Faith and Its Meaning – Lesson 17

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so you’re taking me back to the previous lecture. I talked about the multiverse, but I’m leaving that aside for now because I already discussed it. Okay? It doesn’t work—you can’t dance at two weddings at once here. Well, you can; you’ll see on every successful atheist website that they dance very nicely. But you really can’t dance at two weddings at once. Meaning, if you tell me it’s a short time, then it shouldn’t have formed; if it’s a long time, then why doesn’t it dissipate? In other words, that just doesn’t work. There are characteristic time scales for a process. And the characteristic time scales here are very clear. So these examples really leave a lot of people gaping, and people were very happy to discover them—the atheists were very happy to discover these examples because, supposedly, it’s a death blow to the physicotheological argument. In my view that’s just nonsense. What you’re doing is introducing very special systems of laws with your own hands. Think about it: there could be a system of laws where, for example, if you have one square filled in black, it stays that way. That’s also a system of laws. Or another square gets added next to it and now it stops. That’s also a system of laws, right? Now understand that there are so many systems of laws of that kind, that to say that any system of laws you randomly choose will create complex creatures is simply a joke. You chose certain systems of laws in which complex creatures really do emerge. And they’re complex, but they also dissipate, and they’re also nowhere near as complex as life in our universe. So these arguments, in my opinion, are very weak arguments. I’ll maybe give another example, because what really stands behind this is the claim that complex beings can also arise by chance. You don’t need an involved agent or some particular system of laws controlling things—complex beings can also arise by chance. That’s really what’s behind the claim. I once saw this somewhere—I don’t even remember where—something by some Christian philosopher in English, I don’t remember where I saw it. In America there are tons of studies on these things; over there everyone fights about them. What they’ve forgotten, we’ll never know, and what they do there is insane. First of all it’s a much bigger place, with lots of money invested in it, but on both sides—the atheist attackers and the creationist defenders—and they do enormous work there. Here, each of us scribbles something during lunch break; we’re not serious, we don’t really work seriously. In any case, the claim there is this: there’s a project, I think it’s mainly based in Berkeley, called SETI, S E T I. What is that? It’s a large space telescope that collects signals coming from all over the universe. Why? Because it wants to discover the existence of intelligent beings—rational, living beings—on other planets, in other galaxies, wherever, okay? And the question is: how would you detect that? There are all sorts of signals—the world is full of wonders and marvels, as the song says, right? Meaning, all kinds of signals. How do you know that this is a signal sent by an intelligent being? So what they do is check correlations. Meaning, if there’s structure in the signal—think about it—if there’s a signal, say, with dash dot, like in Morse code, so if you have dash dash dash dot, dash dash dash dot, dash dash dash dot, that didn’t arise by chance, right? Somebody probably created it. Now I don’t necessarily know how to decipher what it means. I have no idea what language it speaks, if it speaks at all, or how it produces communication, okay? But there’s something here that an intelligent being was involved in creating, right? It’s not something that just arose from random physical processes, okay? So what they’re really looking for are correlations among these signals. By the way, when I was here doing my doctorate, we had an initiative—we wanted to interest Kishon. Kishon was a wealthy man; we wanted to interest him, and he was opposed to modern art, as is well known—he also wrote about it, and even after his death a very amusing book came out about modern art. We wanted to interest him in funding research that would take modern paintings—those modern-art things that say nothing, just that sort of scribbling—and try to examine scientifically the claim made by various art critics and artists who say that there’s deep thought and ideas behind it, and so on. Today there are ways to test that. You can always invent ideas behind any shape, right? If you do it ad hoc, there’s no problem. We know this from the world of Talmudic interpretation too, right? I can do whatever I want with any text; I just have to decide. How do you test it scientifically? I simply check correlations among the different pixels in the picture, and I see whether it’s something completely random or whether there’s some pattern behind it, some correlations. You can test that scientifically, okay? And then you can show that in fact whoever made it was a child in kindergarten who spilled paint, and not some artist whose thoughts are exalted beyond simple people like us, who don’t understand what he wants from our lives. I was once in the Israel Museum and I saw there—I saw a picture like that: a wooden frame with white fabric, and that’s it, just white, nothing else, not even a dot, nothing. And the title above it was: Wooden Frame with Metal Hanger. That was the name of the work: Wooden Frame with Metal Hanger. That was the name of the work. Yes, ever since Duchamp—you know, with the toilet—anything goes. Meaning, whatever you put there, people will always find something in it. What’s the problem with offering interpretations of things? Whatever you put here, I can offer you an interpretation. You always can—what’s the problem? It symbolizes for me the sunrise on the third of February with the cry of a bird in Oceania, I don’t know exactly what. Are interpretations lacking? With interpretations you can do whatever you want; that’s the hermeneutic circle, right? That’s always the problem of interpretation theory. So you have no way of knowing, no way to get feedback on whether your interpretation is correct. Any interpretation can fit, because you’re adapting it ad hoc. The trick is to shoot the arrow into the center of the target after the target is already there. Okay? That’s roughly the problem of interpretation. When you interpret the work after it’s been created, there’s no problem attaching some kind of interpretation to any work. Always. What’s the problem? Right, always. Songs, everything, every work of art. Okay. Now go figure out whether it’s really worth anything—whether this is the work of the interpreter or the work of the creator.

