Faith – Lesson 31
This transcript was generated automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- [0:00] Introduction and summary of the physico-theological proof
- [2:45] The epistemological proof and trust in the senses
- [4:15] The pragmatist critique of the argument
- [7:30] Presenting the options with no third possibility
- [9:41] Summary: trust in the senses and the connection to God
- [11:06] The connection between determinism and free choice
- [16:48] The reliability of the complex sensory system
- [28:11] A dilemma argument and the logic of conclusion
- [30:00] The principle of induction and the extent of its validity
- [31:14] Evolution as a challenge to the physico-theological argument
- [32:56] Trust in the senses: psychology versus philosophy
- [35:00] The connection between evolution and morality
- [49:01] The four philosophical paths to faith
- [51:54] Summary and continuation: the moral proofs
- [55:09] The components of evolution: mutations, genetics, and selection
- [57:04] Closing the lecture and Sabbath greetings
Summary
General Overview
The speaker presents the theological formulation of the proof from epistemology as a reversal of the physico-theological proof, building a kind of “pincer movement”: if one accepts that complexity points to a directing hand, then there is God; and if one rejects that and claims that complexity can arise by chance, then a problem arises regarding trust in the very tools of cognition themselves. He argues that trust in the senses, in a priori principles like causality and induction, and in methods of thought like Ockham’s razor, implicitly assumes a God who created us in such a way that we can know the world. He then brings major critiques—pragmatism, learning from experience, and evolution—and answers them by distinguishing between a psychological explanation and a philosophical justification, by arguing that the justifications are circular, and by claiming that our trust in the senses is absolute and a priori. At the end he summarizes four “philosophical paths” to faith and lays the groundwork for the next proof, from morality, as a theological proof of the same type.
Reversing the Physico-Theological Proof and the Proof from Epistemology
The speaker describes the physico-theological proof as an argument from the complexity of the world to the conclusion that someone probably created it, and he raises the possibility that the atheist may claim that complexity can arise by chance without a directing hand. He reverses the direction of the argument and claims that if the system of sensation and thought arose by chance, then there is no basis for trusting it, so the question becomes epistemological: where does trust in the senses and in a priori assumptions come from? He defines the epistemic system as including all the senses and intellectual tools such as the principle of causality, the principle of induction, accepted ways of thinking, Ockham’s razor, and assumptions about the uniformity of the laws of nature. He concludes that when a person trusts his tools of cognition, he is implicitly assuming that there is God, and he distinguishes between a philosophical formulation that says, “If there is God, one can justify trust in the senses,” and a theological formulation that says, “If there is trust in the senses, then apparently the assumption of God is already there.”
The Pincer Movement, the Dilemma, and the Logical Structure
The speaker presents the move as a dilemma argument with no third possibility: either one believes in God and accepts the epistemic tools as reliable, or one does not believe in God and does not accept the tools as reliable, and just “goes along” with them for convenience. He formulates the structure as a combined attack: if someone rejects the argument from complexity by claiming that a complex thing can arise by chance, then the speaker asks what indication there is of its reliability; and if someone justifies reliability through experience, the speaker brings back the philosophical argument about the probability that something both complex and reliable arose without a directing hand. He also presents a formal version of the dilemma: “P implies Q, and not-P also implies Q, therefore the conclusion is Q,” because clearly either P or not-P, and there is no third possibility. He stresses that this is a logical argument with premises, and whoever does not accept the premises is not compelled to accept the conclusion, just as, in his view, no argument can persuade without premises.
The Pragmatist Critique and the Response to It
The speaker presents a common atheist response according to which there is no real trust in the senses and in thinking, but only a behavioral adoption because “there’s nothing else” and there is no alternative, so one simply “goes with” the habit. He calls this pragmatism, in which what is desirable is made to override what is true, and notes a paradoxical role reversal: sometimes the one presenting the argument is accused of pragmatism, but here the one defending himself adopts a pragmatist position himself. The speaker says he has no decisive answer for someone who insists on that position, other than laying out the two possibilities and arguing that there is no third. He claims he finds it hard to believe that a person truly does not trust his senses in practice, and suggests that the pragmatic stance sometimes serves as a way to “get out of the argument safely,” whereas the proper goal is self-clarification, not victory. He uses the image of the Matrix to argue that someone who had become convinced he was living in a total deception would not simply keep going along with it as usual.
Paternalism, Implicit Beliefs, and Determinism as an Example
The speaker accepts the charge of paternalism and defines himself as a “proud paternalist,” arguing that many people do not fully understand their own beliefs and that explicit beliefs sometimes conceal opposite hidden beliefs. He brings determinism as an example and argues that many people declare themselves determinists, yet in practice conduct themselves as though there is free choice, and therefore, in his view, they do not really believe in it. He describes his approach in “The Science of Freedom” as undermining the arguments for determinism without needing to provide arguments for libertarianism, because, as he puts it, “we all believe in libertarianism,” and the main thing is to stick a pin in the balloon of the arguments that supposedly force us to give it up. He extends this also to belief in God and argues that, in a certain sense, even “the greatest atheists” believe in God implicitly—not because of mysticism or traditions, but because philosophy shows, in his view, that their conduct requires a theistic assumption.
The Parable of the Stone Sign to Scotland and the Claim That One Cannot Know
The speaker returns to the parable of the train and the sign “Welcome to Scotland” on a mountainside, and argues that one can theoretically assume that the sign was formed by chance, but then there is no way to believe it or know that it is really at the entrance to Scotland and not somewhere else. He applies this to the senses: even if a complex sensory system can arise by chance and even be reliable, a person still has no indication external to the system that could confirm its reliability. He rejects the idea that mutual reinforcement among the senses solves the problem, arguing that even the whole set of senses together does not get “feedback” from outside the senses, so it is always possible that the deception is consistent. He adds that the probability that a random system would also be reliable is small, and when there is no indication of reliability, the rational assumption is not to assume that this is the case.
Learning from Experience, Induction, and Circularity
The speaker presents the claim that experience teaches us that the senses work, and therefore through induction we conclude that they are reliable, illustrating it with the example of a computer formed at random—the “Fred Hoyle typhoon” producing a Boeing airplane—or a device that returns correct answers. He agrees that an accumulation of successes can lead a person to believe that the device is reliable, and then the philosophical argument about the likelihood of a directing hand comes back and is strengthened. The speaker argues that experience cannot justify the reliability of the tools of cognition without circularity, because inferring reliability from experience already uses the senses and the tools of thought, especially the principle of induction, which is itself an a priori insight with no independent justification. He concludes that anyone who seeks to justify actual belief in conclusions about the world gets stuck in a circle, and at best can justify only continued pragmatic conduct, not belief that the senses reveal “what really exists in the world.”
