A Refutation of Richard Dawkins’ ‘Ultimate Boeing 747’ Argument

Richard Dawkins has made an unusual argument against God that has become wildly popular among the so-called ‘New Atheists’. Below is a diagram of how I think Richard Dawkins’ ‘Ultimate Boeing 747’ argument (see The God Delusion,[1] Chapter 4) is best summarized – and refuted. Others may present Dawkins' argument differently, for example see this Wikipedia entry. See also William Lane Craig formalization of the argument here. The differences in formalizing Dawkins' argument are largely due to the fact that Dawkins himself failed to state the argument coherently. This has led, inevitably, to a degree of interpretation when formalizing the argument. 

Dawkins’ own words are in italics. The premises of Dawkins’ argument (as I interpret it) are in bold. After the initial critique, I discuss some possible responses to my refutations and finish up by raising some other objections to Dawkins’ overall critique of the design argument.

Dawkins’ argument, in his own words:

The creationist misappropriation of the argument from improbability always takes the same general form, and it doesn't make any difference if the creationist chooses to masquerade in the politically expedient fancy dress of 'intelligent design' (ID). Some observed phenomenon - often a living creature or one of its more complex organs, but it could be anything from a molecule up to the universe itself - is correctly extolled as statistically improbable….

Sometimes the language of information theory is used: the Darwinian is challenged to explain the source of all the information in living matter, in the technical sense of information content as a measure of improbability or 'surprise value'. Or the argument may invoke the economist's hackneyed motto: there's no such thing as a free lunch - and Darwinism is accused of trying to get something for nothing. It turns out to be the God Hypothesis that tries to get something for nothing. God tries to have his free lunch and be it too. 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 (p. 113-114).

Later on, he quotes an article written by himself and fellow atheist Jerry Coyne that adds a little more to the argument:

Why is God considered an explanation for anything? It's not - it's a failure to explain…Ask for an explanation of where that bloke came from, and odds are you'll get a vague, pseudo-philosophical reply about having always existed, or being outside nature. Which, of course, explains nothing (p. 134).

A little later, again, he writes:

The key difference between the genuinely extravagant God hypothesis and the apparently extravagant multiverse hypothesis is one of statistical improbability. The multiverse, for all that it is extravagant, is simple. God, or any intelligent, decision-taking, calculating agent, would have to be highly improbable in the very same statistical sense as the entities he is supposed to explain. The multiverse may seem extravagant in sheer number of universes. But if each one of those universes is simple in its fundamental laws, we are still not postulating anything highly improbable (pp. 146-147).

It [i.e., the explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe] may even be a superhuman designer – but, if so, it will most certainly not be a designer who just popped into existence, or who always existed. If (which I don't believe for a moment) our universe was designed…the designer himself must be the end product of some kind of cumulative escalator or crane, perhaps a version of Darwinism in another universe (p. 156).

It is interesting the number of times Dawkins feels the need to repeat this claim in the one chapter. He repeats it at least a half dozen times. It does seem to be his fallback position: “Keep reminding them…keep repeating it…” Dawkins never bothers to frame this as a formal argument. He doesn’t even identify what his main premises are, exactly, though you get the general idea. Consequently, the reader is left to structure the argument for him. This is how I would construct it:

1. Anything that is highly complex is highly improbable.

2. The universe is a highly complex, improbable system, itself composed of many complex parts.

   3.1. Any designer capable of designing highly improbable things, like the universe, must be highly complex and improbable – at least as complex as the thing it designs.
 
  3.2. Any designer of complex, improbable things must have come about as the result of some kind of simple-to-complex process, e.g. neo-Darwinism, to suggest otherwise is simply a failure to explain the existence of such complexity.

  3.3. To explain complexity by appealing to something even more complex, is self-defeating. This would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, with complex things being explained by more complex things, which are in turn explained by more complex things… ad infinitum.

3. Any Designer-God capable of creating the universe must be highly improbable and would have to come into existence as the result of some kind of simple-to-complex neo-Darwinism -like process.