[Speaker B] Now, theoretically, you could say: let’s do a scientific experiment and ask him, well, what did you mean when you said it—you, the artist? And then compare the results.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because then the artist will tell you: it doesn’t symbolize anything, it’s in the eye of the beholder. Conveying a message through art, through a work of art, is practically a dirty word today. There’s no message. The work came out of me and now it’s at the disposal of the audience. Whatever they see in it—yes, like the joke about Agnon and Kurzweil. Do you know that one? Once people came to Agnon and asked him what the meaning of one of his stories was. He said, I have no idea, ask Kurzweil. Kurzweil, who was his critic, right here at Bar-Ilan. He was his most famous critic. Ask Kurzweil. That’s a very common view today among artists, not only writers—more generally—that the work doesn’t belong to the creator. It’s not that you can ask him what the meaning of the work is and he is the authority to determine its meaning. Fine, I’m willing to accept that claim too. But still, if you’re going to claim that the work has meaning, even if it’s not the creator’s meaning, explain to me in what sense that’s some meaning of the work and not just something you decided to stick onto it. Because you can always stick whatever you want onto whatever you want, as long as you have strong enough glue. Okay? So you need—and today there is a scientific way, at least for the last few decades, there is a scientific way to do this. You simply check certain correlations. Not to check what the meaning is, but to check that there is meaning. That is, to check that the writer didn’t just throw words onto paper in a completely random way, but that he had something in mind when he wrote the work, or when he painted the work, or sculpted, or whatever it may be. Okay? Good. So for our purposes, the claim is that what the atheists are arguing against the physicotheological believers is basically this: what you’re doing is giving an interpretation to the work, but the interpretation is yours, not the work’s. The work is the world, and you decide it’s complex. Then you ask yourselves, wait a second, who’s responsible for this complexity? It didn’t arise randomly. But the complexity is in your eyes, not in reality itself. There’s nothing especially complex here. You decided that such a thing is complex because to you it seems complex—your mode of thought or whatever it may be. Any other system can also produce all sorts of things, and you can call them complex too. It’s in the eye of the beholder. As I said there too, there is a mathematical way to define complexity; it’s not just in the eye of the beholder. In that case I was talking about entropy. It’s the same thing with interpreting works of art; it’s the same idea. There is a mathematical way to define that this work is not random. As for what its meaning is—I don’t know of a way to extract that. But that there is meaning—that it’s not just somebody throwing colors onto paper without thinking and without any idea behind it—that can be tested scientifically. Whether it’s just nonsense or whether there really is something behind it. Okay? They also test things like that in texts today; you can check such things today as well. In any case, for our purposes, what I want to argue is that this is basically what the debate between creationists and neo-Darwinians looks like. The neo-Darwinians say to the creationists: the complexity you see in the world is an interpretation you’re giving it; there’s nothing objective here. You see it as something special, complex, but that says nothing about whether someone had to create it. You see it as complex. And the counterclaim says: no, there really is some objective complexity here; it’s not just in the eye of the beholder. Now come, let me show you by analogy—this is what I read in that article, which I no longer remember where it was—by analogy: the SETI project, the project I described earlier, essentially presents us with the same challenge. Right? Because now suppose some signal arrives and we find in it some correlation that indicates some kind of intelligence. It’s not just something produced randomly. The atheist is really supposed to say: there is no such thing. Why are you deciding that an intelligent being sent this message? Why? Because you see it as complex. A complex thing doesn’t just arise from random processes. Someone is responsible for producing that complexity. But that’s not right—they claim it’s not. Any set of laws will produce complex things. So the set of laws of nature governing the universe—the signals moving through the universe and arising in a completely spontaneous, natural way—can also take complex forms. And have major correlations in them, right? So according to the atheist’s position, you can basically shut down the SETI project, which I assume is staffed mainly by atheists if I know Berkeley and the academic community correctly. Okay? And there, for some reason, it doesn’t bother anybody. And to me this analogy is tremendous, this analogy. The SETI project is really the peak aspiration of all kinds of academics in Berkeley. Not only in Berkeley, it’s everywhere, all over the world, because they look for these signals in various places around the world, not just in Berkeley, but that’s where it’s concentrated. Okay? And at the same time, these very same people can tell me: yes, but our world—the complexity is in the eye of the beholder. Who says someone created this complexity? Any set of laws will produce complex beings. Complex. Do you understand that those two things don’t fit together? You have to shut down the SETI project if that’s the case. Because if you find something complex, a complex signal, you can’t infer from that that someone sent it, because some random set of laws also produces complex beings with correlations and everything, right? And it will be far less complex than a living creature, I promise you, any signal they discover there. So if about that you say, wait a second, such a correlation doesn’t arise on its own, somebody created it—right? Well then, it’s suspicious as… fine, so here too it’s suspicious. I’m not saying for certain, but very, very suspicious. Okay? It doesn’t fit with those claims they made: take a cellular automaton, it does everything, there’s nothing unique about the system of laws. It simply doesn’t fit; in my opinion it’s a frontal contradiction. There is no answer to it. I mean, I think that—what do I mean, no answer? A person can come and say, you know what, I was wrong, we should shut down the SETI project too. Then he remains consistent. But I don’t think people

[Speaker B] would say

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] such a thing unless you push them very hard into a corner.

[Speaker B] So surely if you receive a signal that’s suspiciously something complex, then maybe we could check and discover that it’s…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If every system produces complex signals, then there’s nothing suspicious here. Nothing suspicious at all, no suspicion. And certainly not something worth investing billions in. You invest billions in it, and then afterward to check the source of that complex signal—that’s far more expensive than just tracking the signals, because who knows where it came from, and then try to reconstruct how it was formed? No chance. You won’t find it. You’d probably have to try to decode it in order to see something about its source. I don’t think there’s any way to find what its source is in space. Right? There isn’t. It’s fairy tales. Meaning, nobody really believes this. It isn’t suspicious, that’s just what it is. If a signal with correlation arrives, the next morning there’ll be a headline in all the left-wing newspapers—Haaretz, the New York Times, whatever you want: intelligent life found in the universe. Not life—intelligent beings found in the universe. But the headline written at the beginning of Genesis nobody accepts: a universe has been found that someone probably created, because it’s too complex. It doesn’t sound like some random signal. Fine. A very strong argument in my view.

Okay, so that’s it regarding the SETI project. Now I want to add one more remark. And now I’m opening a big parenthesis. Today it’s accepted among scientists—physicists, I’m speaking at the moment, but not only physicists; in physics it’s especially prominent—that scientific explanations are supposed to be causal explanations, not teleological ones. And when you want to explain some phenomenon, you have to present the cause that brought about that phenomenon. An explanation like: this phenomenon exists because it can lead to such-and-such—that is not a scientific explanation. That’s a teleological explanation, right?

Even in biology, where all the explanations used to be teleological, why do we have a heart? Because without it our blood circulation wouldn’t function and oxygen wouldn’t be distributed through the body, and so on—that’s a teleological explanation, right? Biologists today are not willing to accept that kind of explanation. Why do we have a heart? Because those who don’t have a heart don’t survive. Right? They don’t live—you need to live. Okay? So the whole idea of the evolutionary explanation, of the theory of evolution, is to turn teleological explanations into causal ones, to do away with teleological explanations and turn them into causal ones.

