Dawkins’s argument against the existence of God
February 8, 2008
Just wondered what people think of this argument from ‘The God Delusion’, which purports to show that the existence of God is extremely improbable. First, a definition: an entity is complex if and only if it consists of a number of parts combined in an intricate way, so as to produce extremely statistically improbable properties. (A human being is a complex entity: not every way you fling together the atoms constituting my body is going to produce thought, action, perception, kidneys, lungs, etc.) This definition isn’t watertight, but the general idea is intuitive. Anyway, on with the argument:
1) Complex entities can come into existence in three ways: either by design, evolution or chance.
2) God is a complex entity.
3) God cannot have been designed.
4) God cannot have evolved.
5) Therefore, God must have come into existence by chance.
6) The probability of a being spontaneously coming into existence with the remarkable properties of God (omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence) is extremely slight.
7) Therefore, God’s existence is extremely improbable.
I don’t actually agree with this argument, but I think it’s interesting. Any thoughts?
February 8, 2008 at 2:54 am
I’m glad to see that you don’t agree with Dawkins’ argument. Unless he is taking the liberty to redefine the term “God” to mean a material being which is found within the cosmos, his argument doesn’t even get off of the ground. I know that he isn’t, but if he was indeed referring to a god such as that, then I may perhaps agree with him. However, the concept of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is defined as being outside of space-time, which God created; and by the way, the majority of physicists who adhere to the Big Bang theory willfully concede that all matter, space, and time was created at the Big Bang. Therefore, if this is understood within the term “God”, then to say that God must have evolved or must have been designed is going against the very definition of the term “God.” If God created all matter and space-time, it is nonsensical to say that he had to be created. This implies that there was something before God, assuming that there is time in eternity. Surely this is ridiculous. Christianity doesn’t make this up as a counter to Dawkins’ argument, it has always been understood that God is outside of space-time.
Sorry, that was maybe too long, for just a dang comment.
February 8, 2008 at 4:12 am
[...] on to the latest doomed attempt by the non-believers to logic Me out of existence. Barney87 posted the argument popularized by that pesky Richard “Prove it to me” Dawkins: 1) Complex entities can [...]
February 8, 2008 at 3:41 pm
The argument is invalid as it stands. It relies on the unstated premise that beings (complex beings?) must come into existence. It is always open for someone to object that *if* God was to come into existence, it could only be through chance, *but* there was never any such event as ‘God’s coming into existence’.
Moreover, I’d dispute premises 1, 2 and 6. Rather than (1), oughtn’t we say that there are three ways we *know of* by which complex beings can come into existence, and then it can plausibly be insisted that if God came into existence, it was by some unknown mechanism. With regards to (2), don’t many religions hold that God is a simple entity? That is, he may have incredible properties, but he is not composed of a number of intricately combined parts. And as for (6), the only concept of probability we have to work with is the probability of certain properties being instantiated in the natural order, in which case the probability is not slight, it is 0. As we have no notion of probability abstracted from the constraints we work with in the physical world, we cannot say how probable God’s coming to be by chance is.
So the argument is invalid and multiply unsound.
February 13, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I’m glad you don’t agree with it. There are two flaws in it. First, God didn’t “come into existence.” God exists eternally (see Is 48:12-13 and Heb 1:10-12; cf. Ex 3:14). God simply exists–always has, always will. That is why His name in Hebrew means “I AM.” Second, God doesn’t fit the definition of an “entity.” God is spirit (see 2 Cor 3:17 and Jn 4:24) and the entity definition assumes something material.
February 13, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Thanks for your comments. I’m flattered to have earned a mention on someone else’s blog! How about this ‘old school’ argument:
Can God create a rock that he can’t lift?
- If he can’t, then there’s something he can’t do, so he’s not omnipotent.
- If he can, then there’s something he can’t do, so he’s not omnipotent.
Either way, God’s not omnipotent. QED.
By the way James, what’s with the ‘*’ around certain words? What do they mean?
February 17, 2008 at 12:23 pm
The *’s are for emphasis (rather than italics). Though perhaps I overused them in the last post…
February 18, 2008 at 3:45 pm
As regards the omnipotence argument, one hard-nosed way of dealing with it would be to adopt the Cartesian doctrine that God can violate the laws of logic. Then he can both create a rock so large he cannot lift it, and he can then lift it.
This is rejected by modern philosophers, because it is basically unintelligible. There are weaker forms of omnipotence that can be considered (e.g. where “God can do so-and-so” is true iff “God is doing/does so-and-so” is logically consistent — this rules out the rock example because there is a buried inconsistency if omnipotence is part of the definition of God). But some philosophers reject *all* formulations of omnipotence: see P.T. Geach’s “Omnipotence” for this.
