Richard Dawkins’ Probabilistic Argument against God In his book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins writes: “However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.” Here Dawkins was referring to the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God of Judeo-Christian theology. However, Dawkins fails to take into account some very important considerations. Imagine a race of aliens living in a nearby solar system who have their own version of Occam’s Razor, and have adopted it as a guiding principle of science. In other words, they believe that among competing scientific hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be chosen. One day, an automated probe from their planet lands in a field on Earth to collect soil and mineral samples. In the process, it happens to scoop up a long lost, small white ceramic teacup from a little girl’s toy tea set. Then it returns to the planet from whence it came. After much consideration, the aliens conclude that despite the fact that the teacup bears the semblance of intelligent design, it was most likely formed by the natural erosion of some kind of stone, and not designed by an intelligence, because erosion would be the simplest and least complex explanation. Obviously, these aliens have nicked themselves quite badly by shaving with Occam’s Razor. But why? Because sometimes the most reasonable explanation is not the simplest. And sometimes the true explanation is more complex than its alternatives. And so Dawkins’ objection certainly does not rule out the hypothesis that our universe was created. However, the conclusion that the aliens came to seems somewhat justifiable, because if they were metaphysical naturalists, they might have thought that the odds of life forming in our universe are so low, that an intelligence was the least likely explanation for the little girl’s teacup. Likewise, one might think that Dawkins can still justifiably argue that God is still the least likely explanation for our universe and the life within it. Or can he? Let’s consider that next. Since cosmologists tell us that time began when our universe did, then whatever caused our universe must not have been subject to time as we know it, or to the precise laws of our universe. Long before modern cosmologists came to the conclusion that time began with the universe, traditional Judeo-Christian thought held that God exists outside of time, because of verses such as Isaiah 57:15: “For thus said the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.” Improbability arguments that apply within our time-bound universe would therefore not apply to a timeless God who exists outside of the universe. Many Judeo-Christian theologians, following a strict line of logical reasoning, have traditionally considered God to be the causeless First Cause. This is because: A. All things exist either because they have been caused, or of necessity are self-existent. B. All things in our universe were evidently caused (we now know this because we have observed that our universe is expanding). C. If we trace back the chain of cause and effect, we must come to a cause of our universe (such as what caused the hypothetical big bang). D. The very first cause of necessity must not have been caused. So the first cause must have been self-existent! If, contrary to this line of thought, God was formed by random events, as Dawkins seems to think He must have been, then God would not have been the very first cause. However, we still could say that He was the first cause of our Universe, which is all that really matters to us. If that were the case, how probable would God’s formation have been in the timeless realm in which He dwells? Finite time restrains probability, so if I flip a coin for only one minute, I am unlikely to obtain 5 heads in a row. But given enough time, I am almost certain to obtain 5 heads in a row. Now, imagine a timeless realm of cause and effect consisting of interactive elements, in which innumerable events can happen at once. If the idea of cause and effect without time seems difficult to grasp, this very page that you are reading from can serve as an illustration of it. On this page, one thought builds upon another in a form of cause and effect, but all of the thoughts exist at once on the page. Without time to restrain the number of things that could happen, even highly complex and ordered patterns of events would be bound to happen. Without time to restrain probability, in a timeless realm of the right conditions, God would be certain to form! Within the realm of our universe, it is highly improbable that life would have formed by chance. Isn’t creation by an intelligence the only cause of complex order and semantic information that we have ever observed? As the old proverb goes, “If it looks like duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, it’s probably a duck!” And doesn’t it seem more reasonable that a creative intelligence would have arisen in a timeless realm conducive to the formation of complex order, than that life arose by chance in our universe? Richard Dawkins’ objection to the existence of God therefore reflects not only a poor understanding of Judeo-Christian theology, but it rests upon assumptions that Dawkins could not possibly know are true. Unless Dawkins has stepped outside of the universe to observe conditions there, he cannot possibly know that God is unlikely to exist! - Rusty Entrekin
Posted on: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 14:39:14 +0000
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