Yes, so for example, if you ask yourself how—before Darwin, right, there was Lamarck. Before Darwin, Lamarck asks himself: why did the beaks of the finch, I talked about this one of the previous times, why did the beaks of the finch become stronger? So they’ll tell you: because that’s what enables it to eat the hard seeds that were on that island. Fine? But that’s not an explanation. What do you mean “because”? I understand the benefit of strengthening the beak, but explain to me how it happened. So Lamarck’s claim was that there’s some influence by which creatures can change their traits in order to—the giraffe can lengthen its neck in order to reach food on the tall tree. And that’s an explanation of why the giraffe’s neck is long. The explanation is that it needs food on a tall tree and it can’t reach it, so somehow there is some biological mechanism that causes giraffes’ necks to grow longer. That’s the Lamarckian thesis.

Now Darwin came and made a very small change, but a very dramatic one. And he says: all true, because of the food on the tall tree, therefore the giraffe needs the neck to become longer. But that means it needs the neck to become longer. The question is: how does it actually become longer? The fact that the food is high up doesn’t make the neck lengthen. How does the neck lengthen? So the claim is, again, we talked about this, that mutations arise; there are giraffes with longer necks and shorter necks; those that reach the food survive, those that don’t reach the food die. Those that survive have genetics, heredity; they pass on the longer neck to the next generation, and thus slowly the giraffe’s neck gets longer until it reaches the length it needs.

What’s the difference between this and the Lamarckian explanation? The Lamarckian explanation is a teleological explanation. The evolutionary explanation is a causal explanation. The purpose did not cause the neck to lengthen; rather, the neck’s lengthening was caused by the fact that there were different mutations, some of the mutations had long necks, and so a long neck arose. Except that now there is natural selection: those with the short neck have nothing to eat, they don’t survive; those with the long neck survive. And now those who survived produce offspring that also have long necks, and then suddenly a situation is created in which all giraffes have long necks.

You understand that here, at every stage, what happened is causal explanations, not teleological ones. For everything I can show where it came from, what its cause is, why it happened—and not for the sake of what it happened, but because of what it happened. A causal explanation, not a teleological explanation. That is Darwin’s genius. He took Lamarckian purposiveness and turned it into a causal explanation. Where Lamarck had to resort to purposes, I can now offer an explanation in terms of causes and not purposes. And that’s brilliant. That’s really the whole Darwinian revolution. The main revolution of Darwin is this. That is, he managed to transform a purposive mechanism, which does not exist in the accepted outlook—there are no such things, teleological explanations are not explanations; causal explanations are explanations—and he managed to find a causal analog that would explain the matter without appealing to purposes. Okay?

So basically modern science is very, very wary of teleological explanations. Teleological explanations are considered today to be an anecdote. That is, biologists or physiologists can tell you, look, we have a heart so that it pumps our blood. But they understand that they are not really explaining why we have a heart. They are explaining why the heart is useful to us. But why do we have a heart? For that you have to study evolution; that’s something else. Okay? Therefore people use the old language of teleological explanation but don’t really mean it as an explanation. It’s just a manner of speaking. Okay?

Now many times—I once had some amusing incident too. I was in surgery for appendicitis in HaSharon in Petah Tikva. The head of the department came to me and he says to me—he sees some religious guy lying there on the bed—he says, you know that the appendix has no role at all. It was a kind of provocation, as if—I think God created man, so why did He make organs there without a role? It’s a difficulty for believers, right? Now I think this was literally about a month after my book God Plays Dice came out. He had no idea that I happened to deal with this. And I said to him, tell me, and in evolution how do you explain that this happened? After all, evolution doesn’t leave unnecessary things. That’s wasteful, right? How do you explain that this happened? That’s how I left him the book after I left the department; I left him the book to have in his office.

In any case, for our purposes, teleological explanations today are considered an anecdote, right? A teleological explanation is not an explanation. Teleological explanations—well, with Aristotle, as is known, there were teleological explanations; they’re called teleological. What does that mean? Aristotle says that if you let go of a stone here, it falls to the ground because it strives to return to its source, right? To the source from which it came, which is the earth. Okay? You see that the “because” here points to the future, to the purpose. The stone moves downward not because of something, but for the sake of something—in order to return to its source. Okay? So that “in order to” basically means that this is a teleological explanation, purposive, and not causal.

And for us, in our science of course, the stone falls downward because the force of gravity pulls it. It doesn’t return downward for the sake of something, but because of something. It’s not a teleological explanation; it’s a causal explanation. Okay?

Now people very much mock Aristotle’s explanations, because what do you mean, the stone wants to return to its source? What, does a stone have a will? Is it frustrated that it’s not in its source? Now that seems to me really—let’s say, with a minimum of charity—Aristotle was not an idiot. Clearly he did not mean that; it’s a way of speaking. He gave a teleological explanation, but he didn’t mean that the stone chooses to return to its source, and that it could also decide not to return to its source. The stone will return to its source whether it wants to or not. Our way of describing this process is to say: stones return to their source; it is the nature of stones to return to their source. So the explanation is teleological, but that doesn’t mean the stone decides which purpose to pursue and which not to pursue. Aristotle did not turn the stone into a human being, into an entity with consciousness and choice and desires and aspirations and decisions. I’m quite sure Aristotle did not think that the stone has all these functions. Okay? Rather, the language he used, or the law he proposed, really was a teleological law, purposive and not causal. That’s not what we mean, for example, when we talk about a human being making a free choice.

A human being who makes a free choice—the person really is making a genuinely teleological consideration. That is, he decides whether to give charity to a particular poor person who asks. So I can give the charity, I can choose not to give the charity. I decide to give the charity because I want to do good. Okay? That’s a teleological explanation. I want to realize some value, and for that purpose I take a certain action. If there were a causal explanation, if there were something that caused me to give the charity, then it would not be a decision to give charity. Then giving charity would be the result of a mechanical process. Okay?

When we value someone as having chosen something, and also give him credit for being a good person—he decided to do something good—that means we look at this teleologically and not causally. The explanation of why he did what he did is an explanation that he chose to realize some value or to reach some state. I pick up the phone in order to arrange a meeting with my friend, so the meeting that will take place tomorrow morning is the reason for picking up the phone today. But a cause cannot come after its effect, right? Clearly the meeting tomorrow morning is not the cause of my picking up the phone; it is the purpose of picking up the phone. And the phone call has no cause—no cause. I want a future meeting. Why? Just because. And because I want a future meeting, I pick up the phone in order to coordinate it. Okay?