Evolution as the Last Bastion and the Distinction Between Psychology and Philosophy
The speaker presents evolution as a central objection that undermines both the physico-theological proof and the theological formulation of the proof from epistemology, because evolutionary adaptation can explain why the senses are reliable and why one may trust them without a directing hand. He sharpens the point that his question is not “how could it be” that the senses are reliable, but “how can I know” that they are reliable, and he emphasizes the gap between an explanation for the existence of trust and a justification for trust. He distinguishes between the psychological level, where evolution explains conditioning toward trust in the senses, and the philosophical level of justification, and he gives a parallel example from the future discussion of morality: evolution can explain how moral feelings arose, but not why it is right to act in accordance with them. He presents a stronger argument in the name of evolution, according to which unreliable senses would not permit survival, so evolution supposedly grounds the reliability of the senses as well, and then he responds to it along several lines.
Responses Against the Evolutionary Justification for Trust in the Senses
The speaker argues that the evolutionary justification for trusting the senses rests on circularity, because our knowledge of evolution itself comes from observations and scientific tools whose validity the discussion is calling into question. He asks what trust in the senses was based on before Darwin, notes that On the Origin of Species “came out in 1870,” and argues that Napoleon and people before evolution did not have weaker trust in their senses, so that trust is not based on evolution. He adds that trust in the senses is absolute rather than probabilistic, whereas if it were evolutionarily based one would expect it to be graded and dependent on stage of development, because evolution is not finished and we do not know where we are on the axis of improvement. He argues that phenomena like fata morgana and illusions actually highlight that absoluteness, because they immediately provoke a search for a “positive reason” for the deviation rather than an ordinary acceptance of imperfection. He adds that survival does not always require full reliability, and sometimes precisely not seeing part of reality or having perceptual biases is beneficial, giving the example of fear of heights and one attributed to Ben-Gurion: “Anyone who does not believe in miracles in Israel is not realistic.” He also argues that evolution does not need to produce conscious belief in the senses, only adaptive behavior, so one could survive even without the cognitive wrapper of believing that the senses reflect truth, simply through instinctive reactions.
Summary of the Philosophical Paths to Faith and the Move to Morality
The speaker summarizes four philosophical paths that were examined: Anselm’s ontological proof, the cosmological proof from the causality of existence itself, the physico-theological proof from complexity, and the proof from epistemology as an extension and reversal of physico-theology. He defines a “theological proof” as a proof that does not show that there is God, but rather shows a person that he himself already believes in God implicitly, even if he may be mistaken and can retract it, and he adds that the burden of proof shifts to whoever claims there is no God. He presents the move to the proof from morality as the next stage in that same theological logic, and argues that one cannot be committed to moral values without the assumption of God, similar to the structure of “the train to Scotland.” He ends with questions from the audience about a moral “sense” and visual illusions, and postpones the moral discussion to next time while noting that he does not agree that this sense provides an alternative to God.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good. Again, sorry—I was just busy with something and didn’t notice that the time had already come. We’re dealing with the proof, the formulation, what I called the theological formulation of the proof, and basically what I did here was reverse the direction of the argument. In the physico-theological proof—that was the previous move—in that previous move I brought a proof from the complexity of the world to the idea that someone probably created it, because a complex thing does not arise by itself. Against that, one could raise the claim: yes, but maybe complex things can arise by chance without a directing hand. And there were many attempts—small probability, but there are successful cases, and so on. So then I attack from the other side of the, yes, the second horn of the dilemma, and I say: fine, but if that really is so and it arose by chance, then how do you know that you can trust your senses, your tools of thought, your a priori assumptions? That’s what I called the proof from epistemology, yes, with the stone sign at the railway entrance on the way to Scotland, and I’m not going to go back over that whole matter now. So what we have here is really a move built like a pincer movement. That is, the physico-theological proof says that a complex thing does not arise by chance, and if you say that it did arise by chance, then who told you it’s reliable? And when I speak, of course, about what arose by chance, in this case it’s not necessarily the world but the system I am—the system of sensation and thought of my own self. And therefore, in this formulation—the theological formulation—the atheist’s defense here is supposed to work differently. If in the philosophical formulation, yes, which says that if a complex thing exists then it did not arise by chance, the defense is: okay, but maybe it did arise by chance. Maybe a complex thing can nevertheless arise by chance. Here the claim is: okay, but if it arose by chance, then how do you believe it? The defense could be: fair enough, I really don’t believe it; it’s just convenient for me to act that way. I have no reason not to act that way, not to believe my eyes or my senses or my thinking, and therefore I basically adopt that position. And that brings me to reflections on this proof, what I called the proof from epistemology, yes, the proof from the fact that we believe in our ability to know the world. That ability is made up of means of observation—the senses—and intellectual means: the principle of causality, the principle of induction, our accepted ways of thinking, Ockham’s razor, all kinds of assumptions like: if the laws of nature are valid here, then they are valid everywhere. There are many assumptions that we often aren’t even aware of, and they play a part in our knowledge of the world. And the question is: on what basis do I believe them? If all of this really is the result of accidental construction, a process that happened on its own somehow without a directing hand, then maybe it can happen even though it’s complex. But if that’s the case, then why believe it? Like the stone sign. That’s what I called the proof from epistemology, and therefore what I’m really saying is that if you believe this, then you are implicitly assuming that there is God. And the philosophical way is to say: if there is God and He created us in a sympathetic way, let’s call it that—that is, in a way that enables us to know the world—then one can trust the senses. The theological way says that if I trust the senses, then apparently I am assuming that there is God. Because if I didn’t believe in God, then I couldn’t trust my epistemology, my cognition, both observational and intellectual. Okay, that’s a brief summary of what we’ve done so far, and now I’m coming to the critiques. And along the way various critiques already came up from you too; I said I’d get to the section of critiques. So maybe let’s start with the critique—we’ll call it the pragmatist critique. In my experience—and I’ve already had quite a few conversations with people about this proof—the standard atheist defense against this argument basically says: you should know, you’re right, I really can’t trust my senses, my thinking, and so on, but on the other hand I have nothing else. What do you want me to do—not exist? I’m built this way, I have no reason not to go along with how I’m built, and so I go along with how I’m built. But not that I really trust it or assume it’s reliable or anything like that. Now let’s say for the sake of discussion that I even believe that claim—which I don’t, I don’t believe him. But let’s say for the sake of discussion that I do believe him. He really doesn’t have actual trust in his senses, in science, in his a priori insights; he’s just going along with the habit because he has no better alternative, and therefore no reason to leave it. What that position basically says is that in a certain sense he is a pragmatist. The atheist. What does that mean? He subordinates the true to the desirable. It is convenient for him to live in the way he