The Rabbi calls this argument an argument in the form of logical tongs.

Because in practice evolution simply refutes the argument.

After all, the purpose of the argument is to show that randomness cannot produce reliable senses.
And therefore there must be something designed that produced them.

If so, one can replace the manufacturer of the signs to Scotland (in the analogy: God) with evolution, which also does the designing.

If so, the Rabbi can argue that this argument is circular, since we learned about evolution from the senses themselves—
indeed, but that can be rejected on two levels.
A. The reliability of the senses is also a foundational assumption of the argument itself, and in any case evolution was discovered by means of them.
B. The God we get from this argument is only a factor that designed our senses. Evolution can easily be the God of the argument.

As for the other objections in the booklet (people trusted the senses before evolution was discovered, etc.), they seem very weak to me… after all, people also don’t currently believe in God, and still assume that evolution is what calibrated our senses.

If I wasn’t clear enough, I’ll write a clarifying sentence.
That is, once one assumes that evolution is not a random process but a planned process, the argument is thereby refuted.

So then, if it is a complex process, doesn’t it need a composer? Here one can already argue that no—it doesn’t. After all, the designer too would need a designer, and so on. (Besides, every complex thing would need something more complex than itself to compose it… and it’s preferable to stop with the simple thing, namely the world.)
B. Evolution is not a process but is rather “realized” before our eyes, even though it is only an “ancient law” that was already part of the primordial energy before the Big Bang, which emanated into present matter (which is also really energy). And so on and so on.

I didn’t understand a thing.

My claim is simple:
evolution can replace God in Taylor’s argument.

After all, the goal of his argument is to show that it is not logical to rely on a random process, and therefore one needs a designer.

But here he makes a serious mistake: evolution is not a purely random process. Rather, it is almost a clear logical process once one understands that the meaningful component of evolution is that the strong survive. (Of course, together with genetic changes and heredity.)

If so, comparing the cognitive system to something created randomly and then comparing it to something created through evolution is certainly not a valid inference.
—-

Here the Rabbi objected in the booklet that this is a circular argument. (Evolution is true because the senses are true.)
But I don’t understand why; it’s not so obvious.
I’ll explain:
A.
After all, Taylor’s argument does not compel us to accept an entity of a ‘God with will and intelligence’; rather, his “God” is merely a factor (even a deterministic one) that saw to it that our senses would be coordinated.

Once this is understood, evolution can replace it. And it is even preferable, because the senses themselves point to it.

Why is a deistic God preferable to evolution? Just as God would satisfy us as an explanation, evolution would do so just as well.

[B.
The reliability of the senses is also a foundational assumption of the argument, and in any case evolution was discovered through them.]

If that process is not random, then it itself is designed by God (exactly like the argument from outside the laws in the third booklet). You have gained nothing. Beyond that, evolution does not necessarily build reliable senses, but useful senses. And beyond that, everyone believed the senses even before evolution was discovered.
There is no non-intelligent factor that “cares” about something, unless that non-intelligent factor itself was created by an intelligent factor. At the beginning of the chain there is always intelligence.

It seems that the questioner’s intention is roughly as follows:
The atheist agrees with the believer that the world is amazingly complex and coordinated, meaning that the world is a sophisticated, complex production line that leads inanimate matter to living matter and gives it reliable senses.
The disagreement is whether the first link in the universe must be an intelligent factor, or whether it is preferable to stop at its reflection (= a sophisticated and coordinated production line *as if* some intelligent being created it).
So there is no disagreement that the senses are reliable and that the whole world is a sophisticated production line; rather, in the atheist’s view there is no advantage to stopping at an intelligent being rather than at the production line, because the intelligent being too is complex and sophisticated, and so the original question returns to its place, so it is better to stop one stage earlier.
So it seems to me in explaining Moshe’s words.

And in light of the above, it remains very unclear where the atheist is wrong, or in what way the believer’s thesis is superior to the atheist’s, if God too is complex.

And in the analogy of the train to Scotland, the atheist agrees that there is a mechanism that produces signs precisely fitted to the place where they are found. He knows this from a source not in the stones themselves (the train announcer), and therefore his conclusion is that the mechanism that produces signs not only produces them, but also adapts them to the correct city. So too regarding the analogue: a person knows this from intuition. Intuition shows him that the senses are correct and precise. Does that force him to conclude that there is a designer? Absolutely not. It only brings him to the conclusion that the world is much more complex and coordinated than he had thought until now. But that is not the point of disagreement; everyone agrees the world is coordinated. The question is why it is preferable to add an intelligent being to the chain, when that too would be complex and coordinated without a prior intelligent explanation.

“If that process is not random, then it itself is designed by God (exactly like the argument from outside the laws in the third booklet). You have gained nothing.”

