"And God Said, 'Let there have been a Big Bang' ”
Science, atheism and biblical religion: Science is a programmatic attempt to find naturalistic explanations based on cause and effect for all objectively observable phenomena. Science - as opposed to atheism - does not claim there is no God, it only seeks to find explanations which do not require invoking God; it does not seek to disprove divine intervention, but rather is an attempt to arrive at non-supernatural explanations – 'laws' (and to express these mathematically). The scientific 'origin theory' – combining the theories of the big bang and evolution - follows logically from the attempt to find naturalistic explanations for the existence and development of the universe and of humanity. The question of whether or not there is a physically-untedetectable God who designed the laws of nature and created the universe, or who intervenes in its development, is one which science leaves to people to address individually – it is an issue which has nothing to do with science. [1]
The scientific and biblical origin accounts: Both accounts can be seen as flowing naturally from underlying assumptions, but given the differences between these assumptions it is only to be expected that they arrive at different conclusions regarding the origin of the universe.
Obviously if one seeks naturalistic explanations one will not suddenly find God popping up in the equations, and so the lack of mention of God in these theories is to be expected, and is not in any way a conflict with religion. In fact, quite likely if the creation account consisted only of the statement that God created laws of nature designed to produce humans, most religious people would find the present-day scientific origin theory quite convincing; it certainly seems to provide a logical way for our universe and life to have emerged if there had been no God, or if God had created the universe with laws of nature designed to produce life. The fact that one can arrive at convincing scientific theories without invoking God is very impressive, but it does not prove that there is no God, nor does science claim that it does; what it does prove is that the scientific endeavor has succeeded in its task of finding naturalistic explanations.
In contrast, religion assumes the existence of a God, and seeks explanations which derive from this assumption. In particular, the Bible sets out a picture of a universe designed and created by an all-powerful being, for a purpose which includes the existence of humanity and of their moral activity. Jewish Tradition does not claim there are no other types of explanations for things, and does not assume or teach that scientific inquiries will lead no where, it simply tells of a special creation of the universe and of humanity, and tells of various revelations and miracles which occurred outside the realm of ordinary cause and effect. There is no inherent conflict between an account based on the existence of a God, and another which constructs a naturalistic explanation; the programs of science and of religion are sufficiently different that the validity of one of these accounts should not be considered as negating the validity of the other. There is conflict only with atheistic belief: the belief that there is no God, and the concomitant belief that events proceed strictly according to the scientific scenario without any divine intervention[1].
The scientific origin theory can be appreciated by a traditionalist as a theory which logically follows from its axioms, and as the way that God could bring about the emergence of the physical universe and of life via a natural-appearing process. In the below we will wish to indicate the converse as well: why even to someone who does not believe in the Bible the picture of creation it offers can be appreciated as one which to some degree follows 'logically' from its non-disprovable assumptions, the expected way a universe and the life in it would be brought into being by the type of God implied by the Biblical accounts.
Designing the Big Bang: God’s Choice: Einstein, though he didn’t really believe in a Creator, wrote: “What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world”[14]. Our universe could not have emerged from just any big bang - only a very specific type would lead to a universe with human beings. Similarly, from the Biblical perspective, since a central purpose of the created being is its exercise of free-willed moral choice, the universe would have been designed to contain morally meaningful situations and dilemmas. If God were to create the universe via a big bang, its design would be carefully worked out in advance [15] to give rise to the desired opportunities for moral choice.[16][2]
Creating the blueprint of the universe: From the Traditional perspective it is therefore the eventual human moral challenges that prescribe the universal blueprint; since the Torah prescribes these moral challenges, it sets the parameters for the design of the universe and humanity. As the Midrash says: “God looked into the Torah and created the universe.”[17] Only after assembling a complete picture of a moral being and an appropriate universe would there begin the design of the big bang and laws of nature leading to their emergence.
