Faith – Lesson 21

Table of Contents

• The logical assumption behind the second law and the criticism of the “scientific aura”
• Leibowitz’s challenge and the distinction between “grounding in the familiar” and “grounding in the unfamiliar”
• Argument versus explanation, and the claim that “lack of clarity” is irrelevant
• Scientific status, Popper, and the comparison to Newton and unobservable theories
• The law of gravity versus the “force” of gravity, theoretical entities, and gravitons
• The three assumptions, infinite regress, and the position that the assumptions are “indeed scientific”
• Evolution as a challenge to the physico-theological route, and presentation of the mechanism
• Sefer HaIkkarim, resemblance to descriptions of development, and the distinction between description and mechanism
• Evolution and faith: a zero-sum game, the possibility of evolutionary creation, and the definition of complexity
• Mapping the routes of proof to God, and the claim that evolution challenges only one route
• Creationists, “missing stages,” Dawkins, and the God-of-the-gaps argument versus atheist optimism
• The claim that the physico-theological argument is not a “God of the gaps” argument, and postponing that to next time
• Concluding remarks and the question of “footprints” regarding what knowledge can be inferred from the conclusion

Summary

General Overview

The physico-theological argument rests on the assumption that something complex does not come into being without a directing hand, and the second law of thermodynamics and entropy are presented as a formal expression of that logic more than as an independent scientific assumption. The claim is that people tend to “take the name of science in vain” and lean on its aura instead of recognizing that the foundation here is plain common sense. A challenge by Elia Leibowitz is brought, objecting to explanation by means of something unclear, and the response is framed through a distinction between “grounding in the familiar” and “grounding in the unfamiliar” in science, using Thomas Kuhn. It then argues that the argument need not be an “explanation” in the clarifying sense, but rather an argument that derives a conclusion, and it examines the question of scientific status through Popper and falsifiability, comparing this to Newton and to theoretical entities such as gravitons. Evolution is then presented as the focus of the modern debate because it challenges the third assumption, but it is argued that evolution at most undermines only one route out of many for arriving at God, and even then it refutes a proof, not the conclusion itself. It is even suggested that one could argue evolution does not undermine the argument and may even strengthen it. Finally, the lecture criticizes creationist God-of-the-gaps arguments and the symmetrical atheist optimism, and declares that the physico-theological argument does not rely on an empirical gap that may someday be closed, but on an “essential” gap.

The logical assumption behind the second law and the criticism of the “scientific aura”

The argument begins with the assumption that something complex does not arise without a directing hand, and the demonstration through the second law of thermodynamics and entropy leads to the claim that this is a logical assumption and not really a scientific one. The second law is presented as a formal expression of the logical assumption that highly improbable things do not just happen “for no reason,” even if stated that way it sounds banal. The claim is that there is a tendency to take the name of science in vain, because people like to cling to science because of its aura as “all-knowing and always right,” whereas logic has a less glamorous aura even though it is the foundation here as well.

Leibowitz’s challenge and the distinction between “grounding in the familiar” and “grounding in the unfamiliar”

Elia Leibowitz is presented as arguing that you cannot explain something understood on the basis of something not understood, and that inventing something unfamiliar in order to explain familiar things is not really explanatory gain. The response is that in the history of science there are two types of explanation: grounding in the familiar and grounding in the unfamiliar, in the sense of reduction. Thomas Kuhn is cited in order to distinguish between a paradigmatic period, in which an accepted theory explains facts, and a period of crisis, in which a new theory is proposed—such as quantum theory and relativity—as an explanation that is essentially grounding in the unfamiliar. The claim is that every creation of a new scientific theory is by definition grounding in the unfamiliar, and therefore even if inferring God is grounding in the unfamiliar, there is nothing uniquely illegitimate about that.

Argument versus explanation, and the claim that “lack of clarity” is irrelevant

The lecture argues that the physico-theological argument does not necessarily claim to offer an explanation for the existence of the world, but rather derives a conclusion from the existence of the world and its complexity, and the real question is whether the conclusion is correct and follows from the premises. It emphasizes that an argument is the derivation of a conclusion from premises, whereas an explanation is judged also by how much illumination it provides. A conclusion may be true even if it does not make the world clearer, and therefore the objection “this is not an explanation” is irrelevant to an argument whose aim is the validity of the inference.

Scientific status, Popper, and the comparison to Newton and unobservable theories

The existence of God is defined as not being a scientific thesis, because it does not meet Popper’s test of falsifiability, and it is said that one cannot propose a decisive experiment whose failure would refute the thesis. At the same time, the inference from the facts to the conclusion is presented as similar to a scientific achievement of the type of grounding in the unfamiliar, using the example of Newton, who unified tides, the paths of stars, and the fall of bodies under the idea of gravity. The claim is that just as the force of gravity is not seen in direct observation but is accepted because of its success in explaining facts, so too God is proposed as an inference from the complexity and coordination of the world, even though He too is not observed. The difference, it is stressed, is that the theory of gravity yields predictions that can be falsified, whereas the result “God exists” does not stand a direct test of falsification.

The law of gravity versus the “force” of gravity, theoretical entities, and gravitons

A distinction is made between the law of gravity and the claim that a “gravitational force” exists as an entity that produces attraction, and it is said that these are not the same thing. The lecture argues that philosophers of science disagree over whether the force of gravity “really exists” or is just a convenient linguistic fiction, while physicists tend to assume that it exists, among other reasons because they assume there is no “action at a distance.” It is argued that the law of gravity is empirically falsifiable, but the existence of the force as a causal entity apparently is not falsifiable in the same way, because all that is observed is the phenomenon of attraction. Gravitons are mentioned as the particles that carry the force of gravity, and it is said that major efforts and resources are being invested in trying to discover them, but for now there is no empirical way to verify their existence. Even so, an overwhelming majority of physicists would assume that gravitational force exists. From this it is argued that the similarity between scientific inferences to unobserved entities and the physico-theological inference is significant.

The three assumptions, infinite regress, and the position that the assumptions are “indeed scientific”

The argument is formulated in terms of three assumptions: the world exists, the world is complex, and something complex does not come into being without a component that assembles it. The first two are agreed to even by atheists, and the dispute focuses on the third. The lecture argues that the third assumption can be considered scientific, and can even be formulated through the second law of thermodynamics as the claim that order in a system does not increase without some involved factor, with mention of “Maxwell’s demon.” It is argued that even if the conclusion about God is not directly falsifiable, it follows logically from assumptions that have a scientific character, and therefore there is a proximity here to scientific thinking, even though the speaker distances himself from the fundamentalist-creationist sound of that. The question is raised, “Who assembled the assembler?” and the circularity involved, and it is said that the alternative is infinite regress, which cannot be accepted. Therefore one must assume a first link, and it is argued that the world itself cannot serve as that first link because it does not possess independent existence.

