Can We Believe in God in an Age of Science? The Big Bang & Cosmic 'Fine Tuning' - Peter S. Williams

ancient Greek philosophers such as uh Aristotle here thought that the Universe was infinitely old and thus had no beginning during late Antiquity and the medieval period many theistic thinkers broke with that intellectual tradition on both theological and philosophical grounds for example the famous 12th century medieval M Muslim philosopher Al gazi argued that the the very idea the very concept of actual Infinities entailed various absurdities such that that the concept didn't make sense uh and that therefore the past must actually be finite rather than actually infinite which means that the Universe must therefore have had a beginning Al gazi made the finitude of the past a premise and an argument for the existence of God which is known today as the cam cosmological argument cam is a uh Islamic word that meant um speech it was kind of the the term for the tradition of natural theology uh in Islam so this quote here from Al gazi who argued that every being which begins has a cause for its beginning now the world is a being which begins on the basis of his argument that the very idea of an actually infinite past makes no sense so the past must be finite so the universe had a beginning from which he then draws the conclusion that therefore the world the universe it possesses a cause for its beginning so there's a cause for the beginning of the universe and thus a cause outside of the universe and you can see that that starts to sound at least a little bit like what theists mean by saying God belief in a universe with no beginning became fashionable again in the 18th century due in part at least the influence of the German philosopher Emanuel Kant as philosopher of science Steven Mayer observes few physicists or astronomers at the beginning of the 20th century doubted the infinite age of the universe in 1927 the Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest George lat combined Einstein's theory of gravity with the observation of a Doppler shift in the light from progressively distant galaxies to formulate What would come to be known as The Big Bang Theory Big Bang was actually a disparaging label given to it by people who didn't like the theory but it kind of stuck as a label the Big Bang Theory of the origins of the universe now Big Bang cosmology has developed over the years since the 1920s but the basic picture of a universe with a beginning a finite time ago has been the scientific consensus since particularly the 1965 discovery of the cosmic background radiation left over from The Big Bang when the universe was lot smaller it was much hotter uh and you can detect that today in the microwave uh wavelength of energy and that was something predicted by The Big Bang model and then confirmed experimentally uh in' 65 and M with Progressive detail by a series of uh satellites from Kobe through to plank in the uh 2013's plank satellite so to quote from New Scientist magazine uh this is from a 2012 article The Big Bang is now part of the furniture of modern cosmology it now seems certain that the Universe did have a beginning without an escape Clause physicists and philosophers must finally answer a problem that has been nagging at them for the best part of 50 years how do you get a universe complete with the laws of physics out of nothing now it's important to note that big bang cosmology describes the the evolution of the universe that is the change over time of the Universe from a very hot very dense State a finite time ago to a much bigger less hot less dense state today so it describes that Evolution but big bang cosmology does not say anything about what brought the universe into existence as it were it's a quote uh from Marcus Chow that is big bang cosmology offers a description of the cosmic past as being finite in extent doesn't offer an explanation of that finite Cosmic past and I often used to meet uh 16 17 year old students in schools when I used to go into uh schools doing school conferences on this kind of material and meet students who would say things like oh you can't believe in God these days you know science has explained everything uh we know why the universe is here because of big bang as if Big Bang was somehow a sort of alternative to believing in a Creator because they they have this idea that the Big Bang Theory is an explanation for the existence of the universe but it's not it's just a description of the past of the universe a description that I think very poly raises the question of how do you explain the universe as that previous quote from New Scientist made clear the atheist philosopher of science Bradley monton we quoted him yesterday he says if the universe had a beginning then that lends support to the clam cosmological argument kind of revives that argument and uh it was particularly the American Christian philosopher William Lane Craig who in the late '70s did his first PhD there's not too many people you can say that phrase of his first PhD on uh in philosophy on this issue of the calam cosmological argument and marrying that with modern cosmological data so he looked at both the kind of philosophical arguments against an infinite past that Al gazi would have used but then married it with looking at contemporary Big Bang cosmology as empirical scientific support for that first premise of the calam cosmological argument here's a quote from atheist Nobel Laura in physics Steven Weinberg he says the Big Bang Theory is as certain as anything in science I suppose nothing in science is ever mathematically certain like 2 + 2al 4 but it's the kind of certainty