is built. That’s how he’s built. True, there’s no justification for it, but he adopts the position that it’s true because that’s what’s convenient for him. That is subordinating what is to what is desired—what is called pragmatism. In other words, what is useful or comfortable for me dictates what I believe in—that’s what is called pragmatism. This is interesting because usually, when people hear this argument, they accuse the one making the argument of pragmatism. When I say: look, without God there can be no basis for my epistemology, therefore I claim that there is God, they tell me: you’re a pragmatist. Why? Because basically you’re saying that it’s very convenient for you to trust your tools of cognition, so you invent God so that it will really be grounded and justified. In short, you’re a pragmatist. So the role reversal here is very interesting. The criticism of the person making the argument is that he is a pragmatist, while those defending themselves against the argument are actually presenting a pragmatist stance themselves. Now what really is the answer to that defense? The truth is that there is no answer. That is, all I can really say to the person is: look, it’s like any argument—if you don’t accept the premises, I can’t force you to accept the conclusion. And this argument too is a logical argument in every respect. As I said, it is just a reversal of the implication. If A implies B, then not-B implies not-A. So the theological argument is not-B implies not-A; the philosophical argument is A implies B. Therefore both are logical arguments, both have premises, and whoever does not accept the premises obviously does not have to accept the conclusion. All I’m saying to a person is this: you have two possibilities. There is no third one—that’s the important point. Of the two possibilities, choose what you think, but there is no third. That is, you cannot accept your epistemic tools, your tools of cognition, as reliable, and not believe in God. That you cannot do. So what remains? Two options remain. Either believe in God and accept those tools as reliable, or not believe in God and not accept those tools as reliable and continue to go along with them because it’s convenient—the pragmatic argument I talked about earlier. Those are the two possibilities. If you really are in the second option, then I have nothing to say to you. Right—then this proof cannot work for you, like any logical argument. A philosophical or logical argument is built on premises; whoever does not accept the premise, obviously the argument will not succeed in persuading him. There is no argument that can persuade someone independently of premises. Every argument is built on premises. It seems to me I mentioned the cogito and Anselm, the ontological proof, where they tried to get around that, but you can’t—it failed. So this argument can definitely hold water, but of course the person needs to ask himself whether it is true. Do I really not trust my senses, or am I just defending myself this way so that this religious guy won’t convince me that there is God? In order to get out of this argument safely, I present some position that is not vulnerable to attack, I got out safely, I didn’t lose the argument. But forget the argument with me—check yourself in the mirror. Do you really not believe your senses, or are you feeding me nonsense? You’re selling me nonsense. It’s hard for me to accept that a person really does not believe his senses. I understand that philosophically he understands that maybe they deceive him, and so on. But practically—do you trust your senses? Do you trust that they are reliable? Don’t tell me stories—you trust them. Now I have nothing to say to him; it’s paternalism. He’ll say: I don’t believe. I can’t tell him he’s wrong—how can I know what’s in his heart? But as far as I’m concerned, if you ask me, I don’t believe him. And for me what matters is not winning the argument, but simply giving you diagnostic tools—check yourself and see where you stand. If you really trust your senses, then conclude for yourself that you probably also believe in God. Forget me and the arguments with me and who wins and who loses. Go home and think to yourself now, and whoever really trusts his senses—and in my opinion almost everyone really trusts their senses, all the rest are just excuses, that they’re only going along with it pragmatically and so on—then basically they are implicit believers in God. Yes? The claim that we are basically living in the Matrix, yes, in that movie The Matrix, and keep going along with the Matrix because it’s simply convenient for us and we have no other option—someone who understood that he was living inside a Matrix would not keep going along with it. The only reason a person goes along with the Matrix is because he does not understand that he is living in a Matrix. But the moment he reaches the conclusion that that is the situation, he will not really keep going along with it, because he understands that it isn’t true. So I do not accept that defensive argument, even though I have nothing to say against it. Whoever says it and insists on it—fine, he got out of the argument safely. He didn’t win, but he also didn’t lose. In other words, he got out safely. But if the goal is really to clarify where I stand, and not to win or not lose an argument, then give yourself an accounting: do you trust your sensory tools, your epistemology, or don’t you, or do you not not trust them?
[Speaker B] A comment—yes, it sounds similar to determinism. I assume that most people who believe in determinism really think they have free choice. In the morning they think whether to get up or not; they don’t say, wait, wait, it’s already fixed, it doesn’t depend on me—they decide. Right, right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I completely agree. I even wrote on my website in several columns about implicit beliefs or hidden beliefs. Very often people believe things that they themselves are not aware of. And when you say something like that to a person, you’re immediately accused of paternalism. Who are you to tell me what I believe? I’m telling you what I believe. Now, I’m a proud paternalist. I think that very often people do not really fully understand what is inside them. And very often their explicit beliefs indicate that somewhere hidden away there are beliefs that they themselves are not aware of, and sometimes they even declare the opposite. And I think determinism is an excellent example of that. A great many people declare deterministic views—scientists and philosophers and also ordinary people in the street—declare deterministic views, but to me it is completely clear that they do not really believe it. They do not act that way, they do not speak that way, they do not think that way, they do not judge that way. It’s clear that that is not really their belief. Rather, they have various considerations that seem to them decisive in favor of determinism, so they adopt the deterministic view, but inwardly they do not really live that way, they do not really think it is true. And therefore, in my opinion, the more reasonable way to proceed in such a case is simply to look for the bug in the arguments. Because inside, you understand that it’s not true, so apparently the arguments that seem so persuasive to you are not really so persuasive. And that’s what I tried to do there in the book The Science of Freedom, where I tried to show that the arguments in favor of determinism are really not persuasive. I didn’t bring arguments there for libertarianism—that is, for belief in free choice—because I don’t need to. We all believe in libertarianism. The only thing is that there are arguments that force us to give it up. The moment I stick a pin into the balloon of those arguments, I no longer need to convince the person to be a libertarian. It’s enough for me just to show him that he doesn’t have to be a determinist. I think that in this sense, belief in God is also like that, to a certain extent. Somewhere inside, even the greatest atheists, in my opinion, believe in God. Sorry if I sound paternalistic, like Rabbi Kook with the Jewish spark and all kinds of sayings that I myself really don’t like. But philosophically I think it’s true. And not because I believe the sacred texts and the Sages said that every Jew has a spark and I don’t know what, all kinds of things like that, or books of Hasidism. Rather because philosophically I can show you that you believe in God. It’s not mysticism. I can show you through a philosophical argument that you conduct yourself in a way that indicates that implicitly you believe in God, even if you declare otherwise. I can show you that. And then you’ll be in a tight spot, and you’ll have to decide. Either you give up those beliefs from which it follows that you believe in God, because really it isn’t consistent with atheism, or be honest and admit that you really do believe in Him. That’s how what I called a theological proof works here. Okay?