 4.1. To say that God has always existed fails to explain anything. We might as well say that an eye always existed.

4. God, if such a being were to exist, would require a cause of his/her/its existence - or, at least, an explanation of his/her/its complexity.

5. Conclusion: There, almost certainly, is no God.

And here is how I would refute it:

1. Anything that is highly complex is highly improbable.  True, provided we are talking about physical objects. It is, frankly, difficult to speak of complex ideas/concepts, for example, as improbable in anything like the same way as molecular machines, cars, aeroplanes, people, etc.

2. The universe is a highly complex, improbable system, itself composed of many complex parts. Obviously true.

3.1. Any designer capable of designing highly improbable things, like the universe, must be highly complex and improbable – at least as complex as the thing it designs. False: This is the crucial claim of Dawkins’ argument. However, he fails to give good reason(s) for why this should apply to God, as God is spirit, not a material being. Dawkins’ argument might work in the case of material beings, but to apply this to God is to beg the question, as God is not a material being and therefore can’t be complex in the way Dawkins suggests. To draw an analogy, as Dawkins does, between physically complex objects and an (allegedly) conceptually complex, disembodied mind (i.e. God), is a categorical error. What kind of meaningful analogy can be drawn between the complexity of ideas in a mind and the complexity of a biochemical machine in a cell? How can you quantify the complexity of thoughts? Not in the same way you quantify the complexity of the universe, surely! The latter has ‘multiple, interacting parts’, thoughts don’t have ‘parts’ – not in the same sense, anyway. Dawkins doesn’t even begin to address this issue. Indeed, he seems completely unaware of it. Instead, he just insists that God must be complex in the sense of 'highly improbable', like a cell or an eye. In effect, he insists the God must be physically complex. However, to insist that God must be a physically complex being is to assume the truth of materialism.

We can therefore conclude that the truth of materialism is an implicit (unstated) premise in Dawkins' argument. At the beginning of his book, Dawkins states that he is going to argue for a materialist view of reality – that mind only comes into the world at the end of a very long process of gradual simple-to-complex evolution. But, then, Dawkins commits the fallacy of circular reasoning in his ‘Ultimate Boeing 747’ Argument – he assumes a kind of universal physicalism (the materialist theory of mind) in order to prove the truth of his materialism. That is, in order for his argument to come close to working, he must assume that all intelligence is necessarily dependent on material processes – the very thing he claims he will prove at the beginning of his book! Dawkins cannot expect theists to accept such circular reasoning as a near-proof of the non-existence of God.

Also, when theologians talk of God as a ‘mind’, it is important not to think of God as a mind in the same sense that a human being has a mind. Classical theists, e.g., Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas, etc., talk of God as being intelligent, yes, but not in the same sense that humans are intelligent. God is infinite Being, but that does not mean that God is infinitely complex, as Dawkins would have it. Rather classical theists argued (for reasons too complex to go into here) that the very fact that God is infinite Being necessitates that God must be absolutely simple – not composed of parts, either physical or metaphysical. The reason for this is that anything that is composed of parts cannot be fundamental in its existence, because it would be dependent on its parts for its existence. Thus its parts would be more fundamental. Therefore, God as self-existent Being, not dependent on anything else for existence, has to be simple. This is known as the 'doctrine of divine simplicity' among theologians. The brilliant pagan monotheist Plotinus even referred to God as ‘the One’, to indicate not only that there is only one God, but also that the Divine Being is unified in its essence. For a fuller discussion of divine simplicity see here and here.

