For the Perplexed of the Generation – Lesson 7

Table of Contents

• [0:01] Introduction to the lecture and recording date
• [2:20] The ancient question of eternity and the philosophical context
• [3:28] The scientific challenge in the modern era
• [9:59] The development of complexity over billions of years
• [26:58] The special law and the failure of the physico-theological proof
• [27:59] The importance of the law’s frequency and the weaker claim
• [30:34] Motivation versus arguments — what really matters
• [31:43] Gravity versus evolution in the eyes of the believer and the non-believer
• [33:32] The razor principle and the heavenly teapot — choosing belief
• [39:57] Presenting the theory of evolution — three initial stages
• [42:32] The finch experiment in the Galapagos — Darwin’s example
• [44:04] The experiment’s conclusions and criticism of its scientific value

Summary

General Overview

Thursday, 3 Cheshvan 5771, lecture number seven by Rabbi Michael Abraham on Rabbi Kook’s book Perplexed of the Generation, October 21, 2010, in chapter 4 on page 22, presents the question of the world’s eternity and the question of evolution as challenges to the physico-theological proof, and explains that they do not prove that there is no God, but rather undermine a particular proof for His existence. Rabbi Michael Abraham argues that the Big Bang initially strengthens the physico-theological proof by knocking out the Aristotelian answer of the world’s eternity, and that evolution later comes along to offer a mechanism showing how complexity can arise without a direct creator. He reads Rabbi Kook’s response in the paragraph beginning “The development that comes gradually” not as dodging the new question, but as shifting the focus of the argument from the complex product itself to the very existence of the laws of nature and the deterministic protocol that leads from the simple to the complex, and he argues that evolution itself can become a strong proof for the existence of a director. Noach 5734

Lecture Details and Location in the Book

Thursday, 3 Cheshvan 5771, lecture number seven by Rabbi Michael Abraham, was devoted to Rabbi Kook’s book Perplexed of the Generation on October 21, 2010. Rabbi Michael Abraham notes that the discussion is in chapter 4 on page 22, centered on a paragraph that opens with the words “The development that comes gradually.”

The Question of Eternity and the Physico-Theological Proof

The ancient question of eternity is directed against the physico-theological proof, which infers from the existence of complexity and design that there is a creator. In the ancient world, the possible response against the proof was that the world was not created but had always existed, and therefore there is no room to ask who created it. Rabbi Michael Abraham states that today, assuming one accepts the scientific findings, the Big Bang shows that the world is not eternal, and so the Aristotelian answer falls away.

The Return of the Physico-Theological Proof and the Appearance of Evolution as a New Answer

Once it is no longer possible to claim eternity, the physico-theological proof returns with even greater force, because now it is clear that the world came into being at a certain time and is still complex and coordinated. Rabbi Michael Abraham argues that evolution offers a new answer: complexity can arise through a random process, and in an even stronger version of the claim, refinement is presented as a natural result of natural selection. He emphasizes that evolution is not a claim that proves there is no God, but a claim that refutes a particular proof for His existence through complexity.

Rabbi Kook’s Quote and the Claim that the Response Seems Like “A Return to the Old Answer”

Rabbi Kook is quoted in the paragraph: “The development that comes gradually over billions of years is what shakes the hearts of small-minded people… and they are very mistaken… Divine understanding is built only on the knowledge of unity…” and later, “And if the ways of wisdom require that the matter come about through development… then all the more we should marvel at how great and exalted the Living Eternal One is.” Rabbi Michael Abraham points out that the paragraph seems as though it is returning to the old argument that complexity and order require a creator, even though the new question argues precisely that complexity can grow out of an evolutionary mechanism.

Evolution, Tautology, and the Scientific Status of “Survival of the Fittest”

Rabbi Michael Abraham argues that “survival of the fittest” is, in a certain sense, tautological, because success is defined through survival. He explains that a tautology is not necessarily trivial, but it cannot be refuted in the same way as an ordinary empirical claim. He uses a discussion of computer simulations, bacterial colonies, and equilibrium to distinguish between specific prediction of results and the general claim that there will always be some species that succeed in perpetuating themselves.

The Question of the Creator’s Character and a Long Process with “Waste”

Rabbi Michael Abraham presents the claim that even if there is a God, it is not reasonable that He would create a world through billions of years filled with extinctions and “waste,” and he rejects this as a claim based on unjustified assumptions about the character of the Holy One, blessed be He. He says that such an attack is directed against “a certain God” that someone built in his imagination as an immediate creator, and not against the very possibility of a transcendent being who creates or directs through an evolutionary process. He distinguishes between the question of whether there is a God and the question of reconciling evolution with the biblical description, and he assigns the latter to the next chapter rather than the current one.

Gravity versus Evolution as Explanations of Natural Law and as an Attack on a Proof

Rabbi Michael Abraham brings up a friend’s question about the difference between evolution and gravity, and argues that from the standpoint of someone who already believes, both simply describe how the world works and do not threaten faith. He adds that from the standpoint of someone standing at a crossroads whom we are trying to persuade by means of the physico-theological proof, evolution is unique in that it attacks precisely the lever of persuasion based on complexity, whereas gravity is not usually used as a proof for the existence of God. He also compares this to claims about Kepler and Newton, and notes that a proof based on complexity has different force depending on how broad and complicated the system in question is.

Occam’s Razor, Russell’s Teapot, and the Distinction Between a Believer and Someone “At the Crossroads”

Rabbi Michael Abraham explains that when evolution knocks down the physico-theological proof as a compelling proof, the question remains open, and then Occam’s razor and Russell’s image of the “heavenly teapot” push one not to posit an entity unnecessarily. He argues that justifying belief solely for a psychological reason is “opium for the masses” and is not an argument for truth, and that what is true or false is determined by tools for examining facts, not by social utility or motivation. He distinguishes between a situation in which a person is already equipped with faith from other sources and a situation in which this is the only argument standing before someone who has to decide.

The Structure of the Evolutionary Description: Three Stages and Three Components

Rabbi Michael Abraham divides the picture into three stages: the Big Bang and the coming into being of existence, a period of inanimate matter, and the emergence of basic life, from which an evolutionary process begins until the diversity familiar today. He breaks the evolutionary mechanism into three components: the formation of mutations, natural selection, and genetic inheritance, which allows a survival-enhancing trait to pass to offspring and accumulate. He illustrates this with an analogy about wooden houses and stone houses in a fire, showing that selection by itself does not create refinement without a hereditary mechanism.

The Galapagos Finch Example and the Critique of Experimental “Confirmation”

Rabbi Michael Abraham describes a long-term experiment on finches in the Galapagos in which a drought left behind tough vegetation, finches with strong beaks survived, and they produced offspring with strong beaks because of genetic inheritance. He argues that the conclusion there follows deductively from simple facts, and that it was known in advance that those who can eat survive and that certain traits are genetic, so he does not understand what exactly was “confirmed” beyond the factual statement that there was a drought. He connects this to the claim that evolution is, in certain senses, perceived as “the religion of evolution,” because people get excited about the confirmation of a deductive argument.

The Problem of the Earliest Stages and the Statistical Argument of the Protein Chain

Rabbi Michael Abraham argues that even if evolution explains well the stage of species development, the initial stages — from the Big Bang until the formation of the first chain of life — remain problematic and require explanation. He presents a schematic calculation of the space of possibilities for a protein chain about 300 codons long, with 20 possibilities for each codon, and emphasizes that the number of combinations is enormous and that only a tiny fraction of them has “life potential.” He describes the difficulty as “jumps” between rare “islands” within a combinatorial “ocean,” and argues that repeated successful transitions appear improbable on an almost unimaginable scale.

Intelligent Design: Political Origin, Claims of Improbability, and Reversing the Conclusion

Rabbi Michael Abraham explains that the intelligent design movement arose out of political pressure in the United States surrounding the separation of religion and state and the desire to teach criticism of evolution in school without calling it creationism. He presents the intelligent design claim about “irreducible jumps,” such as the example of the eye, where intermediate stages have no survival value and therefore should not exist. He argues that the debate between intelligent design and neo-Darwinism is infantile, because both sides assume that evolution and God are contradictory, and he proposes combining the claim of improbability with the claim of the empirical facts that it happened, in order to conclude that an improbable process is taking place and therefore there is a director.