So the explanation is teleological, but in the human case a teleological explanation takes on a dramatically different meaning from a causal explanation. Because a teleological explanation basically means that I decide on a certain purpose and act in order to realize it. Inanimate creatures, or even living creatures that are not human beings, probably do not act that way. They act causally. They do something because there was something earlier that caused them to do it, the cause that brought the events about in this way. That is the sharp difference between a causal approach and a teleological one.

With Aristotle this is not teleology in that sense. Aristotle’s explanation is deterministic. He did not think a stone could choose not to return to its source. It must return to its source; it is built into it that it returns to its source. But what is built into it? Built into it is a law that is teleological, purposive, and not causal. But it is still built into it. He did not turn the stone into a human being. It’s not that the stone now decides things or wants things, okay? It’s just making fun of Aristotle’s explanation. He didn’t mean that. But he did say there is a teleological explanation here. Okay?

Now why do teleological explanations really bother people? Why does this bother people? Because there is the law of causality, the principle of causality. The principle of causality says that things do not happen without a cause. Right? Now understand that if I explain something teleologically, then it happened without a cause. It happened for the sake of a purpose, but not because of a cause, because if it happened because of a cause, then it isn’t for the sake of a purpose; then the cause simply made it happen, regardless of what purpose it may end up serving. Okay?

This bothers people, because people who accept the principle of causality say: things cannot occur without a cause. And when you offer me a teleological explanation, you are basically saying that this event occurred without a cause. Think about it: if, for example, we believe in human free choice, that means some electron in our brain began to move without a force acting on it. There is no cause that moved it. It moved because my will decided to move it because I wanted to do something. There is no cause at all. Now this contradicts Newton’s second law. A particle does not begin moving, or begin accelerating, without a force acting on it. Right?

So that is a particular case, but more generally I’m saying that what bothers people about teleological explanations is that they contradict the principle of causality. Things do not happen without a cause. When you offer a teleological explanation, you are basically saying: this happened, but it happened for the sake of a purpose and not because of a cause. In other words, it happened without a cause. No—things do not happen without a cause. That is what bothers people about teleological explanations.

Now this bothers people also in the inanimate world, not only in the human case. Many people deny the existence of free choice because of this. Because if you believe in free choice, that means a person does something without a cause, but for the sake of a purpose. And people are not willing to accept that, because there is the principle of causality. But now I’m talking also about Aristotle’s stones. Even the teleological explanations regarding the movement of Aristotle’s stones, where we’re not talking about free choice and all that, still this is an explanation that does not require a cause. That is, something happened here without a cause. That bothers people.

In the human case, for those who do believe in free choice, there is a solution. What is the solution? The human will is a special thing. There is nothing like it in other creatures or in other places. Why? Because it succeeds in moving things for the sake of a purpose and not because of a cause. But only it. All the rest of the world is a matter of cause and effect. Okay? But at least we have some root that tells us where this teleological action comes from. It comes from the human will. The human will, the ability of a person to choose freely—free will, that is really the meaning of the matter—it succeeds in acting without a cause, contrary to the principle of causality.

What happens in inanimate entities? If I accept Aristotle’s teleological explanation for the movement of a stone, then the situation there is more complicated. Because regarding stones there is not, as I said, will, consciousness, soul, however you want to call it—so what sets purposes before the stone? In other words, why does the stone—even if it has no choice, even if it must return to its source—still, if the stone is always striving to return to its source and that is what governs its actions, that is what determines what it will do, doesn’t that mean that there is something or someone that set these purposes and sees to it that all the creatures or entities in the world act in order to achieve those purposes?

And therefore teleological explanations bother people also when they do not arise in the context of a human being. Even when they arise in the context of inanimate things like stones. Because basically, hidden behind this is the Holy One, blessed be He. When you look at processes and you say they are moving toward a certain purpose, that indicates that there is someone here responsible for this story; that is, someone caused these entities to behave in a way that would reach the desired purpose that He had set in advance.

Therefore purposive behavior very much bothers atheists. Even though on the face of it this is a philosophical dispute—whether you accept teleological explanations or want only causal explanations—what does that have to do with whether you are a believer or not? It does have to do with it. You can avoid it, but I think in the field you will certainly find the correlation; it exists. And there is a good reason for this correlation—a “reason,” in quotation marks, for this correlation. What is the reason? That teleological explanations basically signal to us that behind these behaviors there is some entity, some factor, that sets purposes before stones or tigers or elephants or air conditioners, and sees to it that they act in order to realize those purposes. Right? That is how we tend to interpret purposive processes.

When you see something formed—think of some kind of cellular automaton. You see something moving, and suddenly a Star of David is formed, okay? And it stays that way. So it’s pretty clear that the whole process took place so that in the end a Star of David would be formed, right? So whoever set the laws—the laws are deterministic, this thing moves and all that, it has no other possibility, it will arrive at a Star of David—precisely because of that there must be a designer here, who apparently set the laws so that the system would eventually reach the shape of a Star of David. Precisely because of the determinism. The determinism strengthens this. Because if there is determinism, that means from the outset it was already clear to us: whoever set the laws already knew in advance that this system was going to create the shape of a Star of David, and that is what he wanted. Therefore he built the laws in this way.

You understand that when we adopt teleological explanations—why would the atheist recoil from this? Because teleological explanations say that there is someone who sets purposes before the world and causes it to act in order to realize those purposes. Okay? Therefore atheists very often use science and think that science and faith are always at war, some zero-sum game. That is, either this or that, but not both—you have to choose. Okay? And one of the roots of the matter is that faith is willing to accept processes that have no causal factor—the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world, I don’t know what; there is no physical factor, no simple causal factor. And the more science reveals more and more of the physical factors and laws of nature, this is considered a bite taken out of faith, out of what the Holy One, blessed be He, is doing here, because we have causal explanations, so everything is clear. No need to get to the idea that there is someone here moving these things purposively. Okay?

And indeed the development of science is such that we began with teleological explanations in Aristotle, and slowly—certainly in the modern era—we move more and more toward causal explanations. Today a stone no longer falls because it wants to return to its quarry, but because the law of gravity pulls it downward. Today creatures do not develop in such a way—the giraffe’s neck does not lengthen because it needs to eat high food, but because the evolutionary mechanism causes its neck to lengthen. And so on. That is, everything that once had a teleological explanation gradually becomes causal, to the delight of atheists and the distress of creationists or believers. Okay? So that is basically the process.

