch that was taken apart, put all the parts in, shake it for an hour, ten hours, and suddenly it will assemble itself and start working? That’s the physico-theological argument. This much-maligned argument. Right, but that argument has two problems. First of all, we’re not talking about standing there for ten minutes and shaking it, or ten hours. We’re talking about shaking it for seventy million years, and then maybe something will happen. Second, what is the assumption here? That through this shaking it suddenly becomes perfect? What perfect? A state was produced that we call existence—it is not perfect. This world is not perfect; it has a thousand flaws. Some situation was created that seems perfect in our eyes because we live it, we were born into it. But who said? You’re getting into arguments that I’ll discuss in great detail later on. I’ll address all of these things. I just need a little more groundwork before that. Okay? I promise I’ll address all those arguments. You can also find it in the book, so there’s some backup for the promise. In any case I’ll get there. These are questions that definitely arise in this context, but I want to get to them at the stage where I get there.

Basically the claim is what Sherlock Holmes says in The Sign of Four; Conan Doyle says in The Sign of Four. Sherlock says to Watson: after you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—is probably the truth. Meaning, if you have two options that both seem improbable to you, but one of them you can calculate and show its probability, then the other is one minus that probability. And once you have two possibilities—either something created this or nothing created it—and the claim that nothing created it is implausible, then one minus the probability of that is the probability that something created it. That’s all. To say that the existence of God is implausible in my eyes, and therefore I prefer the first option—that is begging the question at its finest. Right? Apropos atheists, who always accuse creationists of their own fallacies, which they themselves fall into much more strongly. They beg the question. They basically assume that God is implausible and therefore adopt a very irrational claim. Don’t assume that, because you have no access to know that. By contrast, the coming-into-being of a complex thing is something science has something to say about. I can assess that probability—not calculate it exactly, that’s very complicated—but assess that this thing is extremely, extremely implausible. And if so, then the second alternative is one minus that probability. That is the more correct way to deal with the plausibility of the existence of God, not to go straight and say no, the existence of God is implausible, therefore I’ll adopt the second path. Why is it implausible? How do you know? Have you ever met Him? No. Does the fact that you haven’t met Him prove something? On what basis do you determine that? Here there is probabilistic or plausibility-based reasoning—I’m careful, not actual probability, there isn’t really a sample space here—but there are considerations of plausibility that we can learn from our experience, from our reason. Regarding the existence of God, in my eyes it is a result: one minus p is the chance of the existence of God. To assume in advance the chance of the existence of God—that is begging the question at its finest. Therefore I think this objection too is an objection that simply doesn’t hold water.

I want to get to—I detailed more such points in the book, but I want to get to one more point. Yes, one more claim. This one I still want to manage to get to. There is a physicist at Tel Aviv University, an aggressive atheist, named Eli Leibowitz. He is the son of—of course—not the grandson. Right, sorry, correct. And he wrote an article, one of his articles, that discusses the physico-theological proof, and he says this: “The main weakness of the intelligent designer idea lies in the fact that one cannot see in it any explanation at all for the phenomenon it purports to explain. The central argument at its base can be presented as follows: no sane person would think that the marvelous paintings Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were created as the result of random processes without intention and without intelligence, and likewise regarding the F-16”—right, that’s Fred Hoyle’s formulation—“all the more so that such an explanation is required for biological systems in the world, whose complexity is incomparably greater,” or whose entropy is smaller. “However, this achievement is based on a ridiculous a fortiori argument. The idea that an intelligent creature 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 aircraft itself. The thought that an intelligent human hand created the Sistine Chapel does indeed explain the paintings, only because we have prior knowledge of the existence of beings capable of planning and carrying out such paintings. Regarding the natural world and the universe, we have no prior knowledge of the existence of an intelligence capable of designing it. 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 result of it.”

He is basically saying two things here, though he doesn’t feel that he is saying two different things. One thing he says is: this is not an explanation. You take something familiar and understandable to me, the world, and explain it by means of something unfamiliar and unintelligible that you invented ad hoc. So in what sense is that an explanation? “You suspend something stated in an explicit source on something not stated”—to use the language of the Talmud. Right, you hang something clearly taught in one source on something that has absolutely no source, that has no source at all. That can’t count as an explanation. An explanation is to explain something not understood by means of something that is understood. But to explain our world, which after all is familiar to us and understandable to us, by means of God, who is not familiar and not understandable to us—that isn’t an explanation. That’s one. And two, he says: explanations of this sort count as explanations only in a place where I know of the existence of God independently. For example, when I see an airplane, and I know there are airplane engineers in the world, then I say: this airplane probably didn’t create itself; there was an engineer who created it. Or there are painters in the world, so the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel were probably created by a painter and not by themselves. But that’s all because I know about the existence of painters and airplane engineers independently. And then I’m basically—continuing what he said before—then I am explaining by means of something that really is understood and familiar to me. Therefore that can count as an explanation. But to explain the world through God is not an explanation.

