What he says in the column below is very similar, if not identical (presumably he took it from the book), and there it’s explained immediately after what you quoted: “Such a characterization relies on laws that enable development and adaptation, and therefore one may ask: who designed those laws?” In other words, the laws according to which some are fit and survive and some are not require a creator.
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4032726,00.html

By the way, did Shoshani get attacked on sites like Hofesh and the like, or is that reserved only for rabbis?

Yishai, so he’s only claiming that there are other laws besides natural selection, and God made those. That’s really not what this paragraph sounds like. Here it seems that selection itself needs a creator.

What he says in the link (which contains exactly your quote) is precisely that. Selection requires “characterizing the animal and its environment by means of several traits,” that characterization “relies on laws,” and the laws need a designer.

In the link, the line of argument is this: Paley argued that complex things need a designer; Dawkins claims that evolution removes the need for a designer; and then comes the argument you quoted, that evolution actually requires someone to design it.
That’s exactly the argument in God Plays Dice too. And the truth is that we didn’t need these two sages for this argument, because it’s as obvious as can be, and in essence it was said generations ago. Sometimes I wonder whether some amazing scientific theory will come along that explains the regularity in the creation of the world even better, and then sages will once again have to come and rediscover that the fact that there is regularity explaining the world does not in the least refute the need for someone to design and enforce that regularity. As if every turtle discovered on the way down requires reopening the entire discussion and discovering that actually it doesn’t change the discussion at all.

Rabbi Yishai, maybe you’ll manage to explain this to me and get me out of my confusion.
After all, there is a level of complexity x that needs explaining, and it turns out there is a logical mechanism that explains part of that x (natural selection). How does that not weaken the proof?
True, there are conditions required in order to enter the system of natural selection, but it is itself pure logic.
And what do you say about Almog’s drunkard analogy?

What, Yosef, are you chasing me? In the end I really will have to set up a website 🙂

The logical mechanism explains nothing. It’s simply there.
True, without logic there is no explanation for complexity, but there is also no explanation for anything.
Do you have anything you could explain without logic? Here we’re talking about a tautology, so let’s take a situation where a tautology is not true—that is, a situation where we give up the law of identity in logic. Now, is there anything you can explain? I’m afraid not.
I went to look up the analogy for your sake, but I couldn’t understand what a logical wall is and what exactly it is meant to illustrate.

In the end, the laws of logic are givens (at least I see no point in discussion without them). Now the question is how to explain the existence of the complex world. We discovered that it is complex thanks to its unique laws of physics—for example, the size of the physical constants (but not only that)—which, had they been different, there would have been no complexity at all. So now the question is: who legislated those laws? One possibility is that it was by chance, and another is that there is an intelligent designer. The chance option seems highly improbable, because as stated, the laws that allow such complexity are very unique among the theoretically possible set of laws.
Now Almog comes and says to me: but if there were no logic, then the world also wouldn’t be complex. I myself don’t know what would happen if there were no logic. To tell the truth, I don’t find any meaning at all in sentences dealing with ‘if there were no logic.’ But let us suppose for a moment that the claim “if there were no logic, the world would not be complex” is true (by the way, does that imply that the opposite claim is false?). How does that interfere in any way with my argument about the intelligent designer?! After all, the argument began with “the laws of logic are givens,” and from there we continued and saw that there are two possible explanations of the world, and only one of them is plausible.
And maybe something about the drunkard analogy (which, as I said, I didn’t understand). If from the outset I thought that a drunkard had walked along a place with an abyss on both sides, and on that basis I drew conclusions, and then I discovered that in fact there was an abyss only on one side, I would have to recheck my inference. But if from the outset I knew there was an abyss on only one side, then of course discovering that changes nothing.