Deterministic Lawfulness, Randomness as a Statistical Tool, and the Protocol of a Director

Rabbi Michael Abraham argues that in macroscopic nature there is no truly random process, and that what appears statistical is a result of complexity and sensitivity to initial conditions, as with rolling a die, which is in principle deterministic. He explains that even the formation of mutations is a physical process and therefore basically deterministic, and that statistics is a descriptive tool, not a source of ontological randomness. He argues that even if we were to close all the scientific gaps and understand every stage, the very existence of four laws of nature that lead from matter with no identity to a living creature looks like a sophisticated protocol that invites the question of the source of that lawfulness, like a factory that operates well according to procedures that someone wrote.

Closing Reading of Rabbi Kook’s Words as a Renewed Physico-Theological Proof

Rabbi Michael Abraham concludes that Rabbi Kook’s words about “the great creation… arranged in orders of wisdom” and “the great spirit… that gives life to everything” are read by him as a proof, not merely as a way of making faith compatible with science. He argues that evolution is not a revolution that replaces God, but a description of the mechanism of the laws, and that precisely the lawfulness and unity of the system are the non-random element that restore the physico-theological proof in a new formulation. That concludes Rabbi Michael Abraham’s lecture, 13 Cheshvan 5771, October 21, 2010, on Rabbi Kook’s Perplexed of the Generation.

Thursday, the 3rd of Cheshvan 5771, lesson number seven by Rabbi Michael Abraham on Rabbi Kook’s book Perplexed of the Generation, October 21, 2010. We’re in chapter 4 on page 22. In this chapter he’s basically talking a bit about the question of eternity, the meaning of the question, the answers to the question, and the renewed form of the question. Meaning, this question had of course already come up in ancient times, and Maimonides addresses it, but Rabbi Kook intends to deal with a new version of this question, one that relates to evolution, basically the middle of the nineteenth century. And the paragraph in the chapter that begins, “The development that comes gradually,” is really dealing with an attempt to answer the new phase of this question. Last time we ended with the remark that he seems to be going back to the same old answer to the old question, meaning he gives the same answer that the new question is seemingly attacking directly. So let’s summarize a bit what I said last time, just so we align ourselves and get into the issue.

The ancient question of eternity was basically aimed against the physico-theological proof. In Kant there are three kinds of proofs for the existence of God; the third kind is the physico-theological proof. That’s maybe one of the most common ones. It says that if there is something planned, or something complex, then presumably it was not created by chance. Now, in the ancient era the only real way to deal with such a question was to say that it actually was not created. It wasn’t created—it always existed. Once it always existed, then there’s no question of who created it. Meaning, I ask: who created this whole world? It’s so complex—how could it have come about by chance? Fine. So as long as there was no evolution, in the first phase of this question, the only possible answer was that it really was never created, it always existed, and therefore there is no question.

The problem is that in the more modern era this answer collapsed, because scientifically we know that the world is not eternal. The world was created at some point—the Big Bang and some subsequent development through evolution—and seemingly the initial situation created by all these theories, when we talk about this pendulum between faith and heresy or something like that, actually tilts in favor of faith. Meaning, if the Big Bang tells us that the world is not eternal, then the only possible way to answer the physico-theological argument has fallen away. You can’t say the world is eternal and always existed; fact is, it was created—we found that scientifically. So now what? We’re back again: the physico-theological question returns. How did something complex come into being, when we already know it did come into being, and it came into being by chance, or not through a creator? That’s not reasonable. So the physico-theological proof comes back. And in fact, this is a point people often don’t notice. The starting point we reach in light of these new theories—the Big Bang and so on and what follows from it—is actually that if so, then clearly one can no longer rely on the old response to the physico-theological proof. That’s it: now there’s already a decisive proof for God’s existence, because the option of saying it’s eternal no longer exists. Okay? Unless someone denies the scientific findings, but assuming we’re not talking about people who… okay. And therefore, I’m just talking about the starting point. The starting point, which says that the world is not eternal, is a knockout to the Aristotelian answer—to the answer that says the world was never created, so there’s no point asking who created it. But now it turns out it really was created. That’s a stage people often skip in the discussion, because everyone always thinks that now that we have evolution, the question gets stronger. But that’s not true. At most the question can stay the same, or even become weaker. Never stronger. Meaning, the question in the ancient world, the pre-Big Bang era and so on, was a much stronger question, because there was an option to say the world is eternal, and then the whole business collapses and there is no wonder at all that a complex world exists around us. So the starting point is first of all that this option for answering the question is gone.

Now, of course, the Big Bang is a theory that arose after evolution, not before it. So historically this isn’t… I’m describing something anachronistically. It didn’t really unfold in this order. I’m only saying that today, when we already know both things, the initial situation is that in fact the possibility of answering the physico-theological proof has fallen away. Then the question returns: if so, do we now have a proof for the existence of God? Then comes evolution, which tells us: no, I have a new answer to that question. I can explain how something complex arises by chance. The assumption of the physico-theological proof is that a complex thing must have a composer, a maker. It cannot arise arbitrarily. That is completely unreasonable. To choose such an option is to bang your head against the wall. Theoretically it could happen, but if I see something complex, the simple assumption is that this is not what happened. If by chance it did happen that way, maybe. But if I weigh the two alternatives in a balanced way, there is no logic in choosing the alternative that it came about by chance. Okay?

Then evolution comes and says: wrong. There is an option that something complex arises by chance. Not only is there such an option—it necessarily will happen that way. That’s much stronger than merely suggesting an option. Every random process—at least in the very rough description—every random process will eventually lead to constant improvement. So that is basically the claim. Therefore it’s not only an option, it’s even a plausible option. Not only is it one alternative—you can say someone created it, or you can say it arose by chance—no, it’s a plausible option, because in an evolutionary process, improvement is a natural result. It’s not some lucky accident that happened and okay, no big deal. No, it has to be that way. Since things keep improving, and what is not improved dies out—I’m describing it very crudely at the moment—therefore it necessarily keeps becoming more refined all the time, precisely because of the randomness of the matter. The whole thing keeps improving. In other words, it turns the bowl upside down. But one has to remember the background. The background is that the physico-theological question becomes much stronger than it was in Aristotle’s day. Much stronger. The believers have the upper hand much more clearly at the first stage. What evolution does is try to restore the previous balance. It tries to say: once again we have a way to answer this question after all. True, the world is not eternal, but we have a way to show that something complex can arise by chance. Then it takes another step and says not only can it arise by chance, it is also likely to arise by chance—which of course is stronger. And not only is it likely to arise by chance, we also have evidence that this is in fact what happened. There is scientific evidence that there was an evolutionary process—one kind or another, but there is, quite a bit of such evidence. Okay? That’s the general picture.

So the general picture is that there was a very sharp shift in both directions in the modern period. And Rabbi Kook in this chapter presents his aim as an attempt to deal with the new phase of the question, not the old one. The old phase of the question—fine—he says it’s eternal, he says it was created and therefore probably has a creator. Two equally balanced options, I don’t know what to do. Maimonides says it contradicts the principles of faith, but he has no intellectual proof that it’s wrong. He says it contradicts the principles of faith, but I don’t know how to say, or prove, why Aristotelian eternity is not correct. But that we actually do know how to do. The Big Bang shows that it’s not correct. So now a new situation has arisen. And now a new question also arises, that of evolution, and that is what Rabbi Kook comes to answer.

Now when we read what he answers, let’s look at that paragraph. We actually already saw it and read it, but let’s just look again. “The development that comes gradually over many years… billions of years—that is what agitates the hearts of small-minded people. They think that development will make room to deny the living God, to deny the living God. But they are very mistaken. Knowledge of God is built only on the awareness of unity. When we see the great creation arranged in orders of wisdom and the courses of life in body and spirit and intellect, all arranged in one system, we recognize the great spirit present here, which animates everything and gives place to everything.” What? “And if the ways of wisdom require that the thing come through the development of tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of years, then we should marvel all the more—how great and exalted is the Eternal Living One, for whom tens of thousands of years are considered like the blink of an eye, working without cease to produce a desired purpose.”

So that is the answer he offers to the new phase of the evolutionary question. What kind of answer is that? He goes back to the old answer. What is he saying? Let’s formulate it again: he says, look, there is a complex, coordinated, very impressive state here, so clearly someone made it. Good grief—that was the ancient question. The new question says exactly that there is no such argument. How can something complex arise by chance? So what are you showing me—that it’s complex and therefore not made by chance? You’ve gone back to the old question. You framed the discussion as though the old question had already basically—well, he didn’t say solved; I’m saying solved because of the Big Bang. But now there is a new question because of evolution, and I’m now going to deal with it. What are you doing in order to deal with it? Going back to the old argument. He assumes it’s not a random process. What? What does it mean, he assumes? I can assume too, but if you want to deal with a claim, you have to explain why you think it’s wrong. After all, if the evolutionists say they have a mechanism that shows such a thing is not only possible but even likely—not only likely but it even happened, we have evidence for it—then what does that mean? It means that the claim that something is complex and refined and coordinated and therefore not random—that claim has fallen.

