With God's help,

Hello,
Thank you very much for the quick reply,
Could you please write the main point of the argument about within the laws and outside them here on the site, for my benefit and for the benefit of the other interested readers? (I personally read the article in the past; it isn't clear to me exactly which passage you're referring to there so I can look for it.)

More power to you.

I don't understand what's so difficult about finding it. The article has a special and explicit heading that deals with this and is called exactly that, so it's impossible to miss unless you're not looking at all.
Sorry for the scolding, but time and again questions come up here that I answered explicitly in the article. That's why I wrote it, and it's not for nothing that I refer questioners to it. People simply don't bother to read, and ask me again and again the same things that I've already answered dozens of times and that were answered explicitly in the article. I'm running dozens of threads here on topics I've already addressed, and I'm completely exhausted by all this. I don't have spare time, and I expect people to respect that and ask me only about things I didn't address, or points on which they disagree with what I wrote.

Here is the relevant passage:

The physico-theological argument: a revised formulation

Ironically, this foolish experiment not only does not undermine the physico-theological argument, it actually illustrates very well the problem with the atheistic challenge to it, and in fact constitutes disproof of that challenge—that is, a demonstration in favor of the physico-theological argument. Here is the explanation. The creationist claim is that the probability of the accidental formation of something complex is negligible. The neo-Darwinists, by contrast, explain that if you adopt a few simple laws of nature, the process becomes reasonable (the slope of the improbable mountain becomes less steep). The laws of nature that underlie evolution—the laws of physics and chemistry, biology, and especially genetics—create a situation in which this process becomes more plausible, exactly as in the case of the computer experiment mentioned above.

So what does this experiment actually show us? It shows that spontaneous formation is blatantly improbable (this is, of course, a simple probabilistic fact). What it also shows is that if there is someone who inserts into the computer system laws that ensure the process is directed toward the desired goal, then it becomes dramatically more efficient, and its probability rises accordingly. In other words, if there is a guiding hand, improbable processes become possible and plausible. But that itself is precisely the physico-theological argument in its own right. The programmer in the case of the computer experiment plays the role of God in the cosmic context. He inserts laws into the computer that cause a blatantly improbable string or structure to appear very quickly with high probability. Therefore, if we were to see such a computer experiment, in which the string "To be or not to be" appears after 90 seconds, and we were asked whether this happened spontaneously or through the intervention of a guiding hand, surely all of us would answer that there is a guiding hand here. That is exactly what the physico-theological argument does with respect to the origin of life. Which is what was to be proved.

Let us now continue the analogy and take a not very long protein chain, about 300 codons. The number of possible combinations of such chains is 20^300 (since there are about twenty different types of protein that can appear at each place in the chain), an enormous number by any standard. The question now arises: how did specifically the “living” and self-replicating chains form spontaneously? The answer is: because of the laws of nature (those are the “constraints” on the lottery that make it so much more efficient). But now we return and ask: how did these laws come into being? And again we arrive at an intelligent factor, or a guiding hand—in other words, we prove the existence of a cosmic programmer.

How is it possible that intelligent people, leading researchers in their fields, fall into such trivial errors? In my estimation this is a combination of lack of philosophical skill and blatant tendentiousness that corrupts the discussion, as I described above. The solution to this lies not in science but in psychology, into which, as stated, I will not enter here.

In fact, this picture leads us to a revised formulation of the physico-theological proof. After the arguments of Hoyle and Paley, the objections arose that the laws of nature (evolution) reliably lead this improbable process to its goal. They use the laws of nature as an alternative explanation for the process instead of the creationist assumption of God. But now the question moves to another plane: instead of asking who carries out the evolutionary process, we now ask what is the source of the special laws of nature that carry it out. In a system with different laws of nature, there would have been no evolution. With slightly different values of the physical constants, there would have been no chemistry or biology at all, and certainly no evolution and genetics. (This is the argument known as fine-tuning. See early versions of it in Gate One of Duties of the Heart by Rabbenu Bachya.) So who was it, and what was it, that set the values of the constants in such a way that there would be an evolutionary process that moderates the slope of the improbable mountain? That entity, the cosmic programmer, is commonly called “God.” This is the updated formulation of the physico-theological proof.

Within the laws and outside them

The critical point here is the distinction between an argument within the laws and one outside them. There is a process whose a priori probability of occurring is negligible. Now we find that nevertheless it operates within a framework of laws, or constraints, that significantly improve that probability (freezing the correct letters, or the laws of nature). This is essentially an explanation, by means of a scientific theory, of these seemingly spontaneous processes. The argument within the laws says that the process is now plausible, since the laws allow the spontaneous formation of life with a reasonable probability. That is the meaning of the claim that we have found a scientific explanation for these occurrences. The explanation explains them—that is, it makes them plausible. But the argument outside the laws takes us outside the laws. It essentially says that the special character of the laws themselves (rather than the events that those laws explain) is what requires us to posit the intervention of an intelligent factor. In other words, the process is not really spontaneous as it appears. There is a hand guiding it, by means of the laws that govern it.

Paley's watch argument works on the same logical basis. The probability that something as complex as a watch came about by chance is negligible. The world and life are much more complex, and therefore the probability of their spontaneous coming-into-being is certainly negligible. The existence of a watchmaker is the obvious explanation, and correspondingly so too is the existence of a Creator of the universe. The common rejection of this argument is that our world is not similar to a watch (because a living creature undergoes evolution, unlike a watch).

The same applies to “Hoyle's mistake.” Hoyle compared the probability of the accidental formation of life to the probability that a tornado passing over a junkyard would create from it a complete Boeing airplane. His critics argued against him that he did not understand the laws of evolution and their significance, since they ensure that the process is not directionless, and thereby greatly improve the odds of its occurrence. An airplane and its parts are inanimate, and therefore this is a momentary and blatantly improbable occurrence (the probabilistic slope is too steep). The thoughtful reader will surely notice that the logic of the debate is the same logic. Within the laws, the challengers are right, but Hoyle's and Paley's arguments are entirely correct outside the laws.

Thank you very much, and sorry.