Rabbi Yishai, indeed I am chasing, and some would say a small (or foolish) pursuer. 🙂
I’m simply excited by your ability to explain and understand—it’s really fascinating. Truly.
Let me stress again that I don’t mean that the proof has been refuted, only that it has been weakened.
This is not an ordinary logical component, like the law of identity, which says that since there are laws that allow life, life is possible.
What we’re talking about here is some sort of real-logical-actual component: the strong survive.
Almog (as I understand him) is not arguing “if there were no logic,” but exactly the opposite—that logic is necessary and not attributable to the Creator.
In his drunkard analogy, he shows a situation in which logic gives rise to an actual structure that dictates a special result—it creates a wall, so to speak. We are not talking here about logic that causes the following: if there is a structure that prevents falling (= a wall), the person won’t fall. We are talking about a real, actual structure created by logic.
So too in the analogy’s moral: logic creates a mechanism that makes it possible (given a few laws not connected to the very creation of the bear and the cow) to turn the simple into the complex in a way that goes beyond the laws themselves. The laws of fine-tuning and abiogenesis do not dictate the creation of a tiger or a bear. They only make it possible.
If we take the example of Shakespeare’s sonnet and the monkeys, then if there are laws that freeze every correct letter, then clearly someone created those laws.
But that is exactly the difference between the monkey analogy and evolution: in evolution there isn’t someone who arranged for precisely the stronger ones to remain; that is simply the necessary reality (given enabling laws).
Don’t you see a difference? There are two points in logic: narrow logic, and logic that creates a real mechanism.
After all, it is obvious that natural selection is a mechanism that “introduced something new into the world”; it showed how logic produces direction. I’ve heard that this principle is used in programming and the like.
Now the complexity x of man is divided between the laws of nature and logic.
Thank you very, very much for all your help! I just haven’t found anyone else who responds to my points so clearly and who understands the issue (and of course I can understand that dear Rabbi Michi, the powerhouse, is worn out from explaining).

This is not a real logical component, but precisely the law of identity: “whoever survived under deterministic laws is whoever was fit to survive from the start.” Logic did not create any real mechanism here (and probably that’s why I don’t understand the wall analogy, because I know of no way in which logic creates a real mechanism). Logic does not at all entail the law “the complex survives” that led to the complexity we find in the living world. It only says “the survivor survives,” depending on the conditions. The conditions are the laws of physics and the initial state, and those are what did the work.

Almog is indeed arguing “if there were no logic.” He says that if there were no logic, evolution would not happen, and therefore logic gets part of the credit. So let him give logic part of the credit for everything.

Yishai, it’s not the survivor that survives, but the fit that survives.

Y.D.,
“The fit survive” means fit for survival under the conditions that existed. If it’s a hot period, then whoever works in that; if it’s cold, then the opposite; if an asteroid hits the earth, then fit for that, and so on and so forth. In other words, it’s the survivor.
All logic says is that given an initial state and deterministic laws, the final state is necessary, and that is simply a tautology that follows from the definition of deterministic laws.

1) Wow, Yishai, I can’t believe it! It seems to me I’m starting to understand a bit.
What you’re basically claiming is that natural selection without the laws of nature states an ordinary logical proposition (“soft,” in my terminology), not a real one, namely: “Whoever survived is the one who was fit to survive.”
And only once the laws of nature enter the picture does the sentence become: “the strong and the complex survive.” Then it follows that the laws of nature are exactly what poured “the strong and the complex” into “the survivor,” right?
2) Your argument is correct only on the assumption that most laws of nature would not pour the content “the complex and strong” into the tautological sentence. What is that argument based on? Is that itself the fine-tuning argument?
* Because seemingly fine-tuning is not only the only thing that would pour the content “the complex and strong” into the sentence (as opposed to content like “the green survive,” “the round survive,” and the like), but the only thing that would introduce any empirical content into the sentence at all. And then again it seems that the laws do not directly dictate “the strong and the complex,” but only in a very indirect way that is hard to attribute to the laws themselves. In fine-tuning itself there is no command to insert into the theory the content “the complex and the strong survive.” Fine-tuning only opens the door for the tautology to begin operating; it does not really dictate to it that the complex survive.
Huge thanks in advance to your honor.

In other words: could there be laws of nature that would cause the weak to survive? Seemingly strong > weak is logical, no?

1. Yes.
2. Yes. I don’t know how to propose laws of physics that would lead to “the green survive” or anything else, but even today there is no law “the strong survive,” and it is hard to characterize the group of creatures that survived at all. A mammoth and a tyrannosaurus are stronger than a mosquito, but they did not survive. Whoever survives is whoever fit the conditions at that time. And in any case, whoever survives is whoever fits the conditions. Presumably if the laws were changed slightly, such that complex creatures would still arise, they would be different creatures from those in our world—creatures that in our world would not survive, whereas the creatures of our world would not survive there. In other words, the relation between a creature that survives and one that does not survive is not transitive, and therefore it is not worthwhile to use the word “strong.” If we place two creatures in world X and in world Y, different outcomes are possible. This is true even in our own world at different times. It may be that creatures that went extinct would manage fine in the world today, but under the conditions that existed in their own time they did not manage.
As for our issue, we are discussing whether complexity in the world requires a designer, and the question is whether complex creatures have an advantage. Say, whether living things have an advantage over inanimate things. It turns out that on Earth life has an advantage, but presumably if we send stones and elephants to the moon, it is the stones that will survive. I find it hard to see any inherent advantage to complexity. If someone wants to argue that there is such a thing, he is welcome to do so, but the burden of proof is on him.