Now he makes two mistakes here. Both of his claims are actually two major mistakes. And this is just a mistake—not even something one can really debate. He is simply wrong. His first mistake, and it recurs in many of these objections, is that people say: this is not an explanation. Because you take something understood, the familiar and comprehensible—the world—and explain it with something unfamiliar that you invent ad hoc just in order to explain it. So first of all, my claim is that the physico-theological argument does not purport to be an explanation. I am not coming to explain the world; I am proving the existence of God. True, this is not an explanation. It doesn’t make the world more understandable. But still, do you agree that a complex thing does not arise on its own? That proves there is something that created it. I prove a claim; I do not explain. The existence of the world is not the claim I’m trying to explain. It is a premise in an argument meant to prove the conclusion that there is God. The conclusion that there is God is not meant to explain the premise. On the contrary: the premise is a premise whose role is to prove the truth of the conclusion. He simply does not understand correctly the meaning of the argument. The argument does not come to explain the world; it comes to prove the existence of God. Whether it explains things to you or not is your problem. It doesn’t interest me. The question is whether the argument is right or not. Is it possible that this world came into being without a creator? By chance? With very low probability. So that means there is a creator. Period. Whether that gives you an explanation or not—what does it matter?

Take an example. Piglet—my favorite example—Winnie-the-Pooh is walking along the beach and sees footprints there. Fine? He says: wow, someone apparently stepped on the sand and left those footprints. And then he assumes there was some huge elephant or I don’t know exactly which imaginary creature he invents there, some creature that was there and probably made those footprints. Is that an explanation for the footprints? You could say yes, you could say no, because we don’t know that creature; we invented it ad hoc in order to explain the footprints. Does that mean the alternative—that these footprints were formed without that creature—is more logical? Of course not. If there are footprints, someone apparently passed here. I don’t know who it was or what he looked like—I know nothing—but I can infer that someone passed here. Even if you want to say that this doesn’t explain, then it doesn’t explain. What do I care? There is also an explanatory dimension to it, but never mind that right now. So it doesn’t explain, because I don’t know that creature, I don’t know who he is, so I’m not willing to call it an explanation. Fine, don’t call it an explanation. I’m asking whether this creature exists, not whether it explains the footprints to you. And the answer is yes. Because footprints do not form without someone making them. Therefore this is simply a misunderstanding.

When you say “explains the world,” do you mean “gives us information about the nature of the world”? That is probably what he means. I don’t mean that. In a moment I’ll explain—I’ll explain it more fully. The second point where he is mistaken is that he ignores—and for a scientist this is even more surprising—the fact that in science there are two kinds of explanations. He assumes that explanation always means what is called reduction to the familiar. Right? You take something not understood, explain it by means of principles that are familiar and understandable, and then you have found an explanation. That’s what’s called explanation. Usually if you ask a person what it means to explain something, they’ll say: something I don’t understand—if someone comes with principles that are familiar and understandable to me and uses them to explain the unexplained phenomenon, that’s called an explanation. But one must note that at the central stations of science, explanation goes in the opposite direction. For example, when Newton found the law of gravitation, he in fact took a collection of phenomena that we all knew and understood well—bodies falling to earth, tides, the motions of the planets; these are phenomena familiar to us—and he invented a theory, a law of gravitation, a gravitational force, that explains all these phenomena. Is that an explanation according to Eli Leibowitz or not? After all, you take something you invented—nobody ever saw the force of gravity—and you explain through it the phenomena of attraction between bodies. Is that an explanation or not? The answer is yes. There are two types of explanation in science: there is explanation as reduction to the familiar, and explanation as reduction to the unfamiliar. Two kinds of explanation.

