Beating A Dead Horse: Intelligent Designers
Posted on: January 13, 2009 - 6:38pm
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Beating A Dead Horse: Intelligent Designers
Christians will often say, "The universe cannot possibly have been created in exactly this way without intelligent design." The most common way to refute this is to trot out the anthropic principle, which essentially points out that our existence only proves that our existence is possible. For whatever reason, this refutation, though perfectly sound logically, seems to come up short on emotional impact.
Without God, this particular incarnation of the universe is impossible.
This can be rewritten slightly to express the same idea with words that will be easier for us to work with:
Besides God, there are no other possible explanations for this particular incarnation of the universe.
Theists are not going to like it when you reword it this way -- at least not if they're smart. In fact, maybe even you, gentle atheist reader, are bristling a little bit. A brief perusal of the science aisle at Borders will tell you that there are most certainly other possible explanations for the universe besides God. Is it really that simple to completely discard the argument?
In a word, yes. It really is that astoundingly wrong. However, let's keep looking at it to make sure we're not missing something really important. First, let's make an important observation about the wordpossible. I've been talking a lot about epistemological rights recently, and I want to begin with saying that I have absolutely no justification for making pronouncements about any of the current cosmological models. That is the stuff of very highly advanced theoretical physics, and I always had problems figuring out those stupid problems with ramps and boxes and pulleys. Physics is not my thing. However, my inability to discuss physics has absolutely nothing to do with my ability to address this particular argument.
Notice that the theist argument relies completely on possibility, not accuracy. The assertion is that there is no other possibility at all that could explain the universe existing as it does. This is so astoundingly easy to refute that one has to wonder why anyone would bother, but for the sake of being thorough, I will do so:
Assertion: It is possible that there is a multiverse, and that black holes are singularities, each spawning their own unique universe, each with random or at least highly variable universal constants. If this is the case, we should expect that universes such as ours where black holes naturally form would be more common than universes in which black holes do not naturally form. It is possible that time, whatever it might be, is infinite. If that is the case, then we should be surprised if a universe such as ours did not come to exist, as it is within the set of possible universal constants.
(This is a very bad rendition of a real theory, by the way.)
I have no idea whether or not this is the way reality is. I have no idea whether this is probable or staggeringly improbable. This is not the point. The point is, unless there's somebody out there with some startling empirical observations of the nature of reality, this theory is at least possible, even if the possibility is only one in trillions of trillions.
That's how incredibly weak the theist argument is! It is disproven by just imagining anything at all that might have "created" the universe. Of course, savvy theists will balk at this line of thinking. They can't really argue the logic, but they can certainly argue the spirit of the argument. "Possible" doesn't really mean possible in the absolute sense, they will say. What they mean is that nothing else makes any good sense. Sure, you can imagine that multidimensional ferrets shit singularities, and it's pretty much impossible to disprove, but how much stock should we put into that hypothesis. No, the theist will aver, God is the only one with any reasonable possibility of being true.
At this point, a clever debater will insist that theists give up the charade of asserting that God is the only possible cause for the universe, and refuse to discuss the matter further until a new proposition has been put forward.
Having to give up the notion of God being the only possibility, a theist has now conceded that virtually anything could be the cause of the universe. This is actually the death blow for the argument, though most theists don't realize why. To illustrate the point, let's assume the theists are correct in fact. That is, the universe was intelligently designed. We'll concede for the sake of argument that there is an intelligent being who created the universe. Imagine now a conversation between a theist and an atheist where the tables are turned. Science has proven that the universe is most likely to have been intelligently designed, and it is now the atheist who is irrationally holding to the notion that everything began mindlessly, despite evidence to the contrary.
Would a theist, given the preponderance of evidence in his favor, continue to argue that God is the only possible explanation for the universe? Of course not! He wouldn't have to, and any first year college student could point out the error in that position, so why would he? He would happily admit that the atheist was clinging to a possibility, but that there was no rational reason to hold onto that possibility given the preponderance of evidence for intelligent design.
When we look at it from the other side of the fence, we realize that this is just so much emotional pandering. There is literally no logical content worth considering, and when the tables are turned, we see just how ludicrous it is. Once again, theism wants to play tennis with the net down and force atheism to play with the net up.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Evolution is a LIE! I did not evolve from a retarded monkeyfishfrog!
Excellent work, Hamby. It's so easy to just look at the argument and dismiss it because, well, it is ludicrous. What's always more difficult to do, and often seems like a waste of time when an argument is so blatantly poor, is to figure out why it is and why, even so, it appeals to people and even appears decent. What you've done is taken the second look and what's come out of it is a (nearly) text book worthy analysis of a particularly emotionally driven logical fallacy. Thank you!
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Well, that is an interesting way to turn the table on theists. However, I had to read it through a few times to really see what you are doing. So I want to take a stab at a simpler version and see where I can go with it. Let me first say that I would prefer to stay away from the anthropic principal as I have seen too many theists abuse the idea to make a backwards construction into a “finely tuned universe” that somehow must require a creator god. Also, the multiple universes and black holes part of the discussion seems to me to be adding entities that don't really need to be there to make the point. But anyway:
Let me consider a single universe and one where the universal constants could have been variables that ended up as they are. That might sound fairly like the anthropic principal but that is not where I am going. So those variable are what they are and one consequence of that is that we are here to have this discussion. However, that does not take us very far. Had they been different, then we would not be here and this discussion would not be happening. However, that does not tell us why the variable worked out as they did. It only tells us that they happen to be just right. No evidence either for or against god can be derived from that fact.
Certainly we can conceive of a universe that must have been created by a god. Just as easily, we can conceive of a universe that just happened with no intelligent actor behind the scenes. However, we can also consider what the evidence may tell us. To date, what evidence I am aware of only tells us what some of the things that happened were. To the extent that any type of evidence that suggests an underlying account of why something happened only leads into deeper considerations of what happened on a lower level. In any case, considering what happened is not the same thing as considering why it may have happened. Perhaps one day, we will reach some logical end to science where the last “what questions” have been answered.
However, this still does not bring us proof of god. A real, existing creator god can only be an answer to why the universe is the way it is. Perhaps such an answer would point us in the direction of what it was that god really did that was the first cause of all things. I see no reason why the big bang could not have just as easily been the big fart and, as such, not an intelligent act on the part of the creator. Even so, that still only reinforces the last “what question”. It still does not connect the reason to the action.
Just for fun, we can construct a variation on Pascal's wager. One pair of options is there is a god/there is not god. The other is that god can be proved/god can't be proved.
Well, if you can prove the existence of god, then you can work on why the universe is what it is. Conversely, if you can prove that there is not god, then you have no need to work on the matter of why the universe is the way that it is. You simply accept whatever the final question and answer about what the universe is.
On the other hand, if it is not in fact possible to prove the existence (or the non-existence) of god, then you still have no reason to work on the why questions. The only reason for pursuing the matter is if there really is a god and the matter is subject to some reasonable forum of proof. Even then, this still does not tell us anything about the nature of the universe. The what and the why are really two very different areas of inquiry.
Honestly though, I prefer the related comment from LaPlace. When asked by Napoleon why his work on celestial mechanics did not mention the creator, he replied “I had no need of the hypothesis”. Basically, positing a creator god answers none of the how questions. It only goes to the why questions. The basic fact is that “How is the universe such as it is” is a question to science. “Why is the universe is as it is?” is a question for theology and thus not all that important in the grand scheme of things.
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