Faith – Lesson 22
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- General overview.
- God of the gaps, creationism, and the feeling of competition with science
- The question of why the physico-theological proof is not God of the gaps
- Paley’s watch, monkeys on a keyboard, and the Scientific American experiment
- Critique of the experiment: the directed lottery and the lock-picking analogy
- Evolution, abiogenesis, and the laws of nature as a mechanism that is not really an “explanation”
- The rarity of the laws, complexity, and shifting the effort onto the “software”
- The argument from laws: a factory, a washing machine, and rules on the wall
- Why this is not God of the gaps: scientific knowledge strengthens the question and the gap is essential
- Questions about cosmology, efficiency, and a theology of “non-optimal design”
- The eternity of the laws and Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason
Summary
General overview.
The text argues that basing faith on the failures of science is the problematic “God of the gaps” approach, and identifies among creationists a zero-sum-game feeling toward science, to the point of rejoicing when science is wrong. The speaker argues that the physico-theological proof is not “God of the gaps,” because it does not rest on temporary ignorance but on an essential problem: even if science explains more and more phenomena and reduces laws to a small number or even to one law, the non-scientific question would still remain: who “legislated” the special system of laws that gives rise to complexity and life. He uses examples of a watch, monkeys on a keyboard, a Scientific American experiment, evolution, and the laws of nature to argue that a mechanistic explanation does not eliminate the need for a directing hand; it only shifts the question from the product to its conditions of possibility.
God of the gaps, creationism, and the feeling of competition with science
The text describes a justified accusation against creationists who build faith in God on gaps in scientific knowledge, so that the more science seemingly fails, the stronger faith becomes, and when it seemingly succeeds, faith weakens. The speaker illustrates this with cries of joy in “Yated Ne’eman” when weather forecasters were wrong, and with a sense of a zero-sum game against science. He identifies a similar pattern in reactions to COVID, when scientific surprise is perceived as proof of God’s existence. He rejects “tactical” arguments against this approach and formulates an essential criticism of drawing conclusions from ignorance, because scientific gaps tend to close, and the fact that they have not yet closed only indicates temporary lack of knowledge.
The question of why the physico-theological proof is not God of the gaps
The speaker raises the difficulty that the physico-theological proof itself can seem like reliance on science’s inability to explain complexity, and then argues that it is stronger than God-of-the-gaps arguments. The text says that the weakness of God of the gaps is built in, because research progress closes gaps, and therefore hanging faith on gaps is unstable and problematic in itself. The speaker leaves the question temporarily open in order to move toward the answer by clarifying the nature of the argument from complexity.
Paley’s watch, monkeys on a keyboard, and the Scientific American experiment
The text presents Reverend Paley’s example of a watch found somewhere and the assumption that it was not produced by chance, as well as the image of monkeys jumping on a keyboard, where the odds that they would produce a meaningful sentence are negligible. It describes an article in Scientific American from the 1980s that calculates the probability of randomly producing in one shot a 14-letter string that yields “to be or not to be,” and concludes with an average time of about 200,000 years. It then describes an alternative “experiment” in which letters are drawn one by one and each time the correct letter appears they stop, so that the result is obtained in about 90 seconds. This is presented as the article’s claim that evolution advances gradually, and therefore Paley’s argument “misses the point.”
Critique of the experiment: the directed lottery and the lock-picking analogy
The speaker argues that the one-letter-at-a-time experiment is a “stupid argument,” because it smuggles in prior direction, like software programmed to reach a known result, and therefore is actually a formulation of the physico-theological argument rather than a refutation of it. He says that the fact that they stop at the correct letter reflects the guiding hand of a “programmer” aiming at the result, whereas evolution is presented as a process that does not strive toward a known goal in advance. He offers a partial defense through the analogy of a thief picking a cylinder lock with an indication when a pin has reached the right place, and argues that if such an indication exists then the probability really does change, but he still lingers on the fact that in the analogy itself the stopping requires a programmer.
Evolution, abiogenesis, and the laws of nature as a mechanism that is not really an “explanation”
The text accepts that the idea of gradualness can be extended even to pre-evolutionary stages through abiogenesis, but says that the main force of the physico-theological argument concerns life rather than inanimate matter, and connects this also to the anthropic principle and fine-tuning that will appear later. It argues that evolution operates within a system of natural laws, and that if the laws of nature were different there would be no chemistry, biology, or evolution. Therefore the evolutionary explanation merely shifts the question to who set the laws that channel a blind process toward a special result. It presents Stephen Gould’s example of a drunk staggering between a wall and a ditch to show how circumstances can lead to a predictable outcome even without intention, and then argues that the circumstances themselves require explanation if the result is special.
The rarity of the laws, complexity, and shifting the effort onto the “software”
The speaker uses the example of a relatively short protein chain of about 300 codons, where the number of possibilities is “twenty to the power of three hundred,” and argues that very few sequences can survive. Therefore the very ability of the process to preserve “successful” sequences rests on the laws of nature. He says that natural laws “explain nothing” and at most describe a mechanism while shifting the question one step back, to “who is the programmer?” He argues that the complexity or “specialness” of the laws of nature is measured by the specialness of the products they make possible, so that the statistical difficulty remains even if the laws look “simple.” He illustrates this with analogies of a hammer striking metal until eventually a Longines watch is formed, and of a computer carrying out a complex calculation with a short keystroke because the complexity has been absorbed into the software and the programmer.
The argument from laws: a factory, a washing machine, and rules on the wall
The text argues that an explanation that points to a machine’s internal structure or to written work rules in a factory does not eliminate the need for a designer but rather invites the question of who built the machine or who wrote the rules. It says that “set it and forget it” by means of a system of laws does not make the designer less necessary and may even indicate greater genius. It concludes that a scientific explanation relying on natural laws as a mechanism does not touch the philosophical question of who legislated the laws, and therefore does not compete with the physico-theological argument but complements it.