In this scenario the process of divine creation began not with the big bang but rather with the prior idea to create a being with moral responsibility, and the mental picture of this moral being and the universe it would inhabit. Prior to physical creation there would be a mental assembly of the desired main ingredients of the universe, the design of everything necessary to produce a moral being. We can interpreting Genesis in this light as describing the creation of this blueprint one stage at a time. After each stage"God saw … that it was good”[18] and proceeded to the next stage. The end product is the desgin of a being created in the Divine image, and integrated into the rest of the Creation, after which“God saw ... that all… was very good.”[19] Only then,[20] given the entire functioning integrated blueprint of a universe containing moral beings, would a big bang be designed and programmed to teleologically produce them.[21] Studying the universe from the scientific perspective would yield a description not of the blueprint described in Genesis but rather of the big bang designed to actualize it.
PART II: Free will and creation: We wish to indicate how the concept of free will helps tie some essential aspects of the creation account to fundamental Biblical assumptions.
In order for the created entities to be morally responsible for their actions they must possess a certain order of intelligence, an intrinsically free-willed consciousness, and a moral sense. Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man:[8] "I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between men and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is the most important."
Free-willed consciousness and the moral sense distinguish humanity from the animals. However, according to the scientific view, mind is no less subject to natural law than is for example a software program, and therefore all our thoughts and emotion, beliefs and decisions derive from deterministic or random processes. Only a free will which is somehow above the ordinary laws of nature can make human free-willed decisions significant from the perspective of the creator: from the perspective of Genesis, in this sense humans were created 'in the image of God'.[9]
Einstein, moral responsibility, and Genesis: Einstein wrote: "…the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficient personal God....[has] decisive weaknesses... …if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishments and rewards he would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?"
The fact that people are not simple mechanisms does not mean that they are not mechanisms, just that they are very complex mechanisms[2]. Einstein felt that although much is not yet known about their brains, nevertheless if there is a God, their actions are the inevitable result of God’s laws of nature[1][1], just as is the case for much simpler mechanisms. He wrote:
"We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough to nevertheless sense at least the rule of fixed necessity....... The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature.[2][2].... the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary as the past…. [3][3][For t]he man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation......a God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable......for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity, external or internal, so that in God’s eyes he cannot be responsible any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes."
Einstein, atheism, materialism and free will: Einstein makes a statement about his psychological reaction to the success of science: "The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature". Although Einstein was not an atheist, this is the type of statement that atheism is often founded on – the idea that not only does science provide naturalistic explanations, but that there are no non-naturalistic events at all, for example no 'miracles' or other divine intervention. Speaking in the context of the workings of the human mind, he makes another reflection of his psychology: he is a "man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation". Though he was not a materialist, this is an assumption which underlies materialism, the idea that even human thought is governed totally by cause and effect, and thus there is no true free will.
Traditionalists can agree with Einstein that in the biblical conception, the type of choices possible to humans could not be the results of determined or random processes if the created beings are to be held meaningfully responsible for their actions by the creator of the universe and the laws of nature. Whether or not one accepts the truth of the biblical accounts, clearly the implication that human actions are of interest to God, and humans bear responsibility for their actions in God's eyes make sense only from within the perspective that humans posses a 'true free will'. [4][4]
Physics, Free Will and Intuition: True free will is necessarily built upon an interaction "transcending" both the determinism of classical physics and the probabilistically-determined randomness (PDR) of quantum physics. Unless there would be some experimental proof that true free will exists, physics would rightly exclude it[5][5]. Our deepest intuitions however point to its existence. And of course most religious beliefs assume it does exist, and base the concept of moral responsibility on the assumption that our free will is real[3].
The Acausality of Free Will: a Rationale and Ramifications: Beyond our intuition there are other justifications for assuming the possibility of non-causal, or 'acausal' processes, and these perhaps point the way to the physical origin of the type of radically-acausal phenomenon such as free will.
a) The greatest mystery of all is the origin of the universe. A universe which exists is in itself an indication of acausality for it exists without real cause: cause implies temporal order, yet time originated with the universe and thus no cause could "precede" the existence of the universe. Thus in some sense, at its most fundamental level, even the scientific conception of existence implies acausality.