[Speaker C] Rabbi, Rabbi, I didn’t understand something basic in this pincer movement. If, let’s say, we started with the physico-theological proof and the Rabbi says that someone can still come and claim that complex things happen successfully by chance even when… it’s very unlikely, but it can happen. So if I already accept that possibility, then that same person says: my senses too were really formed in a complex way, but by chance, and the fact is that they work because they really did happen by chance, and there’s no problem. It’s like the same answer he had to the physico-theological proof, he just keeps giving now too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll sharpen the point as to why that isn’t correct. I explained this when I talked about the train parable, the stones by the train. When I’m traveling on a train and I see a stone sign on a mountainside saying “Welcome to Scotland,” I can assume it was created by a human hand and he meant to tell me that I have arrived in Scotland, and I can say that it was formed by chance. And for the sake of discussion I’m willing to accept that a stone sign saying “Welcome to Scotland” was formed by chance, even though that is a very, very low probability. But if it was formed by chance, I can’t believe the sign. Because who says it was really formed in Scotland? Maybe it was formed in Australia. Now notice: I’m not saying that such a sign cannot be formed by chance in Scotland and therefore also be reliable. What I’m saying is that I have no way of knowing that that happened.
[Speaker C] But I tried it when I was a kid the first time,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—
[Speaker C] I got off the train, but they told me where it was, so I got off and saw that I had arrived in Scotland, so ever since then I see that it’s good.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s not correct. That’s the next claim I’m going to get to—whether this can be learned from experience. But I’m not there yet; I’ll get to it in a moment. Right now I’m dealing with the question of whether this could happen by chance. My answer is: it could happen by chance, but even if it did happen by chance, you have no way of knowing that. And therefore the claim is that even if the senses, which are extremely complex, could come about by chance—and not only that, it could be that this chance event even produces a reliable sensory system, meaning that these senses are not only complex but also reliable, they correctly reflect reality—even so, my claim is that even if that’s true, I have no way of knowing it. And therefore I can’t rationally trust the senses. It’s like with the train to Scotland, where I said that if I see that stone inscription, then assuming it was formed by chance, it could also have formed at the gates of Scotland. But since I have no indication except the stone inscription itself, and the stone inscription can’t tell me that it’s in Scotland because it was formed by chance, then the location is completely random. So I have no way of knowing that even if this inscription is in Scotland, I have no way of knowing that it’s in Scotland. And therefore rationally I can’t trust it, even though it may have formed precisely at the gates of Scotland. That’s what I explained there.
Now I’m saying the same thing regarding the senses—that’s the moral of the analogy. Even with the senses, in principle, let’s say we adopt the position of the defensive atheist and say that complex things, or rare things, things with very low probability, can come about by chance. Therefore a sensory system that is extremely complex could come about by chance, and not only that, a sensory system could come about by chance that is complex and also reliable. Meaning, it also reflects reality correctly. That too could happen by chance. But since I’m fed only by that sensory system itself, and I have nothing external to it, then from the mere fact that I see something I have no way of concluding that it really exists there. So I have no indication outside the appearance given by the senses themselves; I have no indication at all that the senses are reliable. Therefore, even though they may be reliable, I have no way of knowing that, and so rationally I cannot trust them.
As for the question of experience and learning from experience—I’m getting to that. I’ll just note that I already answered one thing in this context. People say to me: fine, what you saw, afterward you also touch, so that gives you feedback that what you saw really exists there. And then I said—I spoke about this and expanded it to the entire sensory picture: look at all the senses. All our senses together—we do not have any indicator outside the senses telling us that the picture our senses give us is correct. So let’s look at the picture of all the senses together as my data, not just sight. About that, I have no external feedback telling me that it really works, because all my feedback comes from the senses. Now if the senses are deceptive, then it may very well be that they are simply deceiving me consistently—there is no way to know. And therefore the claim is that if I look at the whole sensory and cognitive package—this is why I called it the proof from epistemology—at my entire epistemic system, then I have no external indication, and it’s like the stone inscription on the road to Scotland. Meaning, I have no way of knowing that it’s reliable, even though it may be reliable. But that probability is so tiny that if I have no indication that this is really the case, then the rational assumption is to assume that it is not the case.
Now I really move to the question of experience. One could say: I do have an indication that the senses work, and that indication is experience. I learned in the past, I relied on the senses and saw that I was right, and therefore I learn inductively—yes, of course—that the senses are probably a reliable system, and therefore I trust them. So that means that under this assumption, the philosophical formulation still stands. Because if the senses are reliable, then that is even more surprising. What are the chances that such a complex system would also turn out reliable without a directing hand? That’s a very small probability—but that’s the philosophical argument. And against the philosophical argument the atheist comes and says: fine, but I think it nevertheless happened by chance. And to that I say: yes, but then you cannot know that this thing is reliable. And then he says: yes I can know, because I have experience, and experience tells me that this business is reliable.
I’ll return to the example I gave in order to illustrate this challenge. Let’s go back to the example you gave: suppose I find some collection of parts and glue them together randomly, yes, like Fred Hoyle’s tornado—what’s his name, that astrophysicist, I forgot—Fred Hoyle, yes, exactly. Fred Hoyle’s typhoon that passes over a junkyard and creates a Boeing airplane. Would you get on that plane, start it, and take off? I never would. Because even if this wondrous thing happened and the form of an airplane was produced here, what are the chances that it’s a plane that actually works? That it won’t crash? When there was no directing hand here that designed it for that purpose? No chance. That is the difference between creating a complex system and creating a complex system that is also reliable, that also works.
But now look: I gave an example there about a computer. Suppose that storm produced some kind of device. Now I enter into that device the question: what is the next prime number after one hundred and nine? And it gives me one hundred and thirteen, which is the correct answer. Okay? Now, since the computer was created by the typhoon, I have no reason to trust that result. Meaning, I saw that something amazing and complex was produced here by a random typhoon, but I have no reason to assume that this complex thing is also reliable. Meaning, that it really answers correctly the questions I ask. Again, that too is possible, but as long as I have no indication of it, I will not assume that’s the case. So therefore I won’t accept its answer.
Except what? After it tells me one hundred and thirteen, I check for myself, and I say, wow, it’s right. Then I ask it another question, and it gives me another answer, and once again it gives me the correct answer, and once again it’s right. Yes, it’s very confusing—it’s not one hundred and seventeen, by the way, as the next number. But again it gives me the correct answer, and little by little I come to the conclusion that the impossible happened: not only was a complex device produced by a typhoon, but this complex device is also a reliable, functioning, operating computer. Amazing—but it’s a fact, I have indications. So I can’t deny the fact that this computer works. That is essentially the atheist claim against the argument here.