that simply makes it not worthwhile considering Alternatives and the atheist cosmologist Alexander venin uh said uh the answer to the question did the universe have a beginning is it probably did we have no viable models of an eternal universe so we can build that scientific theory into an calam argument for God and let me share with you the way in which I would put such an argument premise one truth claim number one there was probably a first physical event if you think of the history of the universe as a series of physical events how however you want to kind of divide it up there being a beginning there being a finite history means that there would be a first such physical event second premise second truth claim every physical event has at least one cause at least in a very general sense outside of itself now if both of those truth claims both of those premises are true it follows deductively that something else must be true you might be ahead of me here but I just want to note uh you can give a a subsidiary argument for this second premise you might think why believe that every physical event has at least one cause outside of itself so here's an argument for that and then we'll see whether you right about the uh what you would deduce from those two premises so think of this anything that's um Contin ENT or dependent for its existence on something else has at least one cause outside of itself premise two physical events are contingent or Andor dependent realities um seems like there could not be any physical things at all that seems a possibility um the fact that there are seems to be contingent now if those are both true then it would follow that every physical event has at least one cause outside of itself which was our second premise from which it would follow that therefore there was probably know that probably has been carried forward from the first premise there was probably a first physical event with at least one cause a very general sense outside of itself but remember we're talking about the first physical event of of the universe whether you want to say that's the the the existence of physical things happening over the period of a second in the number of seconds in the universe or plank times in the history of the universe or what however you want to divide it up as atheist Raymond Talis and again we quoted him a couple of times yesterday says recent attempts to explain how the universe came out of nothing that they're not being a cause of the universe attempts which rely on questionable Notions such as spontaneous fluct fluctuations in a Quantum vacuum which is not nothing it's a Quantum vacuum with you can describe it it's not nothing right the notion of gravity as negative energy and the the inexplicable free gift of the laws of nature kind of waiting in the wings for the moment of creation reveal conceptual confusion beneath mathematical sophistication so here's a kind of a second stage continuing on this argument we've got to that conclusion that there was probably a first physical event every physical event has at least one cause outside of itself therefore there was probably a first physical event with at least one cause outside of itself now we add in a new bit of information promise four any first physical event must have a nonphysical cause can't say what was the cause of the first physical event oh it was the previous physical cause so that statement doesn't make any sense does it if there is a cause by definition it has to be a nonphysical cause conclusion therefore there was probably a first physical event with a nonphysical cause if that argument is a good one if it's sound that is if all the premises are jointly more likely true than not and all of the the kind of conclusions the bits where we we draw a conclusion from those premises are kind of validly drawn this at the very least shows that naturalism and materialism as a worldview is wrong and it also starts to sound suspiciously like some kind of theism right some kind of non-physical cause that brought the whole universe into existence who's always believed in something like that you know let me put it this way with a lovely illustration that I often use that comes from the the Catholic philosopher Richard perill I like these kind of um concrete illustrations to get your your mind around these ideas suppose I ask you to loan me a book like my most recent book a universe from someone a collection of papers on Arguments for the existence of God I ask you to loan me a book but you say I don't have a copy right now but I'll ask my friend to lend me his copy and then I'll lend it to you okay but suppose you're friend says exactly the same thing to you and so on add infinitum to Infinity as the Latin phrase goes surely two things should be clear first if the process of asking to borrow the book goes on at infinitum then I'll never get the book from that process secondly therefore if I do get the book from the process the process that led to me getting it can't have been one that went on add infinitum that is somewhere down the line of requests to borrow the book someone had the book without having to borrow it from someone okay now in this illustration receiving the book is receiving existence being caused okay so this is like somewhere down the line of receiving existence something had to have existence without having to get it from somewhere else right because that process of causation can't have gone on ADD infinite must be fine finite see the application likewise argues Richard perel consider any contingent or dependent reality such as any physical event I would say including of course the first physical