It is perhaps not so out-of-character for a universe whose very existence implies acausality to exhibit free will-type acausality.
b) Another question arises as to the origin of consciousness: if humans evolved, then we must suppose that consciousness evolved. However, how could one type of phenomenon, matter ruled by probabilistic determined randomness (PDR), give rise via a physical mechanism such as evolution to a qualitatively different phenomenon[6][6]? One answer would be that consciousness was inherent in the universe at its origin and this enabled the human brain to attain consciousness at some point in its evolution (for example, perhaps when the brain achieved a certain complexity it connected to the consciousness inherent in the universe). Another answer would suppose that consciouness was not present always, but rather it somehow 'emerged', somehow arose without precedent, basically in a non-causal manner, just as the universe itself exists acausally. It is perhaps not so out-of-character for a universe in which consciousness is present from the beginning to exhibit mind-like properties such as free will, and even more-so for a universe in which consciousness 'emerges' acausally.
The First Moment, from the Teleological Perspective: Until the emergence of a free-willed intelligent being from a teleologically-designed big bang, everything that occurs is preprogrammed, an acting out of the mechanistic laws of nature. To a designer of the universe and its laws this would be as interesting as a watchmaker watching the hands of a clock for a few billion years, albeit with some quantum randomness thrown in; perhaps more interesting than watching a clock - it's as interesting as watching the wash cycle of a washing machine with a cycle incorporating some random jumps and jerks, for billions of years. The activity which would be (in an admittedly anthropomorphic view) truly “interesting” even to God, the events which are neither determined nor random, begins only with the onset of moral choice. Only then the purpose of the universe can begin to unfold.[22] In the teleological sense, Creation is completed not with the emergence of the big bang but rather fifteen billion years later when the first intelligent moral being emerges and accepts the burden of moral responsibility for its actions. From the Biblical perspective therefore the period of time from the initial emergence of the universe until the emergence of free-willed humanity is collapsed, and effectively the universe as an entity of interest is only as old as the moral choice it produces.
The Instant Retroactive Universe: It may be that the creation of a big bang would not be the most reasonable method of creation of such a purposive universe since it involves a delay of billions of years until the free-willed being evolves and the desired moral activity begins. A preferable scenario might therefore be the creation of the universe at the stage of the emergence of a free-willed human being - a juxtaposition mirrored in Genesis.
One can imagine a Divine mental extrapolation of the big bang conditions (mental “fast-forwarding”) up to the moral stage of the universe, followed by its creation as an “instant universe”. Thus, paradoxically, the physical creation of the big-bang-emergent universe actually occurs not at the big bang but with the emergence of the first moral being. [23]
This concept is somewhat analogous to a suggestion of quantum metaphysics. At any given instant a physical event can emerge from a quantum non-fully-real state into true physical reality only upon its 'measurement' or ' observation '. It has been suggested that by extension the entire universe, composed as it is of individual events, can also only emerge from a quantum non-fully-real state into true physical reality only upon some type of measurement. According to “quantum metaphysics,” a consciousness is indispensable to all this, and eminent physicist John A. Wheeler speculated that the emergence of a conscious being retroactively causes the emergence into reality of the big bang itself[24] [7][7].
and thus by application of Wheeler's idea, we could say that the emergence of a free willed being retroactively
We propose that it is free will which underlies this property of consciousness, and so only a truly free-willed moral consciousness rather than just a generic consciousness which can accomplish this. True free will can cause events which would not have occurred in a purely determined or quantum universe. As a choice-making phenomenon transcending quantum randomness free will is uniquely qualified to "collapse the quantum wave function" from its myriad possibilities to one actuality. In extension of Wheeler's speculation, perhaps only the emergence of a free-willed consciousness causes the retroactive emergence into reality of the big bang itself. This can be seen as parallel with a reading of Genesis in which the universe or its blueprint is designed as detailed in the '6 days of creation' account, and emerges into existence with the first free-willed activity, described in the Garden of Eden account.