I’m basically saying: look, true, in principle there is no reason to attribute reliability to this computer—to my epistemic computer, there is no reason to attribute reliability—but from experience I see that it works. So it turns out that the impossible happened. A miracle occurred: this random typhoon created a complex system that is also reliable. Here of course I would ask him: yes, but isn’t it more reasonable to say that if the system is complex and reliable, then it probably wasn’t created by chance? But that is the philosophical formulation. We’re now dealing with the theological formulation. Let’s assume that in the philosophical formulation we managed somehow to say that even an impossible thing can come about by chance. That’s not true, but just for the sake of discussion I’m adopting it. Now if I adopt that, then ostensibly there is a good answer here. Meaning, the second horn of the dilemma does not exist. Someone who objects to the philosophical proof, the physico-theological proof in the old philosophical formulation, and says: nevertheless a complex thing can arise by chance—I can no longer attack him with the “either way” argument, on the other side of the dilemma. Because he says: what do you mean? This thing came about by chance, but experience shows me that it’s reliable, so therefore I believe in it, that’s all. And then I really do believe in it. This isn’t Matrix, okay? These aren’t just rules of the game I’m going along with. I really believe in it. And nevertheless I still don’t have to reach the conclusion that there is a God.
And as I said before, that claim is actually a pretty poor one a priori, because now the philosophical formulation pops back up. You solved one horn of the dilemma for me, I’ll come back with the other. If something very complex and reliable has arisen here, then it probably did not arise by chance. But assuming you accept that it did arise by chance, how do we answer this kind of defensive argument? So I’ll say a few things.
First, the claim is that according to this, our trust in the senses should have increased over time, improved over time, right? The more and more experience we have showing us that our senses are reliable, the more trust we should place in them. A small child should not believe anything he sees, hears, touches, smells, and so on. Gradually, as he grows and accumulates experience and sees that the senses really are reliable, he should acquire that trust, increase the trust he has in his senses. That is not what happens. From birth it is obvious to us that what we see is really there. From birth—well, I don’t know, from a very young age. What we see is really there. What we hear really exists there. Therefore it doesn’t seem that this is the result of experience. Trust in the senses is something a priori. It is not accumulated as a result of observation or experience.
Second, I would argue against this claim that it itself is built on trust in the senses. Because what—how did you derive from past experience the conclusion that the senses really are reliable? How did you get that? Through the senses. What do you mean? You saw something with your eyes and afterward you also reached it and touched it. A sign that the eyes reflected the situation correctly, because afterward you touched it too and saw that indeed there was something there. But I already answered that. I said fine, let’s now look at the totality of the senses. After all, I’m not asking about the eyes, I’m asking about the totality of my senses. Do I have any indicator independent of my senses—of all my senses—that validates or gives me an indication of the reliability of the totality of the senses? The answer is no. I have no additional tool beyond the senses with which to make observations about the world. Therefore this is a circular argument. You say that from experience you learn that the senses are reliable. Experience itself is an observation that uses the senses. If they are fooling me, if I’m living in the Matrix, then what is experience worth? That experience itself is worth nothing. Therefore this argument is really a circular argument.
These objections, or the replies to these objections, really complete the presentation of this “either way” structure. The structure that says: if there is a complex thing, it was probably not created by chance, so God created it. And if you assume that a complex thing can arise by chance, then I ask you: fine, so who told you it is reliable? Yes, you see that “either way” claim: if you defend yourselves against this argument, you’ll be attacked by that argument. If you defend yourselves with that argument, I’ll attack you with this one. Meaning, if you defend yourselves from that argument and say a complex thing can arise by chance, I’ll ask you: fine, so what’s the indication that it’s reliable? If you tell me: yes, but I have indications from experience that it’s reliable, then I’ll ask you: fine, so if that’s the case, then we have here something complex that is also reliable—so what are the chances that it arose by chance? That’s the philosophical argument. And there is no way out of this. That is exactly the meaning of a combined attack, yes, of an “either way” argument, or what philosophers call a dilemma argument. It’s an argument of “either way”—either this or that—but from both sides I can prove to you the same conclusion, therefore either way the conclusion is correct.
The logical structure of such an argument basically says this: P implies Q, and not-P also implies Q. The conclusion is Q. Because if Q is a conclusion both from P and from not-P, and clearly either P or not-P—there is no third possibility—then since on each of the two sides the resulting conclusion is Q, one can conclude that Q is true. Fine. That is what is basically called a dilemma argument. Okay, that’s essentially my answer. Either way: if this was created by chance, then I say you can’t trust the senses, which means unless there is a God. And if it was not created by chance, then obviously there is a God. So either way—
[Speaker E] There is a God. I didn’t understand. If I were foolish and went on the plane once, then twice, then a third time, and each time I went on it—I had no way to believe that it would really fly properly and not break apart, but I did it. Now the sixth time, the seventh time, I can say yes, from experience I know it works.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what I answer to that is what I answered before: the principle of induction that you’re using here is itself a principle that is one of our a priori intuitions. Who said it works? Just because it worked six times, who said it will work the seventh time? The principle of induction is itself a principle with no justification.
[Speaker E] Okay, if according to induction, if we—then I can’t do anything at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. Correct. Once—exactly, that’s my claim. These are just examples, but obviously it’s true about everything individually. And my claim is that once you trust your observations and your thinking—the principle of induction belongs to thinking, not to observations—that means you believe they are reliable in some way, otherwise you cannot use them at all. That’s exactly my claim. By the way, more than that: I can say that even the fact that you didn’t crash—who says you flew on a plane at all? After all, you think through your senses that you are on a plane, and it could be they deceived you. Meaning, you can’t really reach the conclusion that you are flying on a plane and that the plane is reliable. You can only say pragmatically: I’ll continue doing what seems to me like flying on a plane, even though I myself doubt whether I am really flying here on a plane. Therefore you won’t be able to derive conclusions about the world. At most you can continue to justify the fact that you keep behaving pragmatically as you have until now. But I’m not attacking pragmatic behavior. Someone who does that, that’s perfectly fine; I have no complaints against him. I’m attacking the person who says: I also believe this. Meaning, it also tells me what really exists in the world. And your argument does not provide that. Okay?