event he says the same two principles apply if the process of everything getting its existence from something went on to Infinity then the thing in question would never have existence and if the thing has existence then the process hasn't gone on to Infinity there was something that had existence without having to receive it from something else and it kind of seems to make sense that if there's the if there is something that's the kind of thing that H just has existence without needing to receive it without being dependent without being contingent then it must be the kind of thing that is independent in its existence that is non-contingent or philosophers would say necessary in its existence such that if it did exist not only can we say there was such a thing there is such a thing and that would also ask answer questions not only about you know why did the universe come into existence but why do we continue to exist Moment by moment you can run you can kind of run the same kind of argument from I think it's raised in a very interesting Way by saying you know there's a first physical event looking backwards in time but you can also say why does anything here and now exist if physical things don't have to exist why do they continue in existence so as American philosopher Dallas Willard would argue the dependent character of all physical States together with the completeness the finiteness the non infinite actual infinit the completeness of the series of dependencies a depends on B depends on C and so on underlying the existence of Any Given physical state logically implies at least one self-existent and therefore nonphysical because no physical thing is self-existent state of being now that is philosophically I think a very interesting part of the puzzle of existence to be able to say a self-existent a independent in its ability to exist a self-existent and therefore nonphysical state of being that caused the existence of the physical universe is a good slice of what theists mean by God shall we uh move uh on to a second aspect of big bang cosmology which describes not only uh a finite uh changing past of the cosmos but has in recent decades revealed that that Cosmos has a a special structure to it when you're looking at the initial conditions and the kind of laws that describe uh the universe and its change over time a matter that's come to be cloy known as the fine tuning of the cosmos beginning with atheist astrophysicist Fred hil's 1953 prediction of a finally tuned uh resonance state in the carbon 12 Atomic nucleus something that was later verified and is now known as the hoil state scientists have come to recognize that the existence of well not life but not only life kind of basically anything very interesting at all uh but especially what philosopher Robin Collins calls embodied conscious agents ecas embodied conscious agents like ourselves that is observers able to significantly interact with each other to develop scient science and Scientific Technology and to discover the universe these all sort of different aspects of this fine Ching that all of this depends upon a staggering degree of cosmic and often more local planetary even fine tuning as well so here's what Fred Hy kind of complained as an atheist a common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics well British Christian philosopher Richard swinburn lays out one version of what what he calls the the principle of credulity of or principle of when to trust the way reality appears to you when to trust the apparent evidence and he argues that it's a basic principle of knowledge which he calls the principle of credulity that we ought to believe that things are as they seem to be until we have evidence that we're mistaken and of course trusting that evidence to show us that we were mistaken in one instance means trusting the evidence that shows we're mistaken if we didn't trust any evidence until we had evidence that it was trustworthy then you couldn't trust the evidence unless you had evidence that it was trust and so on and so on and so on and you end up in this regress and you can't believe anything so basically the rational thing to do you have to start out trusting something and that doesn't mean you're not open to being shown wrong indeed you can't be open to being shown wrong and yes you're willing to trust the way things appear to be so we have a kind of on the face of it a primer facia argument for design which uses this principle and we can apply that to the fine chining of the universe because if we say one we should take things to be the way they seem to be until given sufficient reason for doubt and two the fine tuning of the cosmos seems to be the product of design like Fred H was complaining then of course the conclusion follows that we should take the fine tuning of the universe to be the product of design until and unless we're given sufficient reason to doubt that is William Lane Craig uh describing the cosmic fine chuning in a little bit more detail for us the scientists have discovered that the existence of intelligent life and indeed life and indeed kind of complex chemistry and indeed chemistry and so on uh depends upon a complex and delicate balance of initial conditions given in the Big Bang itself in addition to the laws of physics themselves this fine tuning is of two sorts first when the laws of nature are expressed as mathematical equations you find appearing in them certain so-called constants like the constant that represents the force of gravity the laws of nature are consistent with a wide range of values for these constants there's no apparent physical reason why gravity has to