– One can still argue that this process is almost entirely random, and yet the strong survive, which is almost a logical law.
And if we go with your approach that the world is fully deterministic at the scales of evolution, then:
there will still remain the question whether this world needs a designer. Is this world even a production line at all!? The analogy to a production line is quite puzzling to begin with.

But all those questions already belong on another plane: the plane of the classical physico-theological view.
My purpose here is to challenge Taylor’s theological view by showing that it contributed nothing beyond the physico-theological view.
————————————————————————
“Beyond that, evolution does not necessarily build reliable senses, but useful senses.”

– No.
I have a strong basis for their reliability.
For purposes of this discussion, the Rabbi here already agrees to the foundational assumption that the senses are somewhat reliable and not disconnected from reality. He only raises a difficulty about their precision. But as for that difficulty, it is very easy to refute:
The sense of touch is correct (otherwise we would long since have perished according to evolution), and that way we can test the correctness of the eyes, etc., etc. In the meantime evolution gives us reliable senses, according to testing by other senses about which we are confident. I think the computer through which I am writing this message is an excellent example of that.
————————————————————————
“And beyond that, everyone believed the senses even before evolution was discovered.”

– In my opinion this is the weakest claim.
Even before God was discovered people always assumed the senses were correct. And even when they abandoned God in favor of science they still assumed the senses were correct. The God of the argument is only a designer of the senses; we have nothing at all regarding His identity.
Once people believed in an entity outside the world that designed it; now we know that we don’t need to get to that, but can stop at the process of evolution. We simply place the factor “evolution” into the variable “God—the designer” in place of “a deistic God.”
————————————————————

“There is no non-intelligent factor that ‘cares’ about something, unless that non-intelligent factor itself was created by an intelligent factor. At the beginning of the chain there is always intelligence.”

– Here one can disagree with the Rabbi in several ways.
The analogy of this world to a factory production line (and therefore something that requires a designer) is a very shaky and false analogy.
For example:
We know that a factory produces products. A car factory produces cars.
But the laws of nature produce an enormous variety of phenomena whose connection to one another seems very tenuous. Vast phenomena like red giants, supernovas, and magnificent suns; tiny phenomena like countless different quantum effects, electrons, atoms, and an enormous variety of molecules; phenomena easy to see, like visible light, and others that are invisible, like gamma radiation; planets of all kinds, from ice dwarfs to gas giants, planets with moons and those without. And of course, they produce life.

Which of these phenomena is the “product” of the universe? One of them, some of them, or all of them? Who knows. In fact, why assume at all that what we have here is a product of the cosmic factory? Things are certainly created in the universe, but the religious person owes us an argument showing that these are indeed products in a sense analogous to the products of a factory—something created intentionally. Without such an argument, why should we assume that the universe really is analogous to a factory?
(Especially since we do not have the assumption that the universe has a maker, unlike the assumption that factories we know have a maker.
And we have no assumption of a purpose for the factory called the universe.)
For further elaboration you can read here: http://athologica.com/?p=3100

I’ll give an example to illustrate the nullity of Athologica’s argument.
His argument could also refute an “artificial” factory made by humans.
I enter a giant structure with billions of rooms (the universe full of stars). Throughout the entire building there prevails a set of rigid laws that are a necessary condition (though not sufficient) for the production of sophisticated robots (the parallel in the universe: the fine-tuning constants). In one of the rooms the remaining necessary conditions for creating the robots prevail (this is Earth at the right distance, with water, etc.), and indeed in this room robots are created from simple to complex (parallel to abiogenesis and evolution). In all the other rooms and also in the hallways there are things that only endanger the complex robots, like flames found in every room (parallel to black holes or places without oxygen, etc.), so that the great majority of the building does not seem coordinated for the creation of robots that arose in some negligible room out of the building’s billions of rooms.
According to Athologica one should conclude that there is no designer of this building, including the room inside it, because the product in this building is unclear, and most of the building only “wants” to destroy the robots; they seem like a side effect of a random process. Note well.

Dan can judge for himself.
You latched onto the marginal part of Athologica.
The significant part is that one sees the behavior of the world as random, arbitrary, and purposeless.
Why on earth should one assume the universe is a factory, and that we are its product?
Perhaps the expression that the rest of the universe is trying to destroy us is a flawed expression.

But the idea is that it is not many rooms but one hall with one room.
And the one successful part in it—even its success came from randomness! (evolution)

And everything in it is random and unplanned—galaxies, supernovas, etc., etc. What possible reason is there to assume it is planned?

If for 16 billion years a hurricane raged over a junkyard, and once a car were formed, would you be so amazed? After all, it would quickly be destroyed. So all the more so the first RNA. From the beginning of abiogenesis to the creation of the human being is astonishingly close. See how little time it took from the formation of the first cell until man. Almost nothing. Thanks to the almost-logical law of evolution: the strong survive, genetic change, and heredity.