Why this is not God of the gaps: scientific knowledge strengthens the question and the gap is essential
The speaker says that the more scientific knowledge grows and is distilled into a small number of general laws, the greater the wonder at a “genius lawgiver” from whom chemistry, biology, evolution, and human life emerge. He argues that even if an explanation is found that reduces the laws to four, three, two, or one, like the “unified field theory” Einstein sought, the question still remains: who created the fundamental law? He presents an extreme alternative in which the laws of nature would be a logical and mathematical necessity so that no observations would be required, and then says that this is not the prevalent view, that science is different from mathematics, and that it is commonly accepted that the laws of nature could have been otherwise. He concludes that the gap here is not a scientific gap that research will close, but an essential gap that always accompanies science and becomes a philosophical question after science “has finished the job.”
Questions about cosmology, efficiency, and a theology of “non-optimal design”
The text deals with the claim that the discussion shifts from complexity to a cosmological beginning, and argues that if a “simple” natural law ultimately produces the complex world, then it is not simple but rare and special. It addresses the question why, within a vast universe, life may exist in only one place, and argues that even if so, the very ability of the system of laws to allow life is still a statistically astonishing fact. It distinguishes between the claim that a “watchmaker” exists and theological claims about optimality, absolute wisdom, or the giving of the Torah, and presents the example of a watch that is not optimal but still requires a watchmaker, even if one can ask why it is not “the best possible.”
The eternity of the laws and Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason
The speaker presents the possibility that the laws of nature “always existed” and admits that this is subtler than the claim that the world is eternal, and then argues that even so, the question remains why the laws are specifically as they are. He brings Leibniz’s distinction between the principle of causality and the principle of sufficient reason, and cites Richard Taylor’s example of a special glass sphere in a forest, where the claim “it was always here” does not adequately explain its specialness. He concludes that even if the laws of nature are eternal, the very fact that they form a special system still requires a sufficient reason and therefore points to a lawgiver or creator, and he ends by promising to continue later with the anthropic principle, fine-tuning, multiverse, and the other challenges that came up.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At the end of last time I spoke a bit about this claim of God of the gaps, meaning a kind of accusation that is to a large extent justified against many creationists, who build belief in God on gaps in scientific knowledge—gaps in scientific knowledge. Meaning, the more we manage to point to lack of knowledge or lack of ability on the part of science to explain phenomena, the more that supposedly strengthens belief in God. I’m always reminded in this context of something I used to see once in Yated Ne’eman, those cries of joy when the forecasters were wrong. Meaning, if they predicted rain or something like that and it didn’t come, Yated Ne’eman would really reach a kind of spiritual exaltation. Their feeling was that there’s some kind of zero-sum game against science, and when science fails, that’s a sign that there is a God. In other words, if we flip the coin over, then when science succeeds that means there is no God. When science succeeds that means there is no God. And that’s some kind of competition or zero-sum game, and so creationists—at least the fundamentalist part of them—really love to point to bugs in scientific thinking, to scientific inability, to failures. To some extent it seems to me that even the attitude toward COVID comes from this. My feeling all along was that the fact that scientists really sometimes stood somewhat helpless מול this phenomenon, because it was surprising and you can’t always predict it in advance, and every so often we get slapped in the face by various predictions we had—that this supposedly proves the existence of God with signs and wonders. Meaning, because science failed. So that’s part of the same phenomenon. I ended last time with the question of why the physico-theological proof itself is not a God-of-the-gaps argument. Because basically what I’m doing here is saying: it’s hard to see how such a complex world could have arisen on its own; I have a scientific problem; therefore there is a God. Once again there’s some gap here in scientific knowledge, science can’t explain something, and that’s the proof of the existence of God, that I need to arrive at God. So ostensibly the whole physico-theological argument itself is basically a God-of-the-gaps argument. So I want to explain why, in my opinion, that’s not correct. That is, the physico-theological argument is much stronger than God-of-the-gaps arguments. The weakness of God-of-the-gaps arguments is built in, because obviously scientific gaps keep getting narrowed over time. So there was a lot of God in the tenth century, less God in the fifteenth century, still less in the twentieth, and maybe by the twenty-second century there’ll be nothing left of Him. Meaning, we close gaps in scientific knowledge as research advances, so to base belief in God on gaps in scientific knowledge sounds dubious. And I don’t mean only the tactical argument that it’s not advisable to do this because later it will turn out to be weak and then people will stop believing. I don’t accept tactical arguments. Meaning, if it really were like that, then what does that mean—that this proof really is the right proof, only tactically I’m not allowed to use it? After all, if that’s really what will happen, then the proof isn’t correct. So why should it bother me if people leave faith? They’re right. It turns out the faith isn’t true. I don’t accept tactical arguments, certainly not in this context, and in general I don’t like tactical arguments. I think the argument is an essential one. I really don’t think it’s right to build faith on gaps in scientific knowledge, because I really think there is a strong possibility that they will close, and the fact that they haven’t closed only means that we still don’t know enough. But drawing conclusions from ignorance is something very problematic in itself, not only tactically. I’m not willing to accept such conclusions even on their own terms, not just because there will be problems in the future. So why really is the physico-theological argument not God of the gaps? So why really is the physico-theological argument not God of the gaps? So I’m going to leave the question there for a moment, and I want to move toward the answer in stages. Let’s see—I want to sharpen, sharpen a bit the,
[Speaker B] Let’s try mute one more time. Good, excellent.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to begin the path toward the answer, because this will also greatly sharpen the character of the physico-theological proof—why, at least in my eyes, it’s so strong. You know the very famous example—I already brought the example of Reverend Paley—where he says: you find a watch lying on the seashore, or I don’t know, in the street, okay? You would never assume that it came into being by itself, by chance, but rather it’s clear that there is some watchmaker who made it. A complex thing does not arise by chance. That is the essence of the physico-theological argument. There’s another way to present it. Think about monkeys jumping on a computer keyboard. It’s a famous formulation; I assume some of you have heard it. What’s the chance that they will produce a meaningful sentence? That with their random jumping they will type a meaningful sentence? The chance is negligible, right? What’s the chance that they’ll produce the sentence “to be or not to be”? Zero, right? What’s the chance that they’ll produce a Shakespeare sonnet? Far less. The longer the sentence, of course, the smaller the chance. Okay? So basically, here you go: what’s the chance that a random process would generate a world as complex as the one we know around us? That really parallels this issue. Now, in the 1980s an article was published in Scientific American—and I think it was even an editorial piece—and they described there an experiment that gives an answer to this argument. And the experiment basically went like this. We take a string—yes?