Q&A: The Updated Objection to “Positing the Unknown”
The Updated Objection to “Positing the Unknown”
Question
What does the Rabbi say about the updated objection to “positing the unknown”?
The objection says that we assume that some machine and some painting (the Sistine Chapel, for example) have a designer because we have some understanding of how things like that can be created.
Even if we had never known computer engineers or painters, and had never seen a computer or a painting, the mechanism by which such things are created is still something we understand.
Even if we ourselves could not succeed in painting such a special painting, and even if we were unfamiliar with such special colors, we would still know in a general way the process of painting, which is basically applying lines of color.
And likewise with a machine: even if we have no idea how to build a computer, and have never seen such an engineer, it is still clear to us what the process of creating a computer looks like: it is simply connecting material parts to one another, which is a completely familiar and understandable process (even though we do not know how to create even a simple computer).
The same applies to unfamiliar tracks in the sand. Even if we do not know any animal that could produce such tracks (and even if we had never known any walking animal, and we ourselves floated in the air), we would assume that there is such a creature, because the process of making tracks in the sand is a simple and understandable one (even if these were the first tracks we had ever seen).
But that is not the case with the special laws of the world. We have no understanding at all of what a process of legislating laws of nature, or setting physical constants, is supposed to look like. We are not talking about court laws and the like, but real laws of reality.
That is also why most people who see a snowflake (for the first time) would not think that someone created it, because we have no understanding whatsoever of how to create such a thing.
Is the objection correct? It seems very intuitive…
Answer
In the appendix to my book God Plays Dice I explained why this objection is nothing but one big misunderstanding. Take it from there.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t see any difference, and therefore no new objection. So I don’t understand what is supposed to be refuted.
The difference is simple.
Eliyah Leibowitz’s claim is that an explanation is unacceptable if it invents entities that are unfamiliar.
Obviously that argument is wrong, and the Rabbi rejected it well with the analogy of tracks in the sand, where we posit a new animal to explain the tracks in the sand.
My claim is that in a case where we have no conception whatsoever of the formation-pattern of a complex object (we are incapable of even imagining the possibility of a process for creating a law of nature), we will not infer that there is something that created it.
Now you can easily see that the analogy of tracks in the sand, which succeeded in refuting Eliyah’s argument, does not refute anything in my argument.
As for tracks in the sand, it is clear to us what the process of creating such tracks looks like.
By the way, it is obvious that this is the only reason all people will agree with you regarding all the examples you bring (a watch, an airplane, etc.) while not everyone will agree regarding God and the laws of nature.
Do you have an analogy that refutes my argument? (Like the analogy of the tracks, which refutes Eliyah’s argument)?
Again, I don’t understand what I am supposed to refute. I claim that every law has a legislator, just as we know regarding other laws. In a factory there are operating rules that the manager enacted and enforces. So who is the manager of the laws of nature? We are not talking about constructing laws of nature (they are not entities), but about legislating them. So the question about their formation is irrelevant on the one hand, and definitely connected to the other examples on the other hand, exactly like the tracks in the sand. I don’t see any difference.
Does the Rabbi have an example of a complex thing from which we infer that there is a composer/assembler, even though we have no beginning of understanding or conception of the process by which it was created?
Every explanation in physics begins with the discovery of a phenomenon and the assumption that there is something causing it, even if we do not understand how that something does it.
In the past, when humanity discovered the stars, it inferred that there was some natural phenomenon that caused them, even though it did not know how that could happen. Even today, when we see that there is acceleration in the rate of the universe’s expansion, physics assumes that there is “dark energy” that balances the speed. How it performs this magic—no one really knows. Only after they assumed there was such a thing did they begin developing theories about how it happens.
Strange question. If I have no idea about its process of creation, how can I bring it as an example of something that has an assembler? There are no examples, because this is a logical intuition, not the result of direct experience.
I did not understand the meaning of this strange sentence: when humanity discovered the stars, it inferred that there was some natural phenomenon that caused them?
Your last claim is precisely the reasoning for my own words. When something is before us, we infer that it has a cause, and then we develop a theory of what that cause is. That is exactly what happens with respect to the world / its laws and God.
As far as I’m concerned, we’ve exhausted the issue. All the best.
Everything I wrote was a reply with examples for R. (stars, dark energy, etc.).
As an example of something that we assume has an explanation.
I read it. I’m not talking about the weak objection you address in the book; that really is weak—to say that because I don’t know such an entity, therefore there is no creator (as Eliyah Leibowitz wrote about the Sistine Chapel).
I’m talking about the process by which the complex thing is created.
In all of the Rabbi’s examples (a painting, tracks in the sand, an airplane, a watch, a washing machine, a factory with a talented manager), even though none of the agents familiar to us can create them, the general mode of creation is completely clear: assembling material parts in a special way / stepping in the sand / touching paint to canvas / legislating legal rules.
But with the laws of the world, we do not have the faintest idea what the process of legislating physical laws could look like, even in the most general and rough sense, and therefore it is much less reasonable to propose such an explanation for the thing.
This is a different objection, which does not merely nibble at the outdated objection, and it cancels most of the force of the physico-theological proof, which is built on dogmatic comparisons between real laws of nature (whose possible creation we have no understanding of) and the laws of a factory, a watch, an airplane, tracks in the sand, etc., where the pattern of creation is clear.
Does the Rabbi have any refutation of this objection?