Thank you!
I still didn’t fully understand where all your detailed explanation fits logically into the argument from complexity.
If the laws of our universe create a situation where the fit = the complex, then I would understand: a complex thing is in principle rare, and by God’s creating laws that give a complex thing an advantage, He caused a rare result to occur.
But in your last line you say there is no inherent advantage to complexity, so it isn’t clear why to view the laws of nature as producing “the complex survives,” since the laws did not replace “the fit” with “the complex.” So in a certain sense, the fact that natural selection led to complex creatures is “chance” and not a result dictated in advance, no?
In short, there seems to be some contradiction in your previous comment.

Yishai,
First of all, I’ll say that you really do explain excellently—well done.
1) I agree that logic is necessary. There is no way to imagine what would be “without logic.” There’s no need to make my demand to assign some of the credit for complexity to logic depend on the idea that it might not have existed. Precisely because logic is given and necessary, the credit it receives is not attributable to God.
2) Here is a thought experiment for you.
I built a tiny and relatively simple robot. I installed in it a system for producing robots (replication), enabled the robot to pass on its traits to its child (genetics), and ensured that each time the robot replicates, it makes a robot with a small change from the original (mutations). I built ten such simple robots (relatively simple, as stated below), placed them in a closed room, and left the robotics profession.
You enter the room billions of years later and discover that there are dozens of insanely sophisticated robots there, with advanced sensors and crazy functions.
All these systems were not in the original simple robots that I built.
Don’t you feel that “reality” takes away some of my credit for the complexity of the robots? Would you enthusiastically shake my hand and say, “Well done on the incredibly sophisticated robots you created”? It seems obvious to me that people would not value me that highly merely because reality took my simple thing and by itself turned it into monstrous complexity.
It may even be that I have no idea how to build such sophisticated robots, and only because of their natural selection did such complex products emerge.
Bottom line: natural selection takes some of the credit away from the creator of the first simple robot.
3) In other words: throw weak and strong creatures into an arena, and you will get, with logical certainty, an increase in the complexity of the products. You did not cause the complexity; that is just the nature of battle arenas: the strong survive.

Almog,
That’s an excellent example. There are two possibilities here. One is that you built a simple robot without any intention, and by chance it turned out to be exactly the kind of robot that under the given conditions became more and more sophisticated. That sounds like one fantastically unlikely coincidence, no less than a storm turning a junkyard into a Boeing. The other possibility is that you tried to build something like artificial intelligence—that is, a system with learning ability that succeeds in improving itself—and you succeeded brilliantly. If I were to open the room, I would definitely assume that the second possibility is the correct one, namely, that you designed it (even if you didn’t know exactly what would come out, your intention was to build robots that would improve themselves). Even if you were to tell me that you weren’t trying to do that at all and it just happened by chance, I’d be very skeptical.
After all, there have been attempts to write programs with learning ability, but the success has not been through the roof. If I encounter one like that, I certainly won’t assume it’s a student exercise written at 2 a.m. because the due date was the next day and by chance he came up with something excellent; rather, I’ll assume the best minds in computer science worked hard on it.
After all, even you would agree that if you built such a robot according to your example, presumably when I open the door after billions of years I would find no active robot inside. I estimate the probability of finding an active robot there at more or less 0 (well, it can’t be less, so a little more—let’s just throw out 10 to the minus billion).
You are welcome to throw creatures onto the moon and check whether you get an increase in complexity. You can try it on the sun or on Mars too. And those are, after all, stars/planets that exist within our physical system. If the gravitational constant were twice what it is now, presumably there would be no stars at all and no conditions whatsoever for the survival of complex creatures. Someone worked very hard so that in our system it would be possible to throw in creatures and get more complex creatures out.

Yosef,
Is there an advantage to complexity? If we assume evolution is a deterministic process (contrary to what creationists think), then presumably under the conditions that prevailed on Earth in the last millions of years there is an advantage to complexity.
(The second possibility is that there is no advantage to complexity, and someone created it by deliberate intervention.)
Under other laws of physics, planets would not arise at all, or they would arise with conditions that do not encourage complexity. The fact that such a planet remained is thanks to the tuning of the laws (or, as stated, thanks to direct intervention).