—a string of letters, “to be or not to be.” Let’s talk about that; that’s the example I gave earlier. There are fourteen letters here. I’m ignoring spaces; we’ll write it continuously, okay? Fourteen letters. So now we run a computer randomization and ask: what’s the chance that a string of length fourteen will come out that contains exactly the letters “to be or not to be” in the correct order? A very, very small chance. In Hebrew there are twenty-two letters, if we ignore final forms. So a string of fourteen letters, each of which can be one of twenty-two letters of the alphabet, is basically twenty-two to the fourteenth power. That’s an astronomical number, billions, okay? Therefore the chance that the string “to be or not to be” will come out is negligible. At the speed of the computer used then by the editors of the experiment—of course today it’s different, but at the speed of the computer they had—it was supposed to take two hundred thousand years before a string of that kind would come out. Now understand: if you’re talking about a Shakespeare sonnet, it rises exponentially. If you’re talking about a complex world that contains many Shakespeare sonnets, then there is simply no chance—certainly not in any time frame we can even begin to conceive—that such a thing would happen. Now the article says: fine, but this creationist argument—this is basically a translation of Paley’s argument—is an argument that misses the point. Because evolution teaches us that the experiment was not done this way. So they ran another computer experiment. And their experiment was this: they randomized one letter, randomly, kept randomizing and randomizing, and when they reached the letter lamed they stopped. Then they moved on to randomizing another letter. They randomized and randomized and randomized, reached the letter heh, stopped. Yod, vav, tav—“to be or not to be.” They simply didn’t randomize the whole string at once, but rather letter by letter, and every time they reached the correct letter they stopped. It turns out that a randomization of that sort took the computer about ninety seconds. Yes, a Shakespeare sonnet took four days. That’s what it took them—today it would be less—but on the computers they had back in the 1980s. Okay? So basically their claim in the article was that Paley’s argument treats the world as if it were all created at once, but evolution teaches us that it was created gradually, getting refined, and that’s what Dawkins calls lowering the slope of the improbable mountain, yes? It becomes easier to climb the slope of probability, yes, the slope of the chance that such a thing will happen. If I had to randomize an entire world like this in one shot, there’s no chance such a thing would come into being. But if I randomize a simple string and then it goes through an evolutionary process and advances another stage and another stage, then yes, it can happen over a long enough time and with enough tries and so on—it can happen. And to the joy of the atheists, in the end we move from two hundred thousand years to a few dozen seconds, and Paley’s argument collapses. That is basically the claim. But wait,
[Speaker C] There’s a difference here between biology and astronomy or something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Meaning, you’re talking about the stages before evolution began—how inanimate matter formed, and not from the first protein chain onward in the development of life. But let’s say—after all, there’s also abiogenesis, I mentioned that—and abiogenesis is basically a field that tries to find how the first chain was formed. And the first chain can maybe—I don’t know, there are initial attempts that apparently are already managing to generate such a chain through a natural process, let’s call it that. Okay? So let’s extend the evolutionary argument also to the pre-evolutionary or around-evolutionary stages regarding inanimate matter. Although again, life is really the truly complex thing, and therefore I think the main force of the physico-theological argument comes more from life than from inanimate matter.
[Speaker C] And there’s what’s called the anthropic principle—that there are several constants in the world, and therefore it’s not plausible that this would exist.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine-tuning—I’ll also get to fine-tuning and to the anthropic principle. So the claim basically is that the creationists don’t see correctly, or don’t describe correctly, the probability space. If you look at it properly, if you do the randomization letter by letter, then the thing does have a reasonable probability. I just have to make a remark around this whole issue. Once I had an argument about this—it’s even documented in a book, a book called Siach Shvayim. This was when I was studying at Netivot Olam in Bnei Brak, a yeshiva for ba’alei teshuvah, and they published there—Grilik published some book of conversations with ba’alei teshuvah and so on, and one of the chapters deals with scientists. So he gathered us around a round table and we talked among ourselves, and someone raised this argument and said: this is conclusive proof, it’s impossible that the world created itself. And he said this—he was a chemist. And I told him, listen, the way you’re thinking actually leads to the exact opposite conclusion from the one you want to reach. Because to talk about the probability that the world will come into being is meaningless. You need to talk about probability per unit time. There is no probability on the objective level that the world will come into being. If you carry out billions and billions and billions of attempts, the probability is greater than if you make one attempt. If there are attempts all the time and you take this over time, then the probability is different. Meaning, the correct parameter to deal with is the rate of formation, not the probability of formation. What is the probability per unit time that such a complex structure will form? Why don’t people usually deal with this? Very simple. Because if you arrive at a very, very low rate of formation—say, I don’t know, ten to the minus one hundred per second, okay? The chances that such a world could form—what does that mean? That on average it takes about ten to the hundred seconds before one world is formed. Or in other words, the moment you move from probability to rate, you’ve basically said that the thing is possible; the only question is how long it will take. Now I don’t know how long attempts were going on here; our world is fourteen billion years old, but we’re talking about the question of how it was formed. Meaning, about what was before, insofar as there was a before—I’ve already commented on that once. So it’s not entirely clear what time frame we’re talking about here. But I’m saying, that’s a side remark; we’ll get to it later and I’ll deal with that too. I want to return for a moment to this argument with the monkeys on the keyboard. Yes? How do you randomize the string “to be or not to be”? When I read that article I was in shock, I have to say. Such a stupid article as an editorial piece in Scientific American—it really, really was disappointing. It shows just how ideological bias can lead smart people to say nonsense. I would suggest a better program to them. Take a computer programmed to output the string “to be or not to be,” and believe me, it’ll do it in milliseconds. Microseconds it’ll do it. You don’t even need a few dozen seconds. That’s a program that outputs the string much faster. Why bother randomizing and stopping at each letter and moving to the next letter? I have a much more efficient and shorter technique. Just tell the computer to write “to be or not to be.” What am I trying to say? I’m trying to say that this argument is a silly argument. Meaning, after all, what did this experiment show? That if you randomize the string “to be or not to be” randomly, it won’t happen. So how can it happen? If you make sure the computer program does the randomization in a directed way so that the string “to be or not to be” comes out from the start, right? After all, the randomization was designed—the algorithm was aiming toward “to be or not to be.” It actually stopped the string at lamed, then stopped it at heh, then at yod. Meaning, it knows in advance what it’s aiming at, and now it’s sort of doing a randomization, yes? But actually it’s a directed randomization. The whole idea of evolution is that evolution does not strive toward a goal known in advance. It arrives there without striving toward it. This argument about the experiment is the physico-theological argument in its purest form. Meaning, the atheists there presented an experiment—a perfect formulation of the physico-theological argument. Because what are they actually saying? If the randomization is done randomly, there is no chance that “to be or not to be” will come out. So why did it come out? Because there was a programmer here who wrote the software in such a way that “to be or not to be” was the result he was aiming for, and he built it so that it would come out in a reasonable time. And only because of that did it actually succeed in coming out, even though the process was supposedly random.