Now in fact I’ll say more than that. This process also happens—think about the different sciences, place them in some kind of pyramid. There is physics, chemistry, biology, if you like psychology, sociology, anthropology, the social sciences of various kinds, and so on. And let’s say if we are complete reductionists, then basically each such stage can be based on the previous stages. Everything begins with physics into chemistry, biology—that is, all of these are just physics in more complex form: complex physics is chemistry, complex chemistry is biology, complex biology is psychology, complex psychology is society, social sciences, sociology, anthropology, and the like, economics, whatever you want. Okay? So that is the reductionist picture, which materialists usually think is the correct picture. There are discussions about reductionism, but this is the simple intuition of materialists.

Now the higher you go on this ladder of the sciences, the more teleological the explanations become. In physics it seems clear that explanations are only causal. In chemistry too. In biology not—but slowly it becomes yes. In psychology the explanations are teleological. Why does a person do something? Because he wants to achieve this, because such-and-such—in other words, for the sake of. Not all explanations, but very many explanations in psychology are teleological explanations. And of course in society—why do human beings act this way? Because they want to conquer this, because they want to achieve that, why does society act in a certain way? Again, the explanations are teleological explanations. So the more we go down, let’s say, from sociology to physics, the explanations turn from purposes into causes.

But the line that separates causal explanations from teleological ones is constantly rising. That is, causal explanations are conquering more and more areas. Today already in biology and sociology and psychology and whatever you want, the explanations are basically causal explanations. And in effect supposedly everything has already been conquered; the line has risen all the way to the top. Okay?

Now what is happening under the radar is a somewhat opposite process, even subversive I would say. I return to physics. It’s my field, so it’s easier for me there. In physics there was a certain period in the nineteenth century when Lagrangian mechanics arose, analytical mechanics, and this mechanics explained the motion of inanimate bodies with teleological explanations. For example, there is Fermat’s principle. Fermat’s principle in optics says that light—if you want to know how light will move—light will always choose the shortest path to its destination. In other words, this is an Aristotelian explanation. Just as the stone wants to return to its quarry, light wants to reach its destination by the shortest route. And it chooses the shortest route. The moment you look at what it chooses among the different paths, you understand that this is a teleological explanation and not a causal one. Right?

For example, there is Snell’s law. Do you know Snell’s law? Let’s say there is a tank of water, and here there is air, and I send a beam of light flying through the air and entering the water. Now the moment it passes from one medium to another it is refracted at a certain angle. It changes angle. The relation between the angles is Snell’s law. It doesn’t matter—the refractive indices of these two media determine what the angle change will be. Now there is an alternative way to describe this, and that is by means of Fermat’s principle. Fermat’s principle says light will choose the shortest path to reach its destination. That gives you Snell’s law. It’s the same thing. One can prove that this and that are equivalent formulations.

This is always illustrated through a lifeguard and a drowning man at sea. You know this? There’s a person drowning in the sea, and I’m the lifeguard. And I’m the lifeguard—he can already start saying Kaddish, but let’s say I’m the lifeguard. Now I need to run on the shore, reach the sea, take the rescue board, and swim or sail to him in order to save him. What route should I take? How should I build the path? Seemingly the straight line is the shortest line. Not true. Why not? Because on the sand I move much faster than in the sea. I run. So it’s much better for me that as much of the path as possible be on the shore. And therefore basically, if he is there, I need to run like this and then like this, and not go straight to him, but take a longer route on the shore so that it shortens the route at sea.

Now it turns out that of course you don’t make the sea route minimal—not directly opposite the drowning man, but somewhere in between, which also makes sense. It’s not such a complicated minimax problem. You just differentiate the function and discover what angle is obtained. The angle that is obtained is Snell’s law. That is, if you think about light undergoing refraction, it performs the same calculation the lifeguard performs—what is the best route for him to take—and it chooses the route that is optimal for it. By the way, not the shortest route, but the route that takes the least time. The shortest route is a straight line. The route that takes the least time is not a straight line, but something a little more in favor of the land and against the sea relative to the straight line.

Now there is a simple proof that says geometric optics can be formulated in two ways. You can say: light always chooses the path that will take the least time. That’s one formulation. A second formulation is: there is Snell’s law, interference, diffraction, and all these things, the whole set of laws. It is completely equivalent. That is, this formulation that says light chooses the shortest path contains all the laws known in geometric optics. This is known; it has been proven. It is completely equivalent.

Which of them is correct? Which is the right description? Seemingly, what does “right” mean? Both describe the facts as they are, exactly the same thing. There is no scientific way to distinguish between these two descriptions, because every result of this description will also be obtained from that description, and vice versa. So there is no scientific way to test which description is correct. And still, if you ask physicists, they’ll tell you: obviously the causal description is the correct one, not the teleological one. What do you mean, light chooses the shortest path? What, does light calculate which path is shortest and decide to go there? Obviously not. Why? It goes. The philosophical argument says that obviously the causal explanation is the correct one, and the teleological explanation is an anecdote.

Okay, there is an interesting anecdote; there is also a teleological formulation completely equivalent to the causal explanations, but the causal explanations are the correct ones.

Now the same thing applies to what I think all of you know. Think about a certain ball moving on some topographical landscape—mountains, valleys, depressions, saddles, hills, and so on, okay, the little ball moves. Fine? How do we describe the motion of this little ball? Two ways in high-school mechanics, right? One way: if it’s located here, there is a force on it—say there is a slope here—it has a force, gravity times the cosine of the angle, and it goes down because the force pushes it or pulls it downward. Right? That’s one possibility. A second possibility: potential energy. Right? The body strives to reach minimum potential energy. These are two equivalent explanations. Again, you see: the first is causal, the second is teleological. The body strives to reach minimum potential energy—that is a teleological description. The body doesn’t strive and doesn’t choose; the body moves because something throws it there—that is the causal explanation. But it turns out that the teleological explanation and the causal explanation are equivalent.