Evolution as a challenge to the physico-theological route, and presentation of the mechanism

Evolution is presented as the place where the discussion has been centered for the past 150 years, since 1870 and the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and the debate is located within the physico-theological wing. Within the theological discussion, evolution is said in brief to claim that something complex can arise without an assembler, because Darwin presents a blind and arbitrary mechanism that produces complexity and order without a directing hand. It is emphasized that evolutionary theory rests on a foundation of abiogenesis—the coming into being of life from non-life, or of a protein chain from inanimate matter—and only then do evolutionary processes begin. The evolutionary mechanism is described as a chain of three components: the formation of mutations, natural selection, and heredity, with a distinction between genotype and phenotype and an illustration involving tigers. An analogy is given of houses on the seashore in order to show that without heredity there is no evolutionary “progress.” The process is said to lead to increasing adaptation to environmental conditions and changes, the emergence of new species, and the extinction of earlier ones.

Sefer HaIkkarim, resemblance to descriptions of development, and the distinction between description and mechanism

A passage from Sefer HaIkkarim is brought that describes a process of graduated perfection from deficiency to completion, including examples of coral as an intermediate type between inanimate matter and plant life, sea sponge as an intermediate between plant and animal, and ape as an intermediate between animals and humans. The resemblance to modern debates about “intermediate species” is said to be striking, but it is emphasized that this is not evolution, because the mechanism is missing. The lecture argues that the common mistake is to identify “development” or “progressive perfection” with Darwin, whereas Darwin’s innovation is a blind mechanistic process without teleology and without directionality, unlike Lamarckism, which attributes a striving for perfection and purposiveness. Darwin’s idea is said to seem trivial once stated, but to have required genius to conceive, and its essence is a natural statistical explanation without a directing hand.

Evolution and faith: a zero-sum game, the possibility of evolutionary creation, and the definition of complexity

The lecture argues that it is common both among atheists and among creationists to view evolution as contradicting faith in God, as though this were a zero-sum game that forces a choice, and the speaker claims that this framing is incorrect. It may be that God created the world in such a way that evolution would generate life, and Schneur is cited as saying that he does not understand why evolution contradicts God any more than gravity does, since laws can simply be the way the world is run. A question is raised about the “greater sophistication” of a human being as compared to a tiger, and the reply is that complexity is not a subjective matter but an objective measure via entropy, with life defined as possessing lower entropy and greater order than inanimate matter. At the same time, the difficulty is said to arise from the fact that evolution proposes that a creator is not needed in order for life to emerge, similar to Laplace’s statement, “I had no need of that hypothesis.” Therefore fitting evolution into faith becomes more complicated in the context of creation and not only in the context of natural laws.

Mapping the routes of proof to God, and the claim that evolution challenges only one route

A framework is presented of several philosophical routes to arriving at God, including the ontological, the cosmological, the physico-theological, and a theological route not yet discussed, with each route branching into many versions. The lecture argues that if evolution challenges anything, it challenges only the physico-theological argument, because it attacks the assumption that something complex requires a designer, while the other arguments remain intact. It is further argued that even if this route collapses, that means only that “one path” has been closed, not that it has been proven that there is no God. And even if this were the only route, refuting the proof is not the same as refuting the conclusion, just as a bug in a geometric proof does not prove that the theorem itself is false. It is also stated, with some confidence, that evolution not only does not refute the proof but may even strengthen it, and that the whole debate about evolution and faith is “a storm in a teacup.”

Creationists, “missing stages,” Dawkins, and the God-of-the-gaps argument versus atheist optimism

The lecture describes the creationist claim about “missing stages” or evolutionary leaps as a type of attack on gradualism, set against Dawkins’s metaphor of “lowering the slope” of the improbable mountain. The neo-Darwinian response is described as a God-of-the-gaps claim, according to which one must not use temporary lacunae in scientific understanding as proof of God, because research must continue and the gaps may be closed. The lecture argues that there is an atheist interest in presenting the relationship as a zero-sum game, in which the advance of science shrinks God’s place, and that creationists surrender to this framing when they try to fight science through gaps. It is then argued that the atheist optimism that “the gap will be closed” is itself an unfounded assumption and no better than creationist pessimism. Therefore gap arguments are weak, even if they are not a logical contradiction.

The claim that the physico-theological argument is not a “God of the gaps” argument, and postponing that to next time

The question is raised whether the physico-theological argument itself is a God-of-the-gaps argument, and the answer given is that it is not, because this is a gap that in principle cannot be filled, not merely a lack of information that further research may complete. It is argued that one can already say today that this gap will never be filled, and therefore the methodological problem of the God-of-the-gaps approach does not apply here in the same way. It is then said that clarifying this requires a better understanding of the physico-theological argument, and the detailed discussion is postponed until next time.

Concluding remarks and the question of “footprints” regarding what knowledge can be inferred from the conclusion

At the end, technical guidance is given on how to access the recordings through WhatsApp groups, the website, and YouTube under “Rabbi Michael Abraham Faith.” A question is asked about the image of footprints in the forest and what can be known about the creature that left them, and the answer is that one can infer the size of the foot and things of that sort, but beyond that there is no further essential knowledge, because to assume its existence on the basis of the footprints and then claim that it can leave footprints is tautological. It is argued that this is related to the criticism that one invents God in order to explain the world and then knows about Him only that He created the world, and that this is precisely the issue the speaker claims to have dealt with.

Okay, we’re in the middle of the physico-theological argument, which is based on the main assumption that a complex thing does not come into being without a directing hand. I tried to demonstrate that through the second law of thermodynamics and concepts of entropy, but I said that in the end this is not really a scientific assumption but a logical one. Even the second law of thermodynamics is basically just a formal expression of a logical assumption that says things that are wildly improbable do not just happen on their own. In that formulation it already sounds almost banal, but that really is what lies behind all this. I said there is this tendency to take the name of science in vain. People really love leaning on science because it has this aura of all-knowing and always being right, so if you base yourself on a scientific law then you must be right. Logic and common sense have a less glamorous aura, but in the end it seems to me that this is talking about logic and not specifically about science, or really that science itself in this case is based on a logical consideration.