[Speaker D] Can I say something in their defense? Can’t hear. Can I say something in defense of the writers at Scientific American? Join the fools. Do you know how a burglar picks a cylinder lock? No. A cylinder lock, all those old key locks, has five cylinders. In each cylinder there’s a pin of a different length. And when the correct key enters, all the pins line up so that they have the same gap, and then the cylinder can turn. The chance that a random key will open a random lock is very small, small enough to protect a house. What does a burglar do? He has a device that can move the pins one by one, and he has an indication when a pin has reached the right place.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly like in Scientific American. Okay.
[Speaker D] When the first pin reaches the right place, he starts moving the second pin. Meaning, if what the people in Scientific American meant was that when you get to the letter lamed there is some indication that you’ve reached the correct letter, then they are right that the probability becomes much greater. If there isn’t, then there isn’t.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that too, I’ll get to that too. But first of all, the very comparison between the two forms of randomization is itself saying something. After all, in the example—not in what it stands for, in the parable, in the parable—when you stop it on the letter lamed, who stopped it? The programmer, the one who wrote the software, right? In what it stands for, you can tell me that evolution stops at the initial successful state because it is more survivable or fitter, and therefore it moves on to the next stage.
[Speaker E] So that’s what I said. No, but what they would say is that when you get to the letter lamed, you have a greater chance to survive in the world
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and then you’ll remain.
[Speaker E] What? That’s what I just said.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, what’s called
[Speaker C] survival of the fittest, that’s all.
[Speaker E] Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said, one second. I’ll get to that. That’s exactly Yitzhak’s point from before. I completely agree, and I’ll get to it in just a moment. I just first want to dwell on the parable. The parable itself is silly. The parable itself basically shows me that I’m currently talking about randomizing “to be or not to be”; leave aside what it stands for in evolution. The parable itself is actually a wonderful formulation of the physico-theological argument; it’s not a refutation of it. It formulates it. It basically says: look, without the involvement of a programmer—female programmer in this case—it really wouldn’t have come out. Meaning, the fact that the string “to be or not to be” came out means it wasn’t monkeys jumping on the keyboard, but there was a programmer here who programmed it in such a way that it would come out to the correct result. So first of all, in terms of the parable, the parable is completely silly, because this parable demonstrates the physico-theological argument rather than refuting it. Now, what you’re saying is: yes, but the parable really isn’t successful, because in what it stands for, in evolution, there is a state where the first letter lamed has the ability to survive—not because some programmer told it to stay put, but because it is more survivable. Meaning, it has some ability to remain in place more than any other letter that would have come out, and therefore it will stay until the next letter, heh, comes out, and so on. Then it’s not really someone who programmed it. I’ll get to that in a moment. But first I want to talk about the parable. The parable itself is a parable that does not refute the physico-theological argument; on the contrary, it strengthens it and formulates it well. And basically what the physico-theological argument says is that if something complex came into being, then apparently a directing hand was involved here, a hand that saw to it that it would come out. That is exactly what the experiment in that article proves. They are basically showing me that if the randomization is done just like that, it wouldn’t come out; only if someone from outside is involved here, some directing hand—in this case the programmer—can this result come out. Now, the point is this. If in the end what I’m saying is that the fact that the string “to be or not to be” came out testifies to the existence of a directing hand—now I want to move to evolution, to what it stands for. What happens there? They tell me that there, basically, it happens without a programmer, yes? Or if you like, a lock-picker but without the burglar—without a burglar who needs to make decisions. Rather, some process that runs by itself, on its own. And the letter lamed gets stuck not because someone decided it would get stuck, but because it is more survivable, and therefore it gets stuck. But that’s not correct. Because the evolutionary process is a process that takes place within a system of laws of nature. If the laws of nature were different—they mentioned fine-tuning earlier, I’ll still get to that—but here I’m saying it briefly: if the laws of nature were different, there would be no chemistry, no biology, and of course no evolution either. Meaning, the fact that a certain state arises, or is more survivable, or whatever it may be, is actually due to a certain system of natural laws. Say, if we are reductionists, then the laws of physics, of which chemistry and biology are basically only combinations into very, very complex systems. Let’s speak right now from a reductionist perspective. So the claim in effect—what I basically want to argue—is that the laws, what you are actually trying to show, is that life arises through a blind process without the involvement of a directing hand. How? Because the laws, the laws of nature, make sure that the process moves toward a string of “to be or not to be” or toward sophisticated life. But here’s the thing: laws are not an explanation of anything. Because now I ask: who created these laws? Who is the programmer? It’s like explaining to me regarding “to be or not to be”: what do you mean, of course this string can come out, because there are laws like these that stop at the first lamed and then at the second heh and then at the yod and so on. What do you mean, laws? I’m asking: but who created these laws? After all, these laws did not arise just like that; there was a programmer who wrote the program that way. So that means that when you point to a mechanism, the mechanism merely describes how this process happens. But once a complex process happens here, I ask myself who built the mechanism that takes a random process to a complex result. And therefore the question is not solved, even in what it stands for—now I’m already speaking about what it stands for, about evolution. You understand that if the laws of physics or