An Infinite Creator and the Ant Farm

I am responding to this post on substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-56824464

I would encourage the reader to read this before my response.

I suppose that I should title this why I am a Jew to be funny but I shall not because I am not very funny at all. Neither, of course, is the title of the work to which I am replying to. If you make an allusion it ought to be earned. And if it is earned then why are you lamp shading it? The introduction of the essay is, “My title alludes to Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Am Not a Christian”, but my reasons are different.” Okay that is fine no one is beholden to Russel but then why are you clearly aping him? What is your purpose? I would venture to say that this is stealing from Russel his honor as being a brilliant philosopher. Given that besides you giving reasons why you don’t hold by the Quran, New Testament, or Torah as truly the word of the Almighty there is no similarity between your views and Russel’s this means that you are doing the freshening of the well fallacy, that is you are attempting to prepare the earth so that your critique may be fertile.

And yes I am poisoning the well by accusing you of hiding behind Russel. Don’t do it.

Now let us get to the meat of the arguments. The chief concern—as there is only one—is that the content of the aforementioned holy books does not match with what Mr. Huemer expected from the Holy One. He fails to assert what he expects but we shall attempt to interrogate his words at any rate.

His first critique is that the concerns of the Almighty do not seem to be correlated with the concerns that are expressed within the Abrahamic holy writings. For, given that we grant the Big Bang being 14 billions years ago and thus G-d had to wait around for man, why would He be so concerned about man? This is the deist’s assault upon the theist. Why would an infinite G-d care whether or not I washed my hands this morning? At its face this appeal to incredulity has some validity. Afterall, I do not care very much concerning whether or not the ants wash themselves every morning. My primary concern is that they stay out of my pantry. The works of HP Lovecraft serve as an emotional illustration of this intuition. The great old ones are so powerful and beyond us that they would destroy us not out of malice but as one accidently kills the ants that one did not notice upon one’s morning walk. It is not that one hates the ants but rather that they are beneath our notice. How much more so the infinite creator!

There are two primary fallacies within this appeal to incredulity. The first is that Mr. Huemer utilizes the language of wait in regards to the Almighty. However every theistic conception of G-d agrees that He (I would request that Mr. Huemer learn what grammatical gender is before he embarrasses himself further with that the Almighty has no sex truism) is outside of time. The very name yud, keiy, vav, keiy, the holy personal tetragrammaton has the connotation of timelessness. I am that which I am. Meaning I am not was or will be, rather am. The Almighty is constantly in the present. There is no past or future for Him. Thus to say that He waits is a ridiculous notion.

As such there is not such thing as wait for time has no meaning. He did not wait around for man, man simply is. Now this could be construed as merely increasing his argument. That is the Almighty is transcendent so He would not write a book that cared whether or not you washed your hands? This is why he displays this twice with the ant metaphor which I have stolen and with the Nigerian prince metaphor. Further clenching that this rather than the reasoned arguments from Russel is nothing more than an appeal to incredulity. The sun did not shine for Mr. Huemer before nuclear fusion was discovered because he couldn’t imagine a way that chemical burning could produce this much power.

Mr. Huemer has failed to ask something very important, why exactly was the Earth created? Given that he is addressing the Theistic masses, I am free to utilize my own religion’s framework. The analogy of the ants fits when one speaks of Lovecraft’s great old ones that neither designed nor created the Earth, however, the Merciful One did both of these. Why? People do not create meaninglessly, how much more so an Infinite G-d?

A more proper analogy would be an ant farm. While we do not care about the fate of the anthill outside we will be adults and yet care about the fate of our anthill. We will feed it, observe their tunneling and take steps to preserve their health? Why so! We are so much higher than the ants this ought to be impossible! Likewise though our relationship between the Creator of the World and ourselves is larger than us and the ant it does inform us that one may care concerning entities that are far below oneself. And given that the Creator does not possess the attribute of effort where time spent caring for ant farms is time not spent doing other matter that one does prioritize how can we assert that the Almighty doesn’t care about us? Perhaps He does, perhaps He doesn’t, but it is no contradiction.