Then I spoke about the meaning of this argument, about infinite regress. I’m not going to go back over all the refinements I made to it; today I’ll make the final refinement. And I brought up Eliyahu Leibowitz’s objection, where he argues that you cannot explain something intelligible on the basis of something that is itself unintelligible. You can use things familiar to us to explain other things, but if you invent something unfamiliar in order to explain familiar things, then what have you gained? There is no explanation here. So I said that this is not correct, because in the history of science, or in scientific practice, there are two kinds of explanations: explanation by grounding in the familiar, and explanation by grounding in the unfamiliar—grounding, reduction. Meaning, sometimes I explain things on the basis of familiar principles, but sometimes I explain things on the basis of unfamiliar principles. What is the difference between them?

In the language of Thomas Kuhn, as a philosopher or sociologist of science, as he defined himself, he distinguishes between a paradigmatic period and a period of crisis in the conduct of science. When there is a theory that explains the facts well, that is a paradigmatic period; we work within a given paradigm, there is a theory we use, and every case that comes before us we examine within that theory and find one explanation or another. That is work that is fundamentally grounding in the familiar. The theory is familiar, and we use it to explain phenomena.

I gave the example of investigating a plane crash. We investigate a plane crash, we try to look for explanations: there was a crack in the wing, the engine caught fire like happened a few days ago, or things of that kind. We know that phenomena of that sort can cause malfunctions or a crash, and therefore that is called grounding in the familiar. But what happens if I suddenly find a collection of airplanes whose crashes are explained by none of the theories known to us? Then I’ll have to look for something else. Maybe my information is incomplete, or maybe I need to replace my theories or enrich them. In that case I would actually have to look for something unfamiliar in order to explain the phenomena I’m considering.

Basically, in a paradigmatic period, whenever we get into crisis—that is, when there are too many facts the theory cannot cope with—then we wait for a new idea to come along, we propose a new theory: quantum theory, relativity, all of these are results of a paradigmatic crisis. And then once the new theory is proposed, if it explains all the facts better than the previous theory, we adopt it. Now notice that here the explanation is essentially grounding in the unfamiliar, not grounding in the familiar. I take familiar phenomena and explain them on the basis of a theory I’ve just invented—or discovered, if you like, it doesn’t matter—but it is not a theory that was previously familiar to me. That is an explanation that is grounding in the unfamiliar, not grounding in the familiar. And whenever a new scientific theory is created, by definition it is an explanation of the type grounding in the unfamiliar.

Therefore the claim that explaining the existence of the world… of the world by means of God is basically grounding in the unfamiliar—that’s Leibowitz’s claim—and I say: even if you’re right, so what? Every formation of a new scientific theory is an explanation of the type grounding in the unfamiliar. That’s one thing. And second, I said that such a thing does not even pretend to be an explanation. The physico-theological argument does not necessarily offer an explanation for the existence of the world. It draws a conclusion from the existence of the world, and we need to examine whether that conclusion is correct or not. Whether it explains the world or does not explain it—why should I care? In the end, if the world is complex, then I claim that there is something that created it; it did not come into being by itself. If I’m right, then there is such a thing. Does that thing make the world clearer to me, explain it in some way? I have no idea. Maybe not. So what? The question is whether that conclusion is correct.

An argument and an explanation are not the same thing. An argument means taking premises and deriving a conclusion from them, and that has to be evaluated in terms of whether the conclusion is true or false, whether it follows from the premises or does not follow from them. An explanation is not measured only by whether it is true, but also by whether it illuminates. Right? I’m saying: I don’t know, I can offer all kinds of explanations that may be correct explanations, but they do not help me at all; they do not clarify what I am talking about in any way. That does not mean they are not true; it means they are not an explanation. They do not help me clarify the picture. And therefore the claim that there is no explanation here is not relevant. The physico-theological argument does not purport to offer an explanation, but rather to derive a conclusion from the premises. And the question is whether the conclusion follows or not. I think it does.

Now at this point a question came up, and this is where I want to begin today’s meeting. The question was: to what extent is an argument of this kind scientific in character? I’ve already said several times: the existence of God is not a scientific thesis. It is not a scientific thesis because it does not meet the most basic test of scientific theses, namely Popper’s test, the criterion of falsifiability. You cannot put the thesis that God exists to a falsification test. Right? Suggest to me an experiment such that if it succeeds then God exists, and if it does not succeed then God does not exist—a decisive experiment. I can’t think of such an experiment. Not a staged experiment, I mean. If God reveals Himself and everyone sees that He exists, then indeed He exists. So in principle that could happen. But I cannot initiate an experiment where I build something in a lab, carry out some procedure, and the result tells me whether there is or is not. Or mainly whether there is not, because we are talking about a procedure of falsification, not a procedure of proof. We already talked about the fact that science does not prove; science only tries to falsify or corroborate. So this thesis that there is a God is hard to treat as a scientific thesis, because I do not know how to derive from it a prediction that can be checked and that, if it fails, would refute the thesis.

But—and here I want to qualify what I said—the logical move I made is definitely a move similar to a scientific achievement. A scientific achievement of grounding in the unfamiliar. That is, suppose I have a collection of phenomena—tides, the paths of the stars, objects falling to Earth, things like that—and suppose I’m Newton in the eighteenth century. I stand before these phenomena and now I say: wow, I have an idea. There is a force of gravity in the world, and it is what is responsible for all these phenomena which on their face seem unrelated. Before people thought of gravity, nobody thought there was a connection between tides, the paths of the stars, and objects falling to Earth. Newton basically showed that there is a connection among these phenomena through the theory of gravity.

Now the conclusion he drew—he basically took a collection of facts and inferred some theory that explains them or is derived from them—and that is what I was talking about earlier, grounding in the unfamiliar. But this force of gravity is not something Newton could really see, nor can we. Our conviction in the theory of gravity comes from the fact that it explains well the set of facts it is meant to explain. Right? I have no way of seeing the force of gravity. And in that sense, when I propose God as an explanation or as a conclusion from the world’s complexity, from its being planned, coordinated, complex—we said there are various formulations—then how is this different from the force of gravity? In that sense, the inference from the premises or the facts to the theory that explains them, even though that theory is not observable—I cannot see either the force of gravity or God—but if it explains, then for me that is the scientific theory derived from the facts.

The difference, though—and that is why I say there is something here that really is similar to scientific practice—but there is still a difference. I am not retracting: the claim is not a fully scientific claim. True, the logical route we took from the facts to the claim is the same route one also takes in science. That is true. But that doesn’t mean the product is a scientific claim. Because, as I said before, you cannot put the product to a falsification test. The force of gravity, or rather the theory of gravity, you can. The theory about gravity has certain predictions that I can put to a test. And therefore there the product is a falsifiable thesis. So beyond the route by which I got from the facts to the theory—which exists here too, in the divine context—the product that comes out is still different. There the product can, broadly speaking, stand up to a falsification test—one could argue about that too, a bit, but broadly speaking—and here the product does not stand up to a falsification test. Because the existence of God: I don’t know how to do an experiment that would put that to a falsification test.