Quantum indeterminacy and the First Stage of Creation: Since there are many quantum paths along which the universe could develop, including many paths not leading to the emergence of life or to moral beings, in order to have the universe fulfill its design it is necessary to guide the development of the big bang along a path leading to the emergence of the desired free-willed being. In this case the emergence of a moral being is the last stage of direct Divine intervention in developing the universe and hence the last stage of Creation and the first stage of the ‘natural’ existence of the universe. Thus, even in a universe physically starting with a big bang, it is the emergence of the moral being rather than the big bang that is the first stage of independent existence. And in any case as we saw, for a purposive universe, the first stage of real existence is when purposive activity begins, so that the initial point is not the big bang but rather the emergence of a free-willed consciousness capable of moral choice.
In the context of a teleological oriented creation account, the emergence of a moral being crowns creation. Thus, from the points of view of quantum randomness, quantum metaphysics, and teleology, the emergence of a conscious being as for example described in the Eden account is the initial stage of the universe - not the big bang.
Perspectives:
The non-physical teleological perspective: The universe originates with God’s decision to create or to plan its blueprint, when time did not exist, and so the age of the universe is not defined.
The physical teleological perspective: The universe begins with the emergence of a newly created instant universe containing a moral being; evolutionary anthropology places the emergence of such a being on the order of 150,000 years ago.
The quantum metaphysical perspective: The universe emerges at the moral stage, with a retroactive big bang, so that at the moral stage the universe has no clearly defined age.
The conventional scientific perspective: The universe begins with the big bang and is approximately thirteen billion years old.
In describing the creation of a complete universe at the moral stage, a creation account written from the teleological or quantum metaphysical perspective might imply simultaneity of the emergence of human free-willed consciousness with the completion of the creation of the universe or of its blueprint, which provides a motivation for the juxtaposition of the creation and Eden accounts in Genesis [25].
The Instant Evolutionary Universe: Neither Wasteful nor Cruel: Evolutionary advance is achieved by competition for survival, selection of the fittest via predatory and environmental extinction, fatal biological defects, and so on. The evolutionary path is littered with corpses and suffused with suffering. The emergence of humanity is achieved at the very heavy price of the sufferings of untold numbers of creatures losing their struggle to survive to those more fit than they. Billions of “unsuccessful” mutations, many of them horribly deformed animals unable to survive; billions and billions and billions of small organisms, insects, animals, and even primitive humanoids devoured by predators, killed by natural disasters or birth defects strew the evolutionary path. It is not comfortable to contemplate the total genocide of our ancestors’ competitors, the Neanderthalers. The path of “nature red in tooth and claw” (in the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson) leading to the emergence of humans strongly disturbed Darwin. Furthermore, the horrible evolutionary scenario of millions of years of catastrophic changes and evolutionary struggle was considered by many too clumsy to have been the creation of an all-powerful God and too evil to be the creation of a compassionate God.
In the instant universe scenario, however, these two objectionable features of evolution—that it is too clumsy and evil—disappear, at least in the period leading up to the emergence of humanity. Evolution in the context of an instant universe is not a violence-drenched process. The entire process leading up to the emergence of moral man takes place only in potentiality, in the ‘mind’ of God, as the working out of a process implied by the laws of nature and the initial conditions. Actual reality begins only with the emergence of moral man.
The evolutionary process according to this scenario is certainly not a clumsy method of producing human beings. Instead, the pre-moral stage ‘evolutionary process’ is merely the logically-consistent theory which underlies the emergence of man in a ‘natural’ physical universe. In actuality, however, the emergence of humans took place in a most elegant, clever, and direct manner—as the initial stage of an instant universe.
Laws of Nature: “And God Rested”: Why create a big bang universe, with its billions of galaxies and myriad plant and animal species? Why not create moral beings in a small universe centered on them?
Many people have speculated on the seeming hiddeness of God. Explanations include the necessity to protect the freedom of, and give meaning to, moral choice. Why bother creating a small human-centered universe for the purpose of moral confrontation if free will is compromised by the obviousness of God’s presence? There are also aesthetic reasons for the creation of a complete big-bang emergent ‘natural’ universe rather than a small ‘special’ universe. Constant intervention can be reduced by designing ‘laws of nature’ to allow the universe to be self-operating.[26] For self-operation and regularity there must be consistency and coordination within the entire universe. For this to be the case, there has to be a unifying factor. An elegant method of finding this common denominator is to find an entity which, unified in itself, could give rise to the desired universe. The big bang together with the laws of nature is such an entity.