Yes, one can offer a causal explanation, one can offer a teleological explanation, and this is already in mechanics, not optics. And in the nineteenth century Lagrange proposed teleological formulations for all of mechanics, through functionals, for those who know—it doesn’t matter—the Hamiltonian, the Lagrangian, and so on. Not important. But by way of this, you need to optimize some quantity, and the path that gives you the optimum is the path that will be chosen. Just like light—in light you optimize time, the time it takes to travel; that’s the quantity being optimized. In mechanics it’s something else mathematically; it doesn’t matter. But still, to optimize something is basically teleological thinking, right? You choose something that will be most convenient for you, most efficient for you, or something like that, that will lead you to the goal you want to reach. You understand that this is teleological thinking?

Ask the physicists again—I’ll spare you, no need, I’ve already asked—and they’ll tell you this is an anecdote. Obviously the causal explanation is the correct one; there is some mathematical anecdote by which one can offer a completely equivalent explanation in teleological language. Yes, there is a theorem saying the two explanations are equivalent. Okay, nice. But still, it is obvious to everyone that the causal explanation is the correct one and the teleological one is false. Okay?

Here’s the rub: what people are a bit less aware of—I came to give a seminar here in physics when I was already in the yeshiva in Yeruham after I finished here, so I gave them a seminar about this—and I showed them that the physics they deal with is saturated with teleological thinking, purposive thinking, that has no causal analogue. None. That is, everywhere there is both a causal description and a teleological description, you can say, okay, the causal description is the correct one and the teleological description is an anecdote. But in quantum theory, for example, there is only a teleological description; there is no causal description. In quantum theory there is no force—there is only potential, sorry, only potential appears in Schrödinger’s equation. There is no force.

There is an interesting paper by Feynman in which he once tried to define force in quantum theory, but that is an ad hoc definition; that is, he forced it in—yes, forced it in—because he knows what force is from classical mechanics, so he forced it into quantum theory. There isn’t any—in quantum theory there is no force, only potential, certainly in field theories and more advanced things. What does that mean? It means that in all of modern physics we basically have only a teleological formulation, and there is no equivalent formulation that is causal. There isn’t one; it does not exist.

If these two formulations both exist, then you can ask yourself philosophically which of them is right and which is anecdotal. You say, fine, the causal one is right and the teleological one is anecdotal. But I’m showing you that in all modern physics there are no causal formulations at all, only teleological ones. People don’t notice this; physicists also don’t notice that potential is a teleological description and force is a causal description. We’re just used to it, so we don’t think about it. And what does that mean? At least in light of what we know today, modern physics is entirely teleological; there is no causal description at all.

And if that is so, then everything that bothered you about Aristotle and his teleological explanations comes back again—and this time not in sociology and not in psychology and not in biology, but in physics, the physics of the infrastructure. The micro, the most basic physics there is, at the bottom of

[Speaker B] the pyramid—the layer that isn’t mixed in, as it were, with force and action in quantum mechanics maybe, of the explanation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker B] I didn’t understand what…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I can’t teach quantum mechanics here. I’m only giving you this datum. You should know that in quantum theory, when we want to calculate the trajectory of a particle or the dynamics of a particle, we use potential, not force. Potential and force are concepts from classical mechanics. In quantum mechanics there is only description by means of potential; there is no description by means of force. None. The concept of force does not appear in quantum theory; it isn’t there. And that’s enough for me. That is, I don’t need more than that. Okay?

This basically means that we no longer have the option of choosing between teleological or causal and deciding that the other is an anecdote, or saying that in any case it doesn’t matter. Because only the teleological description exists; there is no causal description. So if a teleological description really reflects the fact that there is some factor here moving things and causing them to move toward their purpose, then we are, in my opinion, in a much worse situation than Aristotle. Because with us there is no causal alternative. There is only a teleological description. And if that’s so, then it seems to me that one can even see in this, I don’t know, an indication of the existence of God. If physics is teleological and not causal, then that means someone causes all these systems to move in a way that realizes a certain purpose, that reaches where He wants it to reach, like that Star of David that was formed in the cellular automaton I mentioned earlier. It’s exactly the same thing. Okay?

Therefore I think that teleological explanations, purposive explanations, which are returning—they haven’t returned, it’s been like this for a hundred years and people simply don’t notice. So for a hundred years physics has been in a place that is entirely teleological. And people still go on living—ask any physicist and he’ll tell you: only causal explanations; teleological explanations are just an anecdote at most. Analytical mechanics—nobody uses it, it’s a nice mathematical technique but nobody really uses it because it isn’t real. So in quantum theory there is only analytical mechanics; there is nothing else. Okay.

So that’s a remark. I said, a big parenthesis—but I’m closing that parenthesis. I still have a few minutes, so I’ll devote them to something that really is secondary, but it also very much touches our current events today, unfortunately. I want to say a few words about the church of science. In English they call it scientism. Scientism. Scientism.