That is what Rabbi Kook is claiming. Rabbi Kook claims that the very fact that nature contains a mechanism like evolution—the one who planned for nature to develop and take shape through evolution, that is the great thing, that is what’s impressive here. Why is it impressive? After all, evolutionary theory tells you: look, I can make you a computer simulation, nobody controls it, and all kinds of creatures will emerge and improve and so on. A priori, if we had built some random world, most likely it would have remained chaos. It would not have contained a mechanism that increases its degree of order and refinement the way our world does. Why? The claim—what is happening here? He’s sort of… no, but I’m asking him not what he means, but why that’s not correct. Because of the creatures generated by evolution. A fossil is more stable than a living creature. A fossil is more stable than a living creature, so evolution—survival of the fittest—basically means the fossil is more suited, more surviving, than living creatures. A scientific question. And why does the system have any tendency at all to coalesce? Why does that happen? Why does it happen after all? A scientific question. Why does it happen after all? The fact is that it does happen. The very fact that this process occurs is indeed something that has no explanation.

Okay, so really, if you take a soup of proteins or something like that, would you ever have imagined that within that thing… I wouldn’t have imagined evolutionary theory either, but there were people smarter than me who did think of it. No, you are observing retrospectively, at the end of the process, and you infer that there are mechanisms operating in nature. You infer? I also prove. Fine, at the beginning I can’t foresee, but the thing I observe—the thing itself keeps improving. This thing is not merely an inference; it’s basically a tautology. You can’t even argue with it. I claim that this statement isn’t scientific at all. It’s not unscientific because it’s false; it’s unscientific because it is necessarily true. Meaning, that the survivor survives—that is a tautological claim. That the more successful survives—in what sense is it successful? Successful in the sense that it survives, of course. That’s the definition of success in that context. It’s a tautology; it has to be true. Now, tautological is not always trivial, of course. Sometimes you need a great genius to understand tautologies. The fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees is also a tautological claim if you accept the premises. But not everyone can get there, right? So the fact that something is a tautology doesn’t mean it’s trivial, but it’s still a tautology.

There are those thought experiments with bacterial colonies where you define rules of the game and let the computer run a simulation. The results are not always obvious. Sometimes there’s an equilibrium, sometimes one population takes over another; it’s not clear what’s going to happen, it’s not as simple as it seems. No, I didn’t say it’s clear what’s going to happen, but the process of improvement—and we live in a world where certain species succeed in perpetuating themselves. Certain species? Some species succeed in perpetuating themselves? Whatever came out came out, but some species succeed in perpetuating themselves. So that is basically the claim. I think I agree with your claims; I’ll try to formulate it more systematically in a moment.

Now one more point before we move on in this issue, and that is to understand what exactly the discussion is about. I already said this last time too. Both the old claim and the new claim against the physico-theological proof are not claims that prove there is no God. They are claims that refute the proof that there is a God. Right? There is no proof there that there isn’t; rather, it refutes the claim or argument in favor of there being a God. Okay? That is basically the logical status of this challenge.

I have a question about that. Unlike, say, the old case, the ancient case, not where you take things about eternity and say there is a created world and it’s just there, I don’t know how to explain it. Here evolution comes and proves to you that the world was created through a process of millions of years, a thousand and one rounds, and then if you want to believe it was indeed created, you have to believe that God created it in precisely that kind of way. And that is a question in itself, because if the whole outlook that doesn’t believe in God says, even if there were a God, why would He create the world like that? One can explain not only that there is a God, but the reason why He would need to create a world in that way. And in what way should He have created it? Not just like that—in this way. What? I don’t understand that. Why does that make it harder? Because once you see, unlike what you say, because of the residue—what? Because of the waste, as it were, of the evolutionary process?

There’s a pretty weak claim here. I know that claim; it’s a pretty weak claim. The claim goes like this: if the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to create the world, then He could have done it all at once. Why does He need a process of billions of years with all sorts of residue and waste of things that became extinct along the way—“oil on the wheels of the revolution,” they once called it. Meaning, all sorts of things were sacrificed along the way so that we could continue to progress. But this claim basically assumes all kinds of things about the nature of the Holy One, blessed be He. And here I say fine, so there is a Holy One, blessed be He, who apparently does not fit the nature you thought He had. He has a different nature—He likes evolutionary processes. I have no way to arrive at a conclusion about what exactly the nature of the Holy One, blessed be He, is, what His desires are, and how He chooses to act. So it turns out that He chooses to act in this way. You want to attack a very specific God, because you assume He ought to be an immediate creator, not a creator through an evolutionary process. So if it’s evolutionary, then that God doesn’t exist. Fine—so that God doesn’t exist. The evolutionary God exists, not the one-time God. But what difference does that make?

No, I’m not saying this makes you reinterpret Genesis. No, Genesis is something else. I mentioned last time too that this chapter is not about the contradictions between evolution and the biblical account. That is a whole separate series of questions: how to reconcile the biblical description with evolutionary theory, which in many ways does not fit. The next chapter is devoted to that. But this chapter deals with a different question: is there or is there not a God, regardless of whether the biblical description is accurate or not? Does evolution deny the existence of God or not? That’s the question. Whatever God there may be—I don’t know which—some transcendent entity that governs or created this whole thing. Okay? What I assume about Him is already entirely my own addition. Meaning, if someone wants to attack a very specific picture of the Holy One, blessed be He, he produces for himself an idealized picture of God—a sort of God who must create a world all at once. Why must He? Because I decided so. So if He didn’t create all at once, that means He doesn’t exist. Well, in exactly such a God I also don’t believe. Right, fine—not the God proved by the physico-theological argument, but the existence of another God, a God who creates by an evolutionary route. Why? I don’t know. Think about it. Maybe it can be understood, maybe it can’t, I don’t know. But what does that prove? It proves nothing. It only refutes a certain kind of image that you imposed on that hidden God. And we’re still much earlier than that—we’re only discussing whether there is such a thing before we assume who He is and what His nature is and what He prefers or doesn’t prefer. Therefore I think that question is not relevant at this stage. If you tell me it contradicts the biblical image of the Holy One, blessed be He, because He is supposed to act differently, then there is room to discuss that now, but we’re not there yet. We’re not talking about the Bible yet. I’m asking whether there is a transcendent entity or not, that’s all. I don’t know what it is or how it behaves. Okay? Good.

Now, that’s the first point. A second point, which I also mentioned at the end of last time, is that a friend of mine once asked me that he doesn’t understand the difference between evolution and gravitation. Right? If gravitation doesn’t trouble our faith, because the fact that apples fall to earth onto the heads of innocent Christians can be explained by saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, made them fall—or I don’t know if for them it’s the Holy One, blessed be He, maybe someone else—then that means a scientific law does not replace faith in God; it only describes the mode of His action. So in exactly the same way, evolution too is like that, because all evolution says is how that transcendent being acts. He acts in very complicated ways—it doesn’t matter—through the whole evolutionary process. But why does that mean He doesn’t exist? It only describes how He acts. And therefore he asks: it’s not at all clear why evolution so agitates believers—of all religions, by the way—but gravitation doesn’t, or any other natural law doesn’t.

Now, I do think there is a difference, at least at first glance. It sounds simple but it’s not so simple. And here one can present it in two ways. The force of gravitation was never used as a proof, as proof of God’s existence. It could have been some other force too; I don’t see anything special in it. There is such a force, okay—it was not used to prove the existence of God. Right? So if you say fine, there is a gravitational force and alongside it there is God, whether there is or isn’t, it doesn’t change anything. Evolution, unlike gravitation, is a theory of formation. It’s not a theory of how the world behaves; it’s a theory of how the world came to be. Now once you have a theory of formation, it also has its weaknesses by the way, because it is very hard to do—the experiments are not repeatable. Right? You can’t do the experiment again, because what happened a billion years ago happened. So there are many limitations to that kind of theory. True, there are predictions, and there are, I think, findings; that doesn’t take away its status as a fully scientific theory, but of course it has limitations. But on the other hand, the fact that this is a theory of formation basically says that…

Development or formation? Are we talking about monkeys? No, so that’s why—I’ll get to that in a moment. The first stage indeed… I’ll get to it in just a second. But the first stage wasn’t complex, so that’s a point—fine, I’ll talk about it in a moment. The world always starts from a given state? Right, and then says how progress occurs. Of course, but the states before the complexities of life were formed were also less complex. So the physico-theological proof is weaker there. The physico-theological proof gets stronger the more complex the world is. At the stages where the world already was complex, evolution explains how that happened. So therefore there is… fine, I’ll say more about the division between these stages.

