Question

Hello Rabbi,
 
After watching your discussion with Aviv Franco, an interesting point occurred to me that perhaps could explain Aviv’s position in a more orderly way.
 
Following the problem of infinite regress in the claim that everything has a cause, you said that only things within our experience require a cause, and therefore the singularity point, which is within our experience, has a cause; and if that cause is not within our experience, then we have solved the problem. Aviv, by contrast, argued that maybe we simply do not know what the cause is. You answered him, rightly, that if one person gives an answer and another does not give an answer but merely says, “maybe we don’t know,” then it is more reasonable to listen to the one who actually offers an explanation.
 
Now, one can look at things differently. In my opinion, your words contain a prior assumption—namely, that the singularity point is something within our experience. I think there are pretty good reasons to think it is not: it is infinitely dense, which means that its time passes at an “infinite” rate; that is, one cannot speak about it in terms of “before” and “after.” Beyond that, we are unable to find for it a cause that is within our experience. And more generally, we cannot really say that it is something within our experience, since we were not there when it existed. From all this it follows that perhaps it is not within our experience at all. Therefore, if it is not within our experience, then Aviv’s claim stands—we do not know what the cause of the singularity point is, because it itself is already beyond our experience.
 
So now we seem to have two possibilities before us: either the singularity point is something we are capable of understanding, that is, something within our experience, or it is not. If it is within our experience, then to explain it we need an additional entity—God. If it is not within our experience, then we do not need God. It follows that according to Occam’s razor, God can be “cut” out of the equation.
 
Or, in other words, Aviv indeed says, “I don’t know” how a singularity point can exist. But even in the position of the other side, which wants to offer an explanation, there is still an “I don’t know” regarding how this entity called God exists. So in truth, neither side explains the matter; both are escaping to the borders of “this is already something we do not know, something beyond our experience.” Aviv is humble enough to say that he does not know the singularity point, whereas the believing side presumes to claim that it does know it, and therefore needs an additional entity called “God.”
 
Truth be told, the same way one could also refute the cosmoteleological argument. But it seems nicer to me to refute it by means of the theory of parallel universes. But that’s for another time:)
 
Happy and amusing Festival of the Giving of the Torah to all the Jewish people!