Faith and Its Meaning – Lesson 10

Table of Contents

• [0:00] Introduction to the cosmological proof and the minimal assumption
• [1:28] Infinite regress and the need for a first link
• [2:30] Making an exception to the general principle for God
• [4:50] Lex specialis: the specific principle versus the general one
• [8:25] The universe as a collective—is it in need of a cause?
• [12:20] The people as a collective—is it a separate entity?
• [14:03] The organic existence of the human being as a whole beyond the details
• [16:49] Searle’s argument: mental properties from the physiological whole
• [25:35] Panpsychism—consciousness in every particle of the universe
• [30:13] Causal connection versus correlation in brain activity
• [31:28] The lack of computational tools for mental phenomena
• [33:05] The absence of equations for describing brain-mind relations
• [35:58] Definition of weak and strong emergence
• [53:47] The cosmological argument and the difficulty of its scientific status

Summary

General Overview

The text presents the cosmological proof for the existence of God as an argument based on the minimal fact that something exists and on the intuition of causality. It explains that the problem of infinite regress is not a refutation but rather what drives the need to posit a first link that itself does not require a cause. It justifies a local exception to the rule by means of the principle of lex specialis, rejects the possibility that the universe as a whole is exempt from causality if it is nothing more than a collection of particulars, and shows that if there is “something more” in it, then that is precisely what is called God. It then moves into the question of the relation between particulars and the whole through a discussion of organicity, emergence, and mental experiences, and distinguishes between “weak” emergence, which can be computed, and “strong” emergence, which cannot be established scientifically. Toward the end, it distinguishes between a conclusion that is non-scientific because it is not falsifiable and a mode of argument that is rational and science-like, and presents the physico-theological proof from complexity as a natural continuation that seeks to explain not only that something exists, but why it is as complex as it is.

The Cosmological Proof: Causality, Infinite Regress, and a First Link

The cosmological proof proves God, defined as the cause of reality and the creator of reality, and it rests on the minimal assumption that something exists. The initial formulation says that everything that exists has a cause, there is a world or universe, and therefore there is a cause that created it, and that cause is called God. The demand to ask what the cause of God is leads to infinite regress, and the text argues that infinite regress is problematic and therefore requires that the chain stop with a primary entity that does not need a prior link.

The text explains that the solution requires making an exception to the principle of causality: at least one thing to which the principle does not apply, and that is called God. The material world is not a suitable candidate for this exception, because the things familiar to us within it are not self-caused. Therefore, what is exempted from the principle is not the kind of thing we know from experience, but “something else,” defined as God. The text emphasizes that even if there is a chain of intermediate causes like Moyshe, Yankele, Muhammad, and Bertha, in the end there has to be an entity that does not need a creator in order to stop the regress—and that itself is the proof.

Lex Specialis and Justifying an Exception to the Rule

The claim that once you make an exception to the rule you can exempt everything is presented as a possible challenge, and the text replies by means of the legal principle of lex specialis, according to which a specific principle overrides a general principle in order to preserve the general rule together with defined exceptions. The example is that Jewish law forbids murder, but imposes an obligation to execute Sabbath desecrators in the presence of witnesses and prior warning and when the required conditions are met; if you always preferred the general rule, the obligation would be emptied of content. In the same way, the text preserves the strong causal intuition of the general rule—“everything needs a cause”—and narrows the exception to what is required in order to avoid infinite regress. The expression “Would I not add to it?” appears in order to strengthen the principle of a minimal exception that does not nullify the rule.

Is the Universe as a Whole Exempt from Causality: Particulars, Collective, and Totality

There is a position that proposes exempting the universe as a whole from the causal principle even if every individual thing within the universe requires a cause, and the text begins by asking whether “the whole” is something beyond the collection of particulars or merely a name. It argues that if the universe is only a collection of things, then if every particular has a cause there is no sense in claiming that the whole has no cause, just as if every person in a group is mortal, the collection of people is not somehow “exempt” from mortality. The discussion points to the philosophical difficulty in the relation between particulars and a collective, and brings examples of “a people” as opposed to “a person” to show that there are conceptions that attribute real totality beyond the sum of the parts.

The text uses a human being and an organism to illustrate a sense of totality that is not arbitrary: a living person as opposed to a dead person contains the same materials, but lacks the organic functioning that unites them into a living entity. It notes that materialism can deny any additional dimension, whereas dualism would solve this by positing a soul/spirit/mind, and then the totality is explained by “something more” beyond matter. The conclusion regarding the universe is “whichever way you take it”: if there is no “something more” in the universe and it is only a collection of particulars, then the whole cannot be exempt from causality if the particulars are not exempt; and if there is “something more,” such as a “soul of the universe,” then that itself just comes back to God under a different name.

Emergence, Mind-Body, and Rejecting a Categorical Identification of the Mental with the Brain

The text brings in John Searle and his book Minds, Brains and Science—in the spirit of the claim that later came to be called emergence—in order to argue that even within a materialist framework one can view mental functions as appearing at the level of the physiological whole without positing an additional entity. It gives the example of liquidity: a single molecule is not liquid, but a cluster of molecules exhibits a state of matter as a property of the relations among them, and from this one can understand how properties can appear only at the level of the whole. On the other hand, it emphasizes that liquidity is “weak emergence” because it can be explained and computed from the properties of the particulars, whereas with the mental there is no computation, language, or tool that shows how a mental phenomenon “comes out” of electrical currents.

The text recounts a conversation with Yosef Neumann and presents his argument, as a materialist, that identifying love or fear with electrical currents in the brain is a category mistake: the currents may produce the experience, but they are not the experience itself. It adds the analogy of a car’s speed as a description of the car’s state that is not an additional entity, but also is not identical with the car’s material. It points to panpsychism as a mistaken response to an unwillingness to accept emergence, and argues that the example of liquidity proves nothing regarding the mental, because there we have computation, whereas in the mental realm we have at most correlations between brain activity and experience, without a mechanism that translates from a physical description to the content of consciousness.

The text brings Bertrand Russell’s example of the color yellow in order to distinguish between an electromagnetic wave and the experience of yellow as a conscious phenomenon, and states that one may argue for a causal relation but not identify consciousness with physics. It argues that “strong emergence,” defined as a transition that cannot be extracted by computation, cannot be a scientific claim because one cannot demonstrate that there is no “something more” there. Therefore there is no scientific decision between dualism and strong emergence, and at most one can invoke “Occam’s razor” as a preference for simplicity rather than as a proof.

Infinity, Time, and Kant: Limits of the Language of “Before” and the Discussion of the Age of the Universe

The text rejects an attempt to explain a world without a cause by means of an infinite chain of internal formations, arguing that this just comes back to “turtles all the way down” and requires a concrete infinity that is not legitimate. It adds a contemporary scientific claim that at least in recent decades it has been known that the world is finite in time, on the order of fourteen billion years, and therefore the process cannot be infinitely regressive into the past. Later a remark is raised about the claim that time itself was created at a certain point, and the text argues that the term “before” does not belong outside the time axis.

It brings Kant, who argued that time and space are forms of our intuition of reality, and mentions Rabbi Shem Tov Gafen and his book The Dimensions of Prophecy and Earthliness, along with his claim that according to Kant the question of the age of the universe before human beings is “invalid from the outset.” The text replies that even if time is a form of intuition, one can still use it to describe the past and the future and legitimately ask about the age of the universe within “the spectacles of time” through which we view things. Therefore the claim does not solve the gap between a tradition of thousands of years and a cosmological age of billions.

Scientific Status, Falsification, and the Distinction Between a Non-Scientific Conclusion and a Scientific Mode of Thought

The text argues that the conclusion “God exists” is not a scientific claim because it cannot be subjected to a test of falsification, in accordance with the Popperian definition of science. At the same time, it states that the way of arriving at the conclusion is scientific, in the sense of a generalization from observations, similar to inferring a law about the falling of bodies with mass. It notes that perhaps what can be subjected to falsification is the principle of causality itself—for example, by way of an interpretation of quantum theory as undermining causality—but even then there is no experiment that directly falsifies the existence of God.

The text rejects the claim that “God is not an explanation” by saying that the argument does not necessarily come to explain, but rather to prove the existence of a certain entity, even if we know only one thing about it. It uses the parable of Winnie-the-Pooh seeing footprints in the sand and concluding that something passed there even without knowing its properties; similarly, from the “footprints” of the world’s existence one infers that there is “someone” who made them. It concludes that conclusions are not certain, because certainty depends on assumptions, and invokes Kant’s critique of the absence of certainty in order to argue that the issue is plausibility rather than certainty. It also presents the view that the goal is to show that a rational person ought to believe in the existence of God, even if one can choose not to be rational.