But the point is that evolution attacks the physico-theological proof; it doesn’t merely describe how the Holy One, blessed be He, works. If you truly believe there is a Holy One, blessed be He, regardless of anything else, then indeed evolution may not attack anything. Not “may not”—it doesn’t attack anything. So you’ll explain that the Holy One, blessed be He, operates with evolutionary tools, that’s how He runs His world. Fine, as far as the believer is concerned. But as far as the non-believer is concerned, evolution says: you will not now succeed in convincing me by means of the physico-theological proof. It attacks the physico-theological proof. Gravitation does not attack it. Do you understand? It’s true that both gravitation and evolution describe the modes of action of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the eyes of the believing person. So that attacks nothing. If I believe anyway, what do I care about evolution? I believe anyway. But I’m talking about a person who is now sitting…

Copernicus and Newton do attack. What? Copernicus and Newton do attack. In the ancient world, to draw a circle, or to move in the form of a perfect circle, was something very, very difficult. The more perfect the circle, the more talented the painter, sculptor, artist, builder was. And you look at stars and they move in a circular path—turns out elliptical—very very precise. And that says there’s some Master of the Universe behind all this. Until Kepler. Kepler and Newton give three laws. That’s a pretty weak argument, a pretty weak argument, because in the end there is one phenomenon here, elliptical orbits, and we found an explanation for that phenomenon. Okay. Evolution is something much stronger because it explains a much broader range of phenomena and also the symbiosis among them. And the physico-theological proof is based on degree of complexity. The more complex a phenomenon you explain, the stronger that proof is. And the more you offer a natural or arbitrary explanation for a complex state, the more, of course, you pull the rug out from under that proof.

From a physical perspective there is a retrospective argument saying that gravitation also kind of damaged it. Once people thought the world is so complex and so… only the Holy One, blessed be He, could control it. Today they see that everything is the result of four physical laws? With such a simple law you describe at least the whole solar system with ease. It’s not so simple to accept that. No no, I don’t accept that. I already said I don’t think it’s correct; I’m just describing it. The initial thought. We’ll come back to it in a moment. Yes.

There’s just one problem in your answer here. What you gave here are two natural laws, one called gravitation and the other called… The difference between them is the time scale on which they operate. One operates on the time scale of an apple falling—two seconds—and the other operates on the time scale of hundreds of thousands of years, maybe much more. And the human being, over the course of his life, is somewhere in the middle. We have enough time to observe apples falling hundreds of times in our lifetime, but the formation and collapse of worlds… No, that’s not exactly the direction. Even if you didn’t see the end of the process… No, but even if a person lived… But even if you lived a tenth of a second, you still wouldn’t take an apple falling for granted. But there is nothing substantial in the falling of the apple, and if it didn’t fall then it just wouldn’t fall. There’s nothing special there that should make you ask who made it. Either in this world apples fall, or in another world apples don’t fall. So what? But the formation of life is a complex process, beyond the question of whether we got used to it or not. There is some complexity here that calls for explanation. Do you understand? A falling apple is fine; the apple has to go somewhere. Either it falls, or it goes up, or it stays in place. So it falls—fine. This law could also have been ten other laws. There is nothing here that necessarily demands explanation. Therefore the physico-theological proof based on falling apples would be very weak.

We could also, even if we didn’t understand and weren’t used to it, as he said, think that the apple disappears from here and appears there. We learn the regularity and it seems simple to us because we explain it by… No, not because it’s simple, but because it’s not special. Why is it not special? What is more special about an apple falling? If apples went up every time, would that require more explanation? Or if they moved diagonally every time? Everything requires explanation, but the fact that there is one law… So what? If everything requires explanation, then nothing requires explanation. No, but one law is more special than another law. Exactly—and that’s only because we say it’s special; there is no difference between… No, that’s exactly the point. Once there is no one law more special than another, the physico-theological proof has fallen. Because the physico-theological proof says: look, if this thing goes arbitrarily, then some law emerged. If it’s not special, then I have no question at all—some law emerged. But here we return to what Ido said earlier—I’ll come back to it—the very existence of the laws, of the process, is what is special, not the result. Not the result that we have a complex creature. It’s the fact that there was evolution, the process itself exists.

No, I’m talking about something else now. In gravitation there is some law; there could also have been a different law. Why should this raise some question that apples fall to earth? Why am I supposed to give some account of that? Why? And if they moved sideways, would that be more understandable? What advantage is there in their falling? I mean, once you see that it benefits someone or integrates with some other phenomena, then I can understand that there seems to be something planned here. But the mere fact that there is a law determining falling or attraction between masses or something like that—so what? And if there were a law determining repulsion between masses, or neutrality of masses, what difference would it make? Some law—what difference does it make? There is nothing special in the law. So the argument is weaker in that case. You could say: the very regularity of the law, the fact that it always operates in the same way, that’s maybe a better argument, and still that is not the physico-theological argument.

And if we look at it as a process, it would be the same thing. There is gravitation that causes the world constantly to move in a certain way, and it isn’t always the exact same thing—there are slight changes over I don’t know how many years. So if we looked at it in that way, then maybe here too there is a process. No, but what does that process do? It creates nothing new, there is no improvement here. It changes over the years. But there is no improvement here, there is nothing. Everything creates something, so what? What does that mean? All our questions are from our perspective. That’s a simple assumption. Obviously in our eyes a living creature, or the formation of a living creature, is something with direction. Since almost any other system of laws, as Ido said before—I’ll return to that—I don’t think would in a random process ultimately create a living creature. You take a lump of clay and put it in the corner of the room and choose the laws of the universe for yourself. Fine? What are the chances that you’d happen upon a system of four laws from which, by the end, offspring would emerge from the room? Without anything happening. The chance is zero. Right? But if that lump of clay now moves rightward because those are the laws that move… so what? It could move right, it could move left. There is nothing here that requires some special explanation, something adapted, directional, indicating someone guiding it somewhere or planning it toward some direction. The argument is much weaker in such a case. Okay?

There are those who think Newton’s laws have no moral or ethical impact, and part of the issue, it seems to me, is that Darwinism is not necessarily like that. No, here we’re already talking about critiques that came later from the religious direction—social critiques too, about social Darwinism and all kinds of things like that, that it educates us to be more violent and more forceful and so on. Fine, these are very weak critiques. What does it mean, “educates us”? If it’s true then it’s true, and if not then not. This is that pragmatism again that says… So this should not determine which theory I adopt, whether it leads to bad or good social outcomes. That’s irrelevant. It’s a critique that is part of the same postmodernism that says I’ll adopt whichever theory suits me, because in any case none of them is true. I adopt a theory if it is true, and I reject it if it is not true. What difference does it make whether it leads to social harm? If gravitation led to social harm, would I say there is no gravitation? It’s not a serious critique.

Now, explain the motivation. Motivations are great, but I’m asking about arguments, not about the motivation for raising the arguments. If I have lots of motivations to raise wonderful arguments but I have no arguments, then what do I care about the motivations? Let’s look at the arguments themselves. What difference does it make? Each of us has motivations. I also have motivations to raise counterarguments because I believe—I want to reject these arguments. So what, does that invalidate my arguments? Check my arguments. Either they work or they don’t. We all have motivations; no one is immune to motivations. Of course many decent Christians had motivations for rejecting Copernicus’s theory. Right, and those motivations could even have been socially decent. The problem was that they turned motivations into factual claims. That is exactly what this critique tries to do. Because the Christians decided that if it contradicts faith then it must not be true, or if it doesn’t suit us then it must not be true. What is true or false is supposed to be measured by the tools with which we examine facts. And whether it suits us or not—well, for that there is a doctor. It has nothing to do with the question whether it is true or not.