be that strong and not a bit stronger or a bit weaker or a lot stronger or a lot weaker so could have been all sorts of values second there are initial conditions on which the laws of nature operate for example the amount of entropy or the balance between matter and antimatter in the universe that's just kind of an in an initial given that then changes over time in ways described by laws of physics with certain constants in but you have to have the initial conditions as well so those are two kind of separate things these constants and quantities fall into an extraordinarily narrow range of Life permitting values for example a change in the strength of the atomic weak Force by only one part in 10 to the power of 100 it's a very small number very small change because that's a very big number 10 to the 100 would have prevented a life permitting Universe uh the cosmological constant that drives the inflation of the universe is fine tuned to around one part in 10 to the power of 120 the the odds of the big Bang's low entropy condition existing just by chance are on the order of one out of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123 for those not used to Scientific mathematical notation like me concrete examples really help um it's generally estimated that there are something like 10 the power of 80 atoms I think it is in the observable universe so these numbers are much much bigger so Craig observes that to first to detect design rationally in addition to high improbability that also needs to be Conformity to an independently given pattern he's saying it's not sufficient for us to observe something and say that thing is very very unlikely therefore it must have been designed that that won't work roll a dice a lot of times in a row you will get a very very very unlikely result that is not enough to show that the result was designed so he says we also need Conformity to an independently given pattern not one that we've just read off the dice rolls but an independently given one says when these two elements are present we have what's called specified complexity which is the tip off to intelligent design and he gives this lovely example he says thus in a poker game any particular deal of cards is equally and highly improbable right it's one hand of cards out of all the possible hands of cards that you can make out of the deck right and everybody who's dealt around the table gets a hand of cards all of those hands are equally improbable and they're all very unlikely but of course that's not enough to prove that your hand cards was the result of design rather than chance yeah but says Craig if you find that every time a certain player deals he ends up getting all four aces you can bet this is not the result of chance but of design and that dealer who keeps getting all Four Aces couldn't allay our suspicions by saying what are you complaining about suggesting that I'm cheating after all every hand of cards is equally unlikely or someone enters a sequence of numbers into a cash machine and it gives them money were they a lucky or B did they get the money by Design now of course you might say well it's possible that they were lucky maybe they were lucky but which is the more probable explanation which is the best explanation that they were lucky or that they got the money by Design when a complex that is synonymous with unlikely can use those terms interchangeably here complex an unlikely event matches an independently given particularly use F here would be a a functionally specified patent you know that's the only pin number that will access money from the account attached to this card it's a functionally specified pattern that has to be hit we tend to infer design and quite rationally say so here's uh Steven Hawkin and Leonard mov from their book The Grand Design they know that the initial state of the universe had to be set up in a very special and highly improbable way in effect they're saying the initial state of the universe exhibits specified complexity how improbable Norwegian philosopher Espin lammer uh quotes uh cosmologist Luke Barnes pictur here who has calculated using conservative numbers the combined odds that a life permitting Universe should exist on the assumption that naturalism is true so that these values will have to be hit kind of without design what are the chances says it's less than one part out of 10 to the^ of 136 it is difficult to exaggerate how unlikely this is these numbers are literally Beyond astronomically big right or physicist Lee smolen has calculated that the odds of Life compatible numbers coming up by chance is around one in 10 to the power of 229 well here's um probably the most famous atheist in the world still fellow Brit Richard Dawkins uh author of books like The God Delusion from which I'm quoting here he says the laws and constants of physics are fine-tuned in such a way as to set up the conditions under which humans and their brains will come into existence well we'll come into the second part of that later on today but note he's talking about fine tuned in such a way as to that is complexity and specification cropping up again really we have this argument one the fine-tuning of the universe exhibits specified complexity two things exhibiting specifi complexity are probably designed conclusion therefore the fine tuning of the universe was probably designed right so how would someone like Dawkins respond to that argument well the most famous objection here would be the so-called Multiverse objection it's basically the idea of um giving ourselves more rolls of more dice in order to make it more likely that our numbers will come up the many