Moving to the Physico-Theological Proof: Complexity, Design, and the Structure of the Argument

The text presents the physico-theological proof as the third proof, after the ontological and the cosmological, adding the assumption that the existing thing has properties such as complexity, suitability, design, and purposiveness. It formulates the argument as follows: something complex exists; a complex thing is not formed spontaneously; therefore there must be a composer/designer, and that is God, while the name and further properties beyond that are not under discussion. It distinguishes, in Kabbalistic language, between creation as something from nothing and formation as something from something, and argues that the cosmological proof deals with the very existence of something, whereas the physico-theological proof deals with the form, complexity, and special properties of what exists.

The text argues that this proof is the central one in the public consciousness, and therefore the evolutionary challenge to it is mistakenly perceived as a challenge to the very existence of God. It describes this as a “zero-sum game” in which believers and atheists alike are mistaken. It brings the Midrash Temurah in Otzar HaMidrashim, about the heretic and Rabbi Akiva, in which the world testifies to its creator just as a house testifies to the builder, a garment to the weaver, and a door to the carpenter. It also presents Paley with the parable of the watch, and Fred Hoyle with the parable of the hurricane, the junkyard, and the Boeing airplane, and argues that objections to these arguments are influenced by tendentiousness, while mentioning David Hume’s criticism that we have experience with garments and watchmakers, but not with universes.

Parallel Challenges to the Complexity Argument: “Who Created the Creator?” and Divine Simplicity

The text shows that the question “Who assembled God?” parallels the question “What is God’s cause?” and is handled by the same pattern of exception-making in order to avoid infinite regress, using lex specialis. It adds a reservation that the assumption that God is complex is not necessarily correct, because complexity is required for a machine that operates mechanically, but a personal being with design and choice can be simple and still produce complexity without itself being complex in that same sense. It states that if the process is not mechanical, there is no necessity to infer from the complexity of the product to the complexity of the producer.

An Eternal World, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and Completing the Cosmological Argument

The text presents the Aristotelian possibility of an eternal world that always existed and therefore does not need a creating cause, and states that modern science rejects this through the idea of the Big Bang and the finitude of time, and also because the world did not always exist at the same level of complexity but rather complexity increases over time. It argues that even if eternity would solve the problem of cause in the cosmological argument, it would not solve the problem of complexity in the physico-theological argument, because a “reason” is still required for why reality is this way rather than some other way. It formulates this as Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason and brings Richard Taylor’s example of a giant glass sphere in a forest: even if one says “it was always here,” the question still remains why it is like that and so distinctive rather than just a random heap.

The text concludes that the physico-theological argument complements the cosmological argument: even if one answers the question of sheer existence by means of eternity, the question of form and complexity still remains and requires a reason or a composer. It ends with the point that the continuation of the discussion will deal with the physico-theological proof, and later also with the challenge from evolution, without automatically identifying that challenge with a challenge to the existence of God.

