Maverick Philosopher

In the Introduction I reported the observation that since the time of Hume, “the vast majority of philosophical attacks against the rationality of theism have borne an unmistakable Humean aroma.” Hume’s aroma became particularly pungent with the release of Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion in 2006. One of Dawkins’ more well-known remarks is that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In the same paragraph in which he makes that remark, Dawkins credits Hume with effectively criticizing the logic of the design argument, but suggests that Hume’s writings nevertheless would likely leave the atheist feeling “unsatisfied”; it was only the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species some eighty-three years after Hume’s death that put the atheist at ease. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that the central atheistic argument of The God Delusion is remarkably similar to an argument advanced by Philo in Hume’s Dialogues.

Dawkins’ argument begins with the idea that God is supposed to provide a certain kind of explanation for various features of the universe that are very unlikely to have come into existence all at once entirely by chance. More precisely, God is supposed to provide an intelligent design explanation for such complex phenomena, where x provides an intelligent design explanation for y just in case y’s existence can be understood in terms of intentional activity on the part of x. To take a simple example at hand: I provide an intelligent design explanation for the existence of the book you hold in your hands in that the words that make up the book were intentionally written by me. Unlike the features of the universe that God is supposed to explain, however, God Himself is not explained by anything external to Himself. Thus, God is the ultimate explanation of all complex natural phenomena and has no explanation outside Himself. Dawkins argues that these two features imply that it is extremely improbable that God exists. A crucial premise of the argument is that “[h]owever statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable.” This is so because God must contain at least as much complexity as the thing God is supposed to explain, yet God is not explained by anything external to Himself. This seems to imply that God came into existence all at once entirely by chance. But given God’s required complexity, this is very unlikely, and hence it is very unlikely that God exists at all. Dawkins puts it this way: “God tries to have his free lunch and be it too.” The argument can be formulated as follows:

Dawkins’ Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit

1. If God exists, then God has these two properties: (i) He provides an intelligent design explanation for all natural, complex phenomena in the universe and (ii) He has no explanation external to Himself.
2. Anything that provides an intelligent design explanation for the natural, complex phenomena in the universe is at least as complex as such phenomena.
3. So: If God exists, then God has these two properties: (i) He is at least as complex as the natural, complex phenomena in the universe and (ii) He has no explanation external to Himself. (from 1 and 2)
4. It is very improbable that there exists something that (i) is at least as complex as the natural, complex phenomena in the universe and (ii) has no explanation external to itself.
5. Therefore, it is very improbable that God exists. (from 3 and 4)

The second premise is substantive and crucial, and Dawkins insists on it repeatedly:

Seen clearly, intelligent design will turn out to be a redoubling of the problem. Once again, this is because the designer himself . . . immediately raises the problem of his own origin. Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a Dutchman’s Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman’s Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance.

In part IV of Hume’s Dialogues, Philo argues that “there is no ground to suppose a plan of the world to be formed in the Divine Mind, consisting of distinct ideas, differently arranged, in the same manner as an architect forms in his head the plan of a house which he intends to execute” because “a mental world or universe of ideas requires a cause as much as does a material world or universe of objects; and, if similar in its arrangement, must require a similar cause.” Like Dawkins, Philo maintains that an intelligent designer of the universe stands in need of explanation at least as much as the universe itself.

How convincing is Dawkins’ argument? A good way to think about this question is to think about how a theist might resist the argument. One reply a theist might make is that Dawkins has overlooked an important difference between God and natural complex phenomena: Natural phenomena are contingent things (they exist but could fail to exist) whereas God exists necessarily (He exists and it is impossible for Him not to exist). If God is a necessary being, then He did not come into existence all at once entirely by chance because He did not come into existence at all. Thus, contra premise (4) above, the fact that a given thing is complex and lacks an explanation external to itself does not imply that the existence of the thing in question is improbable. Premise (4) does not hold in the case of things that exist necessarily; hence, it does not hold in the case of God.

Dawkins does not consider this objection, but he could turn to Hume for assistance in responding to it if he so desired. In part IX of the Dialogues, Cleanthes poses this question: “[W]hy may not the material universe be the necessarily existent Being”? The relevance of this remark to the present objection to Dawkins’ argument is as follows: If the idea of necessarily existing complex entities makes sense, why not suppose that the natural complex phenomena themselves exist necessarily and hence need no explanation? This proposal undercuts the argument from design by eliminating the need to posit a designer in order to explain the complex phenomena in the universe in the first place. One obvious problem with this proposal is that we observe natural complex phenomena being created and destroyed all the time, which apparently indicates that their existence is contingent. But Cleanthes’ proposal can avoid this difficulty if we think of the universe as a four-dimensional structure and suppose that it is this entire structure that exists necessarily. So, while it is true that complex natural phenomena come into existence and go out of existence, it is also true that all of this happens necessarily. In support of this proposal, Cleanthes points out that “[w]e dare not affirm that we know all the qualities of matter; and, for aught we can determine, it may contain some qualities which, were they known, would make its non-existence appears as great a contradiction as that twice two is five.” Of course, we can conceive of the 4-D structure being different than it is, or not existing at all – but we can also conceive of there being no God, so the theist who believes in a necessarily existing God can hardly maintain that conceivability is a reliable guide to possibility. If this is the case, then it is hard to see what basis there is for admitting the possibility of a necessarily existing complex God while denying the possibility of a necessarily existing complex 4-D universe. The upshot is that the notion of a complex but necessarily existent God has implications the theist is unlikely to find acceptable.

Dawkins might also look to Thomas Aquinas (a surprising ally!) to refute the possibility of a complex, necessarily existing God. Aquinas claims that complexity in God is incompatible with God having no explanation external to Himself on the grounds that “every composite has a cause, for things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite.” God cannot consist of multiple parts, physical or otherwise, because if He did, some external explanation would be required to account for the fact that God’s various parts are united in a single being.

