He meant: why reject evolution if the probability of its arising is so small.

High, I mean.

Exactly.
And how am I supposed to respond here?

I didn’t understand what your question is referring to. Did you read my book? Some article? The question is floating in midair.
I suggest you read at least the article. I explain there why the probability is negligible:

מבט שיטתי על יחסי אבולוציה ואמונה

I think there’s no chance of evolution at all, because I still haven’t come across a person with wings.

Can you be more specific?
And anyone who doesn’t believe in evolution should stop taking antibiotics.

I didn’t understand the claim.
I’m talking about abiogenesis, and I heard from someone that you oppose it.
And regarding what you wrote about the “god of the gaps,” I can just say that the laws are eternal, and then they’re equivalent to your God.

Idan — unfortunately you’re mistaken. The Rabbi does not oppose abiogenesis (or evolution); quite the opposite: he holds that it most likely did occur, and not only does it not contradict the existence of a Creator, it actually proves it.
But on all that and more, see the link attached above (it’s really a shame to start explaining long arguments here in a superficial way when they already appear on the site in detail). If you still have questions after that, I’m sure he’ll be happy to answer.

There’s no way there was any evolution, because it’s a process that takes years, and if there were creatures that develop like that and so on (assuming there was some sort of primordial matter), then on other stars too there would be creatures that developed evolutionarily. Especially since science says the world is millions of years old.
Evolution also gives explanations without causes — for example, why doesn’t man have a real tail? Did they once find a person with half a tail?
Also, man from the ape — the Rabbi believes that? Come on!
Those who believe in evolution don’t believe in creation.
That everything was created from an explosion and creatures developed.
The Rabbi also doesn’t believe in the evolution they believe in, only in slight changes, like a short beak becoming a long strong beak. In my opinion, birds that don’t find food look for alternative “prey,” and if there isn’t any then they have to fly somewhere else. Or prey on each other or hunt lizards and spiders and so on. But to change their organs — inconceivable.
Just like the Rabbi argues that genes can only get stronger, I argue that the opposite is also possible: when there’s no need for a beak, it should fall off because there’s nothing to peck with.

To M: either I didn’t understand what he said or I don’t agree; because of his writing style I’m not sure.
To Moshe:
The universe has existed for 13.7 billion years, Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years, life has been developing on Earth for 4.2 billion years.
Enough time for you?
There are human beings born with a tail.
The Big Bang is not an explosion.
And you have no knowledge of evolution.
Explain to me how you understand evolution right now, and I’ll explain where you’re mistaken.
After all, to err is human.

Bro, are spelling mistakes human too?

Dear Idan 2000,
That’s exactly what I said: in 4 billion years, and man hasn’t changed since he became man? And the apes haven’t changed at all either? The fact that a person was born with a tail doesn’t mean the human species once had a tail, because a person can also be born without legs — so does that mean there were once lots of people like that?
I admit I don’t understand evolution.

http://sutrtkheyrubh.blogspot.co.il/

Idan — evolution operates within a framework of rigid laws of nature (the constants of physics, the laws of chemistry, and so on). True, one could say that perhaps the laws always existed (this raises various other philosophical difficulties, but let’s set that aside for the moment). None of this eliminates the philosophical conclusion regarding the existence of a Creator, because if the laws had been even slightly different, life would not have developed.
Out of all the possible sets of laws (infinite for the sake of argument), the probability that it would be דווקא these laws that allow life is negligible (if it can even be calculated).
So now I ask: what is the reason that the laws are specifically like this and not otherwise? (This principle is called the “principle of sufficient reason.”)

The physico-theological proof argues that in order for the laws to be so well-suited to the creation of life, they require a cause — namely, the planner, the Creator. Therefore, even if the laws always existed, this does not eliminate the philosophical conclusion of a Creator’s existence. So evolution is actually what proves His existence, through the study of the laws by which the world is governed. It of course does not solve the philosophical question of why they are as they are and not otherwise.

Moshe — at first glance it seems to me that you indeed are not well-versed in evolution. There are indeed some difficulties here and there in the theory (which may be resolved over time), but in general it is the best scientific explanation we currently have for the way the world was created (by a Creator who brought it about). As I understand it, this is also the Rabbi’s view. Therefore I suggest not taking the discussion in that direction.