Fine, so let’s continue. Essentially regarding evolution and gravitation. Now look: if someone really believes fundamentally, and now the questioner comes and attacks him—why do you believe? There is evolution, or gravitation, or whatever—then that really is the same thing. None of these attacks truly attacks faith. So I believe, and the Holy One, blessed be He, in whom I believe governs the world through evolution just as He can govern it through gravitation. As far as the believing person is concerned, it changes nothing; there is no difference. But as far as the non-believing person is concerned, the person standing at the crossroads who needs to decide—do I become a believer, do I accept that there is a God, or do I not accept that there is a God—here it is completely different. Because gravitation does not try to tell him: look, there is a God because, after all, how will you explain the force of gravitation? But the complexity of the world is indeed used as a lever to prove the existence of God. And then evolution basically says that this lever is invalid; you may remain in the same doubt, this proof is not valid. So for the non-believing person gravitation says nothing, while evolution is very significant for him, because although it is compatible with belief in God, that’s not what I’m asking. I’m not asking what is compatible with belief in God. I’m asking what leads to belief in God. Not what is compatible. All theories are compatible—there’s no problem there. The question is what leads.

More than that: once you knock down the physico-theological argument by saying that complex things can also arise through a random process, then now I have no proof and no argument that forces me to accept the existence of God. And now Ockham’s razor comes and carries me one step further. At this point I’m in a situation of either yes or no; I’m in the same state as before. The physico-theological proof has fallen because of evolution, and now the question is open. But then Russell comes along, and all sorts of… we talked about the teapot in the sky, right? He says that if the question is open, then there is no God, because there is no reason to assume He exists.

So we have basically returned, in a certain sense, as the Rabbi explained, to whether the world is eternal or not eternal and it’s open; either you think the world is not eternal and it was created, or you decide the world is eternal. You cannot prove either of the two arguments. That’s what I’m saying. No, so I say: no, it’s not the same thing, because here there is the principle of the razor. What does the razor say? It says that you don’t invent entities when there is no reason to assume their existence. So the world is eternal? Why not the world is eternal? Why an eternal world? Why should I invent another entity? Which entity? Not an entity—there isn’t one; it was created from nothing. Why should I decide that someone—not someone, no one, it came into being by itself. I’m saying again: if you decide it’s someone, I agree. But I’m talking about the earlier stage, before we get to someone. What’s the difference between that and the Aristotelian period when someone decided that the world… I don’t want to bring you a person. A person comes to you and says: look, that teapot—there is a tiny teapot orbiting the moon of Jupiter; it’s transparent, no one can see it, but it’s there, know that it’s there. What do you say? Is it fifty-fifty? No, I can’t—suppose I can’t prove it by the physico-theological theory. Fine, that’s not the period. It’s the same thing as in the ancient world. No, here the issue is that you don’t remain merely agnostic. Rather, that’s what many claim, at least. In the end, if you have no reason to assume the existence of that entity, then you don’t assume it. Why assume it? Why start inventing all kinds of entities when there is no reason to think they exist? They don’t change anything. So in practice, the situation that appears as if it’s balanced and left to your judgment actually turns into a challenge to believers. It basically becomes the claim: why invent entities when you have no reason to invent them? It doesn’t just leave me in a state where the question is open.

So therefore believing in the heavenly teapot is also a choice. Right, here—why? Someone might believe in the heavenly teapot and someone else might not. Nobody—show me one normal person who would believe that. For example, let’s say there is some person who is, I don’t know, a little not so normal. And there is a person who likes to think that the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted him to look exactly like this at a certain moment. But someone else will tell him that it’s a random process with no intention at all and it’s just an arbitrary state, a mutation, missing half an arm, half a leg, just a random process. Another person says: no, I prefer to think that this is exactly my given state, this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. So that’s a kind of choice. No, no, I don’t agree. Because if you have no other indication of the existence of that entity that wanted, then you won’t assume it. No, these are not two equal options. Then of course someone did it. Why assume that someone did it? I’m not speaking religiously; I’m speaking in terms of probability. What probability? You don’t invent entities if they help you in nothing. Why assume they exist? Here again. It helps only psychologically 99.9 percent of the time. What does “helps” mean? Psychologically? Take a pill! Yes, take a pill! What does that matter? I don’t think so, I know so—take a pill. If they take faith because it helps them, then they are atheists. Then they are atheists. They are atheists. I don’t count them for a minyan. If they want utility—if it helps them—then it’s opium for the masses, then they are atheists. That’s exactly the point. It’s the same claim as before. Exactly the point. You say: I believe in the heavenly teapot. So there it’s not that you don’t count him for a minyan—you hospitalize him, that’s all. But there you have it, it’s the same thing. And maybe if in most cases you tell him there’s a heavenly teapot around the star—so what? Does that make it exist? It’s nonsense. A person comes and tells you: look, there are two possibilities, both have the same explanatory power, neither explains more than the other. So let’s remove one extra entity. Why assume the second one? Why? There is no reason in the world.

And therefore I say we have to distinguish between two situations. If I already come equipped with faith—it doesn’t come from the physico-theological proof, it comes from Mount Sinai. That’s something else. That’s the faith? No, that’s perfectly fine, that’s a claim about faith. A different claim. That’s what I spoke about earlier. I believe in the existence of God for some other reason. Now you tell me, look, but there is evolution. Fine, so evolution is just how the Holy One, blessed be He, manages His world. That doesn’t bother me at all. I’m talking to someone who at the moment is standing—this is why I said that this matters only to someone who is standing at a crossroads and is supposed to make a balanced decision. He has no additional sources. This is the argument standing before him. Once this is the argument before him, he is an atheist. That’s all. If you have other sources of information that make you a believer, and now someone tells you there is evolution, tell him: fine, so evolution is only the way the Holy One, blessed be He, manages His world. That is perfectly okay. So I say: this is not a direct attack on the believer, but it changes things very much when you come with a claim, or try to persuade someone who is currently in a position of considering the question and does not yet have a position. Okay? In that situation he ought to reach an atheist conclusion.

There is also… fine, let’s move on. Let’s move on, and now evolution comes. In the Talmud sometimes you have a situation like this. Side A claims one thing, side B claims one thing. Against A there is an objection and an answer. Okay. After the objection and answer they are already symmetrical. A is “glatt,” as they call it—smooth. B is with an objection. Fine, but the question is how good the answer is. If it’s an answer, then indeed it’s not equal. But if this answer is an explanation, not merely an answer, then perhaps it is equal. The question is how good the answer is. Okay, so let’s really see for a moment how this whole thing nevertheless works. Why in this passage Rabbi Kook really is answering the new question too. As was said here one way or another, people more or less said what I’m about to say. But for that I really want to review a little the evolutionary argument itself and the responses to it. It seems to me that this is really what is written here in this passage.

Evolution basically offers—first of all, one has to explain. To divide the map, the schematic sketch of the map, is this: in the blind claim, let’s say, of the world’s development there are three stages. The first stage is of course the Big Bang, the very coming-into-being of what exists. After that there is a certain period in which there are inanimate things in the world—inanimate solids or liquids, it doesn’t matter, inanimate matter in all states of aggregation, that doesn’t matter now. Inanimate things do not undergo evolution, as is well known. We’ll explain a bit more in a moment perhaps why. At some point carbon or I don’t know what, some first basic form of life, comes into being, and then little by little an evolutionary process starts and it develops until it reaches the variety familiar to us today.

The evolutionary process itself is also composed of three parts, like everything in the army. The first part is the formation of mutations, meaning there is some assumption that things are constantly formed in all sorts of directions, some random process of one kind or another, some arbitrary process. The second component of this theory is natural selection. And natural selection says that among the mutations that are formed, the unsuccessful mutations that cannot cope with the environment will die out, and what remains is the mutation or mutations that can cope with the environment, and thus in some sense there is a process of improvement here. That is where improvement enters. But those two alone are of course not enough. Why are they not enough?

Let’s think, for example, about a certain town with wooden houses and stone houses. Now a fire breaks out. The wooden houses are consumed, right? Because they do not withstand the environmental conditions. The stone houses remain. Right? What will happen two hundred years later? Exactly the same thing. If they build towns of wood and stone, these will burn and those won’t burn. Nothing here improves. In order for the first two stages—mutations and natural selection—to really continue an evolutionary process, a third component is needed, and that is genetics. Meaning, once natural selection leaves the creature that survives better, or is more successful, if that survival trait is transmitted genetically to its offspring, then that means we have already advanced one step further in evolution. Because the next creatures will already be more refined. If it is not transmitted to the next creatures, then the next creatures born will be born with the same distribution of traits as before.

