Q&A: God Plays Dice – Clarifications
God Plays Dice – Clarifications
Question
Hello Rabbi,
2 questions regarding the book "God Plays Dice":
- From what I understood, basically there is no weight to claims about whether it is likely that something will happen or not happen in the evolutionary process. The only weight those claims have is if we ignore the system of laws that drives the process, and then a question like "what is the chance that inert genetic material would form" has meaning, since the chance is negligible. Or really, any stage that is more sophisticated than the previous stage is statistically unlikely, because in terms of the number of possible mutations versus the fact that we need a mutation with greater survivability, that is very unlikely (as you wrote, why wouldn’t an ape with a trunk evolve, etc.). But the moment we are talking about laws of nature that drive the process, this whole discussion becomes meaningless. Because then there is no longer any "likelihood" or "chance" that things will happen one way or another, and nothing is more or less likely. Because once there are laws governing the process, the chance that something will happen is 100%, since this is a deterministic process (and if so, why is the book so full of these comparisons of likely/unlikely that such-and-such would happen?). Therefore the only question left is: if you see the above process as a "positive" process, and you understand that there are rigid laws that govern it, then who created those laws? Did I understand correctly? And is it really true that once we understand that there are laws of nature here, then the whole discussion about the "likelihood" of processes is meaningless? And if so, why discuss it at all? (Maybe at least up to the stage of man as we know him, where perhaps because we believe in free choice there is room to discuss whether it is "likely" or "unlikely" that this or that trait would develop in us, but the point, if I understand correctly, is not whether it is likely or unlikely but whether it is at all plausible and whether it has some sort of advantage.)
- You wrote in another article about evolution: "It is important to understand that such an explanation cannot be given in terms of evolution, for we are not familiar with the formation, random or otherwise, of systems of laws of nature, nor with their natural selection and genetics. Moreover, even if such an explanation is found, by its very nature it will be formulated in terms of other laws of nature, second-order ones (which are responsible for the formation of first-order systems of laws of nature). The question will then simply move on to those laws of nature (who created them, and how does their character allow for the formation of special and finely tuned laws of nature like those in our world). The only way to deal with this argument is by means of what is called the ‘anthropic argument.’ This argument suggests that perhaps there were many attempts in which systems of different laws of nature were created, and we are in the one experiment that succeeded in producing life like ours." Doesn’t the anthropic argument itself also fall into the problem of "second-order laws of nature" that you describe? Isn’t it itself some mechanism, some "law of nature," that creates universes, and therefore doesn’t the difficulty apply to it as well?
- A small comment. As I understand it, the Rabbi’s strongest argument focuses on the "argument outside the laws," the physical constants, etc. I also saw in several places that the Rabbi speaks about a law as a physical "entity," and the law is only a description of it, and I assume that is also connected to the issue. I just wanted to say that in my humble opinion it would be worthwhile to expand on these topics, since they are the core of the proof and they are not sufficiently clear. What are physical constants? What are they? What do they "create," and how? What does the Rabbi mean when he speaks about "laws" and "entities"? True, I am not a great scholar, so maybe the lack of understanding is mine when it comes to this subject, but I really think it is not explained in enough detail and it seems to be taken for granted that the reader understands the topic well. It’s a shame to understand the Rabbi’s whole proof, but then once the discussion turns to the "laws," you don’t really understand what is being discussed. Maybe it would be worth expanding on this point so it can be properly understood and thus complete the explanation appropriately. I would also be happy if the Rabbi could direct me to a source that explains this better.
Thank you very much, and have a good month.
Answer
- I discuss it in order to show just how special the laws are. When the process, taken on its own, is very rare (one out of a huge number of possibilities), then the laws that generate it are special.
- No, because we are talking about the random formation of a huge number of different types of systems of laws, and one of them happens by chance to turn out in a way that allows life. Of course, that will raise the question of who the mechanism is that creates such universes. That is already a cosmological argument, not a physico-theological one.
- What I wrote is that the laws are not entities. They describe the mode of operation of an entity or entities. Therefore the laws are not the cause of anything. At most they describe causal processes. Exactly like in the example of the factory or the washing machine. The laws do not explain anything; they only describe the way the manager or designer operates.
Discussion on Answer
I liked your question, Aleph. Let’s see how the Rabbi responds.
(A small hint: many pens have already been broken on this site in arguments over this question—everyone solves it in his own way.)
I didn’t understand the question. Suppose you roll dice and get the result 5 a thousand times in a row. That is a rare case. If the die were fair, the probability of that would be 6 to the power of minus one thousand. Now I claim that because that probability is so small, it is more likely that the die is not fair—that is, that someone made it so that those particular results would come out. On the assumption that the die is not fair, there is nothing special about this result. It is completely expected, since that is how the die is built. But it still makes sense to discuss the rarity of the result, because that is what determines how clear it is to me that the die is not fair.
That is exactly the same with regard to the creation of the world. You asked about my discussion in this case, which is conducted as though there were no laws. Indeed, I discuss it as though it happened by chance. My claim is that if it is random, then the probability of it is very small. From that comes evidence that it is not random. In other words, there is apparently a guiding hand (the laws are not like an arbitrary fair die, but rather something someone created intentionally). The rarity of the case we got is no longer relevant, of course, once the laws are not random, but it is important in order to see how clear it is that the laws are indeed not random.
If what you mean to ask is that any sequence of a thousand rolls would have yielded a rare result (with the same probability of 6 to the power of minus one thousand), meaning that there is nothing special about the result of a thousand 5s, then yes—much ink has already been spilled here over that. It is not correct, as I explained in column 144 and in the talkbacks there.
1) Okay. If so, then we have to view our case as a rare case. But every case in itself has exactly the same probability and is rare in exactly the same way. If so, does this argument still carry weight? Any system that would have been formed would have been rare in the same way.