chemistry, yes, the basic laws, were different, there would be no biology and no evolution. The fact that one thing survives more and another survives less, and there is this whole process, and genetics of course, and all the ingredients we talked about that are necessary for the evolutionary process—if they didn’t exist, there would be no evolution. Now I ask who the programmer was—who set these laws in the world that channel the evolutionary process toward its destination, as it were. And since it has a very, very special destination—life—and we said low entropy, the specialness here is well defined, that means that if the process arrives in a completely random way at a complex result, apparently there was a programmer here who saw to it that in the environment there would be conditions that would lead a random process to a complex result. This reminds me of an example from Stephen Gould, also an evolution researcher, who wants to show—maybe I mentioned this, I don’t remember anymore—how a process without the involvement of a directing hand reaches a predetermined result in the end. He talks about a drunk coming out of a bar, and on one side of the road there is a wall and on the other side there is a ditch, a ditch with water. And the drunk staggers around, he’s completely drunk, bumps into the wall, and in the end of course he’ll wind up in the ditch. The drunk is moving in a completely random way; there is no control, no one is directing anything, but in the end I can tell you: he’ll be in the ditch. And this is supposedly another example in the same direction, meaning to show that a random process can lead to a special result, or a predictable result, or things of that sort. But again, this is a silly example, because I ask myself: who built the system in which on one side there is a wall and on the other side there is a ditch, and thereby made sure that in the end the drunk would be in the ditch? After all, that didn’t happen by itself. You’re showing me that there are circumstances that dictate the result, but I’m asking who created these circumstances. If the result is special—if the result is not special, then it’s not interesting. If the result is special, then the fact that there are circumstances is not an answer. The fact that there are circumstances that lead to a special result merely transfers the question from the result to the circumstances. And now I ask who created the circumstances that caused the result to be a special result.
[Speaker C] Sometimes the standard answer is that there were many worlds that weren’t, and therefore they disappeared because they weren’t suitable.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s the anthropic principle and fine-tuning—we’ll get there. Fine, I’m first sharpening the argument; these are reflections on it, I’ll get there. So the claim basically is that, say, I don’t know—suppose you take a chain of some three hundred codons, yes? A DNA chain or a protein chain like that of three hundred codons. A relatively short chain, okay? There are about twenty amino acids, so that’s twenty to the power of three hundred, meaning it’s an astronomical number of possibilities. Among the possibilities for those three hundred, there are very few possibilities that can live and survive. Very few. Again, when I say twenty to the power of three hundred, that’s an astronomical number, and that’s a short chain, okay? So they tell me: what’s the chance that exactly such a chain would form, one that remains, and then afterward will produce another chain that remains, and so on? So they tell me: yes, but these processes happen step by step, as we said before. But what makes sure that this process leaves us with those particular special chains that have the ability to continue, or that they remain with a high enough probability so that even if some of them are wiped out they can still continue the process—what takes care of that is the laws of nature. And without the laws of nature, and without them being as they are—if they were different—it wouldn’t happen. And therefore this merely transfers the question to who created the laws of nature in such a way that now the evolutionary process, moving on its own without a directing hand, reaches the final result. But
[Speaker F] So it lowers the issue of complexity. The complexity can become very, very simple at the beginning, and afterward it will already roll by itself and become a sophisticated watch and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That makes no difference. Because if you see a process—if you see a process whose end, not its beginning, whose end contains a complex result, and the process is built in such a way that it takes the drunk or the blind process to the complex result at the end, the circumstances are built that way—then that means that the complex result at the end was some kind of target for the sake of which the whole process was built. And therefore you need to speak about the result at the end, not the result at the beginning. But
[Speaker F] If it happened on its own already, and I only made some small, simple, random step.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it didn’t happen on its own, because with the laws of nature—if the circumstances were different, it wouldn’t happen.
[Speaker F] But that’s not a proof from complexity. The law of nature can be very, very simple, and maybe also…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. I’m claiming that the complexity of the laws of nature is like the complexity of the product they create. Because in the end, this is almost a theorem in probability, I think. Because if you now build a system of laws that takes something very, very simple and creates from it something whose probability of occurring is objectively very, very low—not a result that in any case happens, and this includes some objections that I’ll still get to later—then that means that something in this system of laws is very, very special. The specialness has already shifted from the result to the system of laws. You can measure the specialness of the system of laws by the specialness of the results that this system creates. And the question when I now ask myself: what is the probability that there will be such a system of laws—not such a result? I’m now asking the question, the meta-question. I’m no longer asking what is the probability that life will emerge. Fine, probability one. Why probability one? Because there are certain laws of nature here that make sure that an evolutionary process will produce life. And now I ask: okay, but what is the probability that the laws of nature would be like that? I think it’s basically the same probability as that life would arise in a process without laws. It’s the same thing. Because the specialness of the laws is measured by the specialness of the products. Otherwise you can create all kinds of bizarre laws that don’t produce anything—what’s special about them?