Wait, bro, did you look at the link I attached?
I don’t think the Rabbi believes that man was created through evolution. In fact I don’t understand you at all — and wasn’t it on the sixth day, literally from the day of the creation of the heavens and the earth and the light, literally?
What do we have to be afraid of?

Moshe,
Man (modern Homo sapiens) is 200 million years old, not 4.2 billion. There were tons of changes from the earliest bacteria.
And the reason you don’t see changes is that you’re not looking; people are getting taller through the generations.
M, I can say that in order for a Creator to be formed who wants to create human beings, He too needs a creator. It’s still equivalent.

Gentlemen, Idan (not to insult or anything) is very dyslexic (usually they’re also smart people), so I expect mature responses and that people ignore spelling mistakes, since the mistakes are still correct at the syllabic level.

As for the subject itself,
Idan, the Creator does not need a creator, because we say that a creator is required only for entities regarding which we assume that they are not primordial but “created.”
If so, you could say we should stop at the laws of nature — even though it is not at all clear that they were not created — but the small problem is that the laws of nature are not an independent entity. They describe a process.

I’ll quote from the Rabbi’s notebook on the site — the second notebook:
“Even if we assume that the laws of nature are the primary causes of the universe’s existence, laws only describe something. A law itself is not a being, but describes beings. For example, the law of gravitation describes the relation between masses and the acceleration produced by their influence. What causes motion is not the law of gravitation but the force of gravitation. The law of gravitation only describes the action of the gravitational force. If so, even if we say that the laws of nature caused something (such as the existence of the universe), we are thereby treating them as beings. So from the standpoint of the cosmological argument, they themselves can be the primary being, or the first cause. Or perhaps they are a being acted upon by another being, but at the end of the chain there is a primary cause.
If the laws of nature are not beings but mechanisms, we saw that there must be some being at the basis of their existence, for we have already seen that a process always takes place through an object, even if this is done by means of another process. Either way, at the beginning of this chain there is some being, and everything exists by its power. It is the cause of everything.”

That’s my limited understanding of the distinction between the Creator and the laws of nature, regarding which it could also be argued (assuming they weren’t created in the Big Bang) that they are enough to explain the existence of the world.

In fact, we find in the world that things can be created just like that (quantum mechanics), but there the case is a bit different.

Because:
A. It’s not clear that things can be created in an absolute vacuum, and even assuming they can, they would disintegrate almost immediately so they have no real substance. (Unlike the world.) And that’s even before the fact that we haven’t seen particles of any significant size come into being.
So clearly this objection cannot explain how the world was created, but at most challenges the validity of the cosmological argument.
But nevertheless:
B. The very fact of their creation indicates that something is still hidden behind it, some framework that preserves them, because otherwise how do they always “know” to preserve the conservation laws? (When a particle and antiparticle are created…) Clearly there was something behind this supervising the process. Meaning, this is not completely spontaneous creation. It may be that we have no explanation, but clearly it is not entirely spontaneous.
If so, perhaps laws that were primordial created the particles and there is indeed no need for a Creator. But even so, that remains difficult, because laws are not entities but descriptions of the process of relations between entities, and so the need for a Creator still remains.

That’s how I see the picture.
Best regards, M.K.
Schindler

😉

Well said indeed.

Welcome, M.K.S.
The fact that the Rabbi understood you doesn’t mean we did too.
I didn’t understand what the difference is between a vacuum and emptiness.
What do you think was “before” divine creation, or before the “Big Bang”? Vacuum / nothing / emptiness.
On the face of it, it seems you understand microphysics, so explain: if there is “emptiness,” how did particles come? How did they develop? And only afterward talk about laws and forces.
You know the conservation law, so if there were no particles or any primordial matter, as you say (not that I do believe in primordial matter), then where did their energy come from? Energy is only transferred and changes form.

I’ll reinforce what Moshe said with another point from the notebook.

There is reason to say that laws require an explanation, whereas a Creator does not. Laws are mechanisms that operate in a specific way, and one can ask about them: why are they this way and not another way? If we apply that same logic to a Creator as well,
either we fall into an infinite regress… (and the assumption is that this is a fallacy),
or we assume that the first cause simply has no explanation, and that is very difficult (because really, why is it this way and not another? The probability is negligible),
or we assume that at the top of the pyramid stands something “different,” which does not require an explanation because it is built in a different way.