So now we come to the elephant in the room. That’s evolution. Just as evolution was an argument that attacked the physico-theological proof in the previous formulation—yes, a complex thing does not arise by chance—evolution showed that a complex thing can arise by chance. By chance meaning without a directing hand. And that was a challenge to the physico-theological argument. I answered there that this challenge is not correct, but that’s how it was presented there. In the same way, it also comes up against the theological formulation. Evolution is essentially the last barricade on this horn of the dilemma too, not just on the other horn. What do I mean? Basically evolution tells me: I trust my senses even though they arose without a directing hand, because they arose evolutionarily. And evolutionary adaptation says that if the senses arose in that way, then presumably they are reliable, otherwise I wouldn’t be here today. Meaning, I wouldn’t have survived. Therefore this doesn’t just give me a justification for how a complex thing could arise by chance—which is the challenge to the first formulation, the physico-philosophical one—but it also challenges the theological formulation. Because the theological formulation asks: if your eyes arose by chance, how do you believe them? Or if your senses arose by chance, how do you believe them? Evolution says: what do you mean? They arose by chance, but evolution made sure they would be reliable. And therefore I trust them. So this answers the theological formulation as well, not only the philosophical one.
Now I want to sharpen the point before I continue. Look, evolution gives me an explanation for why the senses are reliable. But I didn’t ask whether the senses are reliable. Maybe they are reliable; after all, if a complex thing can arise by chance, then reliable senses can also arise by chance. I’m asking how I can know that they are reliable. That’s not the same thing. I’m not asking how it could be that this stone inscription is at the gates of Scotland. That can happen; a complex thing can happen by chance. A rare thing can happen by chance. I’m asking: but I, with all the data I have, which is only the stone inscription—how can I know that this is the case? That the stone inscription really is at the gates of Scotland? Same thing with the senses. I’m not asking how it could be that the senses arose by chance—that was the previous formulation. I’m asking how it could be that even though they arose by chance, and perhaps they are also reliable, how can it be that I know they are reliable? How can I know that? I cannot know that, and therefore rationally I cannot trust them. But even if the senses actually were reliable, I myself cannot know that this is so.
Now if that really is the formulation, then evolution supposedly explains that too. Evolution basically tells me: because I study the theory of evolution and understand it, from that I can also ground my trust in the senses. From that I know that my senses are reliable. Now here we need to distinguish between two planes of discussion. One plane of discussion—you can talk about this on the psychological plane and on the philosophical plane. On the psychological plane, why do I trust things? Then one can say evolution shows that a psychology developed in me that trusts the senses. That’s a good explanation for the psychological trust I place in the senses. But I’m not asking psychology. I’m asking what the justification for the trust is. Why, philosophically, do I understand that it is right to trust them—not why I am psychologically conditioned to trust them.
Something similar—just to illustrate the matter, these are very subtle points so it’s important for me to sharpen them. Take morality, for example. I claim—and we’ll get to this at the next stage—I claim that there is no morality without God. Meaning, someone who believes there is valid morality is once again implicitly believing in God. That is an argument of the theological type; we’ll get to it, that’s our next stage. Now against this too the claim of evolution arises. Evolution basically created altruistic mechanisms in us because that has survival value. So therefore, supposedly, morality too can be explained without God. But that explanation commits a categorical mistake, because it does not explain—the explanation explains how moral feelings arose in me, but it does not explain why it is right to act on them. Why I think morality is valid, not how it arose. The question is not a psychological one; it is a philosophical one. If someone says: true, I am conditioned to be this way, and maybe it’s also useful for survival, but I don’t want to act that way. I don’t feel like surviving; I don’t feel like acting according to how I’m conditioned. What is the claim against him? The claim is that he is not okay because morality is valid. The fact that he has a moral feeling inside him proves nothing. I also have a tendency inside me to speak gossip, so does that mean I should speak gossip? Not everything planted inside me is also justified. In order to ask whether morality is justified—not how it was planted in me, but how I reached the conclusion that it is justified—evolution cannot be the explanation. So evolution created something in me—so what? It also created in me the desire to speak gossip. The question whether it is justified in value terms, morally, is a completely different question. And for that, there is no explanation apart from God. We’ll get to that later.
[Speaker D] It’s an explanation—the existence of society.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not now—don’t argue about that right now. For me this is only an example, because we’ll get to it; that’s my next argument, and we’ll argue about it there. I just want to show the difference between the planes of discussion. If we are speaking on the psychological plane, evolution gives an explanation; on the philosophical plane, it does not. Same thing here. When you ask me why I have a tendency to trust the senses, psychologically why I’m conditioned to that, evolution is a good explanation. But now I ask myself: on what basis do I conclude that this conditioning is not Matrix, but is really true—that it is valid, not just that it exists in psychology? That is the question whether evolution can give an explanation. That is the important question here.
Now one could argue yes—even on the philosophical plane. Why? Basically the claim that evolution created in us trust in the senses means not only that it implanted trust in the senses in us, but that it is also an indication that this is justified trust, that the senses really are reliable, that this is not Matrix. Why? Because if the senses were not reliable, we would not be here. We would not have survived. A lion would come, we wouldn’t see it, or we would see a lion where there is no lion, it would devour us and we would not remain here. Therefore the reliability of the senses has survival value, and therefore the adaptive evolutionary process basically not only ensures that we will have trust in the senses, but also ensures that the senses will be reliable. And that is already a claim on the philosophical plane, not just on the psychological plane, because it is already a claim that apparently grounds the assumption that the senses are reliable—not only the mere existence of the senses and the existence of trust in them.
To that I’ll give several answers. I’m hurrying a bit because I still want to finish this section today. So I’ll answer on a few levels. First, I think this too is circular. Why? Because how do I know the theory of evolution itself? Where do I know it from? Meaning, if I adopt it, then it gives me a basis that justifies trust in the senses. But what justifies evolution itself? How do I know it is true? Because I have observations; it’s a branch of science, right? I have observations, I make generalizations, like any other scientific field. Fine—but we are discussing the validity of the scientific tools themselves. Meaning, for me they are grounded in evolution, but evolution itself is a product of the scientific tools, so there is circular justification here. So if you believe in evolution, then if you believe by virtue of evolution, pardon me, then de facto you already believe in the senses. So what do I care? Again I ask: on what basis do you believe in the senses? Okay?
I’ll ask another question that indicates the same issue. What was trust in the senses based on in the eighteenth century? When the theory of evolution only came out in 1870—Darwin’s Origin of Species came out in 1870. Napoleon’s people, yes, in the early nineteenth century or the end of the eighteenth century—on what did he base his trust in the senses? After all, he didn’t yet know the theory of evolution. So what one could say is: true, but evolution created him too even though he didn’t know it. That explains psychologically why he had trust in the senses. But if I had asked him: tell me, what is your justification for trusting the senses?—he would not have been able to answer me, right? Now I ask you: did Napoleon have less trust in the senses than we do? Even after I would expose him to this question? Obviously all of us know the answer is no. What does that mean? That our trust in the senses is not based on evolution—don’t sell me stories. Before evolution, trust in the senses was no weaker. Which means that our trust in the senses is not based on evolution. So what is it based on? Apparently on trust in the One who created the senses, the Holy One, blessed be He.