universes objection actually denies premise one of that argument by hypothesizing the existence of an infinite or at least a very large Multiverse of differently tuned universes it's like walking into a clothes shop and they've got all sorts of different sizes of clothes so it's not at all surprising that you find one that you can inhabit that you can put on and wear so Dawkins suggests there are billions of universes having different laws and constants we could only find ourselves in one of the minority of universes whose laws and constants happen to allow be pricious to our Evolution so nothing to see here folks it looks designed but actually you know that's just misleading because there are billions of universes with different laws and constants problem solved right well I suggest there are at least eight problems with the Multiverse hypothesis which I've arranged here roughly in ascending order of seriousness now most of these objections note app in Spades as it were apply all the more to an actually infinite multivers hypothesis and there are of course additional objections to an actually infinite Multiverse particularly if you connect back to say Al gaz's arguments against the concept of actual Infinity making sense there can be some application there but anyway the Multiverse hypothesis is spec speculative astrophysicist Rodney holder points out that the physics associated with Multiverse models is speculative to say the least especially when it comes to string theory models the theory is of course complex Richard swinburn says to postulate a trillion trillion other universes rather than one God in order to explain the orderliness of our universe the only Universe we observe seems the height of irrationality you'd need lots of differently tuned universes to improve the odds of having a single life permitting universe and why are they differently tuned to each other and so on any scientific Multiverse hypothesis has to posit some sort of Universe generating mechanism and perhaps it's this universe generating mechanism rather than its results that should be compared with the god hypothesis here well Stephen C Mayer says Multiverse Advocates must not only postulate many universes but two distinct types of universe generating mechanisms in order to explain two distinct types of fine chuning initial conditions fine chuning and fine chuning of laws and constants of physics yet each of these Universe generating mechanisms themselves presuppose multiple hypothetical entities or processes so it's a complex hypothesis this now philosopher Logan PA Gage cautions that Simplicity in explanation is a secondary virtue it's not an automatic trump card more complex theories should not automatically be discounted okay fair warning however even if there is something of a a discount on new tokens of old kinds okay we already know that a universe can exist so perhaps it's less of a stretch to say maybe there could be lots of other differently tuned universes rather than to say you maybe there's a non-physical intelligent Creator right you compare these hypotheses but he says even if there's something of a discount on new tokens of old kinds it isn't a blank check one new kind of thing in our explanation would be more than offset by infinitely many new tokens of old kinds so we have to think kind of carefully about this comparison here and Gage argues that theism is simpler than naturalism in terms of the number of fundamental entities postulated so theism postulates one Creator God as the fundamental reality remember back to Myer's quote he says the Multiverse generating ideas within cosmology have deposit two different fundamental kinds of realities as well as lots of different universes and so that comparison it's a complex matter but maybe one could argue that the the god hypothesis is simpler right three and four the that the Multiverse idea is empirically unverified stroke unverifiable and it's ad Hawk so here's a slide from The Simpsons okay if x number of monkeys existed then let's grant that they could type the plays of Henrik ibson to choose a Norwegian writer uh by ch just typing away randomly on their little monkey type writers if you've got enough of them maybe they could do that but anyone faced with the many monkeys hypothesis as an explanation for the works of Henrik Gibson will ask surely if there's any independent reason to believe that there were X number of monkeys typing away at a lot of typewriters for long enough okay if not they will rationally reject the many monkeys hypothesis as an adhawk hypothesis one adopted purely for the purpose of saving a theory from difficulty or reputation but without any independent rationale that's what it means to be an ad hoc explanation and they will favor the single author hypothesis surely the same thing goes for the many universes and one author of the universe hypothesis the Dawkins is really making this argument he's saying premise one if there were enough different universes then the specified structure of our universe wouldn't be complex or unlikely enough to justify a design inference so he needs this premise premise two there are enough different universes in order to reach the conclusion that therefore the fine chuning of the universe does not justify a design inference premise 2 is key here I have it flashing away warning warning danger Will Robinson you know there are enough different universes but as astrophysicist Adam Frank says there is no empirically grounded scientific reason to believe there is such a thing as a Multiverse of parallel realities there's just no evidence for that theory cosmologist George Ellis says that the existence