Aquinas’ remarks lead naturally to a more interesting objection to Dawkins’ 747 Gambit, one that draws on the doctrine of divine simplicity. Aquinas maintains the “absolute simplicity” of God, and he explicates this concept as follows:

[T]here is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of form and matter; nor does His nature differ from His suppositum; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple.

Aquinas lists various possible kinds of complexity here and says that God lacks each of them. Unpacking the various kinds of complexity involved would require a substantial detour through Thomistic (and Aristotelian) metaphysics. Fortunately, we can avoid this detour by noting that various remarks Dawkins makes suggest that when he speaks of complexity, he primarily has in mind the possession of logically distinct parts. For instance, Dawkins quotes with approval Keith Ward’s rejection of the Thomistic doctrine that God is simple “in the sense that what is true of any part of God is true of the whole.” Dawkins agrees with Ward’s alternative proposal that if God existed, He might be “indivisible” but would also be “internally complex.” Thus, Dawkins’ position seems to be that any God that could explain the complex natural phenomena in our universe would have to have multiple parts. The simplicity objection, as construed by Dawkins, denies this. According to the objection, the God that ultimately explains all the natural complex phenomena in our universe not only exists necessarily but has no logically distinct parts. The target of this objection is the second premise of Dawkins’ argument above:

2. Anything that provides an intelligent design explanation for the natural, complex phenomena in the universe is at least as complex as such phenomena.

Dawkins’ main response to this objection seems to be simply to insist on the truth of the second premise: “A God capable of consciously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple.” And: “God may not have a brain made of neurons, or a CPU made of silicon, but if he has the powers attributed to him he must have something far more elaborately and non-randomly constructed than the largest brain or the largest computer we know.”

Although Dawkins appears not to offer much of an argument for this premise, it might be supported by an appeal to experience. In our experience, an intelligent designer of a thing is always at least as complex as that thing. For instance, I contain at least as much complexity as this book does. Hume, through Cleanthes, draws on experience to argue against the doctrine of divine simplicity by arguing that it conflicts with the view that God has (or is) a mind. Cleanthes says:

A mind whose acts and sentiments and ideas are not distinct and successive, one that is wholly simple and totally immutable, is a mind which has no thought, no reason, no will, no sentiment, no love, no hatred; or, in a word, is no mind at all.

Even if Cleanthes’ remarks do not establish the impossibility of a perfectly simple mind, they drive home the otherness of such a mind. The doctrine of divine simplicity threatens to lead to the conclusion that God’s mind is an alien mind, radically different from any human mind.

Dawkins seeks to show that what he calls “the God Hypothesis” is extremely improbable. Many of Dawkins’ critics have pointed out that he construes the God Hypothesis in a way that is at odds with much traditional western theology. For instance, Thomas Nagel says this in his review of The God Delusion:

If the [design] argument is supposed to show that a supremely adept and intelligent natural being, with a super-body and a super-brain, is responsible for the design and the creation of life on earth, then of course this “explanation” is no advance on the phenomenon to be explained. . . . The explanation of his existence as a chance concatenation of atoms is not a possibility for which we must find an alternative, because that is not what anybody means by God.

The implied point here is correct: Dawkins’ argument is most effective against the hypothesis that God is a contingent, complex physical being that is the ultimate explanation for all the natural complex phenomena in the universe – but no clear-thinking Christian believes that hypothesis! However, it seems to me that Dawkins’ argument retains some force despite this point. It retains force in that the theist can evade Dawkins’ reasoning only by accepting the doctrine of divine simplicity, and accepting such a doctrine forces the theist to accept a rather mysterious ultimate explanation of the universe. Immediately after the passage just quoted, Nagel continues:

If the God hypothesis makes sense at all, it offers a different kind of explanation from those of physical science: purpose or intention of a mind without a body, capable nevertheless of creating and forming the entire physical world.

The doctrine of divine simplicity implies that the immensely creative Mind in question is not only disembodied, but also devoid of logically distinguishable parts. But there appears to be tension between the God Who Explains and the God Who is Simple. Traditional monotheism identifies these two Gods. On the one hand, God is supposed to render intelligible the nature and existence of the universe. For instance, we have seen that [C. S.]Lewis maintains that God provides an intelligible explanation for certain elements of human nature. On the other hand, God is said to be transcendent, mysterious, Other. But the more mysterious God is, the less He constitutes an intelligible explanation for anything. Explanations shed light; mysteries are shrouded in darkness.

Hume emphasizes this tension in the Dialogues by presenting two theistic characters (Cleanthes and Demea). One of these characters emphasizes God as an explanation for the physical universe; the other emphasizes God’s transcendent, mysterious nature. It is no accident that the two characters, though they are both theists, are on opposite sides of essentially every substantial issue that arises in the Dialogues. Perhaps this is Hume’s way of highlighting the tension between the God Who Explains and the God Who is Simple. While Dawkins’ argument fails to establish its intended conclusion that the existence of the God of traditional monotheism is improbable, the 747 Gambit at least gestures vaguely in the direction of a more interesting argument. The upshot of this other argument is nicely captured by Cleanthes’ rhetorical question to Demea early in part IV of Hume’s Dialogues: “[H]ow do you mystics, who maintain the absolute incomprehensibility of the Deity, differ from skeptics or atheists, who assert that the first cause of all is unknown and unintelligible?” Dawkins may have failed to establish the improbability of God as the ultimate explanation of the universe, but his argument serves (at least indirectly) to bring to our attention the obscurity of this proposed explanation.