3.2. Any designer of complex, improbable things must have come about as the result of some kind of simple-to-complex process, e.g. neo-Darwinism, to suggest otherwise is simply a failure to explain the existence of such complexity. Unsupported premise. For reasons discussed under point 3.1, Dawkins' claim here is circular. If one assumes a naturalism/materialism, then, of course, this necessarily demands that everything come from simple to complex, gradually. The laws of nature, particularly the second law of thermodynamics, makes it very difficult for anything complex (in the sense Dawkins means) to occur by chance. But Dawkins’ argument only works if God is a material object, subject to those laws. Dawkins could, of course, argue that it is impossible or incoherent for a disembodied intelligence to exist – or for something that transcends material reality to exist. But Dawkins doesn’t do this. At best he mocks the idea – but that is not the same as an argument, a fact that Dawkins forgets when he encourages his fans on his chat forum to use ridicule as a tool against religious believers. 

Anyway, such arguments also run the risk of committing the fallacy of circular reasoning. How? Well, it is clear that Dawkins can’t seem to conceive of the idea of non-material entities (read the quotes above). Being unable to do so within his worldview, he instead rejects the idea, without refuting it. This is how he falls into circular reasoning, mentioned above, probably without realizing he has done so. There is nothing logically incoherent about the idea of a ‘disembodied’ intelligence or consciousness, unless one first defines minds as entities that emerge from brains – which begs the question, obviously. Nor is there anything logically incoherent about something existing independent of space-time, unless one assumes that space-time is all that exists, which, again, begs the question. 

Of course, ‘something that exists independently of space-time’ is, by definition, something that is beyond our sensory experience - and beyond science to discover - which is why Dawkins (and Coyne) mock the idea. But the fact that something is beyond our sensory experience does not mean it doesn’t (or couldn’t) exist. Dawkins can insist that he will not accept as real anything that he cannot discover empirically, but the fact that the senses are limited to a four-dimensional world of material objects, again, does not exclude the possibility that something might exist that cannot be discovered directly by them. Note, also, that the conclusion, ‘things that can’t be discovered by the senses do not exist’, is not a conclusion that the senses themselves can discover.

3.3. To explain complexity by appealing to something even more complex to explain it, is self-defeating. This would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, with complex things being explained by more complex things, which are in turn explained by more complex things… ad infinitum. False: Actually, humans frequently explain complexity by appealing to other, more complex things. For example, archaeologists explain artifacts by appealing to more complex humans to explain them. Written words on a tablet are explained as the result of human intelligence; beavers’ dams are explained as the result of the activity of these much-more-complex animals; paper-wasps’ nests are explained by the existence of paper-wasps, etc. 

In fact, all scientific explanation would come to an end if we insisted that we had to understand the explanation of an explanation before we could consider that explanation a good explanation (you follow me?). After all, the explanation of the explanation would require an explanation, and then that explanation would require an explanation, and so on, ad infinitum. One type of design argument, in particular, makes this distinction – Intelligent Design. ID does not attempt an ultimate explanation of complexity, but merely infers that certain features of nature require intelligence as an explanation of their structure. As such, ID is, in its logical structure, no different than inferring design from archaeology. 

Finally, even if it were an ultimate explanation of integrated or specified complexity, the logic of the design inference would not be affected – it would still be as logically valid as inferring design from artifacts. Dawkins does not attempt to refute the logic of design inferences. He only attempts a reducio ad absurdum counter-argument that, ironically, only works if one appeals to a physical designer, but does not works as an argument against inferring God as the designer. In effect, if Dawkins argument works at all, it only works to exclude material designers, so that appeals to intelligent alien lifeforms as the ultimate source of specified complexity are illogical.

3. Any Designer-God capable of creating the universe must be highly improbable and would have to come into existence as the result of some kind of simple-to-complex neo-Darwinism-like process. False, for reasons stated above.

4.1. To say that God has always existed fails to explain anything. We might as well say that an eye always existed. False: This assumes that, if God exists, then God must be complex; and, therefore, God’s complexity requires explanation. However, based on what has already been said, there is no reason to assume that God is complex in the relevant sense. So, no explanation is required for God’s non-complexity. Also, Dawkins is assuming that, if God were complex, then such a Being must have had an origin. This doesn’t necessarily follow, however.