Just an example from a book called The Beak of the Finch, a good book that was translated into Hebrew, about an experiment by a married couple, evolutionary researchers, that created quite a stir because in this experiment an evolutionary process was measured clearly over a very short span of years. Over twenty years you can already really see evolutionary results, and usually people thought evolution was something that takes I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of years. Here they saw results in twenty years. And the experiment, or rather the events observed in the experiment, were as follows. There were birds in the Galápagos, exactly where Darwin also wandered with his ship, and on one of the islands there was a population of finches. And of course, as with every population, they had all kinds of lengths and strengths of beaks. Fine? Now one year there was a very harsh drought. The drought destroyed the plants these finches ate. What remained was only one very tough plant, very strong, very rigid. It withstood the drought—apparently it didn’t need much water—and it survived the drought. As a result, most of the finches could not crack this plant and eat it, and they died of hunger. Those that remained were the strong finches with strong beaks that succeeded in cracking that plant. Okay? So what came out here? The formation of mutations was the formation of all kinds of lengths or strengths of beaks. That is something random—that’s the random part of the theory. Fine? Now there is a process of natural selection. A difficult environment is created—a drought. Natural selection says that these circumstances will dictate who remains onward. Whoever can survive these circumstances remains onward.

Now if this trait of beak strength were not a genetic trait, meaning if it were not passed to offspring through genetics, then nothing would happen, because the offspring of this surviving generation would still have beak strengths distributed uniformly exactly as before. Because it would not be a genetic trait. All the parents have strong beaks, but if it isn’t a genetic trait then the children would have beaks of all kinds, right? Therefore there has to be a trait that passes through a genetic hereditary mechanism in order for this evolution really to work. So that from then on the finches will all already have strong beaks. And since that really was the case, it was indeed an evolutionary process.

In passing, I’ll say that this book really astonishes me, because I don’t really understand what this experiment confirmed. Let’s see what the assumptions are and what the conclusion is. Basically this experiment said the following: there are finches with all sorts of beak lengths. That’s a fact. Okay. There was a drought—that too is a fact. It’s not a very far-reaching experiment to say there was a drought. After the drought, the weaker plants dried up. A simple fact; everyone knows that in a drought everything dries up, right? Another fact: only the birds with stronger beaks succeeded in eating the remaining plants. A very simple fact—that’s simple physics. Right. Now only whoever eats survives. That too we knew beforehand. Only whoever eats survives; whoever doesn’t eat dies, right. Therefore only those with strong beaks remained. Good, that is a deductive result from all the facts we already knew beforehand, right? So only those with strong beaks remained. Now the fact that beak length is a genetic trait was also already known, and for that you don’t need an evolution experiment—you can simply see it by laboratory means. So that wasn’t what came out of it either. So of course the children too will have strong beaks. So basically take a set of factual assumptions that are all self-evident even before anyone dreamed of this experiment, and the result is self-evident—one only has to know that there really was a drought there. That’s all. Okay, if what the experiment discovered is that there was a drought on the island, fine, then I understand. What was the novelty of the experiment? Aside from strengthening faith in the new religion, the religion of evolution. Here, look, it works. Of course it works. I said before too that evolution in a certain sense is a tautology. If you take very very simple premises, it has to happen. Not that it is likely to happen—it must happen, it cannot be otherwise. And the reason no one thought of it before Darwin is simply that Darwin really was a talented man. Not everything that must happen, or is tautological, everyone can immediately understand. But after he explained this to us, it’s trivial. It’s like doing an experiment: let’s measure the three angles of a triangle and see whether the sum is 180 degrees or not. If it is 180 degrees, we have confirmed the theorem that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180. It’s the same thing. The same experiment. In other words, this experiment merely confirmed a deductive argument. That’s what it confirmed.

If we had seen that the finches, let’s say, whose beaks ranged from two to three centimeters, but suddenly as a result of the drought they reached from three to seven, then we would say: ah, so that’s how a giraffe was formed, that’s how it came. No no no, those are already conclusions. I’m speaking before the conclusions. First of all, what did the experiment itself measure? The conclusions—whether new species can develop—that’s a whole separate debate; we won’t get into that now. I’m only emphasizing that there is something here that in my eyes is a little problematic. There is a kind of development here of a kind of religion, and it is clear that this is some kind of religion. Not because it isn’t true—it is very true. But even true things can be believed in religiously. There is something here, a very strong enthusiasm over something that in the end merely measures the sum of the angles in a triangle. That is, it measures a deductive argument. That’s all.

Now let’s return to our matter. If in life we had found the opposite… suppose, astonishingly, it had turned out that after fifteen generations those that remained alive were דווקא the ones with the thin and weak beak, then of course I wouldn’t say evolution is wrong. I would look for what the trait is. This thin and weak beak is apparently, apparently the weak beak is a better trait. Survival of the fittest, as I learned at university—that means I cannot know in advance what will happen. I… This is a theory that cannot be refuted, obviously. But again, “cannot be refuted” is not an accusation. On the contrary, it is because it is necessarily true. It really is true. You can’t argue with mathematics. This theory is mathematics; it does not belong to the field of natural science, it is mathematics. Meaning, of course it’s true. How can one argue with such a thing? The question whether new species are formed and so on—that is another question, how far the… But that this process is possible, that is obvious. So I don’t really understand why this experiment contributes so much. But let’s continue for a moment.

So basically this is the evolutionary description, and therefore the claim now generated from it—again there are three stages: the formation of existence itself, the formation of the first life, and then the evolutionary process. Those are the three stages. The evolutionary process itself is also composed of three components: the formation of mutations, natural selection, and genetics, the genetic inheritance of the result. Okay?

Now the question is what exactly the argument is. The claim is that since this thing happens on its own, happens randomly, without anyone managing it, therefore the physico-theological proof falls. Because you see that something complex can arise through a blind process without a manager. Okay? It doesn’t matter now what we call it—blind or not; people get very upset when you say it’s a blind process. Nonsense. “Blind” means without a manager. Let’s not get bogged down in semantic nitpicking.

Now, a few things. Some of them came up here during the discussion. First, the first two stages still remain problematic. The third stage—the development of species, the origin of species as Darwin called it, the development of life and the diversification of life—that is indeed, let’s say, explained by evolution. But some process took place before that. Now it’s true that this is weaker, as I also said earlier to Ido, because at those stages the world really was less complex, so the physico-theological argument there is weaker than at those stages. Today the world is very complex, very symbiotic, all the parts somehow connected to and nourished by one another. There really is here a system that looks very, very coordinated, very purposeful. That is what evolution explains. The early stages are less complex stages, and so there the physico-theological proof was in any case weaker from the outset. But still, it seems to me that taking some point of singular matter that explodes at some stage, and from that there emerges some protein chain—and the protein chain is not formed by an evolutionary process; that is the beginning of the whole thing, the beginning of the whole thing—that seems to me quite problematic. Meaning, although it’s true that one protein chain is much less complex than everything we have around us today, still it seems to me that a protein chain is something very very complex compared to some undifferentiated lump of matter that explodes and that’s it. So I think that there too it still requires explanation.

There are, by the way, all kinds of attempts to offer mechanisms for how the early stages happened—the second stage, the transition of chemical evolution and from there onward, how the first life came into being. Today there is a lot of work on this issue because people really say it can’t have happened by chance, contrary to what Dawkins proclaims at every turn. He says it was one successful accident because it happened once. Something that happened once can be a low-probability accident; there were many attempts, and once it happened. A process that keeps happening there—you need to look for an explanation. But something that happened once—fine, one successful accident, that can happen. Maybe. In any event, there are some attempts there by people who do not agree with Dawkins—and I’m not talking about religious people, some of them are atheists. Some are atheists in this matter. They are simply saying scientifically it is not likely; we need to look for an explanation of how the first protein chain arose. Fine? And then they find various mechanisms, one kind or another, and basically say that if so, then we already understand—or will understand, they haven’t gotten there yet—the whole chain from the Big Bang to us, and then there is a perfect alternative.

Now, there is a statistical consideration involved here, and I’ll say it in just a couple of words. A protein chain, even a relatively short one, contains three hundred units, codons—each codon is three nucleotides, but never mind—three hundred codons. There are twenty different kinds of codons. Those are the facts. There are twenty different kinds of codons. So how many chains of length three hundred can there be? Twenty to the power of three hundred, right? Twenty times twenty times twenty times twenty—a truly imaginary number. Okay. How many of those chains are living chains? How many of those chains have life potential? More or less zero. Meaning one out of I-don’t-know-how-many—very few. Almost zero.

