Q&A: Regarding Appendix A in "God Plays Dice"
Regarding Appendix A in "God Plays Dice"
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I feel compelled to begin by saying that I enjoy the Rabbi’s writings מאוד; the Rabbi enriches my world and broadens my horizons.
I wanted to ask about Appendix A in the book "God Plays Dice."
I’ll ask briefly. The Rabbi presented Richard Taylor’s proof in the appendix, and at the end brought objections to his approach and rejected them. I want to ask about the rejection of the last objection ("the most substantial and fundamental"). The Rabbi offered three rebuttals, and I have questions about all three. Regarding the first rebuttal, which says that the theory of evolution itself was created as a result of our basic assumptions and our observations, so why should we trust them? If so, then trust in the theory itself yields the needed conclusion—namely, the understanding that we secretly believe that someone created our system of thought.
About this rebuttal of the Rabbi’s I am puzzled. After all, the Rabbi mentioned in the objection itself that what survives is precisely what functions well, including our systems of thought and our senses; and therefore it could be that trust in the theory itself does not yield the assumption that someone designed our systems, but rather trust in the theory confirms trust in the theory itself when the element of natural selection is added to it.
On the basis of my question, the Rabbi’s second argument could also arise, and based on that I ask: why can it not be that we believe in the theory when it has reached completion? That is, it could be that the trust we place does not confirm our belief in God but our belief in the theory of evolution when we are at its peak.
If my claims are correct, then we are left with only the third refutation: that perfect vision is not always what is best suited to our survival. Indeed, reliability and survival are not synonymous. But it seems likely to me that reliability and survival do in fact go together almost all the time. And when this refutation is left standing by itself, the argument seems very weak.
I would be glad if the Rabbi would explain the refutations to me, if I did not understand them properly, and what validity the proof has after my questions.
Once again I’ll say that I enjoy the Rabbi’s writings very much. Thank you very much.
Answer
If you’re compelled, then say it. 🙂
I didn’t understand your claim about my first answer. Why should I trust a theory that was created on the basis of senses that themselves were formed randomly? You explain this by saying that only what is fit survives, but that itself is a result of the theory that I am supposedly not to accept.
I didn’t understand the second claim. Evolution is not a substitute for God. He created it.
You understood the third, and I don’t see what is wrong with it. You have no basis at all for assuming that your senses are reliable. Even your assumption that they are usually reliable is based on evolution, which is itself a theory created by and out of trust in the senses.
Discussion on Answer
What does it mean to trust a theory that you do not know? Where do you know it from? Regarding God, I can say that I encounter Him in one way or another, non-sensorily, and therefore I have trust in Him. But trust in evolution is nothing more than something embedded in me, and as such, once I become aware of it, I ought to reject it. I also have an impulse embedded in me to speak slander.
I still didn’t fully understand in what way belief in blind evolution and natural selection is different from God in this sense. Can you sharpen that?
Seemingly, a claim of hidden trust in evolution and natural selection is equivalent to a claim of hidden trust in a designer who designed me, and therefore what I see is indeed reliable.
What does it mean to trust a theory that you don’t know? The same question can be asked about what you tried to say—that the very fact that you trust your senses testifies to your belief in God who designed them. What does hidden belief in a designer mean even before you are aware of that option, after all a person trusts his senses before he thinks about God?
Why, regarding God, can I say that I encounter Him in some way that is not sensory? What is that encounter you are talking about?
What is the difference between blind evolution and belief in God with regard to my basic assumptions that become revealed to me as a result of my trusting my senses? I didn’t understand why trust in the senses cannot lead to the conclusion that I believe I am at the end of the clarifying process (as an alternative to your suggestion, which is belief in a designer).
?
There is a difference between an object or entity and a theory. I do not understand how trust in a theory that is entirely unknown to you is possible. Is it embedded in your very bones? So who says it is true? Belief in the existence of an entity is the result of an encounter with it. In any case, an encounter with Him is not the result of sight. One cannot see Him. Therefore any talk of an encounter with Him is always non-sensory.
Sorry for harping on this, but I’d be happy to understand it fully. I agree: belief in an entity is the result of an encounter with it. But what follows from your confidence in the senses is not belief in God alone, but belief that God created you and therefore designed you correctly, and therefore you can trust your senses—and that is a theory. In any case, it is not an entity, and so your distinction is still not clear to me. Especially since this move requires logic, and on that basis one can ask: where do you get confidence in your systems of thought? And therefore the theory that you tried to validate because of your confidence in the senses also falls into the same slot as the theory of evolution, in the sense that we know it through a system in which we place trust (our systems of thought), and one can ask where that trust comes from. And if the answer is belief in God and that He made you and therefore the systems should be trusted (I do not understand why I should trust this system that caused me to understand all this), I do not see why, to the same extent, the theory of blind evolution and belief that we are at its end cannot be the conclusion derived from the basic assumption that we trust our senses.
First, even if you trust evolution, the coming-into-being of evolution itself still requires explanation. This is a “philosophical” proof (as distinct from a “theological” one) for the existence of God. I explained in the book that there is a pincer movement here.
As for the matter itself, if I came to believe in God and He reveals Himself to me to tell me that He created the world and me, there is a basis for accepting that. Beyond that, if I have no trust in my thinking (not in some specific content of it, like evolution, but in the tools themselves), there is no point in beginning the discussion.
I don’t understand. Now you’ve abandoned your proof and moved to the proof that the coming-into-being of evolution requires explanation. Even though that is a good claim in my opinion, I was asking about the claim in Appendix A.
I wrote two arguments here. In the book the first one contains an either-way argument, as I wrote here.
That’s what I have to say.
It may be that I tried to be brief and therefore didn’t explain myself well enough. My claim was: who says that the trust I place in my senses necessarily testifies to my hidden belief in God, and not to my hidden belief in the theory? In other words, it could be that I have a hidden conceptual assumption that the theory of evolution is true, and natural selection as well, and that I am (in my hidden consciousness, of course) at the end of the developmental axis, at least with respect to my systems of thought and my senses. And my hidden trust in the theory is expressed in the fact that I trust my senses, because they are the result of natural selection (in that hidden consciousness under discussion, of course). And since I trust my senses and my systems of thought, I naturally go on and discover the theory of evolution before my eyes through observations, and clarify that same theory that I believed in from the outset, and which was the hidden reason for my trust in my senses.
Until this objection, belief in the senses could testify only to belief in God, but now that the option of natural selection has been opened up, it could be that this very theory itself lies deep within my basic assumptions, and on that deep basis I trust my senses, my systems of thought, and my basic assumptions.