[Speaker F] Let’s take me—I’m a physician by profession, and I have no idea about how watches are made, how they’re built. And suppose it turned out that I could do it with one simple step, I don’t know, strike some piece of metal with a hammer, and over billions of years a sophisticated Longines watch would be formed. Could they say on that basis that Dr. Ochberger is a great expert on watches? He has no idea.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you could say from this that the one who created the situation in which many hammer blows eventually produce a watch created the circumstances within which the doctor is working, and the one who created those circumstances is really what caused the watch to come into being, not the doctor. That’s exactly the point. Because random blows on metal, just like that, do not produce a watch. If random blows on metal did produce a watch, that would mean there’s some system of laws of nature here such that you just do something very… Think about it: when you take a computer and you want to make the computer produce some extremely complicated calculation. Now, whoever built… if there’s a good program for that, then a few simple keystrokes make the computer do the complicated calculation. So what does that mean? That you’re a magician? No, the programmer is the magician. The one who built the software actually built software that absorbs into itself the complexity that would have been required of me if I wanted to do the calculation myself. But that complexity doesn’t disappear; it’s just that instead of my having to think, he thought for me. I now just type thirty-eight times four hundred fifty-six, and it immediately gives me the answer. If I didn’t have the computer, I’d have to think and go through a fairly complicated process. But that doesn’t mean that complicated process didn’t happen. It means the programmer did it for me. So now I’m not checking the specialness of the result; I’m asking… let me ask it this way: what are the odds that when I type thirty-eight times four hundred fifty-six I’ll get the correct answer just by chance, accidentally? Zero. Right? But now look, I type it into the computer and it gives me the correct answer. Amazing. Does that explain anything? No. It only means that the software inside the computer is at that same level of specialness corresponding to getting that result by chance. That complexity is now in the software, instead of in the probability of getting the result by chance. You simply swallowed the… the intellectual effort required into the programmer, not the user.
[Speaker D] Can I say something? So… yes. You’re sort of moving toward an analogy that says: nothing has changed. Instead of saying there’s a random probability that the world came into being as it did, which you rejected on quantitative grounds, not qualitative ones, on the basis of the number of possibilities that had to be selected among, you’re now saying it’s the same thing as there being… there being some law of nature that produces survival of the fittest. But it’s not the same thing, because that law of nature might be very, very rare, but it’s very simple. It’s one thing. Not billions upon billions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, again, that’s the question they asked earlier, and I’ll give the same answer. The moment that law is rare, whether it’s simple or not simple is just words. But if that law… “simple” or “not simple,” translated into entropy, which is what I talked about at the beginning, is basically just how rare it is. When you take all the possible systems of laws, yes, if one could somehow construct a space of all the possible systems of laws, I’m asking how many of those systems would ultimately produce life. The answer is: very few. And the rarity of those systems of laws is the notion of complexity I’m talking about here. Because think about drawing a system of laws at random: what are the odds that you’d draw exactly one of those rare systems? You understand that it’s the same question. So again, it preserves the statistical difficulty; it just transfers it from the product to the system of laws that produces the product. But it’s the same thing. He says it’s the same thing, it’s proportional; I don’t know if it’s exactly the same, but it’s proportional. If one is problematic, the other is problematic too. In the end, in the end, you ask yourself: who created the system of laws? It’s like—I think I talked about this once—this is basically the argument, what I call the argument from laws. You take a washing machine or a factory built in a perfect, coordinated way, run in an extraordinary manner. You arrive there and say: unbelievable, this washing machine works perfectly, everything is coordinated, everything is planned, everything is exactly right, amazing. Then the atheist standing next to you says: fine, everything’s fine, obviously, because I can show you that it’s simply built in such a way that the motor turns like this, then the water comes out, then there’s an electronic mechanism here that makes sure this happens first and that happens afterward, and the timing is set for this to happen, and that’s it. What’s the problem? There’s no problem. No need to assume that someone built this machine, because I have an explanation—I’ll show you from the structure of the machine why it really does this. You understand you wouldn’t accept an explanation like that. And the same goes for the factory. You go to a factory, and it’s built perfectly, completely coordinated. You say, amazing, there must be some brilliant manager here. Then the atheist next to me says, what do you mean? Look at the wall—there are the Ten Commandments on the wall, and there it says what each person has to do at every stage. So of course the factory is run perfectly; no need to assume the existence of a manager. There’s a system of laws here that shows you how the whole thing works by itself. Would you accept an explanation like that? Of course not, because you’d immediately ask yourself who wrote the laws on the wall. He is the brilliant manager. So the fact that he does it in what in the army is called third echelon—not with missiles, third echelon—meaning he sends it off and forgets about it, he writes laws and from then on the system runs, that doesn’t make him any less necessary or any less brilliant; on the contrary, maybe in a certain sense even more brilliant. And therefore the claim is that when we offer an explanation of the kind of tautology or evolution in the analogue, in the end, in the end, we are in fact assuming there is a system of laws, and that is our explanation. But as I’ve said more than once, a system of laws explains nothing; at most it pushes the question one step back, and then I ask myself not who created the world as I know it, but who legislated the laws within which the world as I know it came into being. So now the question is who created the laws and not who created the world—what difference does that make? The probability is still low, and I still have to arrive at the conclusion that there was someone here who did this. Because the laws are very, very special, rare, however you want to call it, complex, it doesn’t matter, and therefore again the chance that this happened by itself is unreasonable. Now there are many objections that need to be dealt with—I’m sure some of you want to say maybe the laws always existed and so on, I’ll get to that. That’s basically the claim. I just want to explain, in light of what I’ve said so far, why the physico-theological argument is not a God-of-the-gaps argument. Now I can explain why: because when I explain that the world is complex and therefore it’s not likely that it came into being by itself, but rather there was someone who created it, I’m not relying on a gap in scientific knowledge. On the contrary: the more scientific knowledge I have, the stronger the difficulty becomes. Because if I have scientific knowledge, that means I’ve managed to formulate a small number of laws, general laws, that succeed in explaining all the crazy phenomena I know around me. But that only means there was some brilliant legislator here who built a system with four laws—say, the four fundamental forces of physics—four laws from which comes all the craziness we know around us: chemistry, biology, evolution, all the way to life and spaceships to the moon and all the wisdom we ourselves create. We are all products of these processes. And someone did all this by means of a system of four laws of physics. So now I’ll put it this way: what would the God-of-the-gaps person say to me now? He’d say to me: fine, that’s what you say, but maybe we’ll have an explanation for how this