It needs to be made clear that the conclusion that God is eternal is not just an attempt to arbitrarily avoid having to explain the supposed complexity of God. There are two reasons why this response it reasonable: (1) God is by definition a self-existent being[2] – a part of the definition of God that Dawkins conveniently leaves out of his description of a Creator-God at the beginning of his book – and self-existence logically implies eternal existence. The only alternative would be for something to pop into existence out of literally nothing, uncaused. This is a metaphysical impossibility. (2) Other arguments for the existence of God show that an Uncaused Cause is necessary to explain the universe’s existence. This is not simply an assertion, but rather a logical inference from the impossibility of an infinite regress of causes. If an infinite regress of causes cannot occur, a conclusion that Dawkins agrees with in his argument, then some first, uncaused cause must exist to explain the existence of the universe. (The term ‘universe’ being understood here in its traditional sense, as ‘all of material reality’, rather than ‘one universe inside a larger multiverse’.) So, Dawkins’ objection to God eternality as a ‘lack of explanation’ fails.

Dawkins needs to provide a very good reason why he has decided to re-define God as a temporally-finite, contingent being. He doesn’t do so. So, his argument commits the ‘straw-man’ fallacy, by critiquing a view of God that no one actually believes in.[3]

4.  God, if such a being were to exist, would require a cause of his/her/its existence - or, at least, an explanation of his/her/its complexity. Clearly false, based on the objections to sub-premise 4.1.

5. Conclusion: There, almost certainly, is no God.  Completely unfounded: Because premises 3 and 4 are unsupported by their sub-premises, Dawkins’ argument breaks down. Therefore, his conclusion is invalid. Actually, the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises, anyway. Dawkins insists that his argument shows that ‘there almost certainly is no God’. At best, even if his argument were successful, it would only show that the existence of God is highly improbable. That, in itself, proves nothing. The universe is highly improbable, as Dawkins’ admits; and the multiverse would, by implication, be far more improbable, if it existed. Dawkins is willing to consider the possibility of these things existing – indeed, it would be almost impossible to deny the existence of the universe, unless one were to accept some form of solipsism, that is. And note that Dawkins’ appeal to the multiverse shows that he realizes that he still needs an explanation of fine-tuning, so, without God, Dawkins is left with his exceedingly improbable multiverse to explain. (See below for references to articles that discuss why the cause of multiverse is unlikely to be simple, like Dawkins suggests.)

Dawkins doesn’t even refute the logic of design inferences – in fact, he explicitly accepts such logic when he suggests that super-human aliens might – emphasis on the ‘might’ – have designed the universe. He denies that the universe is designed, but acknowledges the possibility of design inferences. He, also, implicitly accepts that logic when, at the beginning of his book, he insists that the existence of a Creator is a scientific question (p. 2).[4] Apparently, like Carl Sagan (who was a big supporter of searching for signs of intelligence among cosmic radiation), Dawkins doesn’t object to the logic of design inferences. He only objects to a particular type of Designer. Perhaps, even with the supposed a priori improbability of God, the plausibility of the design inference might improve the a posteriori probability of the God’s existence sufficiently to make it more plausible than its multiverse rival. It is, after all, the probability of a conclusion after the evidence is considered that determines its true plausibility. So, even if Dawkins’ claim that God is a priori improbable were true (which it isn’t), it may still be possible to make a (tentative) design argument for God’s existence, considering that the alternative is a super-complex multiverse.

Possible criticisms of my counter-arguments

To deny that premise 3.1.1 can be applied to God commits the fallacy of ‘special pleading’. If this is a reasonable argument for humans, then why shouldn’t it apply to God? Response: It might be a reasonable argument, if God were a material being subject to the laws of physics and chemistry, as i pointed out. The only reason Dawkins’ analogy would be a reasonable argument is because objects such as the human brain are material and subject to the laws of nature, therefore there are certain things we can say about their probability. However, in the theistic worldview that Dawkins is supposedly critiquing, God is a being that transcends the realm of space-time & matter. God is not material and is not subject to the laws of nature—in fact, God, if God exists, created both. So the reason ‘special pleading’ is valid in this case is that this is a special case.