[Speaker C] Yes. The church of reason. The church of science isn’t even…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] She knows how to sing, so it’s not… Scientism basically means turning science into an ideology. What’s the difference between being scientific and scientism? It’s roughly like the difference between rationalism and rationality. Rationalism is an ideological outlook; rationality is logical thinking. I think I mentioned here that story I had with… I was in yeshiva, and two years above me there was someone studying in Gush, someone there with jaundice—I told that one, right? So in short, that’s the difference between rationality and rationalism. Someone who insists on explanations of a certain kind because that’s what seems right to him—that’s a rationalist. But a rational person chooses the explanation that is most correct, not the explanation that is dearest to his heart. Okay? And a lot of times there’s this feeling that science is a very powerful tool, but it has a community of believers that has turned it into a religion. And anything that goes beyond science is, for them, heresy against the faith. Or anything that offers some explanation for which science can’t offer an alternative or something like that—it’s heresy against the faith. Meaning, it shall neither be seen nor heard nor found. You’re not allowed to say it. Just look—I once wrote a series of six articles on Ynet Science about whether belief in God is rational. There was a long response there. That was after my book God Plays Dice came out, I think. You should see the comments there. At first I was in shock, because I didn’t surf the internet much and I still didn’t know the nature of talkbacks, but it was just awful. It was awful. People there were enraged, foam coming out of their mouths—I didn’t see them, but it was clear to me—foam coming out of their ears. What is this worthless dark zero doing here…? Say, you don’t agree, you do agree, then make this argument, that argument… No, this was completely… I was saying things that were plainly illegal. I said that believing in God is a rational position. I didn’t even say it’s the most correct one; I said it’s rational, meaning it’s legitimate. What is he… what is he doing here, as if? This is a place for thinking, for logical thinking. It’s not. Now what is logical thinking? Whoever thinks like me. Scientific thinking, yes, exactly. That thing—that’s what I call the Church of Science. And a lot of times people reject belief in God in the name of science, when in fact it isn’t science—it’s scientism. Clear? Obviously belief in God does not fall within the domain of science. It’s not part of science, that’s clear. I say that too, as someone who does believe in God. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. If something doesn’t fall within the domain of science, does that mean it isn’t true? Same thing with free choice. It doesn’t fall within the domain of science. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Why do you assume that anything that doesn’t fall within the domain of science—or at least science as you know it—isn’t true? That isn’t science, it’s scientism. Okay? And why did I say this is connected to our world today? What’s happening in our world today—just this morning they sent me some horrifying post by some guy, I don’t even remember his name anymore, never mind slander, let’s not even say it, leave it alone. Some idiot sitting there writing about how all the pathetic leftists and the High Court and the IDF chief of staff and everyone just wants to destroy all of us, and the European Union—you know all those things. Criticism, of course, can exist; I’m not some total fan of all those bodies. But it’s this kind of insane criticism where you can’t see anything in a balanced way. And then the person who sent it to me—I told him, look, but the mirror image of this exists on the other side. When you hear the Kaplan people, or the neo-Darwinians, or something like that—it’s the same thing. Meaning, it’s a religion in every respect. There are things you just cannot say. You cannot say them. And now we’re in ongoing discussion with them, even with some of their leaders, in various WhatsApp groups and so on—you can’t get through at all. These are religious dogmas. You can’t. If you explain something—for example, I’m very far from being a fan of Bibi’s; I despise him, to be more precise. But if even once I try to explain to them that I think he’s acting substantively and in the right direction, they’ll crucify me, burn me at the stake, on the spot. Good thing it’s online and not physical. You just can’t say such a thing. Now, you can hope he’ll be thrown out, say that he’s harmful, and all that may be true. Nothing—you’re not allowed to say that there’s something he does in a substantive way. Smotrich, Ben Gvir, it doesn’t matter, the whole gang, okay? My relation to all of them is about the same. But still, fine, there are things yes and things no—speak substantively. How do I know you belong to the church? When it’s impossible to speak with you substantively. It’s not that you adopt a certain position and disagree with another position—that’s all fine. You can even say that someone who holds a different position is evil, stupid, harmful—also fine, everything is fine, as long as it’s argued substantively. I can agree, I can disagree. But here the feeling is that there are no substantive arguments. Meaning, what belongs over there is a combination of stupidity and evil, and what belongs to us is children of light. There are children of light and children of darkness. The only question is: which are you? Again—from both sides. It’s from both sides. There’s a war here between two churches that can’t talk to each other. My favorite example in this context—even before the Swords of Iron war, during the Reform war, yes, the war that preceded the Swords of Iron war, and now is also coming back. During the Reform war you could see ads in the newspapers from those in favor of the reform and those against the reform—mostly against, but here and there also some in favor. Now, those ads said exactly the same thing, from both sides. They said the same thing. Meaning, those who were against the reform said, look, true, change is needed, but they went too far. And those who were in favor of the reform said, true, there are things they did that went too far, but change is needed. Do you understand that they’re saying the same thing? This isn’t an anecdote. Eighty percent of the public thinks exactly the same thing about the reform. There are ten percent on each side who are unhinged. The eighty percent in the middle think exactly the same thing about the reform. Those eighty percent are split into forty percent against the reform and forty percent for the reform, and they’ll be in Kaplan and they’ll shout themselves hoarse there while saying exactly the same thing. I’m saying—you can relate this to another kind of argument, maybe in the realm of psychology or philosophy, that’s another question. I’m only trying to show one thing. What we have here is a church. It isn’t a worldview, it’s a church. And in a church there’s a discourse framework, there are dogmas, articles of faith. If you deviate from them, then people don’t argue with you—you’re a heretic. That’s it, you can’t talk about it; at most they burn you if you’re even worthy of a response. Okay? In the best case they burn you, because sometimes I prefer they burn me rather than not respond to me. But that’s it—and that’s the characteristic of religious discourse. And the discourse around evolution, the discourse around God, the discourse around the reform, the discourse around a hostage deal—they are religious discourse in every respect, from both sides. From both sides—completely religious discourse. You cannot raise arguments. And I’m telling you, in all these areas, including the last one—in all these areas, 80% of the public thinks exactly the same thing. In all the issues I just raised. There’s no argument. Those who say a hostage deal at any price, and those who say absolutely no hostage deal, think exactly the same thing. And these will say a hostage deal at any price, and those will say absolutely no hostage deal. Exactly like with the reform. Why? Because nobody says we should commit suicide in order to bring back the hostages, right? It’s obvious that it’s not really at any price. Okay? Nobody is going to say, okay, let’s evacuate Tel Aviv so they’ll return the hostages. Or even the Gaza envelope, not holy Tel Aviv. Even the Gaza envelope. They also wouldn’t agree, right? Nobody would agree to evacuate the Gaza envelope for this. So where exactly is the line? The line is where there is significant danger to Israel, right? They badly want the hostages, but they’re not willing to endanger the state in order to bring back the hostages. There can be arguments in the nuances—what endangers the state. There are disagreements here and there. Okay, which risks to take. That’s all, it’s nuances. Now how many people across the whole country really mean a hostage deal at any price—literally? Zero, absolutely zero. Aside from a few maybe in Geha, I don’t know, hospitalized—apart from them, nobody thinks that way, right? How many people think the hostages shouldn’t be returned under any circumstances? Zero—also zero. So what’s left? What’s left is that the discourse is of course: absolutely no hostage deal; hostage deal at any price. What’s the truth? That everybody is saying more or less the same thing. There are a few nuances about the question of how much risk to take. Yes, there are risks they’ll take, disagreements here and there can exist. Truly nuances at the margins, completely at the margins. What? What does it mean to be against a deal? It depends at what price. What does it mean to be against a deal? Are they against bringing back the hostages? What?