system of four laws of physics came into being. But then I ask myself: what will that explanation be? One of two things. Either that explanation will simply show me that there are three laws that produce the four, or two, or one. In the end I’ll get to one law. What Einstein was looking for, right? A unified field theory. One law from which all the laws of nature can be derived. And still, we haven’t solved anything. Because I’ll still ask: who created that one law? The question only intensifies, because the one who created it is even more sophisticated. He does all the craziness we know around us with a single law. That’s genius. How can you do such a thing? Fine, if you did it with ten thousand laws and each time you dealt with something by creating another law. But someone who manages with one law to produce all these amazing phenomena—that’s a genius. We are going backward; he went forward. We have the world, and from within it we try to distill what the laws are. Then we discover ten laws and build from them maybe eight, five, three, and in the end get to one. That’s the easy route, and even that we still haven’t done. I’m talking about someone who went forward. He built one law, and he managed to understand what would ultimately come out—that in the end, in the end, I’d be sitting here on Friday at nine-thirty talking to you about this issue. And that already existed at the Big Bang. There he built one law, and that law governed everything that happened, and then we got all the way to here, according to plan. If that’s not genius, I don’t know what genius is. That’s one possibility. So therefore, if I continue with scientific knowledge and in the end arrive at an explanation, as long as that explanation is some scientific law, it solves nothing. What’s the other alternative? That in the end I won’t need any scientific law. I’ll be able to show that the laws of nature are the product of logical and conceptual analysis. They’re not products of a law of nature at all. Or in other words, all of physics is a branch of mathematics. Physics, biology, and chemistry are all branches of mathematics. Meaning, if we do the calculation properly, then if the laws aren’t like this, we’ll arrive at contradictions. Okay? That’s basically the claim. And then in effect it turns out that in order to know what the laws of nature are, in principle you don’t need experiment. It’s enough to do the calculation and show that every other possibility leads to contradiction. And that basically means there is no difference between science and mathematics; it’s all logic. There is no science in the world. Now, in this context—there is no science in the world at all, as our rabbi said. In this context, first of all it’s clear that the common belief in the world, including among atheists and scientists and everyone else—I don’t think, I don’t know anyone who thinks otherwise, maybe there are some but it’s very rare—that this is clearly false. Meaning, science is essentially different from mathematics. Science requires observation and not just logical calculation by eliminating contradictions. And the other side of that same coin is that according to this view no other world could have emerged. Meaning, all the laws of nature are necessary laws; they could not have been otherwise. I don’t think anyone really believes that. On the contrary, in all these debates with atheists the claim is always that there is one world, but there could be millions of other worlds, as we spoke earlier about the anthropic principle, and we’ll talk about it more. Yes, there could be many other worlds with different laws. So in effect you’re assuming that the system of laws that exists in the world is not a logical necessity. There could have been something else. And that brings back the question again: so who made it be like this rather than otherwise? And therefore I think the physico-theological argument is not a God-of-the-gaps argument. Because here this is a gap that will never be closed. Either way, it’s an essential gap. It’s not that we just need more research to close this gap, and once we know more everything will be fine. Right now we just don’t know enough. No, because in the end you’ll remain with some assumption, at least one fundamental law of nature, and the question will always be: so who created it? The whole scientific process can advance until we reach that unified field, that one law of nature responsible for everything, but in the end, in the end, we’ll always be left with some essential gap: okay, and who created it? And that question is no longer a scientific question. That question is a philosophical question. Because science has finished its work. Science describes everything that happens in the world, I found one law that is responsible for everything, finished, I can now go to the beach, the job is done. So what remains from that point onward to ask is not a scientific question, but who created that science that we now fully know. And therefore this is not a gap within science, within scientific knowledge, because the question we haven’t answered is not a scientific question. It is a question that will accompany science inherently, always. This is not temporary ignorance. It’s not something that right now I don’t yet know, but in the future I’ll close this lacuna, this gap. No, it won’t be closed. Because it’s an essential gap. And therefore I think this is not a God-of-the-gaps argument, since the gap here is an essential gap. So now I want to move on to a few points.
[Speaker F] Doesn’t this still move us from the physico-theological proof to the cosmological proof? Because if we assume that in the beginning there was some basic, simple law of nature that happened, then the discussion really becomes how it happened, and then we move from complexity to the issue of how it began, and we already talked about that in the previous set.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the question that was asked earlier, and I’ll answer again with the same answer. If this supposedly simple law of nature created the entire world in the end—after billions of years, created the whole world as I know it today—then it was not a simple law of nature. It was a rare law of nature. This system of laws of nature, out of all possible systems, has a very, very low probability, like the probability of the world it produced. And therefore you look at it as a simple law of nature, but it isn’t simple. It may perhaps look simple to you, but the proof is to see what it ultimately creates. And whoever created that law of nature apparently saw where this whole thing was going, because otherwise it isn’t likely that exactly such a system of laws would arise and in the end exactly a watch would come out—if we return to the example of the hammer and the iron and the doctor. Yes? So I hit iron with a hammer and in the end a watch comes out. In an ordinary world that doesn’t happen, right? A complex thing is not created from a random simple action. If it is created, then apparently there was some system of constraints or laws within which this whole business is operating, one that takes a simple action and creates a complex result, like the computer program that performs the calculation I spoke about earlier. So whoever made the software, or whoever built that system of laws, had already thought about that complexity and inserted it into the so-called simple law. It is not simple.
[Speaker G] Wait, but assuming there’s only one world that we live in, within billions upon billions of galaxies, then it’s not something
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] all that successful.
[Speaker D] No, the galaxies are inside it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about a universe, not a world.
[Speaker G] The universe—we only have one world in this enormous universe, so it’s not something all that successful.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the laws of nature are valid throughout the entire universe.
[Speaker G] But in the end only one world actually came into being.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. What do you mean, only one world? First of all, that’s not certain.
[Speaker G] There may be a lot of complexity, but it’s not successful.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, whether it’s successful or not successful—I’m going to talk about that too. Yes, the question is one of those claims people raise, like: if the Holy One, blessed be He, made evolution, then why all the waste? He wanted to produce elephants and human beings, so why all the creatures that went extinct along the way? It’s an inefficient process. So does that mean he’s not such a brilliant planner?