To say that God is eternal is just as much an assumption as to say he had a beginning (perhaps more so), so the dismissal of premise 4.1 is invalid. Answer: Dawkins is attempting to prove that the theist’s God doesn’t exist—or, at least, is highly improbable. If Dawkins is to do so, then he must successfully critique the theist’s conception of God. If he doesn’t do so, his argument fails. The view that God is eternal is a core aspect of theistic belief, and has been for at least three millennia, so it can’t be claimed that Jews, Christians, Muslims and other theists just ‘made it up’ in order to avoid more recent challenges from atheists, e.g., ‘Who made God?’ Dawkins can’t simply deny that God is eternal. If Dawkins wishes to prove that God is highly improbable, he must first prove that the idea of an immaterial, eternally self-existent Consciousness is impossible, or else, incoherent. He could then argue that God must be material, if God exists at all. Only then could his 'complexity' argument apply. However, he doesn’t do so, or even attempt to do so - so his argument is invalid.

The rebuttal of premise 3.3 misses the point. We can explain the existence of human beings as the result of the simple-to-complex process of neo-Darwinian evolution. But if we use a complex God as the ultimate explanation of complexity, then we still have to explain the existence a complex God. Response: It is true that to resort to complex beings as the ultimate explanation of complexity would be illogical or self-defeating. The point of my counter-argument above was to show that Dawkins’ argument does not undercut the logic of explaining the appearance of design as the result of intelligence, generally. Furthermore, as Dawkins has not proven sub-premises 3.1, 3.2 and 4.1, he has no reason to claim that God is complex or improbable in the same sense that the universe is, i.e., a ‘physical entity with multiple, interacting parts, arranged in an improbable way’. This is the definition of complexity Dawkins uses in his classic critique of design, The Blind Watchmaker.[5] Dawkins has not proven that God must be physical, he has not proven that God must be temporally-finite and he has not proven that God must be composed of multiple, interacting parts arranged in an improbable way. Until he does so, he cannot reject the classical view of God as an eternal, non-physical, metaphysically simple being.

Some other criticisms of Dawkins’ broader argument against design

Firstly, Dawkins’ main argument is that to appeal to complexity in order to explain complexity is self-refuting. However, Dawkins himself appeals to the idea of the multiverse in order to explain the fine-tuning of our universe. If our universe is very complex – and, therefore, improbable – a multiverse must be a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, etc. times more complex than our own universe. This is because the physical constants of our universe are so fine-tuned that the odds against our universe existing in its current form are so high that the number could not be written down – there are not enough atoms in to universe to write such a large number. So, if Dawkins objects to a (supposedly) highly-complex God, why does he appeal to a super-complex multiverse? Such thinking is clearly self-contradictory (even hypocritical). Dawkins tries to get out of this predicament by appealing to a simple-to-complex view of the multiverse, suggesting that each of these universes is simple in its basic laws. If this were true, however, our own universe would also be simple in its basic laws – but it’s not. If it were, then fine-tuning wouldn’t exist and the problem would be much less challenging for atheists.

Perhaps, what Dawkins meant to say is that the mechanism that created these universes is simple.  In fact, he goes on to suggest several multiverse models that he thinks could mimic neo-Darwinism is some way, e.g. an oscillating universe. However, none of his proposed explanations stands up under careful scrutiny. For example, see William Lane Craig’s critique of Dawkins’ explanations.[6] Other, more detailed, objections to the multiverse as an alternative explanation of fine-tuning can be found in the works of Robin Collins and Rodney Holder.[7] Dawkins does not appear to be aware of these criticisms and does not respond to them, even though earlier articles by Collins and others raise similar objections.[8]

Secondly, Dawkins’ overall critique of the biological design argument is poor. He doesn’t really attempt to refute the best arguments for Intelligent Design, e.g., by Stephen C. Meyer,[9] Michael J. Behe,[10] William Dembski,[11] and others. The only one of these scholars he mentions is Behe. While Dawkins does discuss the concept of ‘irreducible complexity’ over several pages (pp. 119-125), he fails to engage with Behe’s own arguments for irreducible complexity. He fails to cite Behe himself, and doesn’t allow his readers to assess Behe’s argument themselves.