I want to sharpen one more thing in this example of gravity. In fact, one must distinguish, in the theory of gravity—I think maybe I mentioned this once—between two planes. One plane is the law of gravity: that every two masses attract one another with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them—Newton’s law of gravity. There is another plane that speaks about the force of gravity. I spoke earlier about the law of gravity; now I’m speaking about the force of gravity. What is the force of gravity? The force of gravity is a kind of entity that causes this mutual attraction between bodies.

One could state that there is attraction between bodies without claiming there is a force, and just say: bodies are attracted, and they have something in their nature that causes them to be attracted, I don’t know—bodies with mass are attracted to one another; that is the law of gravity. But when I claim there is a force of gravity, I am basically speaking about a kind of entity, something that exists in the world that produces the phenomenon of attraction, the law of gravity. That is not saying exactly the same thing.

And therefore indeed, at least among philosophers of science—though I don’t know a single physicist who thinks this way—among philosophers of science there is a dispute over whether the force of gravity really exists. Or whether it is a fiction, that it is convenient for us to describe the theory in terms of theoretical entities like the force of gravity, but not that we can really say that such a thing as the force of gravity exists. Physicists, on the other hand, as I said before, it seems to me every one you ask will tell you yes, yes, of course, there is a force of gravity, and it causes the attraction of bodies.

More than that: there is even a common assumption in physics that there is no such thing as action at a distance. Now notice that if there is no force of gravity, then I have two masses a meter apart, let’s say, and they attract one another—but they do so from a distance. When I say there is a force of gravity, I am effectively claiming that there is something that touches the mass itself and pulls it toward the other mass. Meaning, there is something that does not act on it from a distance, but reaches it and takes it. And in that sense this is even a conceptual assumption; it is not just a philosophical question. It is a conceptual assumption in physics, and physicists commonly think there is no such thing as action at a distance. Meaning, there is no such thing as action from a distance; action is always at zero distance. And therefore there is no such thing as a law of gravity without there being a force of gravity, a force of gravity that generates that law, that creates the phenomenon of attraction. I am not just describing; I am also making claims about the existence of something.

Now this is an important point, because the existence of the force of gravity is apparently a thesis that is not falsifiable. The law of gravity is falsifiable. I can check whether there are two masses that do not attract one another with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance. If I found one such case, I would have refuted the law of gravity. That can be put to a falsification test. But how can I verify that there is in the world such a thing as the force of gravity? After all, all I see is the phenomenon of attraction; I cannot see the force. I assume that it exists. You understand that this is already really similar to the argument for the existence of God. I am basically positing the existence of something responsible for the phenomena I observe. That something is not observable; nobody has seen it. Nobody can know that it really exists, and in fact that is why many philosophers claim it does not exist. We only talk about it because it is convenient for us to use that language to describe the law of gravity. It does not really exist. But physicists assume that it does exist.

Not only that—they spend billions of dollars trying nevertheless to do an experiment that will test the existence of the force of gravity, not only the law of gravity. For example, to discover the existence of gravitons. Gravitons are particles that carry the force of gravity, just as a photon carries the electromagnetic force. Now if gravitons are discovered, that would confirm the existence of the force of gravity. So far they have not been discovered. We don’t have—it is a particle that is extremely hard to detect, too weak, its interactions are too weak. At least for now there is really no way to discover whether it exists or not. A lot of effort is being invested in this. As far as I know, at least for now there is still no empirical way to verify it.

And still I would bet that if you take a hundred physicists, more than ninety-nine of them will tell you there is a force of gravity, despite there being no experiment that confirms it. True, theoretically, hypothetically, one can imagine an experiment that might do it once the technology exists, I don’t know, in a hundred years. But right now there isn’t one. So how can you assume it exists? Because my reason tells me that the phenomenon of gravity will not occur if there is no force of gravity that produces it. So how is that different from a proof of the existence of God? My reason tells me that complex phenomena do not exist unless there was some composer that created them. I do not see that creator. In some sense perhaps it gives me no explanation—maybe yes, maybe no, one can argue. What difference does it make? But I assume that without it, if it did not exist, the phenomena I encountered would not have occurred. And therefore I claim that it exists. In that sense this is very similar to scientific inference.

So true, it is not falsifiable, but the thesis about scientific entities is also in principle not falsifiable, unlike scientific laws—scientific forces, sorry, scientific laws. Scientific laws can be checked to see whether they work or do not work. That is certainly falsifiable. But the entities that produce them—assuming that an entity exists, or that there is no entity and only the law just floats there, the law operates but there is nothing that produces it—the difference between those two is not falsifiable, at least for now. And still, in the scientific context people definitely make these inferences or reach these conclusions. Therefore it seems to me that the resemblance between the physico-theological inference and scientific inferences is not insignificant.

I’ll say more than that. The physico-theological inference is based on, you could say, three premises: there is a world; the world is complex—that is the second premise; and the third premise: a complex thing does not come into being without a composer. At any rate, I’m formulating it simply. Those are the three premises. The first two premises are not in dispute. The atheists also agree that there is a world and that the world is complex. The dispute is really over the third premise. Because if the third premise is also true, then the story is over, right? The conclusion follows logically from the premises. So the argument is really over the third premise.

But the third premise—that a complex thing does not arise by itself—you could say that this is indeed a scientific premise. One might even say it is the second law of thermodynamics: the order of a system does not increase unless some factor is involved that creates that order. Right, we talked about this with Maxwell’s demon and all those things. So in this case, true, the result is a claim that maybe is not falsifiable, but that result is a logical conclusion from a valid argument based on three premises, and those three premises are scientific. That there is a world, and that the world is complex, and that a complex thing does not arise without a composer—the second law. So the fact that the conclusion itself cannot be put directly to a falsification test—so what? It follows logically from the premises, and the premises themselves do indeed have a scientific character.

And therefore I’m saying—even this sounds a bit far-reaching, I even feel uncomfortable saying these things, it sounds a bit like creationist fundamentalism. There are all kinds of fundamentalist believers like that. But there is something to it. There is something here that is very, very close to scientific thinking.

Now again, you can say that every complex thing has a composer that created it except for the whole, the totality of the whole world. We may still talk about that; I mentioned it in the context of the cosmological argument. Then you say the third premise is not true in our case. Fine, that can be the dispute—but in every scientific context too. I derived from quantum theory the solution to a square potential well, okay? You say, fine, when the wells are square the theory is different. Someone could come and make that claim. So because of that, is what I am doing not science? It is science, because my assumption is that the premise is general unless it has been shown not to be general. Therefore when I assume that every complex thing is created by a composer, that is the accepted assumption in statistical mechanics, in logic, in probability, in whatever you like. If you say there is some exceptional anomaly, one can argue about that, but you cannot tell me that I’m not working within the scientific framework.

