[Avodah] Rav Elchanan Wasserman & Why People Sin

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Tue, Jun 02, 2015 at 10:25:05AM +0300, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
: The idea is not whether you agree with him or not. Rather here is an
: intelligent human who has thought deeply about these problems and does not
: see any obvious signs of a designer. I would venture that that is the
: opinion of most physicists and certainly biologists.

REW would say that he found it obvious that the world was created,
something deep inside (to add my own 2c: of which he is likely unaware)
didn't want to live in a world with a Creator, so he thought deeply
about these problems until he could find an alternative.

(For what it's worth, I think most physicists believe in G-d.)

As you put it:
: What you consider obvious he considers very unlikely. Again we come to the
: point that REW claims that anyone who really thinks about the problem and
: comes up with a different answer than he does simply has an ulterior motive.

But that doesn't make the person any less convinced.

For that matter, the believer also likely has an unlterior motive. (I
said that, I doubt REW would. I am just saying it wouldn't rob him of
his point.) REW is asserting that before you even get to bias, the
obvious position is ours. Their atheism is the one that takes work,
because it's explaining away the obvious.

After all, there is no a priori, obvious-as-a-postulate version of
the Anthropic Principle or other such atheistic explanations of the
universe's design. No equivalent to REW's not attributing a poem to
spilled ink or R' Aqiva's insisting that a garment or bread testify
to their makers.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Friendship is like stone. A stone has no value,
micha at aishdas.org        but by rubbing one stone against another,
http://www.aishdas.org   sparks of fire emerge. 
Fax: (270) 514-1507                  - Rav Mordechai of Lechovitz