Okay. Last time we talked about the cosmological argument. I said that what distinguishes this argument is, first, the definition of God whose existence it proves: God as the cause of reality, the creator of reality. And second, the assumption on which it is based. Unlike the ontological argument, this one assumes some fact, but it assumes a very minimal fact: that something exists. That’s all. Unlike the physico-theological argument, which assumes certain things about that something which exists—complexity, adaptation, design, purposiveness, and so on. So I began with a simple formulation of the argument that says: everything that exists has a cause, something exists—the world, humanity, the universe, whatever. Therefore there is a cause that created that thing, and we call that cause God. Which is what we wanted to prove. Then I began discussing the question: if everything needs a cause, then that God whose existence we proved should also have a cause. So where does this stop? And I said that this claim, which seems at first glance to refute the argument, is actually the very basis that reestablishes the argument. Because if we follow it all the way, we arrive at an infinite regress. And I explained why infinite regress is problematic, using the concepts of potential infinity and concrete infinity. And if we don’t want to arrive at an infinite regress, then we have no choice but to assume that this chain stops at some primary link, one that doesn’t need a prior link that created it. Now, how do I explain that together with the idea that everything that exists needs a cause? There’s no choice—we have to exclude something from that principle. What do I exclude? I exclude at least one thing, the one thing I must exclude in order not to end up in an infinite regress. That one thing is called God. So why not say that the world itself is that thing? Let the world itself be the beginning of the whole story—why go backward? The answer is that the things we know in the world are not things that are their own cause. The material world in particular is not something we are willing to attribute this property to, of being its own cause. It needs things—or things of that kind need something to create them. And therefore, apparently, what is excluded from the principle that says everything that exists must have a cause that created it is not something of the kind we know here in the world, not from our experience. Rather, it is something else. And that something else is what we call God. And again, maybe that’s not the one who directly created the world. The one who created the world is Moishe, and the one who created Moishe is Yanke’le, and the one who created Yanke’le is Muhammad, and the one who created Muhammad is Berta. Fine? But in the end, after we keep going, in order not to reach an infinite regress, it has to stop at a point where there exists some entity that doesn’t need something prior to create it. Otherwise we’re in an infinite regress. And that itself is the proof of God’s existence. The claim about infinite regress is not a claim against the cosmological argument; it is the basis of the cosmological argument itself. The cosmological argument is built on the fact that if I do not assume the existence of a primary link, then I arrive at an infinite regress, and therefore such a primary link must exist. Fine. But now you can challenge it the other way around: okay, so you exclude something from this general idea that everything needs a cause—you’re already making an exception. Fine, so exclude everything. Then the whole idea is no longer true. So the assumption you used—“everything that exists needs a cause”—you yourself are saying it is not true. So how can you build castles on it? Here, I think, I mentioned lex specialis, right? I said there’s a legal principle like this: if I have two principles—philosophical or legal—that contradict one another, I prefer the specific principle over the general one. Because if I prefer the specific principle, then the general principle remains in force, except for certain exceptions. But if I prefer the general principle, then the specific principle is erased entirely. Right? I gave the example that according to Jewish law it is forbidden to murder, but there is an obligation to execute Sabbath violators—if there are witnesses and prior warning and all the conditions are met. If the more general principle were preferred, then nothing would remain of the obligation to execute Sabbath violators. It would never apply; it would be emptied of content. Okay? But if I prefer the obligation to execute Sabbath violators, which is more specific, then the prohibition of murder remains in place, except that there is an exception: for someone who violated the Sabbath, it doesn’t apply. And therefore we always prefer the specific principle over the general one. Same thing here. I’m not throwing out the whole assumption, this causal assumption that says everything that exists must have a cause. Because I have a strong intuition that this is how things are. So there’s no reason to give up the whole thing. On the other hand, I do have a problem, because if I take it all the way, I get stuck in an infinite regress. So what do I do? I prefer the specific case and I make an exception. There has to be one specific thing to which this principle does not apply—the principle that everything needs a cause. But only that. I’ll exclude only that one. There’s no reason to abandon the general idea altogether, the general principle. If I have such an intuition, and it seems true to me, why give it up? The fact that I have to say it isn’t complete, that there must be at least one thing to which it does not apply—fine, so I’ll exclude what I must. But why add more to it? In other words, okay, that one I have to exclude—but why should I give up my intuition altogether? The simplest thing would be: the world. You enter it, you don’t know what’s going on with the world. You came into an already existing world somehow. You see that everyone comes and goes and the world remains. So why do you go so far as to God? I said: because I think that the world—or all material entities as I know them in the world—are not entities that are their own cause. They are entities of the kind that require something or someone to create them. They don’t come into being on their own. And that seems to me a reasonable assumption. Meaning: true, I haven’t seen universes being created, but this universe is a collection of things. And the things within this universe are not things that existed forever; they are not things whose existence is necessary and does not require something else to create them. Therefore, if I’m going to exclude something, it has to be something of a kind I apparently do not know. Something else, something that does not need a cause for its existence. But the kinds of things I know do need a cause for their existence. So it is probably something of a different kind. Maybe I’ll approach this from another angle. Some people want to argue that maybe I should exclude the universe as a whole. Not something specific within the universe, right? Not that there is some rock somewhere that created the universe—the rock is part of the universe. But perhaps the universe as a whole is exempt, or excluded, from this causal principle that everything needs a cause. Everything within the universe maybe yes, but the universe as a whole, no. So I’ll answer that in two ways, but first I want some kind of introduction. When we speak about the universe as a whole, is that something over and above the collection of particulars within it? Is the whole some additional thing, or is it just a fictive definition? It’s a collection of a great many things, and I call that collection “the universe.” There isn’t anything beyond that. So if each of these things needs a cause, why wouldn’t the whole need a cause? After all, the whole isn’t another thing; the whole is the collection of things. If each of the things needs to have a cause, then what is there in the whole—what is that thing there that doesn’t need causes? But I’m saying: what is the whole? The whole is the collection of things. If I have experience of the things, then I have experience of the whole. What’s the difference? It’s like saying: the group sitting here in the room is a collection of people—I don’t know, twelve people, something like that, okay? A collection of people. Now, could it be that they won’t die, this collection of people? I only have experience of specific people, each specific person dies at some point, but maybe this whole collection of twelve people won’t die. But this whole is a collection of twelve people. If about each one you say he is destined to die, that he is mortal, then that is also true of the collection of people. No, because there is some difficulty here, since all kinds of things emerge from this whole, from the whole. What do you mean, from the whole? The whole is the collection of things. What does it mean that things emerge from the whole? Who is this whole? The whole is the collection of things. This universe that you’re talking about. Right. What is the universe? It’s a word. What is the universe? It’s the collection of things that compose it. What more is there? What else is here? So what does it mean that things emerge from the whole? The whole creates them? Who is this whole? The whole is the collection of things that are here. That’s the whole. Now look, this point is a subtle philosophical point. Because when we discuss the question of the relationship between particulars and the collective they compose, that is not a simple question. I’ll maybe give you an example. Let’s look at a people, a nation. Okay, let’s look at a nation. A nation is a collection of people. Okay? When I speak about “the nation,” am I speaking about something else, beyond the collection of people who make it up? Is there something additional here? Or is it just a definition—it’s the collection of people, and there simply is nothing beyond that. In the common view, it seems to me, there is no such additional thing. What is a nation? It’s a definition. But in terms of entities, there is no extra entity here. The collection of individual people—that is what I call a nation. There is simply nothing beyond that. In philosophical or ideological conceptions, call it what you will, there is some debate about this. For example, fascism holds that individuals are subordinated to the interest of the collective, of the nation. To whom are they subordinated, if the nation is the collection of the individuals? Then to whom are they subordinated? What are these ideas? Or what is the dictator? The dictator is also a human being. Only if the dictator represents something else—not the dictator as a person—can you say that. And what does he represent? The collection of people. What is there here beyond that? There is a conception there, and if someone gets into the metaphysics of fascism, he sees that behind fascism sits a different metaphysical conception. It is a conception that says a nation is not merely a collection of people. That is, a collection of people creates a nation, but when you speak of a nation you are not speaking only about the collection of people. There is something more there—the nation is also an entity. An analogy for this is a human being. Look at one human being, one individual human being. He is composed of many cells, organs, right? Go down to particles if you want finer resolution. So is a human being merely a collection of particles? I think we all feel that there is something in a human being such that the whole should not be treated merely as a collection of particles. The whole also has some sort of existence of its own. What, should we say that a person too is just an arbitrary definition? Someone else could define the object as this finger and half of this finger—that’s one object. The other half of this finger together with this thumb is the second object, and the third object is this ear together with the left foot. Fine, intuitively it is obvious to us that this is not an arbitrary definition. Those are not objects. But the person as a whole is an object. That is what distinguishes an organism. An organism is basically a collection of components that operate together symbiotically, so that the whole actually takes on a significance beyond the sum of the particulars that make it up. Say I take all the—say a person is dead. A dead person contains all the particulars that a living person contains. All the matter that exists in a living person exists in a dead person too. So what is missing there? What is missing is the organic functioning of all these things together. They do not form an organic entity. It’s simply a collection of cells. They are still physically connected, as long as he has not decomposed, but although they are physically connected, there is no organism here. So in that sense, it seems to me that a human being is a good example of something that exists as a whole beyond the particulars that compose it—organs, cells, particles, whatever level of resolution you want. But I think there is a kind of problem here. Why? Because with regard to the human being too, there is a philosophical dispute. If you are materialists, for example, then indeed a human being is simply a collection of organs, cells, particles, whatever you want to call them. And then it really is a big question to what