When the evolutionary process is seen as a “computational device,” which it is in the instant universe scenario, it can be seen in all its elegance. Evolution by random mutation in this sense is a self-improving program. It is a very simple yet efficient algorithm, used to run the ‘computer simulation’ leading up to the evolution of ever more complex creatures.
Similarly, the big bang theory is a beautifully simple algorithm for generating the blueprint of an extremely complex universe. Given the design of the intended moral being, the big bang generates a complex universe of billions of galaxies containing billions of stars, with billions of life forms containing billions of cells. All that is created is a singularity or big bang, operating according to one unified universal law in a four-(or perhaps higher) dimensional space-time, and the rest takes care of itself. By ‘mentally extrapolating’ this ‘algorithm,’ God obtains very simply a complete description of a totally self-consistent complex universe and uses this description to create an actual universe at the moral stage without any “red in tooth and claw” physical evolution.
When this big bang evolves or is extrapolated forward to produce later stages of the universe, all these eventual states are inherently regular and synchronized since all is derived from one entity. Everything within the resulting universe operates according to the laws of nature, and the desired moral stage of the universe eventually emerges, this time as a unified self-consistently-operating state of a ‘natural’ universe. It is a universe where humanity seems to arise as the result of natural selection, but where the evolution and selection is part of the Divine plan. As stated in the closing paragraph of Darwin’s The Origin of Species:[27] Thus from the war of Nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
The Common Ground of Science and Genesis: Charles Darwin wrote: “Another source of conviction in the existence of God….follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man …as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man…. [3]
Humans exist now, but scientific research indicates that humans did not always exist on this planet. The scientific quest for human origins therefore seeks a model which allows for life arising where there previously had been none, basically to account for the emergence of humans from the inorganic (“the dust of the earth”) solely via the laws of nature. The theory of the big bang[4] coupled with that of evolution provides a scientifically satisfying hypothetical model for this.[5] Science does not deal with that which cannot be objectively and universally observed by scientists, and so does not deal with the soul. Consequently, the inability of the present-day scientific theories to account for the soul is not necessarily scientifically relevant.[6] Analogously, since science does not concern itself with whether or not the origin of existence and of the laws of nature lies in a creator or not, the thesis of divine creation does not compete with it.[7]
From both the scientific and biblical points of view, Genesis can in the above context be read as describing God’s infusion of a soul—and perhaps a free-willed mind as well—into a humanoid emerging from “the dust of the earth,” as detailed by evolutionary theory, in a universe which developed from a big bang created by God.
Conclusion: From the teleological perspective, the first stage in Creation is to draw up the blueprint of both the desired type of moral being and the desired type of universe at the stage of the emergence of moral beings. Then comes a backwards extrapolation of the moral stage universe blueprint to find the right type of big bang to lead up to this stage.
After the design of the big bang from the specifications of the moral being and a universe that can support moral choice, the resultant ‘teleo-derived big bang’ is mentally extrapolated to the future along all quantumly-possible paths of future development. Each possible path ends either in the emergence of a moral being, whose exercise of free will introduces non-predictability and therefore stops the extrapolation - or results in the end of the universe without the emergence of a moral being.
After extrapolation to the moral stage, the universe is ‘created in potential.’ In the quantum metaphysical sense this might be through a collapse of the wave function caused by the Creator’s consciousness observing the universe. “God saw it was all very good.” From the human perspective, the universe is brought into physical (human) reality by the created moral being’s exercise of free-willed consciousness and its existential awareness of the external universe, and of itself, as separate entities.
From among all the possible (potential) moral universes at the pre-moral stage, one is selected—the best one for fulfilling the purpose of Creation. “God saw all that He had created, and it was very good.”