You can connect this to what Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher and sociologist of science, divided into two kinds of periods in the scientific process. There is a period of normal science, standard science, and there is a period of paradigmatic crisis. What does that mean? Suppose we have a theory that works well; it succeeds in explaining all the phenomena, everything is fine. But slowly phenomena accumulate that the theory fails to explain. One phenomenon—it explains a thousand other phenomena, so it is probably strong, so maybe here I didn’t understand something. A second phenomenon it can’t explain. A third. When I reach fifty phenomena it can’t explain—fifty, it doesn’t matter, some critical threshold—a crisis is created. What happens then? We understand that the known and familiar theory we’ve been using probably has to be replaced. Probably it doesn’t work. What do we do? We search for an alternative paradigm, another paradigm, another theory that will explain the facts, including those fifty that the previous paradigm couldn’t explain. In a period of crisis, we replace paradigms. We do not use the existing paradigm to explain the phenomena; rather, we have to replace the paradigm in order to explain them. What is a paradigm shift? A paradigm shift is explanation by means of reduction to the unfamiliar. I invent a new paradigm, as it were, containing theoretical entities and principles and everything—I invented all of them. And what is their advantage? That they explain the phenomena familiar to me. In what sense do they explain those phenomena? People discussed this—what Hempel called the deductive-nomological model. That is, scientific explanation of this kind is an explanation where, if you see it as a general rule, the particular cases are examples of that rule. They can be deduced from that rule. If that is so, then that rule can serve as an explanation, even though it is invented and we do not know it and we know nothing about it independently except through the facts. In every paradigm crisis, in every situation where science progresses and realizes an existing theory is wrong and replaces it with a new theory, in every such case it is always explanation as reduction to the unfamiliar. When quantum theory was discovered, when electromagnetism was discovered, when gravitation was discovered—every significant step in the history of science is a step of reduction to the unfamiliar. Reduction to the familiar is taking an existing theory and using it to explain a phenomenon you encountered. But that isn’t a scientific discovery, because the theory remained what it was and I use it to explain one fact or another. But when do I replace the theory? When do I discover the theory that later generations will use? That is always a step of reduction to the unfamiliar.

Therefore, if I discovered all kinds of paintings and did not know that painters exist, I would still assume that painters exist even without independent knowledge of painters. Because a complex painting does not arise by itself, on the basis of the physico-theological argument. Therefore I assume that some kind of being exists. I can’t say anything about what it looks like or exactly what abilities are needed for this, but I do know that it didn’t happen by itself. And that is called reduction to the unfamiliar. And now I will, as it were, invent the concept of a painter in order to explain the existence of the paintings. Or I will invent the concept of an aircraft engineer in order to explain the existence of the airplane, or pyramids, or whatever. Right? What he says is simply nonsense. Obviously we often invent unfamiliar things in order to explain the familiar things.

I’ll perhaps finish with a story that I’ve certainly told in other contexts, and maybe here too, about jaundice. There was some fellow in our yeshiva—today he’s a well-known figure—who had jaundice. For about half a year he didn’t come to the yeshiva, in Gush. And a mutual friend of ours went to visit him in the hospital, and came back and told me, utterly astonished: listen, you won’t believe what happened there. They brought some witch-like woman, some young Haredi woman with pigeons. They put them on his navel. The pigeons died one after another. And it turns out that afterward—he came back to the yeshiva. The jaundice passed. Amazing, right? You know these stories about jaundice; these were phenomena that once were very common. Today almost no one uses this anymore, by the way, because apparently it turned out to be nonsense. But never mind. In any case, I went home to my parents and told them: listen, you won’t believe it. This and that happened. Jaundice for half a year, he didn’t come back. They put pigeons on him, they died. Meaning, something happened there and he came back. They drew the bilirubin out of his blood, right? That’s always what they say. Alternative medicine and all these sorts of creatures always have mechanistic explanations for how the business works. That always amuses me—the issue of energy lines that pass from here to there and all that nonsense. Maybe they have good intuition, but spare me the explanation. These explanations are some kind of attempt to scientize your field. So no explanations—just tell me what your intuition says.