By not allowing Behe to speak for himself, Dawkins is able to dismiss Behe’s arguments as appeals to ignorance – ‘God of the Gaps’ reasoning – and he goes on to quote several people to that effect (mainly relying on the conclusions – not arguments – of a lawyer and a judge at the Dover Trial). He does not analyse Behe’s arguments himself. Instead, he refers the reader to Kenneth Miller’s book Finding Darwin’s God and then goes on to engage with a pamphlet produced by the Watchtower Society – hardly a leading ID advocate. Of Miller’s arguments he mentions only one – the argument that the Type Three Secretory System might act as a stepping-stone to the bacterial flagellum. He doesn’t seem aware that Behe and other ID scientists have responded to Miller’s criticisms in numerous places.[12]

Dawkins seems to rely heavily on the assumption that readers will have read his earlier works on evolution, because he doesn’t seem interested in presenting a serious defense of it in his anti-God book. Instead, he presupposes the adequacy of neo-Darwinian theory in making his argument in The God Delusion. However, Dawkins’ earlier works do not refute ID. In fact, Dawkins shows only passing familiarity with ID in his other works (both books and articles), frequently ‘dumbing down’ the arguments being made by IDers. A ‘dumbed down’, ‘kindergarten’ version of the design argument is much easier to refute, it would seem.

Finally, Dawkins’ appeal to this argument reveals a fundamental inconsistency in his overall argument against design inferences. This argument is a crude version of an argument made by the sceptic philosopher David Hume. I say ‘crude’ because Hume was not so foolish as to argue that God’s existence must be 'highly improbable in the very same statistical sense as the entities he is supposed to explain', as Dawkins claims. Instead Hume’s argument is that, the Creator must be more complex than the creation in a conceptual - rather than physical - sense, appealing to a creator to explain complexity does not advance our understanding of the ultimate origins of complexity, at all, it merely moves from the complex objects that compose the universe to the complexity ideas of those objects the compose the mind of God. That is, Hume claims that appealing to a being whose mind is composed of billions of complex concepts, like the inner workings of a cell, cannot count as an explanatory advancement. He does not add to this argument the obvious error of assuming that such a being must, in some sense, be physically complex. Hume was a critic of design inferences, relying mainly on a priori philosophical criticisms, and avoiding the key issue of explaining the appearance of design in nature (e.g., the integrated complexity found in living things). By doing so, Hume's section on the design argument in his famous Dialogues ultimately comes to impasse: he thinks that the design inference in compelling, but that the idea of a Designer-God has intrinsic a priori has problems.

In his earlier book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins argues that Humean arguments are insufficient to refute design arguments, because they do not explain away this appearance of design.[13] In fact, he goes so far as to claim that he would have found it practically impossible to be an atheist in the pre-Darwinian era. Because of this inadequacy of Humean arguments, Dawkins relies primarily on a posteriori Darwinian arguments in The Blind Watchmaker to refute the design argument. That is, he attempts to demonstrate that neo-Darwinism is adequate to completely account for the appearance of design in nature, so that appeal to an intelligent designer, or creator, is not necessary.