If we return to the previous question this will come more into focus. If one creates something however small for a purpose one obviously cares in its ability to discharge the purpose. So why were we created? Given that G-d is good in the Abrahamic religions I may start here with my reasoning. The greatest good is to give and to give in the best way which is to give without hope of receiving. In addition the best way of giving would involve giving the greatest good which we have established must be the Almighty. Given this the Almighty as part of His nature as being good created creatures who are able to receive the divine light of His Holy presence. Creation was made for man to receive G-d. Given that that is His goal as determined by only the statement, G-d is good, Mr. Huemer’s appeal to incredulity falls upon its face. If washing one’s hands in the morning serves the purpose of the Holy One of connecting us with Him then why wouldn’t He care? If have an ant farm and the ants are not disposing of their trash in a proper fashion endangering the health of the colony, you care.

But let us examine his exact appeals to incredulity. Mr. Huemer specifically names the prohibition against idolatry, selection of a chosen tribe, laws against sexual perversions, and maintaining human traditions and power structures. Let us examine these sequentially.

First of all, given the purpose that I derived it is clear why idolatry is such a heinous crime. Let us imagine Mr. Huemer had a patron. This patron liked his writings and thus funded his life so that he may focus upon his writings and such that they may have a relationship. He pays for his pen, ink, electricity, everything. Of course Mr. Huemer owes his patron a debt of gratitude. Let us then imagine that Mr. Huemer in his writings didn’t just fail to thank his patron but actively attributed these resources to a fictional character. Can there be anything more insulting! He utilizes the pen and ink that his patron gave him and writes I hate you letters. Likewise the idolater takes the resources, intellect, and energy granted to him by the Almighty and proceeds to attribute it all to rocks and sticks. How can one not see that this is a flagrant violation of gratefulness and precludes the purpose of creation which is being able to receive the Almighty? Just as the patron would be fully justified to pull his funding of Mr. Huemer why should the Almighty continue to hand over paper and ink such that one can write I hate you letters? That He does is an expression of mercy. That He commands against this is understandable.

As for the chosen tribe it should be noted under Jewish theology this was not the ideal. If Adam and Eve had waited until after Shabbos they would have been given the tree of knowledge and would have entered as Jews. If Noah had protested against the flood him and his sons would have became Jews. Any man could have joined with Abraham and thus became fathers of the Jewish nation. The Almighty offered the entire world the Torah not just Israel and it is only us that said, “We shall do and we shall hear.” As one can see there is no less than four attempts for a universal Jewish nation by the Almighty. Shall we blame Him given that free will is necessary for His purpose that the free will of everyone but Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob chose poorly? This is obviously silly as such this incredulity has no basis.

The laws against sexual perversions are concrete evidence that Mr. Huemer is presupposing the premises of the sexual revolution, that is, “Consensual acts between adults are necessarily permissible.” This is made explicit when he says, “he didn’t care about how consenting adults were having sex with each other.” This is a clear category error. Mr. Huemer has just finished declaring that the Almighty is far above man and now proceeds to project his views of the sexual revolution upon Him? I needn’t belabor the point, this and indeed the entire list is asserted without evidence and as it is self-contradictory I see no reason to spill much ink upon its demolition.

The last point I feel has already been discredited, for given that power structures are inevitable and that the Almighty has an opinion on human flourishing why wouldn’t He have an opinion on how we organize ourselves and our traditions? I think that Mr. Huemer would consider certain power structures to be antithetical to human flourishing. For example, the structure of the Nazi state we both agree is a power structure that is destructive and abhorrent. Given this, why wouldn’t the Almighty have an opinion that we ought not to have this power structure? It frankly beggars the imagination that the Almighty would care about human flourishing but not care about how we structure our power or what traditions we have. It is like a man that claims he cares about the state of his car but then permits his tires to be worn to the tread and his brake pads to sit unchanged.

But now, Mr. Huemer does indeed explain the category of the knowledge that he would desire in the book, that is deep, new insights. I could of course state that when learning Torah I have gained many new deep insights but this is my anecdote vs his. Instead I shall address his two claims.

The first claim is that the Almighty ought to have included science. Why? I have heard this stated but the reasoning is always poor. For let us posit that the Almighty included that DNA is in the shape of a double helix. The receivers would have no framework for what DNA or double helix is. This concept is thus useless. Given that it is useless would one expect the meaning of the words to be remembered? We Jews rapidly forgot the meaning of the exact bird species due to the destruction of the temple and our exile. Why would DNA and double helix survive more? We would thus be left with a verse that says, “The slatoraskin is in the shape of a sheni bresvob.” What is that? What can we do with that? It should be noted that the Torah does actually contain a few scientific victories, for example water as the original formless mater, admittedly Aristotle got this right as well, there being a primordial light which is visible from everywhere (CMB Radiation) as well as the only ancient estimate for the number of the stars which approaches the current estimation is contained within the Talmud that states it is 10^18. The expansion of the universe too is contained within as it is written, “The Almighty spreads out the heavens like a cloth.” Of course none of these are proof of anything.