Almog,
There is a problem with describing the evolutionary process as a struggle for existence, because it implies that the process itself is a zero-sum game among the different players, where there are winners and losers, but no possibility that both sides win. That claim is contradicted by various situations of symbiosis, such as the one between bacteria and humans, among other cases.

So what did you mean by the sentence: “I find it hard to see any inherent advantage to complexity. If someone wants to argue such a thing, he is welcome, but the burden of proof is on him”?
Did you mean a logical-necessary advantage? (in which case it would not be by God?)

Yishai,
You wrote: “After all, even you would agree that if you build such a robot according to your example, presumably when I open the door after billions of years I would find no active robot inside.” And I ask: why??
After all, that is the very claim of evolution: give me conditions that allow a simple robot to exist (for example, that there not be fire in the room), install in the robot a reproduction system and mutations, and with certainty you will get complex products. Why do you estimate the probability as negligible?
Likewise in evolution: give me conditions that allow a protein chain to exist (fine-tuning), give it replication ability and mutations, and after billions of years you’ll get a tiger. There is no need for additional conditions.

Yosef,
Yes, I meant a logically necessary advantage.

Almog,
First, I hope you’ll agree with me that as a matter of fact there is no such robot. Presumably you’ll also agree that people would be delighted to make such a thing.
The claim of evolution is that under certain conditions evolution will occur (though it is not completely clear what the conditions are, and the claim that the conditions existed is really only derived from the fact that evolution did occur). The question is what exactly the conditions are.
As for your robot, I very much doubt you could build a robot that succeeds in building another robot. And even if so, a third generation is already really imaginary. Think about all the malfunctions that could happen along the way and you’ll understand by yourself that it’s imaginary. You need to exploit the conditions really well in order to succeed.
And even if you did manage such a thing (and again, it would already have been done if it were possible, but we are very far from that), it would only be because you managed to understand the conditions that would make it possible. That still doesn’t mean you could do it under any conditions. Suppose a universe with different laws (in a simulation, so you can play in it even though you couldn’t exist in it), and suppose that means only very simple atoms exist in it (occasionally, by chance, a more complex element is formed but immediately breaks down), as would probably happen in most cases if you changed the fine-tuning. In such a world you could not build any robot. Someone tuned the laws so that such a thing would even be possible.

But you also claimed that even if there already is a replicating robot (with all the craziness that involves), it still isn’t likely that something complex would emerge. Why? Why should something break in the second generation? Replication is replication, including the capacity for replication now.

Thank you very much, Yishai!
So it seems to me the central question is whether there is an inherent advantage to complexity. I always felt that there is, and from that came my perception that “the strong and the complex survive” is a logical rule that weakens faith.
You are simply claiming that there is no such thing.
But in my opinion, even if there is no inherent logical advantage, it is fairly clear that in most systems of laws, the complex is preferable to the weak. Of course, only in a place where both can survive (not on the moon). So there are no conditions in which evolution would not progress toward the complex.
And seemingly, once again, we have not gained much by saying that this is not really a logical law.

Forgive me, I’ve now thought again and it seems to me that there really is an inherent advantage to complexity.
After all, we are talking about complexity in the sense of sophisticated functions. And surely there is a necessary advantage to a creature with an eye, with a brain, with hearing, and so on.
What do you say?

Almog,
The fact that in principle it is supposed to replicate does not mean it works in practice. I have a refrigerator, and it really does refrigerate—does that mean it will work forever?
Just think about the materials it would need in order to replicate. You need to think of a robot built from materials that would be sufficiently available for replication over billions of years. Presumably that means they need to be decomposable/processable (which basically means tiny robots that break them down). Think about the energy they would need over billions of years. You need to plan all these things in advance.

Yosef,
Why doesn’t a living creature have an advantage on the moon? Because the conditions there do not allow it to survive at all. An eye has an advantage only under very specific conditions.

I’m talking about a place where a complex biological creature survives. In such a place, it is obvious that a creature twice as complex as it is has a better chance of surviving.

I’m not at all sure that’s true. The fact is that there were complex creatures that did not survive (dinosaurs) and non-complex creatures that did.
But first create such a place, and then we’ll talk. After all, the whole story is to produce conditions in which a complex biological creature survives.