In any case, I told this to my parents. My parents clapped their hands and said: what are they doing to him in that dark yeshiva, ruining his mind? Because this is Gush, right? Ruining his mind. What kind of conservative fossils are these? Where is scientific thinking? Where is rationality? So I said to my parents: listen, I don’t know. To me rationality means something else. Meaning, if someone I regard as a reliable person comes and tells me about some fact, and it doesn’t fit with what I know until now about the world, I have two options: either say he’s talking nonsense, or examine my worldview and replace the paradigm. Now if rationality were according to your model, then our science today would still be at the level of Adam. Because from Adam onward, every time a new fact appeared before us that didn’t fit the existing paradigm, we would reject the fact. Don’t confuse me with facts. We would say: that can’t be, be rational, stick to the existing paradigm—and today we would still have Adam’s paradigms. Science advances in those places where you see facts that contradict the existing paradigm and say: okay, then apparently this paradigm needs to be reexamined. What is the difference between you and an irrational person? That as a rational person you should search for an alternative scientific explanation, because you do think there is an explanation behind it. But rationality does not mean sticking to what I know today and refusing to hear anything else. That is not rationality. I’m saying healthy suspicion is good. I too have healthy suspicion, I imagine, in these contexts. But at face value, to say that this thing cannot be because it doesn’t fit for me—that’s not rationality. That’s just conservatism.

And basically what Eli Leibowitz is arguing here is a conservative claim. Not a rational claim, but an overtly anti-rational one. He wants to say the world arose by chance because I don’t know anyone else who created it. How are you going to know? Every time I show you that He exists, you say He can’t exist. So therefore I don’t know Him, and if I don’t know Him, then the facts can’t show that He exists. So you can never know Him. Every time I bring you an argument showing He exists, you say that can’t be because right now I think He doesn’t exist. Fine—but that’s exactly why I’m bringing you an argument: to persuade you that you are mistaken. Eli Leibowitz’s rationality is the same rationality as my parents in that story, and it is definitely not a rational attitude.

Yes, but in scientific theories, once, as we said, there is a contradiction with other things, then at some point they drop the theory and say it’s incorrect. Okay. In religious matters—faith and all that—if there is a contradiction, no problem, there’s the concept of pilpul; they come up with explanations of this kind and that kind, things that science would have rejected long ago, but they make them work. First of all, in science there are pilpulim far greater than in theology. But still, there is the test of reality. If it contradicts, then in the end it gets thrown out. I suggest to you: try to find an empirical test that would refute the theory of evolution. If you find one, let me know. Many people have claimed they had one, and they did not succeed. And not, by the way, because evolution is not correct, but because it is necessarily correct. It cannot be refuted. Every explanation that you—do you know Amotz Zahavi’s theory, the Israeli researcher? He asks: why is the peacock so colorful and conspicuous? After all, that goes against all evolutionary logic. He stands out; every predator sees him and pounces immediately. So he says: no, the peacock displays the fact that he is indifferent to your power. Look, see, I am colorful and conspicuous and I’m not afraid of you. And then he will frighten the predators, and all the girls will fall in love with him, and he will produce offspring, and everything will be wonderful. You understand that in this way it is impossible to refute the theory—not because Zahavi is wrong, maybe he’s right—but because that means the theory is not falsifiable. Because whatever you bring, I can always show you, by turning it on its head, that it benefits survival, and therefore that is why it is there. Why? Because if it didn’t benefit survival, it wouldn’t be here. Which is true—I agree—but it’s not falsifiable. Now these pilpulim are no less than the great religious pilpulim. The only difference is that in the scientific world there are things—not all, but some—that are falsifiable. Evolution isn’t, but there are things that are. In the theological world, no. And the scientific status of the physico-theological claim—that will be the topic with which I open next time.

Alternatively—and alternatively—I recently came across an old topic, but happened to encounter it recently. A person brings up the issue of kosher signs in animals and birds. He says, he brings the signs of split hooves and scales and all those things, and says: how can it be that three thousand years ago they knew that only these four birds have these characteristics, or only these five mammals, and so on and so on? That would seem to be decisive proof. So why do we say that we need to use plausibility? Here’s proof! About this matter, that there are exceptions, and much has been written about it—that it’s… So that’s it: I don’t understand physiology. So there are contradictions? Are they just talking nonsense? Just talking nonsense? It’s a matter of interpretation. But regarding the camel and the hyrax and all those things, even things explicitly written in the Torah—not only things the Torah says don’t exist—even things the Torah says positive things about, it’s not so simple. Not about the hyrax; about the hare and the camel—there are various things there that don’t exactly match the Torah’s description. It’s a matter of interpretation. I wouldn’t bring proofs from there. I understand.