But then I run into the question: okay, so who composed the composer? And this becomes an endless loop. What do I gain from that? We already talked about that question. Right—but let’s return to it. So what is the conclusion here—that there is a composer? When I say we talked about it, I mean we also answered it, not just asked the question. What I said is that the alternative is infinite regress, as in the cosmological argument—which is why I introduced that one first. Now if you do not accept, and I think you cannot accept, infinite regress, then you have to assume that there is some first link in the chain which either always existed or was created without a composer, because otherwise you just run into a fallacy. But that first link is probably not the world itself, because the world itself is not the kind of thing that has independent existence, that does not require other things to compose it, and I spoke about this in previous sessions. Therefore I think the option of infinite regress—and I examined this more in the previous, cosmological argument—but it is true in our context too.

Now I want to continue with the physico-theological argument and get to evolution. Evolution is basically the place where this discussion is located today—or not only today, but for the last 150 years. In 1870 Darwin’s Origin of Species came out, and from then until our own day there has been a fierce debate over the theological implications of the theory of gravity—sorry, of the theory of evolution—and as I’ll explain in a moment, this debate, if we want to locate it, where does it take place, where is it happening? It is happening here, in the physico-theological wing, in the physico-theological track.

But I want to dwell a bit on that point. In fact, evolutionary theory basically tells us, briefly put, that a complex thing can arise without a composer. In short, in a nutshell, that is basically what the claim says. Evolution says many things, but as far as our discussion is concerned, our theological discussion, what really raises the question mark here or provokes the discussion is Darwin’s brilliant invention, where he shows us that there can be an arbitrary, blind mechanism, without any guiding hand, that produces a reality that is increasingly complex and ordered, blindly, without someone planning it and creating it. Okay? That is basically the claim. Or in other words, it attacks the third premise of the physico-theological argument—that a complex thing cannot arise by itself, it needs something to create it. That’s the big picture.

Now what exactly does this say? I’ll describe it briefly for those who are not familiar; some here are. First of all, the theory of evolution does not stand on its own. Before we got to stages of evolution, we already had to have some protein chain, some DNA capable of replicating, undergoing mutations, and so on. So first there is abiogenesis. Abiogenesis means the formation of life from non-life, or the formation of a protein chain from inanimate matter. Okay? That is the first stage, and it is not connected to evolution; it is the infrastructure on which evolution is built.

After there is a protein chain, now evolutionary processes begin. What are evolutionary processes? The Big Bang created inanimate matter. Inanimate matter went through billions of years, however many, and at some point there was abiogenesis, meaning biology came into being, living matter came into being, let’s call it that. Those are processes people are working on today; it is not yet entirely clear whether and how this is possible, but there are already initial directions for how living matter could arise from non-living matter. And then, after the first protein chain was formed, evolution begins.

In principle this is a process made up of three basic building blocks. One building block is the formation of mutations. That is, once I have a protein chain, it can replicate itself, and therefore more protein chains are formed, but there are differences among the protein chains—small differences, but there are differences. For the purposes of our discussion, that is what is called mutations. That happens in all sorts of ways, by the way, not only mutations—that is just one name—but I am using the word mutations here to describe all the phenomena that create protein chains that are not identical to the original chain.

Okay, so now we have a collection of various variations of the original protein chain—of course this is true for every chain, but let’s focus on one. Now these mutations, of course—there is genotype and phenotype. The genotype is the protein chain or the DNA, and the phenotype is the organism that this DNA is responsible for, or creates, or expresses. The phenotype is an expression of the genotype. So in effect, a certain tiger has a certain DNA, a certain genotype, and the phenotype is the tiger, okay? The organism these genes created. A tiger with a different genotype will be a slightly different tiger: taller, shorter, a different color, I don’t know, stronger, weaker, and so on. Okay? So there is always a relation between genotype and phenotype.

The mutations create different genotypes, different protein chains, different DNA, and as a result of that of course also different phenotypes. There are tigers of different kinds. Now that is the first stage, the formation of mutations. The second building block is a process of natural selection. Natural selection means that all these tigers that were created here have to survive. They have to struggle, perhaps against one another, perhaps against circumstances or constraints in the environment. They have to obtain food, defend themselves from threats—threats from other animals, or from weather, or all kinds of things like that. This presents them with survival challenges. Some of them will survive; others will not. Those not equipped with the tools that allow adaptation to the environment will not survive. Those who survive are those equipped with the tools that enable them to deal with the constraints.

So the second component is what is called natural selection, and it is a process of selection: you pick out some of the genotypes or phenotypes I described earlier, and others die out, go extinct, because they cannot withstand the struggle of natural selection, the struggle with circumstances.

But that is not enough. You also need a third component, and that is heredity. Why? Think, for example, of a collection of houses on a seashore, okay? All kinds of houses built in different ways from different materials and so on. Now some tsunami comes, a storm, the sea floods the coast. Some of the houses—those not built properly—are destroyed, and there are houses that survive because they were built strongly. By the way, what is strong? Strong is always relative to threats. On the coast in a place with strong storms, sometimes Japanese-style houses made of paper are actually stronger. Strong means suited to the constraints of the environment, not necessarily stronger in the sense of exerting more force. Fine, that is what I call stronger or fitter, more suited if you like.

So some of the houses remain because they were fitter to deal with the tsunami. Is that a process of evolution? There are mutations here—different houses. There is natural selection—some houses went extinct, some did not. But the third component is missing: genetics. Since houses are not living creatures, they do not produce offspring houses that look like them. Therefore at some stage these houses too will decay and disappear, and now people will have to build new houses, and the process will start over. There will be no progress over time—unless the people draw conclusions and build the houses according to the rules they infer from what happened. They will see that these houses are stronger, so the new houses they build will also be like that. Fine. That means the people are making the adaptation. But there has to be some process of heredity, because otherwise there is no evolution.

And the tigers that remain after surviving produce other tigers, and the other tigers they produce are already equipped with tools suited for survival here. And therefore that survivability will be preserved. Then what will happen is that the next tigers will begin the process again. There will be mutations, there will be new constraints they have to cope with, those constraints will impose natural selection, and the even more refined tigers will produce offspring that now have the more refined genotype, and so on, and that is how it continues.