And again, this is not a proof that there is a Holy One, blessed be He, because maybe evolution did this even though I am mistaken and think it is because of the Holy One, blessed be He. But that is the whole point of the theological proof: it does not prove that there is a Holy One, blessed be He, it proves to you that you believe in His existence. Maybe you are wrong, but you believe in His existence. So don’t tell me you are an atheist. I’m just sharpening the point again and again because there are many philosophical subtleties here that need to be noticed carefully when we conduct this discussion.
So that is another point. In other words, trust in the senses throughout history also shows that this trust is not based on evolution. The next point I want to make here, the next thing I want to raise against this challenge, is the absoluteness of trust in the senses. Look, if trust in the senses were based on evolution, then the conclusion should have been that the senses generally reflect the truth but here and there they miss. Because evolution is not finished yet; we still have room to improve, right? Right. We are some stage in the middle of the road. So one cannot assume that the system is already a perfect system. It is a system that keeps improving over time. Where are we in that process? I don’t know—somewhere in the middle. So the conclusion I would draw from this is that one can place some degree of trust in the senses—but check yourselves: our trust in the senses is absolute. If we see or hear something, it is obvious to us that it is there, aside from pathological phenomena, mirages, and then we really do look for explanations of why there was a mirage. Apparently we shouldn’t have to look for explanations for a mirage. Every now and then this sense misses because it hasn’t fully developed yet. My evolutionary descendants will already have better vision, until in the end we reach perfect vision. But why do we assume that we are already at that stage, that we are at the stage of perfect vision, that we have finished the evolutionary process of vision? Evolution cannot tell us that, because evolution does not tell us where we are on the axis of development. So even if evolution provides some kind of basis for trust in the senses, the absoluteness of our trust in the senses says that it is not based on evolution. And then again I ask: so what is it based on? Apparently on God.
Another thing I want to argue—yes, and again, if a person’s vision sometimes fails, yes, there is a mirage. But notice that whenever a mirage occurs, scientific or psychological research or whatever immediately begins: how did this happen? Because our assumption is that the sense of sight does not miss. If it misses, then something happened there. Mirage phenomena are actually an indication of the absoluteness of our trust in vision, not of doubt in vision. Because the fact that every such phenomenon immediately leads us to look for an explanation—something went wrong here, this can’t be—why, what’s the problem? Every now and then it misses because the sense hasn’t yet been completed, the evolutionary process of producing our perception, our vision, has not yet ended, and therefore every so often we miss. That’s a third claim.
A fourth claim against the challenge from evolution is that the assumption here is that evolution, evolutionary adaptation, preserves reliable senses—it leads us toward senses that are more and more reliable. That is not accurate. It is not accurate for two reasons, and perhaps this is also the fifth reason, the fifth attack on this challenge. For one thing, it’s not accurate because sometimes survival specifically requires that we not see things. Reliability of the senses is not always the best tool for survival. Many times it is—you need to deal with dangers, so you need to know they exist—but there are quite a few situations in which precisely not seeing part of reality is actually a better survival tool. Ben-Gurion said that anyone who does not believe in miracles in Israel is not realistic. Meaning, there are things we don’t see, and if we did see them we wouldn’t do them. If we were realistic and looked at the facts, we would not establish a state. Okay? Meaning, there are situations in which—I don’t know—say I see a very deep valley and I get a fear of heights, so I don’t cross there, but there is no basis for fear, no real basis for that fear. Because there’s a railing, I’m holding onto it, so what if I’m standing up high? So there, if I didn’t see, that would actually help me get across. Meaning, there are situations in which unreliable senses actually contribute to survival. Now I’m not saying that’s most situations—it’s probably a minority—but there are such situations. So what does that mean? It means that the senses should have developed in a way that is useful for survival, not necessarily in the way that is most reliable. And that means they are not necessarily reliable. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But once again, the absoluteness of our trust in the senses says that this is probably not on an evolutionary basis.
And the fifth claim, which I mentioned before, is that in order to produce evolutionary survival, I do not need trust in the senses—I only need to act as if I trust the senses. Yes, it’s like when they explain morality—let’s return to the example of morality. Evolution creates altruistic feelings in people and therefore they help one another; that is the evolutionary explanation of morality. Okay? Now I say: evolution doesn’t need to produce any feeling; it only needs to produce behavior. Evolution doesn’t need to condition me so that I understand there is a lion here; evolution only needs to condition me so that if there is a lion here, I run away. I can fail to see the lion, not believe in the sight of the lion, and none of that matters. But if when there is a lion nearby I run away, that is enough for my survival. The whole cognitive or perceptive framework—the framework of perception, of consciousness—that underlies the matter is not needed for survival.
So my trust in the senses does not belong to what I do; it belongs to the background on the basis of which I do what I do. When I see a lion, I believe there is a lion here and therefore I run away. If I ran away for some other reason, not because I believe there is a lion here, I would also survive. What evolution needed to do was: when there is a lion nearby, I run away. But why should it produce senses that show me reality correctly and also consciously, so that I also believe them? There’s no need for any of that. It only needs that when there is a lion nearby, I run away in some way or other. It does not have to go through my perceptions, my understanding that there is a lion here, making a decision—on the contrary, yes, Daniel Kahneman spoke about System 1 and System 2, yes, system one and system two of decision-making, like in driving, yes, when we drive on automatic pilot. Not consciously. And we drive no less well that way—maybe even better. In any case, we respond much faster when it does not pass through our cognition and instead we do it instinctively. Therefore I think it would actually contribute to survival if, in order to flee the lion, I did not have to understand that there is a lion here, calculate, reach a conclusion, and then run away. It’s like in cartoons, you know, I don’t remember what it’s called—the beep beep, yes, the one who spins his legs in place like that and after a few seconds suddenly starts running. It delays survival a bit. Looney something, I don’t remember.
Anyway, all these claims basically say that the evolutionary explanation, in my opinion, does not provide a reasonable answer to our trust in the senses. Fine. The truth is that here I’ve more or less finished the move of the fourth notebook. Just allow me a few more minutes to summarize—I started late, and that was a little at your expense time-wise, but I just want to summarize so we can move to the next chapter. If we do—basically I want to claim this, I said it earlier too: we’ve seen where we stand here. We have basically seen until now four paths on the way to faith. The four that need to be discussed. There is intuition, there is tradition, and so on—fine, those are things there isn’t much to discuss. But beyond that there are four more philosophical routes we have taken.