extent, and whether, one can treat this whole as something beyond the collection of materials that compose it. But if you are dualists and you think that a human being also has a spiritual component—a soul, spirit, psyche, whatever you call it—then on the one hand the problem is solved, but how is it solved? It is solved by saying that there really is something in the person besides the materials. It isn’t that the collection of materials creates the whole. No. It becomes a whole only because there is something else there that is what turns this whole into an organism. Okay? And then indeed, for example, one can discuss what happens with a car or a computer. Today, in the age of AI, this is an especially popular question. Right? Is AI too some kind of organic entity like a human being? Organic not in the biological sense, but organic in the sense that it functions as an organism. We, back in the day, developed robots. You cut off the electricity and that’s it. Well, if you take away a person’s soul, that’s it too. Take out his heart and it’s over. That’s the very point. So it’s the same thing. Fine, okay, same issue. I’m asking: ostensibly it is the same thing. So should I also relate to a car or a computer as an organic entity? In the case of a car or a computer, at least my assumption is that there is no spiritual dimension. There there is only matter. So can there be an organic entity without something beyond inside it? Meaning: do the collection of components themselves, once they join together and begin functioning symbiotically, produce something else here that is not just that collection but something more? Okay? Or not. Must there always be something beyond the particulars if I am to treat a collection as something beyond the particulars that compose it—in this case, the soul or spirit of the person? These issues arise in the context of body and soul. In the context of body and soul there is John Searle, an American philosopher. He wrote in the 1980s, 80s–90s, gave a lecture in the 80s I think, lectures in England. And it came out as a book called Mind, Brain and Science, or maybe it was Brain, Mind and Science—I think something like that. And there he basically—he did not yet call it by the name it later received, later it came to be called emergence—but he basically argued the following. He wanted to claim that although his worldview was materialist—there is nothing in man besides his biology—still, the organic whole produces mental functions. We have mental functions, we feel different emotions, we think, we remember, we do all kinds of mental acts. These mental acts do not require the assumption that there exists in us something beyond our physiology; rather, the physiological whole can be a sufficient explanation for our mental aspects. But death contradicts that too. What? An ordinary dead person flatly contradicts that assumption. Why? What mental sensations? There is no biology there. A dead person does not have biological processes. Independently of spirit and soul. Materialists too agree that a dead person is not a living person. They just claim that the difference between a dead person and a living person is the question whether things are moving, whether it is functioning, whether some kind of energy has gone out. Somehow the energy left, and then the body died. But they do not claim that some substance left, that some entity left that had been inside it, some kind of thing that exists; rather, the machine simply ceased to function. He gives an example for this. He says, for instance, think about a property like liquidity. Okay? A cluster of water molecules, H2O, is liquid. A single water molecule is not liquid. Right? Liquidity is not a property of an individual molecule. That is called a state of aggregation. Why is it called a state of aggregation? Because it is the state in which the aggregate is found. Liquid, gas, or solid—those are states of aggregation. All states of aggregation are properties of an aggregate; they are not properties of the individual object. An individual molecule or atom is not solid, not liquid, and not gas. Solid, liquid, and gas are states that describe relations between the molecules or atoms that make up the whole. Now he says: so what do we see here? We see that the whole has certain properties that exist only at the level of the whole. They do not characterize the particulars that create the whole. And therefore, he says, the mental properties or mental functions within us may also appear only at the collective level. Meaning: our physiological whole somehow produces mental phenomena. But that does not mean we need to posit something more beyond the physiology in order to explain those mental phenomena. Okay? Sometimes there are properties that appear only at the level of the whole and do not appear at the level of the particulars that make up the whole. Therefore, he says, one need not assume that whenever additional properties appear, there must be something more. Otherwise, how can it be that a property arises at the level of the whole that does not exist at the level of the particulars that compose it? Right? That’s basically the claim. Later this was called emergence. There are properties that emerge out of the material whole. It is not something additional; it is simply that once you join enough elements together in certain forms, something new emerges out of that whole. Something that was not present at the level of the individuals, the particulars, that make up that whole. The problem is—and here I’m sharing with you, in a big parenthesis, what I’m doing now, but it’s important for understanding the idea—I had many, many discussions about this with various people on these subjects. For example, after my book on evolution, God Plays Dice, came out, a Jew called me who was a professor of life sciences at Tel Aviv University, Yosef Neumann, who was a materialist and atheist, very active in that sense. He has since passed away. I mentioned him in the book; among other things I criticized some statement of his, I don’t remember exactly what. He called me, we had a long conversation, about an hour or something. He was a very nice and intelligent man, and it was a pleasure talking to him. And shortly afterwards I heard he had died. It was very sad to hear. In any case, during the conversation he told me—quite candidly—he said: listen, as an active materialist, I cannot get across to my fellow materialists a terribly basic mistake that is widespread among them. They say that our emotions are basically electrical currents in the brain. Emotions or thoughts or desires or things of that sort. And I try to explain to them that this is a categorical mistake—he says this as a materialist. It’s a categorical mistake. You cannot say that currents in the brain are love. Or fear, or stinginess, or I don’t know what, or solving a quadratic equation. Okay? Currents in the brain are not that. You can say that the currents in the brain produce that. You cannot say that it itself is currents in the brain. The love I feel for someone is not currents in the brain. It may be that currents in the brain produce that feeling which I call love, but identifying love with currents in the brain is simply a categorical mistake. This is not even about philosophical disagreements. Anyone who makes that identification is just mistaken, just confused. There are so many who do it, and so many professors and researchers and philosophers and so on who write about this with enormous enthusiasm and relate to everyone else as fools—and it’s simply bizarre. Simply foolish people. It’s just confusion. And he said this as a materialist, notice. He did not want to show that he agreed with me that there is something in a person besides matter. No. He did not agree that there is. He only argued that mental phenomena emerge from the material whole; they do not require the existence of something additional. But still, they emerge from it—they are not identical with it. The speed of the car is not the car. It is some characteristic, some state the car is in. Right? So it is not the car, but it is also not some other thing that exists in the world besides the car. There is no extra entity in the world whose existence I must posit in order to say that the car has speed. It is enough to posit that there is a car. Right? It is in a state, or something is happening to it, that it is moving, that it has speed. That is a state of the car. I don’t need to posit anything more. The mental acts or components are states of the material whole. But you cannot say that those states are electrical currents in the brain. It is simply conceptual confusion. Maybe an expression of love? No, not an expression of love; I mean it generates love. Fine. That one can argue about, but at least that is a claim one can make. You cannot say that this is love—electrical currents in the brain are love—that’s just confusion. It always comes together. It always comes together, okay, that is a claim one can hear. I don’t agree, but it is a claim one can hear. So what does that actually mean? It means that even if you are a materialist, a sober materialist, you need to understand that you cannot identify liquidity with the molecules. Something more emerges here, and for that you have to posit a process of emergence out of the material whole. You don’t have to say that something else exists in reality besides the material whole, but you also cannot identify this emergent thing with the material whole itself. There are various creatures who argue in favor of what today is called panpsychism. Do you know what that is? It is the assumption that every particle, everything in the world, has consciousness. What do they want to claim? That consciousness does not appear only in a human being in a very specific construction, but that everything in the universe has consciousness—every particle, every electron, every atom, every chair, everything has consciousness. Well, a pile of nonsense, and it’s not even worth the time to deal with it. But where does this nonsense come from? It comes from the unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of emergence, because you are basically saying: you are unwilling to accept that a material whole can produce consciousness if none of the components of that whole has consciousness. You do not acknowledge the possibility of emergence. Okay? So instead they invent this stupidity. But that example is not a good example, the example of liquidity. Why not? Because it is true that the property of liquidity is a property of the aggregate and does not exist at the level of the individual molecule, but I can derive or explain the property of liquidity in terms of the properties of the particulars that make up the aggregate. Give me the molecule and I’ll tell you at what temperature and pressure a collection of such molecules will be liquid. I know how to make that calculation. It’s a calculation. I can do that calculation. It’s like: I have four markers here, right? This marker is not four; this marker is one. How do they suddenly together become four? Fine, because one plus one plus one plus one equals four. You do a calculation and you get four. You understand that this is not real emergence. There are properties that are properties of multiplicity, but they are not essentially different from the properties of the particulars. It’s just multiplicity. So if you know the field around the molecule, then you know that if there is a collection of molecules of this type, under certain conditions of temperature and pressure, I can tell you that it will be liquid. Meaning, I know how to make the calculation from the properties of the individual to the properties of the collective. And therefore—then with the nerve cells in the brain too maybe you’ll also be able to make a calculation that… That is the big question. We’ll see in a moment. But the example of liquidity is basically something you can call emergence, but it is weak emergence. It is emergence in the sense that I can indeed explain the whole on the basis of the particulars. The property at the level of the whole does not exist in the particulars, but the particulars have properties on the basis of which I know how to explain the property of the whole. There is no problem, I have the calculation, I can do it. Okay? By contrast, when you speak about the mental dimensions in a person and want to say that they arise from the material whole, you have no way to make any calculation that shows this—about anything. There is not the slightest hint, not a shred of a hint, of the beginning of a direction for one mental phenomenon, of how it comes out of a material whole. Nobody knows how to say one word about this. Nothing. And neuroscientists who think they know how to say something about this are just as confused as the others I mentioned before. All they can say is which construction in the brain takes place when I feel love, or when I recognize my grandmother, or when I am afraid of something, or when I solve a quadratic equation. Okay? That, yes. But that is a correlation. You cannot show me love coming out of the electrical currents. What equation would take electrical currents as input and output love? There is no such equation anywhere. And therefore there is no hint in the knowledge we have today, at least, that it might even be possible to make such a calculation—that from the physiological whole one could