of multiverses is neither established nor scientifically establish he says five be Multiverse would be insufficient to explain away the data perhaps um even if a Multiverse did exist what guarantees that it would be big enough and varied enough to explain away the very high degree of fine-tuning that we see in our universe philosopher of science Bruce Gordon says there are many independent constants and factors that are fine-tuned to a high degree of precision the cumulative effect of All of These Fine tunings significantly erods the probabilistic resources of say the string landscape models grahe snard helpfully points out that even an infinite number of universes may not give the attribute that is required that is a cosmos Fit for Life even if there's a infinite Multiverse he says as John pinh Horn commented the infinite sequence of even numbers is distinctly short of oddness so just because there's an infinite number of things doesn't mean you're going to get the type of thing that we're trying to explain you'd have to have some sort of explanation of why that Infinity includes that type of thing which goes back to the complexity and ad hoc kind of issues with the theis six Multiverse is question begging as the agnostic cosmologist Paul Davies author of books like the Goldilocks Enigma you know why is the universe just right for Life says Multiverse theories merely shift the problem up a level from Universe to Multiverse to appreciate this one only has to list the many assumptions that underpin the Multiverse Theory first there has to be a universe generating mechanism in the case of Eternal inflation a a Quantum nucleation of pocket universes to be precise but that raises the obvious question of the source of the quantum laws not to mention the laws of gravitation including the causal structure of SpaceTime on which those laws depend that permit inflation furthermore if we accept that the Multiverse is predicted by string or M Theory version String Theory then that theory with its specific mathematical form also has to be accepted as given so Davis concludes that the Multiverse Theory cannot provide a complete and final explanation of why the universe is Fit for Life it just points you to a whole bunch of other things that themselves need explaining as mayor says not only does the universe generating mechanism in inflationary cosmology require prior unexplained fine-tuning he says it actually requires more fine tuning than what it was proposed to explain actually argues that it makes the problem worse when you try and push it back when you try and push the ruckle in the carpet under the sofa the ruckle actually gets bigger when you're trying to offload it in this way you don't get rid of fine tuning indeed he argues you get more fine tuning that needs explaining that's from his uh book Return of the god hypothesis which I highly recommend seventh the Multiverse idea arguably undermines the practice of science physicist Brian Green uh says the danger here is that if the Multiverse idea takes root researchers May too quickly give up the search for underlying explanations when faced with seemingly inexplicable observations researchers May invoke the framework of the Multiverse prematurely proclaiming some phenomenon or other to merely reflect the conditions in our own bubble universe and there thereby fail to discover the deeper understanding that awaits us so you observe something unlikely that seems to require explanation and you say oh yeah but we live in a Multiverse where all sorts of weird things happen because unlikely stuff happens because of the Multiverse nothing to see here move on that kind of undermines the rationale of doing science eth the hypothesis of a Multiverse is actually disconfirmed um Rodney hder again says our universe is far more special than we would expect it to be even if it were merely a random member or of the subset of universes that are compatible with our existence so if you take the small subset of universes compatible with our existence most of them are less ordered less special than the universe we actually observe our universe is too fine-tuned to be explained away as just a well we happen to live in a random member of that subset as atheist Roger Penrose writes in his book fashion faith and fantasy in the new physics of the universe consider how ridiculously cheaper in the sense of improbabilities it would be to Simply produce by mere random Collision of particles the entire solar system with all its life readymade compared to the fine tuning of the universe so he says the problem is why did we not come about this way just random get this patch this island of stability life permitting stability why do we not come about this way rather than from an absurdly less probable 1.4 * 10 to the 10 tedious years of evolution seems to me that this conundrum simply points to the incorrectness of the bubble Universe idea the multi- universe idea now the danger that the Multiverse hypothesis undermines science might I'm told be mitigated by the assumption that we are a generic members of the Multiverse but that is an assumption that underwrites the problem of observational disconfirmation so the undermined science and the observational disconfirmation problems actually form horns of a dilemma for the Multiverse hypothesis you have to face at least one of them so in light of the cumulative case against it I think the many universes objection does not constitute a sound defeated to premise one of the Cosmic fineing argument moreover even if we were prepared to Grant a Multiverse his philosopher Michael rotor arguing that our evidence supports a designer whether