So life basically becomes more and more sophisticated, more and more adapted, increasingly better suited to environmental conditions. It may also be that creatures become more intelligent, smarter, because intelligence too is a survival instrument. And therefore evolution, the theory of evolution, which again in a very simplified form includes these three components—or chains in which each link is made up of these three components: mutation formation, natural selection, heredity. And again: mutation formation, natural selection, heredity, and so on, from the first protein chain until our own day and beyond. And that is how life constantly becomes more sophisticated and develops, creatures change, new creatures are formed, previous creatures go extinct, and so on. That process continues all the time. That is basically the evolutionary picture in a nutshell.

What does this mean for our discussion? By the way, this is a very interesting point. In the Sefer Ha-Ikkarim there is a passage that really describes these things. Not that I claim Rabbi Yosef Albo knew evolution, okay? But it is interesting to read it. Look here—this is from my book: “And when we examined the matter of the forms found in matter and in all the lower beings that come into being, we found them all proceeding along a path of perfection from some to others, meaning that the later form is more distinguished than those preceding it.” There is a process of refinement here. “And it is as though matter is always moving toward receiving forms from the level of deficiency to the level of perfection. For first it receives a lesser form and after that a more distinguished form, and it rises step by step to the more perfect.” Then he continues here, “And just as in one motion every part is for the sake of the next part, so it appears that such is the case with the lower beings that come into being, that every part is for the sake of the next part. Existence rises step by step until at last it rises to the human form. And what indicates that matter always moves from deficient existence to perfect existence according to the degree of refinement of the mixtures, is what is found in coral, which is like an intermediate between the inanimate and the plant, and the sea sponge, which has only the sense of feeling and is like an intermediate between the plant and the animal. And the ape is like an intermediate between the animal species and the human species.”

Look how similar this is to what we think today. Really, the whole debate with creationists about transitional forms and the gaps—it is amazing how many of the components of the modern debate are found in Albo’s text. But one thing is not here: evolution. There is no evolution here. It is the mechanism. Let’s be careful about that point. People always love discovering evolution in the Torah through letter skips, or in Rabbi Yosef Albo, in the Talmud, or even in Rabbi Kook. But there is no evolution there in any of those places. Because evolution is not merely saying that things became more sophisticated. That is written in Genesis, right? On the first day this, on the second day the inanimate, the plant, the animal, the speaking being. So yes, we see that things become more perfected. That is not what evolution says. Evolution is proposing a mechanism that explains the process of refinement. How can such a thing happen? And unfortunately or fortunately, it explains it without needing a guiding hand. And that is the focal point. In this respect I think Rabbi Yosef Albo neither thought this nor would he certainly have agreed if he had heard it.

So many times we see descriptions like these that seem to us like evolution. It is not evolution. Evolution is the theory that explains how this business happens. For example, alongside Darwin there was Lamarck. And to this day there are still people who hold by Lamarckism, and there are even updated versions—Hablanka I assume, and by that I mean Yossi Laor—there are those who even bring this into contemporary evolutionary theory. What is Lamarckism? Lamarckism is sort of like evolution; everything in Sefer Ha-Ikkarim could fit Lamarckism too. Only Lamarckism claims there is purposiveness here. That is, matter aspires—or creatures aspire—to become more and more perfected. Okay? That is the opposite of Darwin. Darwin’s whole idea came precisely to reject Lamarckism, Lamarck. What does that mean? It means the process does not strive anywhere. There are no aspirations here, no tendencies, no purpose, no teleology. Everything is viewed causally. That is Darwin’s great innovation.

If you look at the process I described earlier with the tigers, there is no prior plan here by which this whole business is becoming more sophisticated and striving to be more. Things simply happen as they happen, and what survives is what is more sophisticated, or what is more adaptive. And therefore in the end the whole business becomes more sophisticated, but not because the system has some property of turning into something more sophisticated. There is no such property. The system goes in all directions; only the less sophisticated directions go extinct, and what remains are the sophisticated directions. Darwin’s whole idea is exactly this point. Therefore identifying it with the refinement of the species is simply nonsense; it misses the whole point of the discussion. The whole point, all of Darwin’s innovation, is not that the species became more sophisticated, that reality, existence, rises as Rabbi Kook says. That is not Darwin. That is nonsense. Not that it is nonsense—it is true—but there is no reason to connect that to Darwin. Darwin is the claim that this thing happens without a guiding hand. That is Darwin. That it happens without there being a prior plan or tendency, as Lamarck thought or as others think, in order for it to happen. No. It happens simply because every natural system will do this one way or another, which is very surprising. It is a brilliant idea, Darwin’s idea. After he said it, it seems completely trivial, but to think of it was genius. Sometimes there are ideas that are trivial once stated, but to come up with them you have to be a genius.

And his idea is not that reality becomes more sophisticated, but that there is a mechanistic, natural, blind, arbitrary, statistical explanation, without a guiding hand, for the refinement of reality. That is the point Darwin introduced.

I’ll maybe get to… But even for him you started with the Big Bang and then the tiniest thing was created, so he doesn’t explain the Big Bang? No, obviously not. That is why I said Darwin deals only with the part of history in which life already exists and life becomes more sophisticated. Before that there is the Big Bang, abiogenesis, then physics, then a transition through physics and chemistry into biology, and then there is life. So he didn’t answer your question that there was still someone who composed it from the start. Right, that’s coming in a moment. Right now I’m just describing the picture; I’m not even yet discussing the debate itself, the arguments and counterarguments. First let’s just understand the picture before us. The picture before us is basically a summary of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution. Okay? The whole picture: the Big Bang is physics, billions of years until abiogenesis arrives and biology comes into being, protein chains or DNA come into being, and evolution, and basically the formation of all the diversity of life. Okay? That is the picture, or the natural description, of the formation of the world and life.

Now let’s try to see what this means for our discussion, how radical what I’m saying really is. Let’s see what the arguments are, what the counterarguments are, what this is supposed to do. It is commonly thought—and this is common both among atheists and among creationists—that evolution contradicts belief in God. Therefore it is a zero-sum game: you have to decide, either you accept evolution or you believe in God. Creationists believe in God and therefore reject evolution. Neo-Darwinians, atheists, believe in evolution and therefore throw out belief in God. But one side is accepted by both sides: that you cannot hold both together. You have to choose. The debate is over what to choose. Okay? That is why this often looks like a debate between rational thought and, let’s call it, mystical or religious thought. Rational thought adopts the scientific hypothesis and the scientific description. And those who adopt the religious hypothesis deny science; they are not rational. So in the debate between rational and non-rational, at least from my perspective, the rational side wins. From the perspective of most of the world, probably not, unfortunately. But in this debate it really often appears that way; that is how the debate is often presented. And therefore in that debate the believer loses by definition, because he is presented as a non-rational creature. That is simply an incorrect presentation of the picture.