derive our mental aspects, the mental phenomena we have. That is a conjecture that may be true, but it has no basis. No basis whatsoever. Nothing is known in this area at present. But there’s dopamine and serotonin, meaning we have some sense that dopamine is a transmitter for some kind of pleasure? We know many things, of course. Neuroscience works on many things much more complex than that too; you can see that a certain pattern of brain activity corresponds to solving a quadratic equation. But that does not mean that you know how to calculate that someone who sees this pattern of brain activity would perform some calculation and get the solution of a quadratic equation. You cannot show me the transition, you only know there is a correlation. When there is such activity, the person is mentally solving a quadratic equation. Physiologically, this is what happens; mentally, that is what happens. And you find a correlation between the two. With liquidity that is not the case; that is not a correlation. With liquidity I have a calculation that shows me that if the shape of the field around the individual molecule is such-and-such, then when you place a collection of molecules there, I can do a calculation and tell you that the result is liquidity, liquid. That does not exist with regard to mental phenomena. And this is what people don’t understand, because they fall into the same mistake I mentioned earlier. They identify love with the neuronal state, with the neuronal processes occurring in me. That is simply nonsense. Love is a mental phenomenon. And maybe it emerges from the material whole, maybe yes and maybe no. Can you show me one calculation, the simplest one, of the simplest mental phenomenon, where I can make a calculation and show why this or that electrical current produces the solution of a quadratic equation? Or love, or hatred, or fear, or stinginess, or I don’t know, religious faith—whatever. There is none. There isn’t even the language, there are no tools, nothing, absolutely nothing in this area. And it is amazing how intelligent people, professionals, philosophers, neuroscientists and all the rest, do not grasp this simple point. They simply do not grasp it. They have scientific blindness. Blindness caused by science, not blindness toward science. Meaning: science blinds them. Because when you deal with things there is no scientific way to handle, you simply deny their existence. That is what often happens. If I connect an electrode for you to that cluster where you know that in that cluster there is love or hatred or whatever, and I connect it to some other nerve, then that nerve can translate it for you into love once you stimulate it at a certain point. Okay, that only means there is cause and effect. I do not deny that there are causal relations between neurons and the mental. Of course. I can induce feelings of fear in you, I can induce pain in you, I can fictitiously, without actually hurting you, show you many things—but that is only a correlation. When I create in you a neuronal state, a mental state is produced in you. No, it can also be the other way around. Sometimes fear, for example, causes physiological phenomena. We freeze because of fear, or the heart beats quickly, or something like that. That is influence in the opposite direction. That is influence from the mental to the physical. Okay, there are influences in both directions, that is obvious. I am not talking about that. Of course there are influences. I’m asking whether you know how to describe that influence in equations or in whatever kind of scientific tools. No, there is no way to do it. Today, as far as I know at least, no one knows how to say anything about this. But most people simply do not notice that there is even something here needing explanation. For them it’s obvious: love is such-and-such electrical currents in the brain, so what is there to explain, relation between what and what? It’s the same thing. The electrical currents are the love. I ask them: how do you calculate love from the electrical currents? What is there to calculate? The currents are the love. So that is nonsense, of course. It’s like what Bertrand Russell says in his book The Problems of Philosophy. I mentioned this—I don’t remember—he asked once: what is the color yellow? So when you ask a person nowadays, or in recent generations, what the color yellow is, he will say to you: it is an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such wavelength, the wavelength of yellow. Okay, obviously nonsense. Why is it nonsense? Because yellow is a phenomenon of consciousness; there is no yellow in the world. Yellow exists only in our awareness. An electromagnetic wave of a certain wavelength that hits my retina will produce inside my awareness that appearance which I call the color yellow. But yellow is not the wave. The wave is the cause of the fact that in my awareness there is generated a perception of yellow. Right? It’s like what we discussed with the tree falling in the forest. Exactly. So the same thing here. You can say there is a causal relation. Yes, the electromagnetic wave causes the sensation of yellow, obviously. But it is incorrect to identify yellow with an electromagnetic wave. Yellow is a conscious phenomenon. The electromagnetic wave is a physical phenomenon existing in the world. Okay, same thing here. The electrical currents are a physical phenomenon. Mental phenomena are not part of physics. You can say that physics generates them, that it is their cause. You cannot identify the two things with one another. But if you do not identify the two things with one another, and you claim that one is the cause of the other, I would expect you to have some mechanism to explain to me how this happens, how this causal process occurs—equations or no equations, doesn’t matter, in one tool or another. There is none. So what does that mean? I ask people, also in panels, debates, discussions—there have already been countless such things for me—I ask them: so do you understand that liquidity is not a good example? With liquidity I have a calculation. But here you want to claim that there is nothing in us but physiology, and that physiology is what generates all the mental phenomena. Because it’s emergence, right, it’s emergence. I say: do you have any indication that there is emergence here? So they tell me yes, this—and now this is a new invention in philosophy—it’s called strong emergence as distinct from weak emergence. Weak emergence is emergence where one can do the calculation and go from the particulars to the whole; strong emergence is where one cannot do the calculation. So fine, you can’t do the calculation, but there is still this transition, only we don’t know how to do the calculation. Now maybe that is true—perhaps—but I only want to note that such a claim cannot be a scientific claim. Why can’t it be a scientific claim? Because you can never have an example that demonstrates the fact that there is strong emergence. There cannot be such an example; even in the future no such example will be discovered. How do I know? Precisely. Because the moment you show that there is emergence here, how will you convince me there is emergence? I’ll say no, this doesn’t come from the whole at all—there’s something extra there. You need to show me two things: first, that there is nothing extra there, and second, that it comes out of the whole, right? Now if you show me that it comes out of the whole, then you have a calculation—that’s how you would show it to me. If you do, then you have turned it into weak emergence. To show me that there is strong emergence is basically always to make a claim that you can never prove. And this is what they tell me when I argue for dualism, that there is in a person a soul or spirit—they tell me, look, that is not a scientific claim, you can’t prove it. So the alternative is strong emergence—that is the scientific alternative? Which of course is not scientific. Now one can argue, one can say: okay, but then there is Ockham’s razor. Why posit something more? Better to posit as few entities as possible. So I posit the material whole, and there is no reason to posit the existence of anything else because that is a simpler theory. That is a claim one might be willing to hear, but you need to understand that both possibilities exist. There is no scientific decision as to which of the two possibilities is correct, because both claims are unscientific. Both are unscientific. Now everyone has to decide what seems more plausible to him or what seems simpler to him. To me it is simpler that there is a soul; to you it is simpler that there isn’t. Okay. And then for a monkey there is dualism and for a cat there is dualism? Maybe, because you have to accept it in a very sweeping way. Not necessarily, but maybe. Why? Because animal behavior is no less like that. Not sure—maybe yes, maybe no, I don’t know—but I don’t care. I can accept that dualism, I can reject it, it doesn’t matter to me. So the point is that the relations between the particulars and the whole they compose are not all that simple. Meaning: if you want to claim that there is something in the whole beyond the particulars, then it depends. If it is weak emergence, I have no problem, but then it is not true that there is really anything extra there. There are simply properties you can speak about only at the—only a group of four are four, each of them individually is one. Is that emergence? That’s not emergence, that’s fine. Because only a group of four is four; one is not four, one is one. Okay? But one plus one plus one plus one together gives me four. Same with the molecules. Each molecule is not liquid, but a collection of molecules with such-and-such a field around each one gives me liquidity by calculation. So there is no problem with that. Therefore with liquid, for example, I would not go so far; I would not claim there is something in it besides the collection of molecules composing it. Why assume that? The fact that it has the property of liquidity changes nothing; I know how to explain it in terms of the properties of the individual molecules. Okay? By contrast, with a human being it is already more complicated. Because in a human being the properties appearing at the level of the whole cannot be straightforwardly reduced to the particulars, to the properties of the particulars, the individual cells or particles, organs or whatever. And therefore in a human being, in my view, there is definitely plausibility to assuming that there is something more that creates this wholeness, this organicity of the human body. But notice: right now, whether I accept that or not, what I basically want to argue is that if I treat the collection of particulars as something beyond… if there is nothing more there, then maybe there is emergence, but weak emergence. Fine? Why am I saying all this? Let’s return to the world. We were talking about wholeness. Is there, in the wholeness of the world, something beyond the collection of things that compose the world, the collection of objects, the entities, that compose the world? So the claim I want to make is: either way. If this is weak emergence, then there is no such thing as a universe. There is a collection of things. I can call that whole collection “the universe,” but the universe cannot have properties different from what is dictated by the particulars that compose it. It may have a property like liquidity, but it cannot be essentially different. I can calculate it from the properties of the particulars. Therefore, if all the particulars need a cause, then the universe too needs a cause. It cannot be that the whole does not need a cause if every one of the particulars in it does need a cause. Because there is nothing in the whole beyond the collection of particulars. So what will you tell me? No, there is something more here in the universe. It is not merely the collection of particulars. There is some soul of the universe, the mystics will say, I don’t know. Just as there is a soul in the human body that turns it into an organism, turns the collection of all its particulars into an organic entity, so too the world is some sort of organic entity and has a soul of the world that turns it into something organic and not merely a collection of parts, of entities, and so on. But if that is so, then we have returned right back to God. That soul—that is what I’m talking about. In practice, there is something here besides the collection of those things, and it is responsible for the creation. What difference does it make to me whether you call it the soul of the universe or the Holy One, blessed be He, or God? What practical difference is there? This is an important point, because often people argue—and I mentioned this—that maybe the one who created the universe is not God but, I don’t know, Moishe Zochmer. So how do you know it’s God? Exactly! I did not claim anything about him except that he created the universe. Fine, so it’s not Shakespeare, it’s his cousin who also wasn’t called Shakespeare. So what? In practice I proved the existence of Shakespeare. Right? I didn’t say anything about him other than that he created the world. So what does it mean to say: maybe it wasn’t God who created the world but Moishe Zochmer? If Moishe Zochmer created the world, then Moishe Zochmer is the God whose existence I proved. I say nothing about that God except that he created the