Q&A: The Physico-Theological Argument 👎
The Physico-Theological Argument 👎
Question
Good afternoon,
contrary to the common claim that something complex points to someone who aimed it that way, there is also the possibility that someone simply repeated conditions that could create it, with a tiny probability, very many times.
As a response, for example, to the idea of a factory that runs by itself and therefore probably has a designer, one could give the analogy of some classic miracle story that is almost certainly the result of enough attempts in which a coincidence could happen, and then people notice only the successful case. Any unusual case can be classified into one of the two causes according to the features of that unusual case.
Therefore, when we look at our universe and see something very, very unusual, two possible ways that this unusualness came about can initially suggest themselves. How do we choose? We don’t choose. Both ways are possible. In scenarios one can imagine, like a miracle story or a factory, it is relatively easy to classify, but regarding the creation of universes we do not understand; how do those who decide for one side know whether universes tend more to come into being intelligently or to come into being in very large numbers?
In short, both an intelligent creator and very many universes are proven only by an indirect conclusion about their existence and from one of their properties observed in the universe, and both are sufficient explanations; because of our lack of familiarity with the creation of universes, it is impossible to decide between them.
Answer
That is the claim of the anthropic principle. I discussed this at length in the third booklet and in my book The First Existent.
Discussion on Answer
If we want to go formal, as in Column 144, which is very close to the subject if not directly about it, then we can talk about what appears on page 5 (the line with footnote number 5) and is explained on page 6:
the choice that P(A|B2) be one divided by the number of universes.
The meaning of the notation is, just as a reminder, the probability that given a universe-generator there will be a complex universe.
The whole point of the article stands or falls on this, and it says there:
“The assumption that there exists a random generator of universes has a very low probability because we have not seen many other universes that it created besides ours. By contrast, an intelligent factor creates exactly the world it is interested in, and therefore it does not bother me that there are no other universes.”
The rest of the paragraph was not clear, and I’m not sure it is even relevant. A random generator with enough attempts will almost certainly create a rare universe at least like ours. And the paragraph also makes a claim about P(B2), and that is exactly what needs to be proven, so this is begging the question.
A. About every possibility you could say that there were infinitely many possibilities and therefore it happened.
B. You assume that one cannot attach an a priori probability between hypotheses, but that leads to many absurdities.
The Rabbi chose Ockham’s razor: a simple thing without a boundary is considered simpler than a thing with a boundary.
Think about how before Einstein people did not think speed had some particular limit; only necessity led to the idea that it has a limit like the speed of light. (Why 3×10^8 and not 4×10^8?)
C. And following from B: given that you have consciousness and understanding, the assumption that the primary factor in the world has the capacity for understanding—after all, in the end it includes the potential for what you have—adds further a priori probability. Now apply Bayes’ law and you get the conclusion.
D. Dualism improves the probability even more (we see that spirit can affect matter, etc.).
A. I can say that about anything I’m not expert in (say, the creation of universes). The unique example is all the miracle stories that exist, which are no more than coincidences. Even so, there are cases that are not like that, and they too are declared planned because there is some intuition about it.
B. The term “simple” is hard to define when comparing a generator and an intelligent creator. Each has different characteristics and different strange chains of development, and such a definition simply does not exist. And anyway, we gave them a definition according to the role they play as we see them in the universe; there is no way to know what follows from that beyond our grasp, and maybe one of them is actually very far from simple.
C. And does he have a body or the form of a body, in your view? I think not. So it seems it is not necessary that he share properties with us, and you are proposing only this example, retroactively, after you have already fixed your opinion.
D. Why should it bother me if ghosts or whatever you want are floating around the generator? What does that have to do with an intelligent creator?
A. I didn’t understand.
B. By the term “simple” I mean that you assume as few possibilities and definitions as possible for the hypothesis. If in your opinion there is no a priori possibility at all in choosing between hypotheses, then fine. Just don’t claim that the multiverse is preferable to any other possible proposal.
C. What difference does it make what I think? Do you agree that the primary factor includes properties of consciousness, and afterward the world was created, and 14 billion years later many little people with consciousness came into being?
D. If a ghost is something arbitrary, then indeed it adds nothing. But if the intention is beings with knowledge, then why do you assume there are additional ghosts around the generator? Maybe it itself is that “ghost.”
E. The primary factor has to be teleological. It is strange that entities we perceive as deterministic come into being as a result of something arbitrary and teleological.
I had already read the chapter in the booklet, and implicitly I also tried to answer it.
Because an intelligent creator and a multiverse are symmetrical, I’ll defend the multiverse with exactly the same defenses I found in the Rabbi’s booklets/debates about the intelligent creator.
The first thing is that the booklet presents the multiverse as an assumption and not as a possible conclusion from complexity. Once it is an assumption and not a conclusion, you can make the classic Russell’s teapot move against it—but that simply isn’t the case. Just as an intelligent creator is a possible conclusion from complexity, so too a multiverse is a possible solution. (That’s also what many atheists do, just with the creator instead of the multiverse: they present it as an assumption rather than a conclusion from complexity.) In addition, the Rabbi presents there certain other analogies showing that coincidence, in this specific analogy, is much less likely than a planner—but as I said before, it is hard to know whether universes are more likely to come into being in large quantities or through a planner, and therefore they cannot be classified. The analogies apply only to narrower cases where we have intuition about whether they are more likely to happen after many attempts or to be produced by a creator.
And there is also in the booklet the common argument pointing to imperfection/lack of economy in the theory (in the case of atheists against the creator), and therefore saying it is invalid. Here it is simply presented for the side of the multiverse. On that you already answered in the debate with Eilam Gross that if you see footprints in the sea, you know that someone made them, and you do not need to define that someone completely in order to know it, and that this is a functional rather than essential definition of what caused the complexity (exactly the same for the multiverse).
The booklet simply does not answer the claim of symmetry and inability to decide, but rather someone who specifically holds the multiverse view out of the two options—and it answers him in ways used by average atheists, some of which the Rabbi has already refuted when they were presented against a creator.