Laws are something within our experience, and indeed the difficulty of their needing an explanation exists. A Creator, by contrast, is an entity not within our experience, and the same question cannot be asked about Him in the same way (and indeed we saw that such a different sort of thing is required in order to avoid regress).

Conservation law of the sun: the sun burns itself up (it’s a ball of gas). How does the gas not run out, how does it not explode? How does it not weaken?

We asked about the sun. Now let’s ask about the Creator: why is He spiritual? Answer: because if He were material, He couldn’t create matter, because He would be limited. Therefore it is necessary that He be spiritual and unlimited.

Where did you find regress here in the example I gave?

This will be long.
I’m dysgraphic, not dyslexic, but it doesn’t matter — I appreciate the understanding.
Moshe,
As far as I understood you, you’re claiming that the laws need matter for them to act on.
I’m saying that the laws allow the creation of matter, and that’s a theory formulated by Stephen Hawking. I can explain it, but expect a rough explanation because I don’t fully understand it myself.

Moshe (2): just as matter is energy, so matter-energy is space-time (Stephen Hawking’s theory).

I think M is saying that laws are not matter, and because of that they don’t need a creator, and the probability doesn’t matter because of the multiverse theory, so someone always wins the lottery.

Moshe (3?): there’s no conservation law of the sun, there’s E=MC^2.
And it doesn’t burn; it performs nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, and that’s exactly what happens in a hydrogen bomb, so it is exploding, but I assume that’s not what you meant. And yes, it will run out of gas; they estimate that will happen in about another 5 billion years.
Sorry if I missed something, that’s a lot of information.

:((: A law needs an external operator — energy needs to create if there is matter, but a law can’t create anything.
Wait, laws can create matter — let’s say. According to what framework? Time? Give a formula as a function of t and we’ll check what matter comes out when we plug in infinite or finite time.
A function doesn’t produce matter! You’re mixing things up!

Moshe, I really warmly recommend reading the Rabbi’s book “God Plays Dice”; it really addresses all the points you’re raising here. I truly don’t mind telling you what he writes on every issue, but it seems to me it’s just a shame when there’s a place where it’s all concentrated together (along with other issues).

Regarding multiverse theory:
1. First of all, generally speaking, it is only a certain interpretation of quantum theory. It still has no proof. True, it gets a lot of attention publicly because it’s an exciting theory, but it really has no proof. Meaning: the atheist who claims there is no God because no one saw Him also invents an infinity of worlds, which no one has seen either, as an answer. Great…
2. How do you know what laws govern there? On what basis is there an assumption that there is a different law there? Is there proof for that? Likewise, the atheist invents infinite worlds that no one has ever seen, in which talking teapots and divine pink elephants and anything else one can think of could exist — and this is supposed to be the more rational alternative…
3. The important point — even if we assume multiverse theory is correct, then you have a law that produces universes with different natural laws. That reality too is, after all, a law. So now I ask: why is that law like that and not otherwise? What is the probability of that? It too needs an explanation == God.

Again, I suggest you read what’s written. There really is comprehensive treatment there of all the subjects you’re raising.

I keep saying: however much you say that the laws require a creator, I can say that the creator requires a creator.
You still haven’t explained to me the difference between eternal laws and a creator.

We’re repeating ourselves. I addressed this in my third comment (mine, not in general). And again, this also appears in the sources I mentioned from the Rabbi….

In any case, I’m already feeling like a troll who just “took over” without permission a question that was sent to the Rabbi in the first place (and sorry about that… that wasn’t the intention), so I’ll stop doing that and let you continue the conversation with the owner of the site (the Rabbi).

Okay.
I apparently either don’t understand or don’t agree.
And because we’re not speaking at the same linguistic register, it’s hard to tell the difference (and add to that my spelling mistakes…).

Maybe the Rabbi can take an active part in the discussion.

This is an important discussion for a site that purports to provide an alternative to Jewish missionary sites.

Idan, my brother, you’re not writing a Torah scroll, so you’re allowed to make mistakes — as the sages said: do not read “his banner over me is love,” but rather “his skipping over me is love.”
http://sodtorah.co.il/pirush.php?pos=%F9%EE%E5%FA%20%F4%F8%F7-%EB%E4&pasuk=

Why the link?

It got slipped in by mistake.

Can I get an answer?