The game is not zero-sum. In principle, first of all, at the simplest level, it could be that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world by means of an evolutionary process. He created the world such that evolution would produce life up to the human being and beyond—maybe after us there will even be more sophisticated beings. That is how He chose to create the world. Does the fact that you discovered the process of evolution contradict the existence of God? As my friend Nadav Shnayer once said, he doesn’t understand why evolution contradicts the existence of God any more than gravity does. The fact that there are laws in the world is true, but when I say there is a God I mean that God is the one who created the world, or the laws. Now how does the world operate? It operates with laws—gravity, evolution, biology, whatever you want. Why should that…

A question? Yes. Who said that we human beings are even sophisticated creatures? Who said we are more sophisticated than a tiger? They are stronger than we are. So I addressed this in previous sessions. The claim is that the definition of complexity is not in the eye of the beholder, contrary to what you’ll find on all sorts of atheist websites; that’s nonsense. Complexity has a mathematical, scientific, objective definition, and that is entropy. I explained and defined the concept of entropy there. Entropy is a measure of complexity. Low entropy means high complexity; that is basically order. Okay? High entropy—and therefore it has objective measures. And the second law of thermodynamics is a scientific law, meaning a law in physics. If it speaks in terms of entropy, that means the concept of entropy has a basis in objective reality. It is not just how I look at things. Otherwise the way I look at things would not be able to establish laws in physics.

Now life, in the most objective definition there is, consists of things with very low entropy, meaning very high order, things much more complex than inanimate objects. And that is a scientific definition. It has nothing to do with the debate between atheists and believers and so on. These arguments are arguments born of misunderstanding, because here the definition of complexity is objective. What? Just calculate the entropy, that’s all.

So if I’m talking about the evolution claim itself, I see no essential clash between holding evolutionary theory and believing in the existence of God, any more than there is with holding the theory of gravity. The question of how God runs His world—through such laws or other laws—I examine with scientific tools. But the fact that I found those laws means there is no God? But it’s not that simple. Why? Because when we speak about God, at least as God who creates the world, then when I propose evolution I am basically saying: you do not need someone to create the world; the laws themselves caused the world—or life, in this case—to come into being. So in fact, what does it mean to say the Holy One, blessed be He, uses this to create? He doesn’t use anything. I’ll show you that He isn’t needed at all for the world to come into being. That is not the same as gravity. In gravity I am not claiming that God causes each mass to attract the other mass. One can argue maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe He made the law of gravity and the law of gravity does that. But I do claim that God created the world, or life, or us. And if I can describe that scientifically without needing God—like Laplace said, “I had no need of that hypothesis”—then that is already a somewhat harder question: how does that fit with belief in the existence of God?

But to make clearer the lack of difficulty—or the absence of any real difficulty—I want to sharpen the point further, to show why in fact there is no clash at all. It is nonsense. So look, let me remind you of the big picture from which we began. There are, I think, six or seven kinds of route. In the philosophical route there are three sub-routes—or actually four, as I’ll define them: the ontological proof, the cosmological proof, the physico-theological proof, and the theological proof, which I haven’t yet discussed; we’ll talk about that next time. That is the fourth. Okay, each of these four routes is itself divided into different shades of argument. Meaning, the ways of arriving at the existence of God are divided into six or seven types, each of which is divided into subtypes. In short, there are many, many such ways—619 of them, if you like. Fine, I don’t know, lots.

Now if, when I say I adopt evolutionary theory and I say that a complex thing can come into being without a guiding hand, without any external factor being involved—does that mean there is no God? If I believe in our tradition, the tradition says there is a God. If I believe my intuition, which tells me there is a God, then there is a God. If I believe the cosmological argument, then there is a God. The ontological argument, then there is a God. Where is the clash? The clash is only in the physico-theological argument. Only there. Notice: of all the ways of arriving at the existence of God, only the physico-theological way is challenged by evolution. Why? Because the physico-theological way proves the existence of God on the basis that a complex thing is not formed without a planner. And here evolution says: not true. Here, I show you a mechanism by which a complex thing is created without a planner. So I have pulled the ground out from under the third premise in the physico-theological argument, the premise that a complex thing requires a planner. Okay?

What does that mean? Notice—even suppose that is true. And later I will argue that it is not true. But suppose it is true. Then what picture do we now have? Are the atheists right? You can’t accept evolution and say that God created the world. Fine. What does that mean? Does it mean there is no God? Of course not. Does it mean He was not revealed at Sinai? Of course not. What it means is that route number 92, route number 92 out of the 619 routes, is closed. Meaning, this specific physico-theological argument is invalid. It cannot lead to the existence of God. Okay, and I still have 618 other routes.

So even if it is true that this clash basically means the physico-theological argument has fallen, or that certain versions of the physico-theological argument have fallen—so what? All it means is that I need to choose one of the other routes. But I’ll say more than that. Even suppose this were the only route, there were no others, only the physico-theological route to the existence of God. Even then, when you pull the ground out from under the proof, have you shown me that the conclusion is false? No. Suppose I proved geometrically that the sum of the angles is 180 degrees. Someone found a bug in my proof. My proof is not correct; I made an incorrect step there. Does that mean the statement that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees is wrong? No. It means the proof I presented is not correct. But it does not mean the theorem is false; the theorem may still be true. Maybe yes, maybe no. The proof has fallen.

Notice, all evolution does at most—even that it doesn’t do—but all evolution does at most is, first, knock down one route out of very many possible routes. Second, even when it knocks down the route, it knocks down the route, not the conclusion. Meaning: this proof is not correct. Fine. And I can still believe in the existence of God because I think it is true not because of this proof, or without proof, or from another proof, or however you like. There is no problem with that. The question remains open whether there is or is not a God. So there is no proof; the question remains open. Fine. Now everyone will decide on the basis of his own reasoning what he thinks. That is the second point.

The third point: I want to argue that it does not even knock down the proof. And not only does it not knock it down, I’ll make a fourth claim: not only does it not knock it down, in my opinion it strengthens it. Evolution strengthens the physico-theological argument; it doesn’t merely fail to knock it down. So this whole story is a storm in a teacup. This whole raging worldwide debate around evolution and faith is a storm in a teacup. It is simply nonsense.

Now I want to explain these things a bit. I’ve committed myself here to some fairly far-reaching claims. I may maybe refer—I don’t have much time, so I’ll just make one remark, and next time I’ll get more deeply into the discussion itself. There is a common creationist claim—yes, those who believe in creation are called creationists—that they basically attack the theory of evolution, naturally, because as I said, both they and the neo-Darwinians believe this is a zero-sum game. In order to win the debate, you have to knock down the other side, because belief in God and belief in evolution cannot go together. So one of the catapults fired at evolution is the claim about missing stages, or stages that cannot be filled evolutionarily.