One of them is Anselm’s ontological proof, the perfect God. The second is the cosmological proof: from the very fact that something exists, everything that exists must have a cause that created it. The third is the physico-theological one, yes, Kant’s classification. Physico-theological means that from the complexity of the world we learn that it probably has some sort of engineer. And the fourth path is what we are talking about here. It is the extension of physico-theology or the other side of physico-theology, and it is what I called the proof from epistemology. It says that even if this thing arose by chance, there is no real basis to trust it or to assume it is reliable. And if I assume it is reliable, then apparently I believe in God. And again, it may be that I am mistaken, it may be that there is no God. But this only proves that I believe in God, that’s all.
Now one can discuss it—yes, true, not true. It also means that the burden of proof is on the person who says there is no God, because if I believe in Him, I may be mistaken, but you have to prove to me that I’m mistaken if I’m to abandon what I believe in. That is the meaning of a theological proof. A theological proof does not prove some truth to you; it shows you that you yourself already believe in it. Now it could be that you are mistaken and will retract, no problem, but don’t tell me you don’t believe in it, because you do. There are various indications that you believe in it.
This is regarding the proof from epistemology, which completes the physico-theological proof. Next time I want to speak about the proof from morality, and the proof from morality still belongs—it is another kind of proof. In Kant’s classification it actually appears in another book, but not in this usual classification, because Kant does not speak of theological proofs—he does not include them in this classification at all. Therefore you won’t find the physico-theological proof in this formulation in him, nor the proof from morality, except in another book. But in terms of the logic of the proof, the proof from morality is also a theological proof. Meaning, it is a proof that does not prove that there is a God, but rather proves to you that you believe in Him. Now you can say you are mistaken and retract, but you cannot say that you don’t believe in Him and still remain committed to moral values—just like the train to Scotland. So in that sense it is exactly the same logic, but a proof of a different type. That is why I attach it to this talk or to this whole discussion.
Okay, I’ll stop here. Again, I apologize for the delay at the beginning. I did this a bit quickly this time, but I think in the end we managed. So, God willing, in another two weeks we’ll meet again, right? Moving on. Okay. If there are questions or comments, then…
[Speaker B] Yes, I have a question. One of the proofs on this issue is the moral issue, like he said, “and he saw that there was no God in this place,” or something like that—if there is no God, there is no morality. Whoever doesn’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s our next topic. If you want to ask about that, it’s a shame to do it now, because that is exactly the topic we’ll discuss.
[Speaker B] But I just want something brief. In my opinion it’s simply the sixth sense, that’s all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s part of the senses. All the senses are for survival purposes, and this is one of those senses. I wrote it down in front of me—I’ll answer that next time. I don’t agree, but we’ll talk about it next time when I speak about that proof. Absolutely. I agree that there is such a sense—not that I disagree that there is such a sense—I disagree that this is an alternative to God.
[Speaker B] With the senses we know there are things like mirages, all kinds of impossible images. So we know that the senses aren’t absolute or anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s what I said earlier regarding a mirage, or if you prefer, Escher’s illusions, yes, and all kinds of things like that. But every such case immediately leads to investigation: wait, what happened here, and how did they do it, and so on. What does that mean? That these phenomena דווקא prove the absoluteness of our trust in vision. Because every time there is some deviation, we don’t say: okay, then our sense of sight is not perfect, evolution hasn’t finished the job yet. No, we understand that there is some positive cause here that is misleading us, and therefore we were mistaken. Not because the sense simply doesn’t work in this area at the moment.
[Speaker B] Isn’t the taste for that survival?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but the ability of it to deceive us—of Escher or of a mirage to deceive us—maybe that does have a survival explanation. Meaning, it may be that when we’re deceived, they are actually using some other type of perception besides just the eyes; the brain intervenes and mixes in with the eyes a bit. But that ability of the brain to work that way—maybe that has some other survival value. And that’s a different matter.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, what I didn’t understand is this: if, say, the Rabbi disagrees with evolution, that’s one thing. If the Rabbi agrees with evolution, then the whole argument there against evolution isn’t clear to me. After all, even given the fact that there is a God, still if He acted through evolution then—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem. But evolution doesn’t—I’m not saying I don’t believe in evolution; I do believe in it. I just think evolution is not a refutation of the proof. On the contrary, precisely because of God I believe in my senses and in my perception and in my cognition, and from that I also infer the theory of evolution and therefore I believe in it. I’m not—someone here asked whether evolution is not an empirical theory. “Survival of the fittest” is a tautology, but evolution also includes genetics and many other things; without that there is no evolution. I spoke about this when we discussed the previous formulation. Evolution basically has to assume three basic assumptions, or there are three components in every link in the evolutionary process. One component is the formation of mutations, which is not a tautology; that is something observational. A second component is genetics, and a third component is natural selection or survival of the fittest. Natural selection is a logical tautology. It is not observational. But the first two are observational, and without them there is no evolution. Okay. Is that it?
[Speaker C] Basically what the Rabbi said—the fourth argument the Rabbi made against evolution—could actually also be formulated as: if everything were evolution, then why would there be emotion at all? After all, that problem—which is of course another problem—but wouldn’t it have been better if there were just robots walking around here and surviving wonderfully and without emotions, and they responded like computers?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning that all our spiritual and cognitive dimensions should not have arisen. So—
[Speaker C] It’s like a separate argument, even standing on its own, unrelated to everything else. Even if everything is true from beginning to end, emotion is completely unnecessary.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. It’s connected, it’s connected to the previous formulation, and this argument was raised even with some kind of statistical calculation by a very well-known Christian American philosopher. I forgot his name for some reason, it slipped my mind just now. Today I’m weak with names. Notre Dame—I don’t remember his name. He’s a brilliant person, and of course very much vilified because he’s this kind of conservative Christian, but precisely because he’s a talented analytic philosopher, he gets slammed by all the atheist liberals, yes, because they don’t like it when there are talented people on the conservative religious side. So he raised this argument, and he even has a statistical calculation. It appears in my book In the Science of Freedom, I think, actually I think not—in the book about evolution, it appears there, his calculation. I forgot his name, I don’t know, the name slipped away from me. Okay, anyone else? So Sabbath peace, and again sorry for being late at the beginning.
[Speaker D] Sabbath peace, thank you very much.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sabbath peace, thank you very much. Yes.
[Speaker D] Just to let you know—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that Brik in the Yom Kippur War was a company commander in the war. What? I can’t hear. You were talking about Brik, about Brik’s column and the things. Brik?
[Speaker D] No, no, Major General Brik, some other Brik.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sorry. Okay, have a peaceful Sabbath, thank you very much. Okay, goodbye.