Good. Rabbi, okay, I… yes. What I understood is that this professor is claiming that the proof of the painter’s existence does not stem from the painting. It does not stem from the painting. We didn’t prove the existence of a painter because of the painting. Therefore, if there is a world, then there is the painter of the world. He is saying something else. He is saying we proved there is a painter. We proved the painting from the painter. Meaning, we knew of the existence of a painter and then proved he painted it. Meaning, we started from the painter and not from the painting. Why? Why? That isn’t true. We started from the painting, which is the world, and arrived at the painter. What do you mean? No, in the case of a painting, in the case of the painter, in reality, in the F-16—did we know of the existence of an F-16 and therefore say there is an engineer? Or did we know there are engineers, and therefore say the F-16 was made by an engineer? What really came first? So I argue that this is not a question of what really came first. Even someone who does not know of the existence of aeronautical engineers, the first time he sees an airplane he will say: apparently there are beings who built it. So it doesn’t matter whether I specifically knew of the existence of aeronautical engineers before I saw an airplane. It’s irrelevant. Because I’m saying: if a person didn’t know they exist, he too would infer that they exist from seeing the airplane. Therefore it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I went through. A person sees a tree, says nobody made it… say just a tree in the forest—he’ll say maybe some person made it. But if he sees a car, he’ll understand that a person made it. What’s the difference? Not necessarily a person. Something. Something. Yes. I don’t know a person or not a person. I’m not saying anything about that something. I am only claiming that something made it. Yes. Okay.

Anyone else? May I just ask one question about— I know it’s a long question and the Rabbi probably wrote about it, so maybe the Rabbi can point me to something he wrote about it. How does the Rabbi answer for himself, in the clearest way for himself, the age of the world and the contradiction with science? Usually when I discuss the question of the age of the world, or factual questions in general, I discuss them with scientific tools, not theological ones. So if scientifically it is very plausible that the world has existed for fourteen and a half billion years, then my assumption is that that is probably the truth. Now how does that fit with the biblical descriptions? There are a hundred thousand possibilities. I don’t know which one is correct, and it doesn’t interest me all that much. The very fact that there are so many possibilities and I have no way to choose among them means it isn’t so interesting. Either the Torah begins from some person who existed six thousand years ago, some particular level of development, and that is what it calls Adam. Or the days of creation each mean a whole era. Or I don’t know what. All of these—you know—have already been ground to dust. I understand, thank you. That the time axis runs at… yes, you know that someone—even Gerald Schroeder, I think—made some calculation. Since in relativity, at the Big Bang the mass of the world was extremely concentrated. All the mass of the world was at one point. So the rate of the flow of time changes drastically compared to a state where the world is spread out. The smaller the density of mass in the world, the slower time flows. Now when you say the world has existed for fourteen and a half billion years, that is intrinsic time. When you translate that into our time, he claimed you get something like six thousand years. Because in the period when the world was denser, time flowed very fast, but in our units of time that amounts to only a few seconds. Therefore I’m not sure he is right, by the way, because even the historical periods we know, where the rate of time was not substantially different from today—from a hundred thousand years ago or a million years ago—which is an evolutionary joke, a cosmological joke, right? A million years is nothing; it’s an instant. Okay? In the last million years, the rate of the flow of time is roughly what we know today. Therefore I don’t see how he got six thousand years in his calculation. But I’m saying there is also such an option that has been proposed. I didn’t read it, so I don’t know the details.

But do you hear? I wanted to ask—earlier when we read Eli Leibowitz’s claims, you compared his second claim to the fact that in science this also happens. For example, Newton saw phenomena we know and tied them to a new concept, gravitational force. But the comparison isn’t so clear to me, because gravitational force really does cover many phenomena and it also gives an explanation of the world. Whereas he doesn’t give an explanation for why the world exists by saying God created it that way. What’s the difference between “why are bodies attracted? Because gravity attracts them” and—yes, but gravity we can apply to additional things. Whereas here in Genesis it is an ad hoc setup. You’re saying it is a scientific claim that can be falsified in a future experiment. This brings me back to the previous question about the scientific status of this claim. I said I’ll open with that next time. You’re right: here it is not falsifiable. I’m not claiming the argument is a scientific argument. I’ll explain that next time. Thank you. Okay.

Something totally, totally unrelated to all this. People talk about whether there are aliens or not. Could it be that this coronavirus is actually an alien? Depends how you define alien. It’s just a definitional question. If you define an alien as DNA without a nucleus or without a nuclear membrane, then maybe it’s an alien. It’s complicated. Fine, so let’s forget it. Good, thank you. Sabbath peace, goodbye.