or not we're in a Multiverse because a theistic Multiverse maybe God made lots of universes a theistic Multiverse is a possibility and a theistic multiv IE would likely contain a higher proportion of Life permitting universes than would an atheistic Multiverse just kind of I priori thus our relevant evidence is more to be expected on a theistic Multiverse hypothesis than on an atheistic Multiverse hypothesis maybe it wouldn't be as strong an argument but even granting a Multiverse it still seems to be an argument for design so Dawkins really retreats in his work to philosophical attempts to rebutt these kind of design inferences from fine chining for example he says the designer himself this is very similar to the yeah but who made God question that you raised earlier the designer himself in order to be capable of Designing would have to be another note this word complex entity of the kind that in his turn needs the same kind of explanation oh dear says if you're trying to explain something improbable it can never suffice to invoke an entity that is itself at least as improbable so he sets this as a principle of good and bad explanation question do we make an explanatory Advance if we explain this complex self-portrait in terms of the existence of the yet more complex edad Mo I think the question kind of answers itself of course we made an explanatory advance in explaining that painting in term of monk even though monk is more complex than his self-portrait Dawkins principle of explanation is just obviously wrong indeed Dawkins thinks his arguing that we should reject explanations that are more complex than the data they explain but Dawkins is more complex than his argument so by his own rule of explanation he shouldn't believe he is arguing for his rule of explanation that is this is this objection is self-contradictory and again it doesn't get worse for you in philosophy than that so um here's a second attempt from Dawkins the design rebuttal uh take to he says critics of my book try to deny that a god capable of Designing something complex must himself be complex but he says look you know God has to be clever enough to calculate the exact values of the physical constants that would find you in the universe call that simple God has to have enough bandwidths to listen to all the prayers and Praises of billions of people simultaneously the one thing he can't be is is simple well in a debate that was chaired by the agnostic philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny um Kenny actually had a bit of an interaction with Dawkins on this matter and Kenny distinguished between complexity of structure and complexity of function and he used the illustration of an electric shaver electric razor and a Cutthroat razor and he said the electric razor can only be used to cut a beard but the Cutthroat razor might also be used to cut a throat right so he's pointing out that although the Cutthroat razor is much more complex in its structure than the Cutthroat razor the Cutthroat Razer has what you might call a bigger complexity of function things you can actually do with it you could use it as a letter opener you could chop your carrots with it you all sorts of things the the the shaver is basically good for shaving beards maybe as a paper weight or something you know but fewer things even though it's got more complexity of structure in other words demonstrating that something has complexity of function doesn't demonstrate that it has complexity of structure because they're different things demonstrating complexity of function doesn't demonstrate complexity of structure back to Dawkins quote God has to be clever enough to calculate he has to to listen now all the things that Dawkins raises are things that God has to do they are functions so Dawkins is trying to prove that God would have complexity of structure needing explanation like the fineing of the universe by arguing that God has complexity of function Dawkins response to Kenny was to say I really don't see what you're saying but I hope you do he's saying that God can't be complex in the sense of being an unlikely contingent arrangement of Parts if for example God were to be a necessary being so Dawkins is here begging the question against God being a necessary being as is traditionally believed in theology uh his thinking of God like these OMG design your own Dey fridge magnet sets that you can buy online where you can mix and match your pictures of deities and come up with your own deity on your fridge because God is a complex arrangement of contingently linked Parts well no that if if some Gods may be like that but you can't just beg the question against God being a necessary being so as the atheist Thomas Nagel responds to this kind of objection he says God you know if there is one is not a complex physical inhabitant of the natural world that needs explaining in the way that specified complex physical objects like the university none of Dawkins observations is an argument showing that God must be complex and not simple in the relevant sense Dawkins equivocates over the terms complex and simple in order to beg the question against God being a simple stroke necessary being rather than a complex contingent being as John Lennox Wily pointed out a book called The created God Delusion probably wouldn't have sold quite so many copies

Channel: FOCLOnline

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Keywords: scientific apologetics, Christianity and science, arguments for creation, is God real, intelligent design, worldview

Id: mZvRygHVHwU

Length: 58min 13sec (3493 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 29 2024