Rabbi Akiva’s Proof For the Existence of Hashem[G-d]

B”H

Rabbi Akiva’s Proof For the Existence of Hashem[G-d]

A heretic once came and asked Rabbi Akiva, This world….who created it? He answered, The Holy One Blessed be He. Said the heretic: Show me clear proof! Said Rabbi Akiva, come back tomorrow.

The next day the sage asked, what are you wearing? A garment was the answer. Who made it? asked Rabbi Akiva. The tailor, was the reply. I do not believe you; show me clear proof.

The man protested, But what shall I show you? Do you not know that the tailor made it? Answered the sage, And what of you? Do you not know that the Holy One Blessed be He created this world?

The heretic left without reply.

But what is the proof? asked his disciples. Said the rabbi…Just as a house indicates a builder, a garment a tailor, and a door a carpenter, so too does this world tell, the Holy One Blessed be He created it.

translation of Midrash Temura

Dovid: With this in mind, imagine for a moment that you saw a 35mm. camera lying on this table. Then someone came over to you and made the claim that the camera came into being by chance collision of atoms over billions of years. Would you take the claim seriously?

Pavlov: Certainly not.

Dovid: Well what’s more complicated, the human eye or a 35mm. camera? Before you answer, let’s examine the facts.

The cornea admits incoming light and is kept moist and dust-free by the secretion of the tear glands. The curved surface of the cornea, along with the refractive properties of the liquids within the eyeball, begin the process of bringing the light into focus.

The lens, however, is the main element of the eye responsible for focusing the incoming light rays. It is located just behind the iris and is held in place by suspensory ciliary ligaments. Tension on the ligaments flattens the lens, and focuses the eye for far vision, the condition of the eye at rest. However, contraction of muscles attached to the ciliary ligaments relaxes the tension of the ligaments and permits the lens to take the near spherical shape needed for viewing objects at a close distance. In summary, these changes in lens shape enable the eye to shift its focus (accommodate) from far objects to near objects and vice versa.

Once the focused light enters the eye, the process is far from finished. The light must reach the rear of the eye to the light-sensitive retina. The retina is made up of an abundance of receptor cells called, according to their shape, rods and cones. The last time I checked into the statistics I learned there were about 125,000,000 rods and 6,500.000 cones.

The ability to see an external faint light depends on the amount of what is called “visual purple” in the retinal rods. An eye continually exposed to darkness is compensated for its environment by additional production of visual purple, which enable the rods to react to faint light. Bright light greatly reduces the amount of visual purple, but simultaneously, it activates the retina’s color-sensitive cones. As a result the eye is for the most part able to cope with major changes of light intensity.

Another aid for adjusting to problems of light is the choroid coat. It is a sheet of cells filled with black pigment which absorbs extra light and prevents internally reflected light from blurring the image.

The pupil also protects the eye from excessive illumination. This opening in the eye’s center enlarges or decreases in size, depending on whether the incoming light is dim or bright. With the aid of the surrounding iris, the pupil is regulated automatically to the width suitable, for both intense and weak light.

If you accept that there was a designer for the camera, logic dictates that you accept that there was a designer for the human eye.”

Pavlov: Who says Hashem is the designer? Perhaps a god not interested in human affairs is the designer.

Dovid: If he wasn’t interested in human affairs, why then bother to create us at all?

Pavlov: Perhaps our creation was only of interest to our Creator at the very beginning. Sort of like a roll of toilet paper.

For those who are convinced that the world has a designer and is not accidental press here to go to the next section of this article offering evidence that the designer of the human eye is also interested in human affairs.

But for someone who assumes that design in nature, such as the human eye, can still be explained away as the product of a combination of accidental forces and survival of the fittest, I have added a new series of articles to the web site dealing with this issue as well as other similar science issues. The first of these new articles is entitled the SETI proof for the existence of G-d which shows the intervention of a designer in nature regardless of your stance on Darwinian Evolution.

Tekhelet

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