Q&A: The Proof from the Scientist
The Proof from the Scientist
Question
With God’s help,
Hello to the honored Rabbi,
I would be glad to hear the Rabbi’s opinion about the proof here. It isn’t overly formal in its wording, but I hope it is still understandable.
~Can there be an atheist scientist?~
Part of the defining features of a scientist is the belief that the things around us are not self-caused (or caused for no reason), but rather that there are causes that explain them. For example, when the apple fell from the tree, Newton understood that there was some force that caused it to fall.
But an atheist assumes that the reality around us was not created by an intelligent cause that made it this way rather than another way; rather, the world can be treated as a random contingent reality.
But if it is indeed a random reality, then there is no reason to assume that it would operate in a way that matches how our understanding works, such as the principle of causality together with analogies and abductive inferences, Occam’s razor, and so on.
So the very fact that we assume the principle of induction applies to the world around us means that we are implicitly assuming that the world around us was caused by an intelligent entity.
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Also, I had a question about the Faith notebooks.
In Notebook 3, the Rabbi made extensive use of the anthropic principle to illustrate complexity. But I wanted to ask why he did not bring a much simpler proof for the uniqueness of the world דווקא from the world’s simplicity, as emerges from Occam’s razor.
For example, Newton’s second law, which links force and mass, is presented in linear form. But in a random world, we might have thought it would appear in any other form—for example under a very complicated equation (or not even in the form of a function at all)—such that we would never have managed to think of it. Is this not a significantly better example than the complexity of the world?
Answer
These matters were discussed in the third and fourth notebooks. The question of whether a “scoundrel” (= an atheist who says in his heart, “There is no God”) is possible was discussed in the first notebook.
The principle of causality is not a property of a scientist but an assumption of his. He can qualify it and say that its validity is limited. In any case, this is discussed at length in the notebooks.
After that, you return to the argument from the fourth notebook, part 2.
The anthropic principle does not illustrate complexity. On the contrary, it assumes complexity. The complexity can be taken from any source you like, including the laws of nature. That is what I did in the notebooks. However, one can argue about the simplicity of Newton’s second law. There could have been a law stating that the speed of all objects is always constant. That is simpler. And so on.
Discussion on Answer
Not exactly. A scientist can be a scientist even without the principle of causality in its ontic sense. He can relate to gravity as a law and not as a force (when there are two masses, they are attracted to one another, without getting into the cause that produces this). That is correlation and not causality.
Beyond that, many argue that causality is within the laws themselves (they themselves describe the causal relation), but the laws themselves are not subject to the principle of causality.
Okay, but one can still raise the difficulty regarding the principle of induction and Occam’s razor.
And certainly regarding the sense of “why” that envelops science? The assumption that there is an answer behind the “mystery”—all these are assumptions that behind the things we observe there is an explanation, and a good explanation. But in a random world there is no reason to assume that.
And to that they will tell you that they do not assume it, but rather investigate whether it is so. Fortunately for us, sometimes they find that it is.
And then the claim arises: what initial assumption would they even have had to start looking for this at all, if they assumed the world is random? Even winning the lottery several times in a row is compatible with the assumption of causes and so on in a random world.
Rather, it is proven that they did in fact think there was a reasonably good chance that they would find a proper explanation. And if they assumed that, doesn’t that mean only that they believed in the intelligibility of the world? And that it isn’t so random…
In order to look for an explanation, you need some initial foothold, but in a random world there is no reason to think that behind things there will be causes (the chance of that is far lower than consecutive lottery wins).
Rather, they assumed that there was indeed a reasonable chance they would find an explanation. But if so, that is a sign that they believed the world operates with intelligibility and simplicity. But if that is so, doesn’t that mean the world is not random…?
And this somewhat resembles the famous joke used by outreach people about that person who was looking for parking in Tel Aviv, searched and searched and couldn’t find any, and promised the Holy One, blessed be He, that if he found parking he would put on tefillin, etc. He had just finished making the promise when a car pulled out right next to him, and he said: Thanks God, but I’ve already managed on my own.
In any case, the only possible way, as I understand it, to argue against the proof is to say that since nature created us, it created a fit between our thinking and the way nature operates—but that sounds to me like a rather dubious explanation.
In the end, we have returned to the proof from the laws. Notebook 3.
My claim is more in the style of the fourth notebook and not the first notebook.
In any case, it is true that the principle of causality is not a property of the scientist but his assumption, but without the principle of causality a scientist has no ability to be called a scientist. At least not like the kind we assume today.
Even when the scientist applies the principle of causality to the world, there is still no reason to assume that under a random world it would actually work. And so too regarding the principle of induction.
And even if we assume that there are certain confirmations nowadays for these principles, the atheist scientist still could not claim that this is how it will always be, because it may be that just as a cellular automaton is random, so too the laws of nature in our world may be stable for a few thousand years and then change.
In short, the main claim is that a random world can behave at any moment and change like a random world, and a person who does not believe cannot claim anything about the world’s regularity or its behavior.