Q&A: Eliyahu Leibowitz’s Objection to the Physico-Theological Proof
Eliyahu Leibowitz’s Objection to the Physico-Theological Proof
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In the book The First Being you bring Eliyahu Leibowitz’s objection, in which he argues that the conclusion that the world has a Creator is different from the conclusion that a painting was made by a painter, because with a painting our prior experience teaches us that there must be a painter, whereas regarding the universe we have no prior experience.
You explained his words as meaning that, in his view, reasoning about the universe is grounding the unknown in the unknown, and grounding the unknown in the unknown is illegitimate. But as I understand it, his claim is exactly the opposite: the conclusion that the world has a Creator just as a picture has a painter is grounding the unknown in the known. It is a psychological phenomenon in which we take a familiar phenomenon and use it to explain another phenomenon about which we have no experience, thereby grounding it in the known. If so, the question returns to its place: perhaps the universe has some other explanation unknown to us, just as the phenomenon of the tides has an explanation different from what was known in Newton’s time.
Thank you very much
Answer
Incorrect. You are reversing the expression from its accepted meaning (both in my usage and generally). Grounding in the known means looking for an explanation of an unfamiliar phenomenon by means of a familiar mechanism. Leibowitz is looking for a familiar explanation, and I showed there that science does not work that way.
Beyond that, the universe does not and cannot have another explanation, because the claim that God created it is not an explanation. There are two possibilities: either someone created it or no one did. If we rule out the possibility that it has no creator, then the only remaining possibility is that it does have one. That’s all. Who that being is that created the universe is a different question, and this proof does not address it. So there is no room here for “another explanation” (beyond there being an explanation or there not being one, there is no third possibility). I also explained this in the book itself.
Discussion on Answer
That is really a strange piece of pilpul. By that logic, explaining something with arithmetic would also be grounding in the known. The fact that a complex thing does not arise on its own is a logical principle, not something drawn from the familiar world (its source is not experiential but logical). Just as I use logic and mathematics, so too I use basic logical principles. That is not called grounding in the known. Of course, you can call that too “grounding in the known,” but then you empty the concept of its content.
There is a third option: that the statement “the world was created” is meaningless.
When we look at particulars in the world, we are used to seeing that a complex thing is created by a designer, and when we stand before the universe we encounter a complex phenomenon and do not know whether or how it was designed, and then we adopt the model of thought familiar to us—that something designed must be created by a designer, just as a plane is designed by an engineer and a painting is designed by a painter. This is grounding in the known in the sense of a familiar form of thinking: a designed thing must have a designer. If so, specifically the conclusion that the world has a designer is grounding in the known.