Q&A: Evolution
Evolution
Question
Have a good week!
How is the Rabbi?
I’d be glad to ask several questions on the topic of the creation of the world:
1. The Rabbi wrote that the solution to the fact that the physical constants are so precise is not plausible if one says it is because there are infinitely many universes, since how do we know to assume infinitely many different laws of nature? My question is whether one can apply the multiverse model so that there is no probabilistic question about the process of evolution itself, since there would be infinitely many attempts in parallel universes. (And here one cannot answer that there are strange laws of nature, since the constants would remain the same and only a probabilistic possibility would be given for evolutionary development.)
2. What is the philosophical problem with saying that there is an infinite regress of a chain of causes and there was no creation? (The argument for the eternity of the world, but in a dynamic rather than static form.)
3. How do we know to assume at all that there must be a first cause? Maybe there is no causality at all (somewhat like Hume’s claim), and in practice we only behave as if there is, but we have no basis to infer from this the existence of the cause of causes?
4. The Rabbi wrote that even Dawkins has to admit the existence of a cause of itself, and if so, that itself is God. My question is that there is an essential difference between such a God and the real God, because a self-caused being only points to something that “stops infinite regresses,” but not to an intelligent entity. If so, that is not a definition of a living God, but only of something that exists (somewhat like Spinoza’s God, and not even Aristotle’s God). (Admittedly this is not difficult against the teleological formulation, only against the cosmological one and similar arguments.)
Thank you very much!
Answer
1. How do we know to assume infinitely many different laws? I don’t recall writing anything like that. I wrote that it is unreasonable to assume the existence of masses of universes that we do not see. That is true for evolution as well. I also wrote that we know of no generator that creates different laws randomly, and that indeed is not relevant to evolution. But in any case, once one reaches the conclusion that the laws were created intentionally (by God), why claim regarding evolution that there are infinitely many universes rather than that God arranged that too?
2. I explained in the second booklet (and in the second talk in The First Existent) what the problem is with an infinite regress.
3. The straightforward assumption is that everything has a cause. Anyone claiming otherwise bears the burden of proof. In no other context would you accept the claim that something happens without a cause.
4. I also answered this in The First Existent. Someone who creates laws is someone with intention and intelligence. Beyond that, once we have proven the existence of such a thing, and a revelation occurs in which He presents Himself to us, the revelation completes the picture about Him.
Discussion on Answer
Then the question comes back: who created Him? Laws are supposed to be the product of intelligence (a legislator). If the being that created them is not intelligent, then it itself must be the product of intelligence.
Even if you define the laws as a description of matter (I have no objection to that. I didn’t say they are entities), the question still remains: who legislated and created them? Now we will ask: who created the matter of which these are the descriptions?
Thanks!
And why must there be a creator at all? Maybe everything just exists, and that’s it.
Must the creator be a living “entity”? Maybe it is enough that it simply exists.
Why does anything exist at all? (I direct this question toward God as well, and I am not asking how or who created Him, but why He exists at all.)
All these questions are answered in my book The First Existent.
Good morning!
As for causality, this is Hume’s problem of induction; and even if we do not accept it in everyday life, still, when it comes to a theory of everything, shouldn’t we take it into account?
Thank you very much!
If so, then I’ll ask further: perhaps that thing which stops the regress, which we call God, did not create the laws actively, but rather they flow from Him (somewhat like Aristotle’s claim)?
And let me ask it another way: how do we know to define the laws as having meaning or as an idea of the cosmos? Maybe they are just a description of matter itself and are not something additional to it (just as one might define the concept of number and idea merely as a description of matter, in line with nominalism)?