In the instant retroactive universe everything proceeds in the most direct, logical, and aesthetic way. The Creator can withhold direct intervention after the ‘laws of nature’ take over upon the emergence of a moral being. “And [all] the Heavens and the Earth were complete….and God…rested”[28]
Consequently, a natural-law-obeying thirteen-billion-year-old instant universe emerges into physical reality unfolded from a moral-stage-teleoderived big bang. To paraphrase Genesis: And God said, “Let there have been a big bang.” And it was so.
What is the intent of the creation accounts in Genesis – what are its essentials? Einstein, who used the term 'God' somewhat differently than Biblical religion would, wrote: “I want to know how God created the universe. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon…I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.”[1] This is not to mean that Einstein believed in a conscious being – God – who created the universe as an act of will, as laid out in Genesis. However, he believed that there is some supreme Being, and perhaps felt that this was the only essential truth in Genesis.
To some people the essence of the creation accounts is the 7 days of creation, or the order in which specific entities were created, or the amount of time that seemingly lapsed between the creation of the universe and the emergence of humanity (5 days) or the fact that Adam ate forbidden fruit from a tree in Eden which gave him the ability to distinguish good from evil. To this writer in contrast, the essence is a totally different set of teachings: the fundamental teachings being that the universe originated in a purposive creation by an all-powerful Being; that the universe is the product of very careful design, with 'quality control' at every step; the idea of humanity as a culmination of the creation process; and the concept of the emergence of free-willed choice and moral responsibility in a universe which up until that point lacked beings capable of comprehending the difference between good and evil and acting freely to choose one over the other. In addition, there is the theme of existential loneliness, the relationship of men and women, of humans and God and other aspects fundamental to our existence such as the burden of moral responsibility. On the other hand much of the details are allegories, pointing to deep and hidden mysteries but not meant literally – including the idea of the 7 days and the alleged implied age of the universe (it is not specified ever) and the idea of a Tree of Knowledge and a talking snake and so on.
Free Will and Kabbalah: Free will is in the above sense somewhat unphysical, and indeed its creation can be seen as having mystical ramificaitons. In order to make the free-willed actions of these ‘moral beings’ truly independent of the will of their designer-and-creator, there is a sacrifice of the sovereignty of the Creator’s Will, a withdrawal and narrowing of its exclusivity this parallels God’s tsimtsum (contraction) before Creation, as described by the Kabbalah. In order for the Creator to bring an additional independent consciousness into existence, the pre-existent unity had to be shattered; this parallels the traditional mystical concept of shvirat ha’kelim, the breaking of the vessels.
Free will & morality, fairness & the burden of existence: So that it will be morally responsible for its actions, the created being is given a share of the Creator’s free will - the attribute that underlies Creation itself.[10] In biblical terms, humans were created “in the image of God”[11] with some infusion of the Divine during the Creation process: “And God breathed into man the spirit of life”[12].
As it is not fair to create an entity burdened by existence, and plagued by suffering, it makes sense to create the being in an idyllic environment (the Garden of Eden) to gain its retroactive acquiescence to having been created. It is similarly unfair to impose the obligation of moral responsibility on a being that did not choose it. The being could reject its moral responsibility by claiming that it had not chosen to be faced with moral dilemmas.
A situation can therefore be arranged whereby the being itself chooses whether or not to bear the burden of moral responsibility. The Creator forbids the assumption of this burden, so that the responsibility of the choice becomes that of the chooser alone.[13]
With the assumption of moral responsibility and the acquisition of free-willed consciousness, purposive history can begin.
[1] The great majority of philosophers and scientists would likely agree that neither atheism nor religion can be proved or disproved.
[2] According to the view, a person’s actions are the result of ‘nature and nurture’, or ‘genes and environment’. Since the genes are from nature, if God created nature then they are from God. Similarly, nurture is the environment created by other people, but the actions of these other people are the result of their own nature and nurture, and so on backwards to the first people. In this sense ‘nurture’ is also indirectly ‘nature’.
[3] Nevertheless our intuitions about what is logical make true free will counterintuitive. Thus our intuition is in favor of the idea of true free will, but our conception of logic makes the same true free will counterintuitive.