world. Nothing at all. All I’m arguing is that there must be something or someone outside this reality that created it. What his name is, what his attributes are, what he wants from us or doesn’t want from us—that’s a different matter. I’m not dealing with it at all; that’s not the point. Could you explain this, for example, with a piece of magnet you can feel? There’s magnetism. And in magnetism you don’t feel that there’s electricity. But when it all gets integrated, you can get from it to electricity, because of the movement of all… of two magnets one next to the other. There is a relation between a magnetic field and an electric field, so I didn’t understand—so what? And from here you continue the chain of that. And electricity creates this, and this creates that, and this creates that… What exactly is the claim? I don’t understand how this… what do you want to argue in our context? The claim is that you have a situation where from a certain situation you can see a chain of developments. What, that there’s a chain of one thing leading to another? Is anyone denying that? I didn’t understand how this is connected to our discussion. You said you want to get to the point that there is a soul here. At the end of the road there is some kind of thing called energy. There is something that… So… I don’t understand where you’re heading. What is the claim? Translate it to our case. What are you trying to challenge in the argument? Are you trying to strengthen it? I want to claim that you are looking for some kind of something that operates this whole system. Some spiritual thing that operates this whole system. It could also be that that same magnetism existing within the sphere… could… meaning, in every… you mentioned water, you mentioned magnet, so I’m mentioning to you. There are all kinds of crystals that can be… that can constitute something… It’s hard to explain, hard to explain the… Fine, think about it. I don’t understand where this is heading. Anyway—so yes. From the first perspective we said that if the universe is only a collection of items that have a cause, then the universe too has a cause. And then you want to say that because the universe has a cause, there is a Creator? Because that cause… The cause is the Creator. Not because of it. The cause of the universe is what I am calling here the Creator in this context. That is God. And for the smaller particulars too there is a cause that you simply see with your eyes? Yes. From my experience I know that each thing of this sort does not arise by itself; it needs some kind of cause. But Spinoza proposed a God who is his own cause, meaning he connects it… Not his own cause; he identified—pantheism—he identified God with reality. I cannot understand these things. There are all kinds of people in love with Spinoza, and I just cannot understand this nonsense. I mean, if God is the totality of reality, then Spinoza is an atheist. So he calls the totality of reality God—so what? I can call it Moishe Zochmir. But there is also something more there beyond… But if there is something more, then he isn’t identifying it. Then I too say there is something more—so what did he innovate? He wants to identify it with the totality, with the universe. What do you mean it doesn’t come from outside? But you say it’s something more—so if it’s something more, isn’t it outside? It’s something more but it’s inside? What? So inside—the inside is the outside. Infinite attributes—God has infinite attributes, and we identify only two of them, extension and thought. So? So basically we only grasp very little of what… Fine, no problem. But still he is basically an atheist. Since reality itself is what he calls God. The fact that I call reality God does not turn me into a believer. I just changed the name. In my dictionary the world will not appear under “W” as universe but under “G” as God. That’s all. Apart from that everything remains the same; I just changed the word I use. So what have I gained? I don’t understand this. In any case, the claim is that either way—if I claim there is something more in the universe, and thanks to that perhaps I can say that the universe itself does not need a cause even though all the particulars composing it do need a cause—fine, no problem, then from my point of view that’s God, so what have you gained? And if you say there is nothing there at all, then how can you assume it doesn’t need a cause if all the particulars composing it do need a cause? Therefore, either way, you come out with no advantage here. In the end there has to be something responsible for the existence of this horror that we are living inside. Maybe one more remark. Perhaps there could be a situation where there is nothing in the universe besides the particulars composing it. But there could be a claim that says that this process of things arising from other things, which we see all the time—right? Sand hardens and becomes rocks, rocks crumble and become sand, water erodes rocks, all kinds of things like that. It is obvious that things undergo metamorphosis. Things become other things and there is such a process. So now the cause of the rock, say, is the hardening of sand together with water and salt or whatever exactly, and a rock is formed. So the sand created the rock, with the water and everything. Who created the sand? I don’t know, something else—a previous rock that crumbled and created the sand. And the water too came from something, and something else created it, and then you can say: every thing in the world has a cause, and still the whole as a whole did not have a cause. It just continues. Every thing in the world creates another thing, and it keeps going all the time, and the whole still doesn’t need a cause. This is an infinite process that just keeps continuing. Meaning: one thing creates another. So every thing in the world indeed has a cause that created it, and still the whole as a whole does not need a cause. Here I tend to think that this too is a problematic argument. First, because of the physico-theological argument that we will come to later, the argument from complexity. Because even if this explains the presence of things, it does not explain their complexity. But beyond that, we are back again to turtles all the way down. In other words, is that really an explanation? Because the moment you tell me that this is an explanation, you are really telling me that you have no explanation, right? Like turtles all the way down. Basically, until you have presented to me the whole chain from the first link onward all the way to us, you have not presented an explanation. The fact that you say it continues infinitely doesn’t help me. Continues infinitely means, ah, this has a cause and that has a cause too—wait, wait—yes yes, everything has a cause. What do you mean everything has a cause? Show me. Don’t declare that everything has a cause—show me. You can’t show me, because it’s infinite. That is exactly turtles all the way down. Essentially you have to talk here about a concrete infinity, not a potential infinity, and therefore I think that argument too is not correct. Especially since, at least in recent decades, we know that our world is finite in time—meaning it has existed for fourteen billion years or something of that order—and it is not infinite. So in the end this process did begin sometime. It is not an infinite process. What? So that contradicts the second one. No, I’m saying such an explanation is not an explanation. This explanation basically presents a concrete infinity, but there is no such thing. About infinity you can speak in potential language, not in concrete language. What? Why does that contradict the explanation? So I’m saying such an explanation is not an explanation. Because this explanation basically presents a concrete infinity, and there is no such thing. About infinity you can speak in potential language, not in concrete language. What? And maybe that explains—it’s not clear how sensible this is—that time was created at some point, and before that there was no time. Okay. Those are always very problematic statements, because what does it mean “before that there was not something”? Before that there was no “before.” The term “before” does not belong here. Before the time axis—what was before the time axis? The term “before” is a term that exists within the time axis. You can’t say such a thing. Say there was time, or that there always was—look, the point is whether time exists or does not exist; those are debates. Kant argued that time and space are only forms of our perception of reality. They are not really things that exist. And there was once a Jew named Rabbi Shem Tov Gafen, one of the forefathers of the Gafens—Yonatan Geffen and his father Geffen and those people, Moshe Dayan’s family—who was a very interesting Jew. He has a book published by Mossad HaRav Kook called Dimensions of Prophecy and Earthliness. Those are three essays he wrote. One of them is an essay published in a Russian mathematics journal on the nature of prophecy, the mathematical nature of prophecy. In any case, among other things he wanted to claim there that he had a solution to the age of the universe. After all, people always ask: the age of the universe does not fit with tradition. Tradition says it is five thousand seven hundred, or fewer than six thousand, years, and the age of the universe we know is over fourteen billion years. Okay. So he says, according to Kant the question itself does not arise. Why? Because Kant said that space and time are only forms of our perception of reality. They do not really exist. And before human beings exist, time has no meaning. So there is no point in talking about how long the world existed before there was a human being. There is no “before.” Before there was a human being there was no time, because time is only a form of human perception. Where is his mistake? His mistake is that even if time were only a form of human perception—first of all I do not think it is true that time is a form of human perception—but even if that were true, it does not solve the problem. Why? For example, I can ask when my grandfather was born, and usually I did not exist then. Right? So how can I ask that? Because when I wear glasses of space and time, I can look with those glasses both at the past and at the future, and I will describe all the events in the past and future on my own timeline. The fact that this form of perception was born with me is fine; I use it. But when I use it, I can also use it to describe the past. When I look back at the past, I also describe it on the axis of my time and space. Therefore there is no problem with that even if you say that time is a form of human perception. I now look back and ask myself how long the world has existed. I can say fourteen billion years in the language of my time-glasses. When I translate it into this subjective language of mine, the language of time, and I ask how long the world has existed, that is a perfectly legitimate question. There is no such thing as “before that.” If time was created in my subjective perspective, then there is no “before that.” Fine? Okay, we could get into the philosophy of time here, but let’s leave that. I want to make one more remark about the cosmological argument. I want to talk a little about the relation between the argument as I presented it here and a scientific claim. If now, as a result of this argument, the claim that there is a God becomes a scientific claim. As I said in the introductions, I said no. Why not? Because this claim cannot be subjected to a falsification test. I cannot think of an experiment whose results would indicate to me whether the claim was refuted or not, corroborated or not. Therefore it is not a scientific claim. Since Karl Popper we know that the minimal definition of a scientific claim is a claim that can be falsified. Okay? A claim that can be put to a test of falsification. This claim cannot be put to a test of falsification. But there is nevertheless an important point that I think is worth emphasizing. The way I got from the assumption to the theory to the conclusion is a scientific way. When I look at bodies—bodies with mass—and I see that each of them falls toward the earth, then I generalize: apparently all bodies with mass fall toward the earth. I make a generalization on the basis of facts, right? Here too I make a generalization on the basis of facts. I say: basically, various things that exist here had something that created them. I have various facts that I know. From this I generalize that everything that exists needs something that created it, and in particular the world, and therefore there is a God. That is a completely scientific generalization. What is unscientific about it? The result. Because the law of gravitation can be subjected to a falsification test. If we take a body with mass and see that it does not fall toward the earth, the theory is refuted, right? What falsification test can I perform on the existence of God? I can’t. Yet the way of arriving at the conclusion is a scientific way. It is a generalization on the basis of observations, on the basis of facts. But the conclusion itself is not scientific, because it cannot be subjected to a falsification test. Fine? Those are two different things. So if someone says to me, look, this is not a scientific claim, I agree. If they say, look, this is not scientific, this is mysticism—I do not agree. The way