What does that mean? There are evolutionary processes that require some kind of jump from stage A to stage C, where it is not plausible that there was an intermediate stage B, or that we haven’t found stage B, but it happened in a jump. And the whole evolutionary idea is that you don’t need jumps; things happen gradually, and therefore they are possible. What Dawkins calls lowering the slope of Mount Improbable. What evolution does is take the probabilistic slope the creationists are talking about—it can’t be, the probabilistic slope is too steep, there must be a God who lifted us up that slope—and he says no, evolution lowers that slope, like this, lowers the slope, and therefore it is possible to climb it without God’s help. That is Dawkins’s metaphor.

Fine, but that basically requires looking at the process as a gradual process. And every time someone points to some gap or jump in the evolutionary process, that is supposedly a victory for the creationists. Well, I don’t accept that claim at all. That is not a victory for creationists even if we discover there is a gap, because lottery-like things can always happen. But beyond that, what neo-Darwinians usually answer is that this is a God of the gaps argument. What does that mean? You are bringing me proof of the existence of God from some gap or lacuna in scientific understanding. But when there is a lacuna in scientific understanding, what one should do is more research in order to close that lacuna.

If I were proving the existence of God from gaps in scientific knowledge, then I ought to have been a huge believer in the first century CE, a somewhat smaller believer in the tenth century, an even smaller believer in the sixteenth century, and an atheist in the twenty-first century. Because scientific knowledge keeps advancing, and therefore there is less and less room for God. And this is a kind of zero-sum game between scientific understanding of the world and belief in God. And by the way, it is a distinctly atheistic interest to present the picture in this way, because it basically leads everyone to atheism. They say: okay, let’s advance a little more, and in the end we’ll understand there is no God. And the creationists surrender to this foolish game when they try to fight science. They try to show: no, no, we do not understand, therefore there is a God. They insist on still locating God in the zones of non-understanding, in the areas of lacuna. And in my view that is a problem. It is also not true, and methodologically it is mistaken. From the standpoint of the religious debate it is mistaken. It is simply a major error to argue in that way.

And it is also incorrect beyond being mistaken. Because God of the gaps is indeed a very problematic argument. Scientific knowledge—the fact that I do not have scientific knowledge proves nothing. In the past I had even less scientific knowledge; science advances. People do research and progress. So little by little we close those gaps—so then there is no God? So God exists only because we are ignorant, for now scientifically ignorant? That does not sound plausible. Ignorance is something that ought to call us to do more research, not to introduce various demons and spirits and gods to close the matter for us.

Or some formulate it this way: if every time I encountered a scientific problem I recruited God, then today I would still hold the science of Adam. Because I would not do research. Every time I did not understand something, I’d say: it’s God, everything’s fine. Research is built on the fact that when I don’t understand something, I do more research and try to understand it. That is how I discover more and more things. So using God as a card in the scientific field is a mistake. That is God of the gaps, or God of the gaps. You take the gaps as proof of the existence of God, and a creationist who does that is shooting himself in the foot. But people do it a lot.

Now of course one can ask why the physico-theological argument itself is not itself a God of the gaps argument. I’ll make two remarks about that. First, many times in the ordinary gap debates, atheists say: fine, there is a gap, but we’ll continue researching and we’ll close that gap, and then we’ll show you there is no God. First of all, as long as you haven’t continued the research, you don’t know—maybe there will remain a gap that we won’t be able to close. Atheistic optimism is no less a God of the gaps argument than creationist pessimism. Just as the creationists say: fine, there is a gap, that means there is a God—they are assuming the gap will not be filled, right? That is basically what they assume. We won’t be able to close this; there is no scientific explanation here; here God enters. What are the atheists assuming against them? Not at all. We’ll continue the research and this gap will close. Can you be sure of that? What, everything? Do you already know right now that all the gaps will close? That is optimism without basis. It is no better grounded than creationist pessimism. So one has to understand that the God of the gaps objection is also not as strong an argument as people think.

But in the end it is either optimism or pessimism. I prefer to be realistic, neither optimistic nor pessimistic. What does that mean? I don’t want to build belief in the existence of God on a gap, because the gap might be closed. Therefore an argument from a gap is a weak argument. But I also cannot be certain that the gap will close. It is not that God of the gaps is a logical contradiction; that is nonsense. No, it is not nonsense. I simply think it is a weak argument. Okay? So one must be careful with that too.

But since I don’t like gap arguments, people ask me: so what about the physico-theological argument itself? Aren’t you basically saying that complexity—we have no explanation for how it arose; a complex thing does not arise on its own; I have no explanation for how it arose; therefore there is a God? Is that not an argument from a gap? That is really the big question about the physico-theological argument. And I want to argue that it is not. It is not a gap argument, because here it is a gap that by its very nature cannot be filled. I can already say today that it will never be filled. It is not a lack of information that further research will complete. So maybe you can call it a gap, but it is a different kind of gap. Here there is not the problem of God of the gaps. And in order to explain that, we need to understand better what exactly the physico-theological argument is. I’ll do that next time.

A short technical question: how do you get to the recordings? In the various WhatsApp groups where I announce the class, there are recordings of all the classes, not only this series; all the series I give are recorded there, and also on my site. On YouTube? On YouTube too, yes. It’s called on YouTube—a page, or whatever, a YouTube channel of my classes—but you can also see it on my site. Under “classes” there are video classes and audio classes. Video is the Zoom, and by topic you can just look; all these series appear there. Search on YouTube: Rabbi Michael Abraham faith, and you’ll get to the Rabbi’s lectures. Got it, thanks, thanks. Okay, any other comments or questions? Sabbath peace. Sabbath peace, Sabbath peace, Sabbath peace.

A small question, a question. You said in the previous class or the one before that if you find footprints in the forest you can’t know anything about the creature that left the footprints, right? You can know something—you have footprints, you have some grasp of how it left the imprint in the sand, that’s something, no? No, fine, beyond that I can’t know anything about it. The size of its foot? Yes, but to say who could have made those footprints—that’s tautological, obviously. I inferred its existence from the footprints, so obviously I can infer that it can make that sort of footprint. The question is whether I can say anything else about it beyond that. That’s the claim I was dealing with there: someone says, you’re inventing God to explain the riddle of the world’s creation—so what do you know about God? Only that He created the world. Fine, then you haven’t said anything about Him, so that explains nothing. Okay, fine, thank you. Sabbath peace, Sabbath peace.