[Speaker G] It’s a little different. I mean, it has to do with whether we ask, somewhat theologically, whether there was even intention from the very beginning. If he built something initially, something simple that developed into a complex form, and it barely counts in the universe, then how does that fit? That’s the question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You have to distinguish between two things. I’m asking a first question: what are the odds that a system of physical laws would allow chemistry and biology? The answer is zero—very, very small. Okay? The number of systems of physical laws that would allow chemistry, biology, and life is tiny. That’s the first remark. And therefore even if within our entire universe life arose only on our planet—which by the way is not at all clear today, but let’s assume it for the sake of discussion—okay? Still, the fact that the physical system that exists in the world allows the existence of life is a statistically astonishing fact. It doesn’t matter that in practice it happens only in our universe. In the end you have to think about how special the system is. And if it really is special, then it makes no difference that it does this only on one planet. Most other systems wouldn’t do it even on one planet. True, that doesn’t rule out that there are other systems—or one or two—that would do it on every planet. Fine. But still, this is a very, very, very special system, and the chance that it happened on its own is negligible. But now you can ask a different question. Fine—but there are systems, how many, five systems, that are more successful, that would create life on every planet. And if the Holy One, blessed be He, is such a genius, then why did he choose the fifth most brilliant system? Let him choose the most brilliant one. That’s a completely different question. It’s parallel to what happens, say, when you find Paley’s watch. You find a watch that is built in a non-optimal way. Okay, you would have built it better. Would you conclude that it was built by chance? Arbitrarily, blindly, that there was no watchmaker? No. But clearly there’s no chance it came into being by itself, even if it isn’t optimal. So clearly there was a watchmaker. You say, fine, but if there was such a brilliant watchmaker here, why did he make a watch that isn’t the best, but only the fifth best? My answer is that apparently this watchmaker’s mind is different from mine. He apparently wanted something different from what I think. Or he wasn’t such a genius—also possible. But still, there has to be a watchmaker. The conclusion that there is a watchmaker is a result of asking: what are the odds that such a watch would arise by chance? Even if it isn’t optimal, that doesn’t matter. The odds that it would arise by chance are still very small. And that is enough for the physico-theological argument.
[Speaker G] But theologically that makes, that changes a lot.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you can now say, fine, then apparently the Holy One, blessed be He, is not such a genius as we think. That’s a different claim.
[Speaker G] It contradicts a principle about the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but that doesn’t matter to me. Right now I’m only talking about the question whether there was someone or something here that created the world. Is it the Holy One, blessed be He? Is he all-powerful? Is he a great genius? Did he give the Torah? All sorts of other statements—I haven’t spoken about them, I’m not committing myself to them. I’m asking whether something so complex does not dictate the existence of someone who built it. My answer is yes, it does dictate that. What can I say about him? Is he the greatest genius in the world? Is he the optimal genius? Is he all-powerful? I don’t know, maybe not. I’m not entering those questions at all. First of all, I’m entering the question whether he created—whether there was someone who created the world. For me, that is the important thing. Now here there are—now I’ll come to a series of reflections, some of which came up in the questions you asked here, and we’ll begin now. But now I’ll go through all the claims you raised in an orderly way, and a few more. The first claim concerns the laws. I said that in essence my argument is an argument from laws. And the question is: who is responsible for the fact that the laws here are so special that within them life, biology, and all the complexity we know around us arise? Now here one could say that the laws are primordial—they always existed. And that is already more subtle than saying the world is primordial. The world, let’s say, we already know—the Big Bang is fourteen-point-something billion years old—but the laws still, even after physics, it could still be that the laws were primordial, they always existed. And then there is no question of who is responsible for those laws having arisen rather than other laws. Here I want to say something that seems very clear to me intuitively, though I find it a bit hard to convince people who disagree with me on this point; everyone will formulate his own position. Leibniz distinguished—and I’ve already brought this up in the past—between the principle of causality and the principle of sufficient reason. What does that mean? The principle of sufficient reason basically asks the question: why is the thing as it is? Yes, Richard Taylor, some American philosopher, gives an example of this—I think I mentioned it once. You walk in a forest, and you find there a beautiful glass sphere with all sorts of fascinating colored shapes inside it, lying there in the forest. You ask yourself: how did this sphere come into being, what caused it to be as it is, so special? Then someone comes and tells you: it was always here. Is that an answer? So Leibniz argues that it isn’t, because even if it was always here, there is still an interesting question: why is it so special and not something else? Beyond the question of actual infinity and not potential infinity—what does “it was always here” mean? “Always here” means an actual infinity, that is, it existed for an infinite time; that’s a problematic concept. But even if I ignore those things, which we discussed in the cosmological proof, still—even background music or is that the bell for the break—the claim is that the principle of sufficient reason basically says that if you see a special system of laws, even if it has existed from time immemorial, not that it was ever created, still, still, it requires an explanation why it is this way and not another way. Because a system of laws that existed from time immemorial could also have been different. Not been created differently—again. It was never created, it always was. But I don’t know what that sentence even means at all, but let’s suppose. Still, the question of why it is as it is and not any other system—that is still a question that requires an answer. And that is what he calls, as distinct from the principle of causality. The principle of causality applies only to things that were created at some point. If it was created, I ask who created it or what created it. If it was never created, the question of causality doesn’t arise. But the question of reason does arise even with respect to things that always existed. If they are special, that still arouses wonder. Why are they this way and not another way? And there should be some reason for that. And therefore I think that even if the laws always existed, still I think it is reasonable that behind them stands some legislator. Because otherwise they would not come out precisely so special rather than as any other system. And the primordiality of the laws—in other words, even if one could speak of that, and again I say, I am highly doubtful, because this is a concrete infinity and not a potential one—still, from the standpoint of the principle of sufficient reason, in my view this still requires the existence of someone or something that created them, a legislator, yes, that created these laws. That’s the first remark. I can’t continue further now. I’m now going to get to the anthropic principle, fine-tuning, randomness, to many things that came up here in your comments. Multiverse, yes, all those things. We’ll get to all of them, don’t worry, step by step. It’s also in the book, by the way; anyone who wants can look there. Okay. So if there are comments or questions, then go ahead. Okay, thank you, Shabbat
[Speaker C] Shalom.
[Speaker G] Thank you very much, Shabbat shalom, thank you very much, thank you very much, Shabbat shalom, thank you.