Q&A: Who Designed the Designer
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Who Designed the Designer
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi!
How can one deal with Dawkins' claim: "Who designed the designer"? By turning God into something complex, and therefore needing to assume that He too has his own creator?
Answer
See the third booklet. The assumption that a complex thing requires a creator applies only to entities of the kind familiar to us, which require a cause external to them. Without that, you end up with an infinite regress.
Discussion on Answer
As I wrote, unless you assume a difference also with regard to the formation of complexity, you fall into an infinite regress. Just as He is His own cause, so too He is the cause of His own complexity.
The Rabbi suggested the idea of primacy—and that fits for me with the assumption that there is no cause external to Him. But regarding the assumption that God is an unfamiliar kind of complexity, I don't understand: is the whole basis of Dawkins' claim that God is material, and therefore in the end there is no fundamental difference between us and God?
And also, is it possible to suggest the assumption that perhaps within the concept of perfection, God also oversees imperfection—complexity?