So in practice, if we look at the set of combinations of all these chains and ask ourselves—picture this as some sort of ocean, okay? There is an ocean with a huge number of possibilities. Every point in the ocean is a protein chain of a different kind, or a different combination of them. Now among these combinations there are tiny islands, pinheads in the ocean, scattered kilometers apart from each other. That is roughly the scale. Okay? Pinhead islands scattered kilometers apart. So even if the evolutionary claim says that there is some process of natural selection, we still need to understand, first of all, that the case where a living chain was formed—that is, one of these islands that really is a chain with life potential—“by chance,” that is already a very very weak claim. That is what Dawkins calls a successful accident. But I say it projects onward too.

Think about it: basically there is some random walker here, right? I’m now standing on one such pinhead in the ocean—say I’m already there. That was formed by one first successful accident. Okay, what happens now? Now it undergoes mutations of all kinds, right? There is a chain of, say, length three hundred; there are many possible mutations; it can turn into any of the other chains, never mind. Of course, very few of those will themselves also be living chains, right? Very few. Okay. So in order ultimately to reach a living organism, it’s not enough to produce the first pinhead. One must begin jumping from one pinhead to another in the ocean with eyes closed. Try running that. The process is blind. Okay? So the person stands on that pinhead, closes his eyes, jumps a distance of kilometers and lands exactly on the next pinhead. Okay? Then again closes his eyes, jumps again, and again onto the next pinhead, through a process of thousands of steps—actually many more than thousands—until truly living organisms like those familiar to us today are formed. So note: the probability of such a path is simply imaginary. Simply imaginary. The chance of reaching a pinhead is one over twenty to the three hundredth power. Multiply that for each step in the chain. Okay? Every step in the chain means multiplying by yet another such probability. I’m just trying to give you the order of magnitude.

So basically what happens here is this. I’m already making almost the same Olympic leap to arguments that have arisen only in recent years, called intelligent design arguments. So the intelligent design arguments basically say the following. They say that in the evolutionary process there are jumps that are irreducible. What does that mean? There are certain jumps that cross a gap that cannot be traversed gradually. You can’t cross it by means of all kinds of intermediate stages. Why not? Because the intermediate stages have no survival value. They would not survive. Okay? This is a bit parallel to the chain of jumping from pinhead to pinhead, only here it’s in the genotype and there it’s in the phenotype—or it doesn’t matter, it’s the same idea.

So the claim basically says that once you have stage A needing to move to stage B—say, you have half an eye, or no eyes, and now an eye has to form. That’s one of the famous arguments about the eye. An eye has to form. And they say: look, half an eye has no evolutionary value whatsoever, meaning no survival value. You still don’t see with half an eye. So clearly half an eye won’t develop. How would it develop? And if it developed, it would die out. Right? So how does the move happen from a creature without an eye to a creature with an eye, all at once, without intermediate stages? Okay. That is one kind of argument. And then they answer it—I won’t get into it now—some did propose gradual paths from having no eye to having an eye, with various theories we won’t go into here. But what matters to me is how this debate is framed.

After all, how did intelligent design come into being? Intelligent design came into being out of political distress, basically. That’s how it started. In the United States there is a law separating religion and state, and therefore the neo-Darwinists argued that creationism must not be taught in school because it is a religious theory, not a scientific one. A school is supposed to teach science. It’s not supposed to teach religion. Religion is learned on Sundays in church, not in school. A school is not supposed to teach religious things. So now the people trying to offer the creationist alternative to evolution cannot enter the schools. That is the problem. So what did they say? They said: we have a new trick. We won’t teach creationism; we’ll only teach the scientific claim that stands behind creationism. And that is science. What claim? That evolutionary theory does not meet scientific criteria. A scientific claim—you can teach that in school. How? Let me show you. Evolutionary theory basically assumes certain impossible jumps, and from a statistical point of view that is not plausible. A perfectly scientific claim. That is what I want to teach in school. The conclusions the students will draw—that evolution is not correct and so on—they’ll infer on their own. I’m only teaching that I have… because it can’t be that teaching the theory is scientific but teaching objections to the theory is not scientific. That’s ridiculous. Okay? So that is basically the claim. It was born out of political distress; they tried to present creationism as a thesis within science, playing on the scientific field.

And that is one face of the conflict. What? Didn’t they solve it there? Ah, there the situation is a little different. Usually the battles there are against the Department of Education, I think. The Department of Education there is actually quite conservative, it seems to me. I don’t know much better than you probably. In every state it works differently. But usually it seems to me the war is against the authorities; it isn’t the authorities warring against the people in the United States. The authorities are often fairly conservative, at least in some states. In any event, here in Israel it’s a little different; the politics of the matter are a little different.

In any event, how is this debate positioned? Who stands against whom? The intelligent design people stand there and argue that evolution is not correct. Evolution is not correct because improbable things—why assume they happened? This is not a plausible claim scientifically. I show you that this process has a very very low probability, a very very low likelihood, so the conclusion is that it is not correct. Okay? That is one kind of scientific argument. A second kind of scientific argument says: listen, what do the evolutionists answer them? First, it may be that there is indeed a gradual process, and even if we haven’t found it yet, it will be found. Not every gap in knowledge should immediately make us throw out the theory. We’ll research more and find it. Second, they say: we have experiments showing that evolution occurred. Doesn’t make sense? Find an explanation, but the fact that it occurred has empirical evidence; you can’t ignore that.

Now this dialogue is a completely infantile dialogue. It’s a dialogue of fools on both sides, because both sides agree—and this is why we once talked about how intelligent design isn’t really my argument either—because the intelligent design people, on account of the irreducible jumps, argue that therefore evolution is not correct. That is their conclusion. Their argument is based on the fact that it is improbable. The conclusion is that evolution is scientifically incorrect. That is the conclusion, and I say that is not right. That is not the conclusion. Not here. You are shooting yourselves in the foot. You are shooting yourselves in the foot because I, as a believer, actually want that theory to be true. Why? Because if I show you that processes which are blatantly improbable happened, what does that mean? It means there was someone managing them, that they are not random processes, right? After all, if you want to prove faith, then don’t you need to show that blatantly improbable processes do not happen without a manager? The whole proof for the existence of God, the whole physico-theological proof, rests on the fact that an improbable process does not happen without a manager, right? So the more improbable the process is, the more it works in your favor. Okay?

Now when you point out that these jumps are highly improbable jumps, you are right. But the conclusion to draw from that is not that it didn’t happen, because they rightly say there are empirical facts that it did happen. I say: you are fools—look at what you are saying. You yourselves say it is improbable, and you yourselves say there are facts that it happened, so let’s now connect the two results. Let’s put intelligent design and neo-Darwinism together and see what comes out. Intelligent design says it is improbable; neo-Darwinism says but it happened. And I say both are right. An improbable thing happened. What does that mean? That there was a manager who managed it, that it didn’t happen by itself. Therefore there is a God. In other words, the best proof for the existence of God that I know is from evolution. From the fact that there was evolution, not from the fact that there wasn’t. From the fact that within evolution there are things that are utterly improbable—yes, that is part of the matter. The claim is that there are jumps there that are utterly improbable. And precisely because of that, this is the best proof that there is a God, but notice: it follows from combining both sides that are fighting with each other. They fight because these say it is improbable, and those say but we have facts that it happened. Right: it is improbable and there are facts that it happened. When something improbable happens, that is what in plain Hebrew is called the physico-theological proof.

There are also things observed today. For example, there are blue-green algae that perform photosynthesis in the green wavelength range. By contrast, trees and all plants and all vegetation without exception—why are they green? Because they reflect that wavelength; they do not perform photosynthesis in green. Now, so I heard from experts in the matter, this is considered a great puzzle and an unexplained thing. After all, nature is clearly capable of doing it. We’ve seen it in the lab, we see it in the sea. So why doesn’t it happen at sea? No, not just at sea—why doesn’t it happen in any plant? Why doesn’t it happen on land? Here, there are examples by the thousands. That is, no one claims that what is observed today, if it is improbable, is therefore impossible. No one claims there are no gaps. No one claims that. Some say: look, we’ll overcome the gaps with further research. Or fine, there are gaps, I don’t know the explanation, but you can’t deny the fact. So no one disputes that there are gaps. What? Why? No, never mind. Yes, fine. All these gaps could be accidental. That too is a sort of gap, but never mind.