For what it is worth, I think Geach’s rejection in that article isn’t very strong. He argues that it is logically possible that “God brings it about that Miss X never has sex”, but if Miss X has already had sex, God cannot bring it about that Miss X never has sex (“God can bring it about that Miss X never has sex” is false).
However, one could simply say that Geach has argued on the sly by not giving a full description of the feat that God is supposed to be performing. If one compares “God can bring it about that Miss X never has sex after she already has had sex” and “God can bring it about thet Miss X never has sex before she has had any sex”, then the first is an impossible-because-logically-inconsistent performance, and the second is a possible-because-logically-consistent performance.
But certainly the matter is more complicated than the Old School argument makes it out to be.
May 9, 2008 at 9:58 am
It’s a bad argument:
Dawkins comes to his conclusion, which we can state as:
C: If God exists, he came into existence by chance. If God is God, he is omnipotent and omniscient – such features are highly unlikely to have become established by chance. Therefore it is unlikely God exists.
Problems:
1) Maybe it is unlikely. But that doesn’t mean it’s untrue. We have no Good Reason to Believe either that God does or doesn’t exist – so agnosticism not atheism is the correct stance.
2) Dawkins assumes that there are only 3 ways something can come into being. But that is to assume that the human forms of comprehension exhaust all possibilities of how things come to be constituted. Dawkins simply cannot assert that as true: he cannot establish (by fiat) a priori that there are no other ways things can be constituted (manners which are perhaps beyond our comprehension). God could have come into being via one of those methods.
Better way to doubt the existence of God:
There is no evidence for God’s existence. Everything that can be adduced as evidence can be explained – and *explained better* – by science and other secular methods. We have no Good Reason to Believe in God because of experience, not because of a priori rationalist deductions.
May 11, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I agree with you that, technically speaking, we should regard ourselves as agnostics. (I prefer ’sceptical agnostic’, to be really clear.) The problem with this, however, is that in the popular imagination agnosticism is associated with a state caught between doubt and faith, or that irritating attitude expressed by saying: ‘I believe that there’s something out there – some kind of force or spirit – but I don’t know what’. I think, as Russell did, that it’s better to call oneself an atheist, in order to avoid this negative association. Of course, in more nuanced discussion this can be clarified.
Your position seems to be that it’s right not to believe that God exists and wrong to believe that God does not exist. On reflection, I think that this is right. But it is important, when you admit this, to denigrate God’s possible existence as much as you can. Always remind your interlocutor that it is equally wrong to believe that there are not invisible fairies at the bottom of the garden, for example, or wrong to believe that Thor and Odin do not exist. Take every opportunity to offend religious sensibility (perhaps I should call myself an angry sceptical agnostic).
Interestingly, the religious person does badly here, because in committing himself to the existence of the (say) Christian God, he simultaneously commits himself to believing that Thor, Odin, Zeus, Apollo etc. do not exist. Accepting that one God exists generally involves one in holding multiple verification-transcendent beliefs.
Of course, this beings us to the response that belief in the existence of an external world, or in other minds, are equally verification-transcendent beliefs, and, by our agreed principle, beliefs we should not hold. (This is normally intended as an RAA. Alvin Plantinga wrote a whole fucking book on this called ‘God and Other Minds’, where he tried to vindicate the reasonableness of belief in God by comparing it to our belief in other minds.)
What do you think of this sort of argument?
June 26, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I’m going to be a bit more hard-nosed than Sagar too. I’d say I’m an atheist, but not because I can disprove the existence of God. Rather, it is because I think it is a good policy when there is no evidence for the existence of an X, to believe that there are no X’s. This, as Barney says, is what we do with Father Xmas, and tooth-fairies. It is rubbish to say that you will not say that they do not existence, only that you do not believe that they do.
June 26, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Plus, I’m not even sure I have a concept of God, or what sort of entity he would be. This is because I find it hard to grasp the concepts by which he is described (omnipotence, omniscience, etc.) Are they like human power, knowledge, etc., only quantitatively greater? (This was the Image of God doctrine that held sway in the 16th/ 17th centuries). But I do not think I am able to extrapolate the concept of, e.g., power out to infinity. Or is God’s power, knowledge, etc., qualitatively different? If so, what is its nature? It is no good saying we don’t know, because to the extent to which we are unable to answer these questions we lack a conception of God.