[Speaker D] They’re releasing terrorists. If they tell you, I’m returning the

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] hostages, but after that you’ll be able to destroy them—are you also against the deal? Because that’s what these guys are saying. Okay, bring back the hostages, and afterward we’ll destroy them. Nonsense in my view, but never mind. Okay? So you understand that it’s only a question of assessing reality: will it really be possible to destroy them after they return the hostages? If not, then you also agree not to. Now I think not—I don’t think it’ll be possible to destroy them after a hostage deal, after we bring them back. Me personally, fine, maybe I’m wrong; I’m not trying to push a position here. I’m trying to show you that those speaking from both sides think the same thing. And it’s the same thing in the argument about the Holy One, blessed be He, in the argument about belief in God, in the argument about evolution. Almost all arguments are like this. If you examine them, you’ll see that people think more or less the same thing, or they can say, okay, there’s a nuance this way, a nuance that way. Not certain there is a God, more certain there is a God. Okay, legitimate. Move the line here, move the line there. For you, 70% is enough; for him, 70% isn’t enough. I don’t know, finished. There can be arguments at the margins. But they present it as some total, absolute argument. Simply children of light and children of darkness. Stupid versus wise, righteous versus wicked—yes, like “the wicked into the hands of those who engage in Your Torah”—yes, how does that go there? I think Dawkins and I are actually very similar. Because when he comes out of his church, he’ll see that we’re not arguing all that much—the distance between us isn’t great. He himself, by the way, says he’s an agnostic, agnostic. He’s not—right. What counts as evidence? Not enough evidence. Evidence of a certain strength counts as enough. What strength? There’s no 100%, right? The whole question is how much. Fine, so I’m saying—again, I’m not claiming there are no arguments in the world. What I am claiming is that when you examine it, you’ll see that nothing is polar. Overall there are nuances; the question is where to draw the line. There are disagreements, fine, I’m not saying we’re all clones of one another. By the way, one of the problems—and now I can’t hold myself back, so I’ll say this too, which is really very current—not current in the sense of some position, but in what it says about our reality. The moment we perceive the side that doesn’t think like us as children of darkness, then first of all we don’t listen to their arguments. And they usually do have arguments—by the way, from both sides. There are arguments. Both sides have arguments. None of the questions I raised here is simple. And there are arguments on both sides. Now of course we fortify ourselves in our church, and the other is a heretic. Right? Or evil, or stupid, or both. Right? Whoever thinks differently from me is either evil or stupid or both. Usually both. Okay? Now what happens? If he’s so evil and stupid and has no arguments, then there’s no point in listening to him either. To someone who has none—do you listen to stupid people or evil people? No. You don’t listen, so he has no arguments. After all, you haven’t heard arguments from him. Of course you haven’t heard them, because you don’t listen. He has no arguments. If he has no arguments, then how is he holding such a position? Without arguments? So he’s either evil or stupid. And if he’s evil or stupid, you don’t listen to him. Do you understand that this is positive feedback? What is it—a self-reinforcing thing? On both sides. That’s what’s happening among us today, in my opinion. That’s what’s happening among us today.

[Speaker C] Now, the question is whether the explanation you just gave is really a thing. I think it’s on a more sociological level. Fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that’s the problem—that psychology gets mixed into…

[Speaker C] the substantive arguments.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, but I’m saying—that’s the problem. The problem is that psychology gets mixed into the substantive arguments.

[Speaker D] Also, people you see who are inside this argument…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t need to convince me that people… You don’t need to convince me that people are driven by psychology. I know that. That’s exactly what I’m saying. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

[Speaker D] So it’s not connected to the position.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is connected—that’s what I’m saying. I claim that psychology overshadows the essential arguments. And we entrench ourselves psychologically and refuse to listen to arguments. What—what will listening to arguments do? That’s what people don’t understand. That’s the only thing that can break this vicious cycle. If you manage to convince someone to listen to someone else’s arguments—or conversely, convince yourself to listen to someone else’s arguments—what will happen? Suddenly you’ll discover that there are arguments there. It doesn’t mean you’ll agree. But there are arguments there. He’s not an idiot, and he’s also not evil. There are arguments there. Now as a result, one of two things will happen. Either you’ll agree with him—that can happen too, heaven forbid. Or if you don’t agree with him, at least you’ll understand that he’s not evil or stupid; he just thinks differently. That too is something. Why is that something? Because then there won’t be a problem making a decision. We have mechanisms in democracy for making decisions when we have disagreements. Why are we stuck today? Because people don’t perceive this disagreement as a disagreement between two legitimate positions. They are not willing to accept the mechanisms of democracy as mechanisms that can decide these disputes. I don’t run a democracy with Nazis. I don’t let a Nazi majority determine what I should do. So the moment I perceive them as evil or stupid, I won’t be able to resolve the dispute—it’s impossible. The moment I listen to arguments and I understand they’re not evil or stupid, that doesn’t mean I’ve been persuaded. But it does mean I’m willing to hold a vote and accept the ruling of the majority. Or whatever—the democratic mechanisms, or the court, or the majority—each side denies a different part of the democratic mechanisms. Okay? Not… again, what I’m saying is addressed equally to both sides. I need to put a notice at the top: my remarks are directed equally at both sides. And this thing is a disaster. The thing that needs work is not manners—let them curse me, let them curse my mother, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It bothers me, but that’s not the point. Listen to me. After you’ve listened to me and you still disagree, curse me. The problem is that the curses are a substitute for listening. Instead of listening to my arguments and saying I completely disagree with you, you curse me and don’t listen. Forget it—listen, hear me out, I have arguments. And the other side has arguments too. I try very hard to work on this—I’m human too, in case you didn’t know—it’s hard for me too, but I try very hard to listen to people who don’t think like me. Every now and then I learn new things, meaning I hear arguments. In the end I form some position; many times I don’t change my position after listening, but I do understand that there is another side here. Meaning, sometimes I moderate, sometimes I understand that in certain contexts I need to take different steps. We don’t know everything ourselves, and we haven’t thought of everything ourselves. And that’s a lesson that… again, I’m starting from a theological debate, and it’s true there too—also with regard to belief and non-belief, you need to listen very carefully to the arguments of both sides. There are arguments on both sides. In the end you have to form a position. But there are no perfect idiots and perfect villains here facing the righteous and the wise. It doesn’t work that way. Okay? For both sides it doesn’t work that way, and both sides are sure that it does work that way. And only on this point are they stupid or evil—on the point that they think the other side is stupid or evil. Okay, that’s enough. I’ll stop here.