by which I arrived at this conclusion is not mysticism; it is exactly the same way I use with scientific conclusions, exactly the same thing. There is nothing mystical here. True, I cannot subject the result to a falsification test, so what can I do? By the way, if you insist, then perhaps one can even subject this to a falsification test. Not the claim that there is a God, but the claim that everything has a cause. If we see something that had no preceding cause, then we have refuted that claim. Quantum theory, for example, someone might say refuted the principle of causality, the principle that says everything must have a cause, because in quantum theory we think there are things that happen without a cause. So there you go: the theory that everything must have a cause is apparently even a falsifiable theory, not just a theory we arrived at by generalizing from facts. Therefore one must sharply distinguish between the question whether the claim I arrived at is a scientific claim and the question whether the way I arrived at it is mystical or a way appropriate to scientific thinking. The answer to the first question is no; the answer to the second is yes. The path is a scientific one. The conclusion cannot stand a falsification test and therefore is not scientific. Okay? And in that sense, people often say it is not scientific—I am not excited by the fact that it is not scientific; it cannot be scientific. How can one subject the existence of God to a falsification test? Fine, so what? But if the way by which I reached the conclusion is the same way I use in the scientific context, then that means it is a rational way, meaning it is certainly a way worthy of trust. Fine, those are two different things. This accusation that the claim is not scientific is not something one really needs to get excited about. Another claim—I don’t remember, maybe I mentioned this last time—another claim comes up and says: God is not an explanation. There is something you do not understand—how did this whole story come into being? So you say: God created the thing that came into being. But about God you can’t say anything except that he created the thing you are talking about. So you haven’t really given me an explanation. This can’t be an explanation that adds understanding. You didn’t add understanding. You invented for me another thing about which I have no understanding whatsoever—what it is, who it is, what it did, and that’s it. That is not called explaining something. God is not an explanation, right? A very common claim in arguments with atheists. But that is a mistake, a misunderstanding. Think, for example: in this argument I am not introducing God as an explanation; I am simply proving the existence of such an entity. That’s all. Even if that entity explains nothing, I can still prove that such an entity exists. Think for example of Winnie-the-Pooh walking along the seashore and seeing footprints in the sand, and it turns out they are his own. He sees footprints in the sand and says: apparently something passed through here, something that made these footprints in the sand. Then the atheist will tell him: what, can you tell me anything about whatever passed through here? Nothing except that it made those footprints. You can’t tell me anything about it. Alive, dead, vegetable, inanimate, what it wants, who it is, what its attributes are—you can’t say anything about it, so you haven’t explained anything. Right, I really haven’t explained anything. But I still proved the existence of something that passed here and made those footprints. Whether that is an explanation—whether it explained something—why is that relevant? I proved to you the existence of a certain thing. You know one thing about it: it made the footprints. You know nothing else about it. I proved to you that there exists such a thing that made the footprints. True, I can’t say anything else about it. So what? I can’t say anything else. Same thing here. These footprints that are in the world, as it were—the fact that the world exists—prove that there was someone who made these footprints. I can’t say anything about that someone. You tell me it’s not an explanation? Health to you, then it’s not an explanation. So what? You still have to say something about the proof. I brought you a proof. What do you have to say about the proof? Nothing. So that means I proved to you that there is a God. And that is basically the claim. And one final note, of course, which I already made but I’ll summarize here too: when people say, okay, but who said everything has a cause? Maybe that’s not true. That is the assumption of the cosmological argument. Maybe it isn’t true. Then here I say one of two things. First: why assume it is not true if everyone has the intuition that it is true? You can say it is not certain. Indeed, it is not certain. In the argument itself I saw that there must be one exception for which it will not be true. Okay? God is the exception who is not supposed to have a cause. Right, I’m not saying it is certain. But no logical argument can lead to certainty. We discussed this at length in the ontological argument. Right? A logical argument derives a conclusion from premises. About the premises you always have to decide what you think of them in order to accept the conclusion. So the claim that the conclusion is not certain is perfectly obvious. The degree of certainty you have in the conclusion is the degree of certainty you have in the premises. Now decide whether you accept the premises or not. As for the fact that the conclusion is not certain—so what? One of Kant’s criticisms of all the proofs for God’s existence was that they do not lead to certainty. So what if they don’t lead to certainty? The question is what the probability says, not certainty. There is no certainty about anything. That is one thing. Second, I say: for me it is enough—I once had a series of articles in Ynet Science about whether belief in God is rational. And I argued there that it is enough for me to show that rational thought leads to the existence of God— I rest my case—and that was the end of it. If someone says yes, but maybe one need not be rational, maybe not. But I say that if you think rationally, you arrive at the conclusion that God exists. That is what I want to show. Whoever wants to be irrational—fine. Usually they accuse believers of irrationality. Right? What’s the problem? If you don’t arrive at it, then what is the alternative? What? The alternative is that there is no God and all causality is incorrect, and everything is fine. It casts doubt on the principle of causality. Not certain—the principle of causality. That’s how we think; maybe it’s not true? Maybe. But the rational assumption is that it is true. The scientific world is built on the idea that everything must have a cause. It is not for nothing that people get tangled up with quantum theory, because there suddenly we see things that have no cause and people tear out their hair. Why are you tearing out your hair? What’s the problem? So there is no cause. Why must everything have a cause? Those same people, when you argue with them about God and the world and so on, will say yes, of course, there are things that do not need a cause. I have met dozens of such people. And then if someone tells them something happened without a cause, they’ll have him committed for temporary insanity—or not temporary. Depends on the context, okay? So on this point, that’s why I gave that introduction in advance, because I knew—there had already been arguments there, you have no idea what arguments there were in Ynet. They screamed there, cursed, what do you mean even allowing these dark reactionaries to write here. This is the exclusive inheritance of the atheists, the scientific sections of the web. Meaning: anyone who dares say something else there is simply a heretic, forbidden to be admitted to the church. So what I said there in advance was that I do not want to prove that there is a God. I want to prove that a rational person ought to believe in the existence of God. If someone says, fine, but I’m not rational, then no. I only want it to be clear who is rational and who is not rational among believers and nonbelievers. Because usually people think the opposite. Usually people think that the believer is irrational and the nonbeliever is the rational one. Okay? Fine. So I’ve finished the issue of the cosmological argument. The physico-theological argument is the third kind of proof. Again I’ll place it in context: the ontological argument is an argument that assumes no premises at all; it uses concepts and definitions and only analyzes concepts. We saw that this is problematic. Then the cosmological argument does assume premises, but still a very minimal premise: that something exists, that’s all. The physico-theological argument already assumes a more detailed, more complex premise. It says that something exists and that this something has certain properties. For example, it is very complex, or coordinated, its parts are coordinated, or designed—it doesn’t matter, there are different formulations. Okay? So it says: if the thing that exists is complex, a complex thing does not just come into being on its own. Someone assembled it, and therefore there is a God. That is the argument, schematically. So you see, the structure is exactly the same as the cosmological argument. Only the cosmological argument says: something exists, and everything that exists must have a cause that created it, therefore there is a God. The physico-theological argument says: something exists and it is complex. A complex thing does not arise on its own. Not everything—a complex thing does not arise on its own—and therefore there must be an assembler. There must be someone who created it. A similar structure, only the premise is different. Of course, the definition of God whose existence we are proving here is also different. Now God is not the one who created the world, but the one who designed it, or assembled it. If you want to speak in Kabbalistic terms, there is creation and there is formation. Creation is something from nothing, and formation is something from something. To shape a form is formation. You form this thing and give it shape. Okay? So the cosmological proof speaks about creation—how anything came to exist at all—and the physico-theological proof speaks about formation. Meaning: how the form of the existing thing came into being, its complexity, its special properties, and so on. Now this proof is perhaps the main proof brought for the existence of God. Usually the proof people bring is this one. People who arrive philosophically at belief in God generally arrive by this route, and therefore it is often identified with belief in God. We will see later that the challenge from evolution to this proof is perceived as a challenge to the existence of God, when in fact that challenge has nothing to do with the existence of God. Evolution does not touch the existence of God in any way. But the feeling is that the physico-theological proof and the existence of God are the same thing, so if you attack the physico-theological proof, you have thereby shown there is no God. No. I attacked the physico-theological proof—maybe it fell. Who said there is no God? Maybe there is, only this is not a good proof of His existence, or there are other proofs that are good, or there aren’t—it still doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist. It only means that this particular proof failed. Okay? Since this is perceived so strongly—why do Christians fight evolution so fiercely, establish research institutes to write materials against evolution, to refute evolution? Because both the atheists and the believers agree that this is a zero-sum game. That if you believe, that means you have to reject evolution; and if you believe in evolution, that means you have to reject the existence of God. So both sides agree. The only question is whom to embrace and whom to reject—that’s the argument between them. And both sides agree that the game is zero-sum. That is nonsense. The game is not zero-sum; both sides are mistaken about that. Okay, we’ll get to that. The reason this happens is because they think that the physico-theological proof and the existence of God are the same thing. They identify the two, so that if you explain the world without God creating it, assembling it, being involved in it, then there is no God. No—there is a God and nevertheless the world came about without Him, or its complexity came about without Him. Okay. So let me perhaps begin with a midrash. I’ll just read it to you. Midrash Temurah, Otzar HaMidrashim: “There was once an incident in which a sectarian came and said to Rabbi Akiva: Who created this world? He said to him: The Holy One, blessed be He. He said to him: Show me a clear proof, prove it to me. He said to him: Come back to me tomorrow. The next day he came to him. Rabbi Akiva said to him: What are you wearing? He said to him: A garment. He said to him: Who made it? He said to him: The weaver. He said to him: I do not believe you—show me a clear proof. He said to him: What shall I show you? Don’t you know that the weaver made it? What do you want me to show you? You see a garment—don’t you understand that someone made it? Rabbi Akiva said to him: And you—don’t you know that the Holy One, blessed be He, created His world? Here you have a world—don’t you know that the Holy One, blessed be He, created it? The sectarian left. His students said to him: What is the clear proof? He said to them: My sons, just as the house testifies to the builder, and the garment tells of the weaver, and the door of the carpenter, so the world tells of the Holy One, blessed be He, that He created it.” Still, that isn’t an answer. Why not? What’s the difference between the world and the garment? And what’s the big difference? Look, there was an American clergyman named Paley in the nineteenth century. There’s a famous Talmudic story that the emperor’s daughter said to Rabbi Akiva, come tomorrow, so he told her that tomorrow I’ll answer you. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah—there was a sectarian who asked him, so he told her come tomorrow. And she says to him, where is your soul? In the Talmud in Gittin maybe? Maybe, no—I’ll get to that, I’m skipping. And where is the soul? I don’t know. So he said to him, come tomorrow and look at the sun. This is one of the sun’s little servants, and you can’t look at it. You can’t look at it? No problem. Fine, not exactly the same thing, but yes. Here this is really the argument from complexity. He says: you have a woven garment. You understand that this is something produced, with structure, with purpose, with coordination among its parts—someone designed it, someone made it. And just as the garment testifies to the weaver, so the world testifies to its Creator. There is the clergyman Paley, the American clergyman Paley—one of the most reviled arguments of the last 150 years. Basically he argued this: suppose you are walking down the street and you see a watch lying on the pavement. You immediately ask yourself who made this watch. How was this watch produced? Apparently there was a watchmaker who made this watch. Now the world is much more complex than a watch. So if regarding the watch you are not willing to accept that it just happened to come into being without someone making it, then all the more so the world. It is like this midrash. Okay. Not Paley—Fred Hoyle. He said—and there this really insulted the atheists because he was a famous physicist, and a heretical physicist is the worst kind, a heretic against atheism, right. Fred Hoyle said that the probability that life arose by chance is roughly like the probability that a hurricane sweeping over a junkyard would produce a functioning Boeing airplane out of the scrap. It would probably connect them somehow in the course of the storm and a Boeing airplane would emerge. He says that life arising is a far greater miracle than that miracle. Right? And you cannot imagine how much discussion has been poured out in order to slander those two guys. These arguments drive atheists out of their minds. And of course with mockery and “what nonsense.” They can’t understand how the intelligent Fred Hoyle said such nonsense—apparently he was ill that day or something. And all the objections are completely baseless. Simply baseless objections. It is incredible how smart people fall because of their bias—they just fail to see the logic of the person standing opposite them. David Hume had an objection to this claim. He said: we have experience with a weaver or tailor and a garment, and with a carpenter. With universes we do not; with universes we do not have that same experience. We will get to that argument later. There is an article by Eli Leibowitz, Yeshayahu’s son, who is an astrophysicist at Tel Aviv University and also a well-known atheist activist type. He wrote an article in that direction, and I’ll deal with it later. He too said silly things like everyone else. In any case, this physico-theological argument basically says: complexity points to a complexifier, to an assembler. You see a washing machine. You come to a washing machine and say: washing machine—fine, how did it come into being? How did it happen that it is suddenly standing here and washing and knows how to spin and take in water and expel water and take detergent? Well, someone probably made it. Then the atheist comes and says: not at all, it somehow happened by itself without a cause. A washing machine just happened. It can happen, right? All kinds of strange things happen, so a washing machine can happen too. You understand that these things sound extremely implausible. I’ll get to that claim too, that says we have experience with washing machines. In any case, that is basically the claim. Now if I formulate this as an orderly argument, like the cosmological one, I would say this. First premise: there exists a universe whose structure—human beings, even an animal, it doesn’t matter—is very, very special and complex. Okay. Second premise: a thing with a special and complex structure does not arise spontaneously by itself. It needs someone to produce it. Conclusion: there must be something that produced this complex thing. For us, that is God. And again, don’t ask me, wait a second, but who said that’s God? Maybe it’s Moishe Zochmir. Fine, then Moishe Zochmir is God. At the end of Yom Kippur we say seven times, right? Moishe Zochmir is God. So the claim is that I prove the existence of whoever created this complexity. I don’t care what his name is or what he does or what his attributes are. I’m not looking for explanations, I’m bringing proofs. Okay? Exactly as I said about the cosmological argument. Now in this context, of course, here too the argument can arise—the discussion here is very parallel to the cosmological argument until we get to evolution. That is the exceptional case, because evolution attacks this argument, but does not attack the cosmological argument. But aside from that, almost all the other objections are the same ones we encountered in the cosmological argument. For example, people say: okay, so who created—if God assembled all this complex thing, then He Himself is probably very complex. So who assembled Him? Exactly like in the cosmological argument: if everything has a cause, then what is God’s cause? Okay? And again I’ll go in the same direction and say: there is lex specialis, preference for the specific. And I say: apparently the principle that complex things have an assembler must have some exception. Otherwise we end up in an infinite regress. And this exception is probably not something from our world, because from our experience we know that a complex thing does not arise on its own. Rather, it is something outside our experience, and it really has no assembler and opens this chain. Everything we said about the cosmological argument, I say here too. But I do want to add one thing here: the very assumption that the thing that created the world is itself a complex thing—I’m not at all sure of that. That itself is an assumption drawn from our experience here. But it is not certain. For example, if I am speaking about a machine that created the world, that machine would need to be very complex. Design and execution ability—that is a super-complex machine, right? But if I am speaking about a personal entity, as they say in philosophy, meaning something with planning ability, awareness, and the like, I am not sure it is correct to speak about it in terms of complexity. It creates complexity; it is not itself complex. A machine is terribly complex, and it manages to produce a complex thing, because everything it produces is, in some sense, already in it, right? It produces it mechanically. If we speak about a personal entity, not a machine that creates this world, then that could be a simple thing, not a complex thing. It is just very intelligent and can produce complicated things, complex things. And it itself does not have to be complex. If the process is not mechanical, then one cannot necessarily infer the nature of the producer from the product. If the process is mechanical, then I can say: the product cannot be more complex than the producer. The level of complexity of the product indicates the complexity of the producer. If the producer is a being with planning ability, choice, right—not a mechanical thing—then not necessarily. It may be very simple but smart, and so it can produce complex things. Even though if you were to look at it—if one could look at it—you would not see in it some kind of complexity. It is very intelligent, okay. But you would not see complexity in it in the same sense in which we talk about complexity in our context. Therefore I am not even sure I accept the premise that the Holy One, blessed be He, needs to be complex for this. I only say: even if so, okay, I still have to exempt the first link in order not to arrive at an infinite regress. But here I’m noting that I’m not even sure it is true that He has to be complex. That is just by the way, okay? Now, another important point. There is the option of an eternal world. It does not need a cause that created it, because it always existed. Okay? Notice: not an infinite series of stages, each one creating the next—no. The world exactly as it is, always existed. Therefore there is no need to assume that someone created it, assembled it, or anything like that. Here the answer is simpler than what we saw earlier, from two aspects. One aspect: scientifically we know this is not true. The world did not exist for an infinite amount of time, it did not always exist—the Big Bang. Second, it was also not at the same level of complexity as it is now. The level of complexity keeps rising. Life arises, stars arise; the level of complexity keeps increasing. So it is not true that it too always was. Aristotle thought the world as we know it today had always existed. There were always human beings, always animals, always everything. Everything we know had always existed. That is what people thought until two or three hundred years ago. Everyone thought that, until evolution. Okay? Our scientific knowledge today tells us this is not true. Things become more and more sophisticated; that is the evolutionary process. In a certain sense we see that evolution did not refute this proof but is the very substance of this proof. We’ll get to that later. But you see that things become more sophisticated over time, not simpler over time. That is the first point. The second point is that even when I speak about creation, about the cosmological argument, about how things came into being, you might perhaps say that if they always existed then there is no need to assume someone created them, because they always existed. But when you speak about complexity, that is something different. I already explained this in the cosmological argument, and that is why I think the physico-theological argument complements the cosmological argument. Why? Because if I am talking about an entity that is very, very complex—say our world is very, very complex—and suppose it had always existed that way. Even if it had always existed that way, I still ask myself: why is that which always exists precisely like this and not otherwise? This is called the principle of sufficient reason, as distinct from the principle of causality—a term of Leibniz. There must be a reason that the thing I see before my eyes is indeed like this. And I need that reason even if this thing has always existed. Because even if this thing has always existed, okay, but why has there always existed precisely such a complex and special thing and not just something else, or nothing at all? That too requires a reason, even if not a cause. A cause is not needed because it was never created, so there is nothing that created it. But there still must be some reason why that thing is as it is. In contrast to the cosmological argument, where if you say the world is eternal you solve the problem—no cause created it, because no one created it, it always was—in the physico-theological argument, even if you say it always was, that still does not solve the problem, because there still needs to be a reason why it is as it is. This sharpening was made by Richard Taylor, an American philosopher, in his book Metaphysics. He illustrates the principle of sufficient reason this way: suppose you are walking in a forest and you see there a giant glass sphere containing all kinds of beautiful special forms and wonderful figures and everything. So you ask yourself: interesting, how did this thing come into existence? Then the atheist walking next to you says: no, it was always there, this thing was always here. Is that a good explanation? No, it is not a good explanation. Not because it wasn’t always there—maybe it was always there—but still, why is the thing that has always been here precisely like this? Why is it so special? How did it happen that the thing existing here eternally is so special and not just some random heap of garbage? That still requires a reason. This is what is called the principle of sufficient reason. Therefore the eternity of the world may be a challenge to the cosmological argument, but it is not a challenge to the physico-theological argument. And in that sense, when we discussed the eternity of the world as a challenge to the cosmological argument, I said that the complement to that would be given in the physico-theological argument. That is, even if you explain to me the mere existence of things by saying they always were, so there need not be someone who created them, you still cannot explain their complexity that way. Their complexity still requires an explanation. Okay, so here the arguments complement one another. Okay, up to this point—we’ll stop here.