So basically the claim is that there is some missing point here—this debate is a dialogue of the deaf. People don’t quite understand, because both sides in the argument agree: if evolution is true then there is no God, and if there is a God then evolution is not true. Both sides agree on that. Now the whole question is which of the two sides to choose. If you remember, last time I said that in the period of the Enlightenment they presented us with an impossible dilemma, right? Whether to be clever and wicked or stupid and righteous. That was basically the dilemma. Because one was forbidden to engage in outside wisdoms, so either be righteous but an idiot, or be wicked and clever. And you know what? People chose the option of being wicked and clever, because they were not willing to accept the dilemma. Here it is exactly the same. Exactly the same. The structure of the debate basically says that you, the Jew, or the person looking at this debate, have to choose. Either you go with the intelligent design people and deny facts, because there are facts that it happened, or you go with the neo-Darwinists and then you don’t believe in God, you are wicked. That is exactly the dilemma.

And the point is that just like in the Enlightenment period, now too this way of framing the dilemma is wrong. There is an option to be both righteous and clever. You don’t have to be stupid in order to be righteous. Evolution not only allows for the existence of God—it proves the existence of God. The physico-theological proof in its third phase now—not the second, we talked about two. The third physico-theological proof is that from the fact that there is evolution, it follows that there is a God. Earlier we said we had a second physico-theological proof: eternity fell away, right? Then the physico-theological proof came back—that was the second type. Evolution answered that. The second answer—eternity was the first answer. Now there is a third type of physico-theological proof which says that evolution itself is the best proof for the existence of God. I don’t know whether this is an answer that will resolve the whole issue, but it seems to me that this is indeed the current situation, at least as long as there are such gaps.

Now beyond the gaps—maybe they will be closed; maybe the answers will fit those gaps. What? Yes, if they close all these gaps. But then my next claim comes. Right now the only possibility one can really think of here is that they manage to close all the gaps. There are so many that I suspect it will take quite a long time, even if there really are answers to all these gaps. It is a very very non-simple task. But fine, suppose they succeeded in doing it—and the fact that they haven’t succeeded also doesn’t mean anything. There are many things we don’t know; that is why we research. Sometimes we do know. It doesn’t mean anything. It is not correct to draw conclusions from lack of information. It’s hard to build good conclusions on that.

But there is another very important point here, and it seems to me it also came up here. This point basically says the following. Suppose all the gaps are closed. We understand everything in the evolutionary sense. We understand not only everything—we even understand the first emergence of life. We understand that too. Everything is fine, all arranged properly. So what? Does that really constitute an alternative to the claim that there is a God? Again, not a refutation, but an alternative. Does it constitute an alternative? I think not. Why not? I think not. And I’ll tell you why. Because the truth is that in nature there is no genuinely random process at all. Quantum mechanics perhaps, but let’s speak at the macroscopic level. There is no random process. When we talk about a die—we throw a die, right? What is that? We calculate probabilities; for us this is considered some sort of statistical event. So we check the probability that it lands on this face or another face. But there is nothing truly random here. It is a completely deterministic process. Chaotic perhaps, but completely deterministic. It is very complex, very sensitive to initial conditions, and therefore we handle it with statistical tools. That’s all. But it is a completely deterministic process. Right? If you give me the initial velocity, the density of the air, the direction, everything I need to know, the weight of the die, its shape, and so on, at least in principle, like Laplace, I should be able to tell you on which face it will land. There is nothing statistical there. Nothing.

So if that’s the case, note something. In the evolutionary process we’ve closed all the gaps, but there is a strong statistical component in it, right? The component of the formation of mutations. Mutations are formed in some way; then there is natural selection; then genetics. So first of all there is the formation of mutations, but even that is a physical process. Biological, but also physical within it. And therefore it is quite clear that it too is not a random process. Not a random process. Again, I’m not talking at the quantum level; I’m talking at the macroscopic level right now. No one claims evolution is based on quanta. This is not a quantum phenomenon measured at the macroscopic level, unlike superconductors. The claim is—there are no claims that it is a quantum process. It is random because we treat it with statistical tools, for exactly the same reason we use statistical tools with a die. Basically this process is completely deterministic.

Now look. Here is a process based on four laws of nature, okay? A process absolutely insane in its complexity, in the number of its possibilities, to the point that we need statistical tools to handle it, and it leads us from a lump of clay to a human being. Fine? In a continuous process, we understand every step, there are no jumps, everything is clear. I’ll give you a task, and no one will succeed in doing it. Set the world up yourselves—the world is at your disposal—choose four laws of nature as you wish, whatever you want, that take an undifferentiated piece of matter and through a perfectly natural process, with all the evolutions you want in the world, ultimately produce a human being, or a frog, or the whole array before us. There is no chance whatsoever that this would happen. And that is when we are allowed to choose the laws by hand. But if those laws weren’t chosen by anyone, then where did they come from?

Basically what we have here is a process that becomes random to us only because the tools we use to deal with it are statistical tools, but the truth is that it is entirely deterministic. And this is a process that is governed overall by the basic laws of nature. So basically what we have here is a process that the Holy One, blessed be He, directs very carefully at every stage through the laws of nature that He set. That’s all. When I look at a factory or a computer or some sophisticated system, okay? A cybernetic one. When I look at how this thing works—how can it be that it functions so coordinately? A super-efficient factory, everyone knows where to pass things, what to do, how exactly the business works. Obviously there is some manager here who established a protocol for how things are done, and he’s apparently a successful manager who instructed the workers and that’s that, and therefore it works very well. Any sensible person would say that, right? What would the atheist say? What nonsense are you talking? Don’t you see there is a protocol of laws here? Everyone reads the laws and knows what he has to do, what to transfer where, and therefore of course it all works. The argument is: who wrote the laws? Were these laws born there out of the vacuum? Where did they come from? The manager manages the factory precisely through that protocol. The claim that there are deterministic laws explaining the conduct of the factory does not have the slightest bearing on the question whether there is or is not a manager.

If we say eternity about the laws? What? Yes, but even eternity about the laws is still somewhat problematic, because what does eternity of the laws mean? The question still remains why they were set exactly this way. Even if they weren’t created at a certain time—maybe we’ll say the eternity of the world? Maybe even the Big Bang—there the assumption is that the laws of nature exist beforehand? I didn’t know that. Right, maybe laws of nature were formed when you calculate such-and-such years, assuming they existed even earlier. Fine. And everything needs a cause too, even if it is eternal and just exists like that. I arrive at a deserted island and I see a sophisticated computer there. The computer might always have been there. Would anyone accept such a claim? A computer functioning wonderfully—“it was always there, that’s all.” So no explanation is needed. Even if it was always there, I would still think something here is being managed. So it was always there, but it is always managed. That is the simple outlook.

Now others say: fine, but our experience concerns things we know. The totality of the world we do not know, so you can’t apply our experience. Maybe that’s true, but it seems to me the burden of proof is on the one claiming that. First of all I work with common sense. If it turns out I’m wrong, I’ll understand. But I think this is common sense. So in the strict logical sense I don’t think there is a proof here, but I think there is a very strong common-sense proof.

And to return, in closing, to the words of Rabbi Kook—when we read Rabbi Kook, look: “When we see the great creation arranged in orders of wisdom, and the courses of life in body and spirit and intellect, all arranged in one system, we recognize the great spirit present here.” What does that mean? He isn’t saying this enables us to remain believers and say that the Holy One, blessed be He, manages the world through evolution just as through gravitation. He is saying something much stronger. He is saying that when we see this, it’s not merely that it is compatible with the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He—it proves the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He. And why? Because that is exactly what he says: evolution is not really a revolution. It is not really a revolution. It only explains the laws of the protocol written by the manager. The manager wrote protocol laws, and these protocol laws determine how the whole thing works. But there is a manager who wrote this system of laws, otherwise how did it happen? And that is exactly what Rabbi Kook is saying here.

After all, I asked: he is simply raising the old physico-theological argument. How is he dealing with the stronger claim? Right—the old physico-theological argument is still valid. The physico-theological argument that a complex thing does not arise by chance is still valid even after evolution. Because even after evolution, what you explain is only that there is some system of protocol laws leading us to the complex thing. But those laws themselves are exactly the non-random thing here. And someone wrote that system of laws or created that system of laws, and therefore one can indeed return to the old formulation of the physico-theological proof, and that is what Rabbi Kook is really saying here.

That concludes the lesson of Rabbi Michael Abraham, 13 Cheshvan 5771, October 21, 2010, on Rabbi Kook’s Perplexed of the Generation.