I explained all this and I cannot repeat everything here.
How does the passenger know there is a mechanism for creating signs? He cannot know that, and therefore there is no basis for his trust in them.
The two arguments complement each other. If you reject one, you will run into the second, and vice versa. That’s all.

I answered that. There is an announcer who declares the name of every station, and by the roadside one also sees stones on which the city names are written. (In the analogue, the announcer is intuition.)
That proves there is apparently a mechanism for creating signs suited to each and every city. Who created the mechanism? No one—it has existed forever. And if you say: but the mechanism is complex, so it must have a calibrator and a composer—answer: God is even more complex than the mechanism, and you are willing to accept that He has no composer, so why not stop at the sign mechanism?
There are no tongs here at all; the atheist remains consistent and coherent. At most, Taylor’s argument thickens the argument from complexity.
I would be very, very glad for a response.

And the Holy One, blessed be He, also reveals Himself to us and informs us that Dawkins is a liar.
You can’t invent additions to the model. The argument draws an analogy between two situations: the train to Scotland without an announcer and the blind formation of the world/the eye. The claim is that trust in the inscriptions indicates an intentional writer, just as trust in the eye indicates an intentional maker of the eye.
Now you add evolution, but you also learn about evolution from the eye. That is exactly like learning that there is a blind mechanism for producing inscriptions from the very existence of the inscriptions.
If you add an independent source of information apart from the inscriptions themselves (like the announcer), then add, in parallel, an independent source of information about the reliability of the eye. You cannot change one side of the comparison and then raise difficulties.

With respect, Rabbi, I am repeating myself for the third time: I *did add* a source independent of the senses for my trust in them, namely the fact that I have an intuition regarding the correctness of the senses, and that is what gives me confidence that they are reliable.
I claim that the analogy to the train to Scotland is indeed not similar to the analogue, because in the analogue there is an independent source; if so, in the train analogy too one should add an announcer declaring arrival in Scotland.
Would you say that I have proved that someone designed my senses and matched them to the world? Absolutely not. It only proves that the primordial laws existing in the world are even more special than I had thought until now (not only did they create a complex human being, they also created a sensory system that faithfully reflects reality). The probability of blind formation of such a mechanism is now much less plausible than the system without the senses, but that is not what the atheist disputes. He agrees that the world is a sophisticated production line, marvelously coordinated; he only disputes the conclusion that at its base stands an intelligent being. Would you say that this is irrational?
A. Perhaps, but that is not essentially different from the atheist who did not infer the existence of a designer from the usual physico-theological argument. At most, the argument has now been strengthened, and it is based both on the human body and on its senses, so the argument has not helped much.
B. That is not true. As long as it turns out that the believer too accepts a complex link that has no composer (God), it is not clear in what way the physico-theological thesis is preferable to the atheist one. On the contrary, the atheist thesis is preferable both by Occam’s razor and because it stops at a less complex entity (the world), rather than at God, who is presumably more complex than the world.
P.S. I didn’t mention evolution; that was Moshe.

The fact that you repeat them for the third time does not make them correct, nor does it change the fact that I already answered this. Intuition is nothing but trust itself. The question is what it is based on and whether it can be trusted. You can also talk about the intuition the passenger on the train has that the inscription is reliable even though it was formed randomly. If you want to trust that intuition, be my guest. You can also declare that you have an intuition that 2+5=17.4.
I’m done. If I haven’t succeeded until now, then apparently I cannot do better. All the best.

If only the earlier months would return, when our great rabbi was at his sharpest.
He would set every feeble-minded person straight on his error, and not brush him off with this and that.
For this I weep, for surely he has not forgotten his learning.

1) It seems the Rabbi thinks I am trying to annoy him and not asking in order to know, and I am sorry for that.
Intuition tells me that the senses are correct. Why can’t I rely on that? After all, the Rabbi relies on his intuition regarding free choice.
Intuition gives me recognition through the “eyes of the intellect” that the senses are correct. What does that mean? Nothing except that they are correct. Now, of course, the physico-theological argument is strengthened greatly, but no tongs force him to change one of my positions. I have an external source for trust—a certain recognition. How was it formed? Presumably the production line (the world) produces perfect products. That does not force me to say there is a creator, because I can assume the line is primordial without sufficient reason, just as I assumed regarding the philosophical argument.
2) Even according to the thesis that there is a God, it is still not clear what belief in the senses relies on, for the existence of a designer does not require that everything be designed—especially in light of the fact that I see the designer running the world in a very unplanned way throughout the process = for most of the animals along the way there really were faulty senses, and therefore they went extinct. Unless you assume that already the first eye saw correctly in a completely accurate way, and that is patently unreasonable.
I would be glad for a response to these two points.

I don’t think you came to provoke, but my feeling is that I explained everything well and I have nothing to add. I answer many people here, and it’s hard for me to repeat things again and again. What the heart desires, time steals. I will add one response to the two points (because they are two sides of the same coin).