Because how does the science fit the goal of the Almighty? Now Mr. Huemer says that its because, “it would have demonstrated his authorship a lot more convincingly than just insisting “this is the word of God”” (Here is where you insert the Khuzari. The interested can read Rabbi Gottlieb on the actual proof Judaism has for the authenticity of the Torah. https://www.dovidgottlieb.com/comments/Kuzari_Principle_Intro.htm ) Except no it wouldn’t. Let us posit I invented time travel and went and informed the primitives of my religion and told them concerning my preferred system of laws. I declared that they would know that I am divine because DNA has a double helix. I am at a loss how they would consider this proof of anything. When scientists in our time discovered this if they had declared that they were prophets because of this fact they would have been laughed from the room. Why is Moses declaring it different? If one says this is because the shape of DNA is not able to be determined by bronze age methods. But then this means that it cannot be checked until the modern era! So until the 1960s for thousands of years there is information in there that cannot be checked.

In addition, given that this information could have been related by say a time traveler this does not prove that the Almighty wrote the book. One could easily attribute it to aliens who were engaging in a sociological experiment. Perhaps there are thousands of planets with a Bible and the aliens are seeing what happens. Scientific knowledge does not preclude this answer therefore it isn’t proof of anything and thus it is pointless to relate random physics trivia. Why would an infinite Being be concerned about what 21st century humans care about? Mr. Huemer demands that a divine book spoon-feed us 21st-century physics trivia. But an infinite Creator has no interest in giving us a fish; He teaches us how to fish. The Torah does not provide a static textbook of physical science—which human optimization was fully capable of discovering on its own—but rather an elite framework for human reasoning, justice, and spiritual optimization.

The final point that he makes is that the ethical lessons imparted by the Torah and Bible are firmly within the Bronze age context and do not make any radical innovations. (Except for the Sermon on the Mount…Which is paraphrasing selections from the Tanakh and Talmud.) He specifically lists death penalty for adultery, homosexuality, disrespecting parents, and working on Sabbath as well as genocide and slavery. This attack presupposes that G-d is good. But we have already proven that if G-d is good then He created man with an intention which means that He does in fact care about if you wash your hands! Which is it Mr. Huemer? Is G-d of such transcendence that we are ants or is He good and thus we are the reason for creation?

I will not belabor the point by addressing each of these commandments in turn because they present a contradiction as expressed above. Why exactly is human ethical reasoning any more qualified to judge the commandment of the Almighty than the ant may judge our ethical reasoning? Mr. Huemer desires to eat his cake and have it too. I am of course willing to discuss the ethics of scripture, but I don’t see why I should waste my time when Mr. Huemer started by rejecting the premise.

There is also the issue that I do not think that Mr. Huemer is an expert in Bronze Age legal systems. He is imposing modernity upon scripture and finding it wanting without imposing the Bronze Age upon it and seeing if it is wanting? The code of Hammurabi has laws where if one for example kills the daughter of another man his daughter is killed. The Torah bans all of these unjust laws. Is this not an innovation? Just because we have adopted the innovation until it has become obvious does not preclude it being an innovation. Likewise, the principle of innocent until proven guilty is contained within scripture. I could continue, but the point is that Mr. Huemer has yet to investigate what legal and ethical innovations did the Scripture actually deliver? The entire world view of the Torah is antithetical to the cyclical Bronze Age. It was the Jews that first imposed upon the world a narrative. Mr. Huemer is fully dependent upon the idea of historical narrative and progression and yet denied that the Torah gave him any contributions! This is a clear absurdity.

We may thus conclude that Mr. Huemer’s reasons for not being Abrahamic are based upon fallacies and self-contradictions. I am certain that if Russel read this article he would be embarrassed that his visage was utilized to lend dignity to what is a scarcely disguised fallacy. Russel’s reason were thoughtfully considered and tested against some of the greatest theologian of his day. On the other hand Mr. Huemer’s reasons have been demonstrated above to be without any merit.