I explained this in the fourth booklet. The claim against trusting the senses in a case of spontaneous formation is different from ordinary skepticism, because if the senses are indeed a product of a blind and arbitrary mechanism, then there is no reason whatsoever to trust them. By contrast, natural trust in the senses is reasonable, and the argument against it is just ordinary skepticism (there is no argument in favor of the unreliability of the senses).
We have really exhausted this.

But I gave a truly serious empirical—not skeptical—argument against trusting the senses even if God created us:
Even according to the thesis that there is a God, it is still not clear what belief in the senses relies on, for the existence of a designer does not require that everything be designed—especially in light of the fact that I see the designer running the world in a very unplanned way throughout the process = for most of the animals along the way there really were faulty senses, and therefore they went extinct. Unless you assume that already the first eye saw correctly in a completely accurate way, and that is patently unreasonable.

And I gave a genuinely substantive argument explaining why that is not correct. A blind mechanism creates mechanisms that usually will not be reliable (except in a very rare case). But with God, while there is no necessity that He created something reliable, there is also no probability that He did not. Here it is up to our decision, exactly like ordinary trust in the senses. You have no information how they were formed, but you have a feeling that they are reliable, and that is enough. And indeed that is enough.

Wait a second. Do you mean that throughout the entire evolutionary process animals always had correct senses? Is that scientifically accepted?

I didn’t say that, but enough.

Well, it’s not clear to me why the Rabbi thinks we are different from an ancient cow and monkey (who of course had faulty senses). God chose to create the world through evolution, and therefore it is a scientific fact that the first x species do not have correct senses (and now you wrote that you agree with this). It is not clear why you are sure that we are animals with a number greater than x.
I see here a very forceful question, and I didn’t raise it earlier, but the Rabbi chooses to dismiss himself with “enough.” Too bad.

Not a forceful question at all.
First, maybe they too had reliable eyes. I only said that I didn’t claim that. Second, who told you that those cow and monkey species (or amoebas) thought they had good vision? We think so. And third, after reliable eyes were formed, mutations do not give that up. An evolutionary process usually advances and improves; it does not retreat.

I assume Danny will ask the question you asked in the booklet, which will come flying back to you like a boomerang:

“After all, evolution is a long and complex process, throughout which the creatures that arise become more and more sophisticated. Unsuccessful intermediate forms go extinct, and others better than them take their place. When those fail in the struggle for survival, they go extinct and are replaced by others. How do we know where we are located in this process? Are we already at the place where our vision and our thinking are perfect?” p. 56 in the booklet.

Exactly, Kobi. This is already a different argument. Suddenly the Rabbi too agrees that trust in the senses is some sort of “recognition” implanted in us, and not a derivative of belief in God.
Maybe he argues that such a recognition is explained only by faith, but that is a different argument.
I think Taylor’s argument exists only if the believer does not accept evolution. Then of course, if man is not part of an evolutionary process, it is reasonable to assume that God did not deceive us and created us almost perfect.

Not suddenly. I have written this already many times in the past. Rather, the justification for this implanted trust is faith; every alternative is randomness, which undermines that trust. That is the gist of the fourth booklet.

I think I’m beginning to understand.
Basically your claim is not really about the senses themselves (because regarding them there is intuition), but about our reliance on intuition itself—what is the justification for such reliance.
That is, if we had an external source for belief in our intuitions, then the problem would not exist.
This is just an extension of the argument from epistemology about intuition in relation to the senses.
And if I believe in God, then it is possible to say that He did not simply plant a false intuition in me.
Right?

Indeed. Just one small correction: if I believe in God, then it is possible (not necessarily reasonable, as you wrote) that He did not plant a false intuition in me. That is enough for me—that it is possible (that is, not implausible. It doesn’t need to be plausible).
The basis of the matter is that first of all my intuition is that the senses are reliable, and I have no reason to abandon that. In order to abandon it I need a positive reason. Now, if I espouse the accidental formation of the senses, then I do have a reason to abandon it, because on that assumption it is completely implausible that the senses would come out reliable. By contrast, if I believe in God, then it is still possible that the sensory system is not reliable, but there is no necessity for that at all. Therefore I have no reason to abandon the initial intuition I have. That is, only if it were implausible (as in the thesis of accidental formation) would I have had to abandon the intuition. It does not need to be plausible in order for me to adopt it. In adopting it I do not rely on God’s goodness, but on my intuition. It is enough for me that there is no difficulty against it.
This is an important distinction and not mere hair-splitting, because I argue that one should distinguish between my objection to the thesis of accidental formation (according to which the other possibility is very plausible, and not merely just existent) and ordinary skeptical objections (which raise only the bare existence of another possibility, and no more).

Crystal clear. Thank you.