He takes a similar approach in The God Delusion – up to a point. However, when Darwinian arguments prove to be inadequate (specifically, in the case of the origin of life and the fine-tuning in physics), he appeals to chance to prop up his argument (pp. 137-139). In particular, he appeals to the multiverse to explain away the appearance of design in physics (pp. 145-146). He seems to sense the inadequacy of merely positing this idea; however, as, toward the end of his argument, he falls back upon his crude re-imagining of the a priori Humean argument described above to prop up his ‘Darwin + multiverse = problem solved’ argument. “God, or any intelligent, decision-taking, calculating agent, would have to be highly improbable in the very same statistical sense as the entities he is supposed to explain” (p. 147). However, this flip-flopping back-and-forth between Humean and Darwinian arguments is inconsistent. Having acknowledged the inadequacy of Humean arguments to address the main issue (explaining integrated complexity), Dawkins appeals to Darwinian arguments. When Darwinian arguments prove inadequate, he appeals to a Humean-style argument to prop them up.

To use a cliché, Dawkins wants to have his cake and eat it, too – acknowledge the inadequacy of Humean arguments, but hold them in reserve, in case Darwinian arguments also prove unpersuasive. He can’t have it both ways. Having acknowledged the necessity of explaining the appearance of design, Dawkins can’t, then, fall back on Humean arguments, if Darwinian arguments fail.

Even if we concede, for the sake of argument, that Darwinian arguments succeed in explaining the variety and complexity of life, this still leaves the problems of the origin of life and the fine-tuning in physics. In fact, these problems have proven even more intractable, precisely because it is highly unlikely that Darwinian-style explanations could apply to these problems – despite Dawkins’ musings to the contrary. Considering his previous acknowledgment of the inadequacy of a priori arguments, Dawkins can only adequately refute the design argument by providing a highly plausible, evidentially-based naturalistic explanation of fine-tuning and other aspects of design that neo-Darwinian evolution cannot even attempt to explain.  

In conclusion…

The ‘Ultimate Boeing 747’ Argument is the lynch pin of Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, and his entire case against God, considering how often he repeats this argument in his books and articles. He clearly regards the design argument as the most persuasive argument for the existence of a Creator-God. This is the only argument that he spends a whole chapter discussing. In fact, he calls the design argument is ‘the big one’, i.e., the most popular argument for the existence of God (p. 113). He barely touches upon the various cosmological arguments,[14] moral arguments,[15] etc. – covering all other arguments (as well as a lot of ‘arguments’ that are actually not used as arguments by theists) in one chapter (Chapter 3).

So, Dawkins’ refutation of the design argument is clearly intended to be the main thrust of his argument against God. As part of that, the ‘Ultimate Boeing 747’ Argument is at the core of his critique of design – it is his ‘fallback position’ and his Weapon of Mass Destruction, all in one. He claims it ‘comes close the proving that God does not exist’ (p. 113). The rest of Dawkins’ argument against the rationality of religion depends heavily on the conclusion that Dawkins has refuted the best arguments for God. In fact, his argument that religious faith is immune to argument falls apart when readers realize that he has failed to refute the design argument - or any of the other major arguments for the existence of God. Consequently, refutation of the ‘Ultimate Boeing 747’ Argument is a significant blow against Dawkins’ book.

Of course, other arguments, particularly the cosmological argument, have been more important historically to a defense of theism, and there have always been strong concerns among theistic philosophers about the efficacy of design arguments to provide a sound basis for belief in theism, as opposed to deism, panentheism or even Plato's Demiurge, from his Timeaus. Biological design arguments, at their best, can only tell us that life is the product of intelligence rather than purely natural processes, but cannot tell us who or what that intelligence is. It is unlikely to be an alien (extra-terrestrial), as, the use Dawkins' own reasoning, that alien would, itself, have to have evolved and, if design arguments are correct, evolution on other planets is just as unlikely as it is on planet earth - extremely unlikely. Compounding this is the additional problem that, even if intelligence were to exist elsewhere in the universe, such a civilization would still have had to create technology capable of traversing light-years across space to other planets. The propose 'designer-aliens' really only compounds the problem for evolutionists. 
However, this does not exclude other forms of quasi-theistic belief. As such, design arguments cannot, by themselves, provide strong reason to think that the designer is the God of theism: the omnipotent, omniscient, self-existent, timeless, immaterial, eternal Creator of the cosmos. Dawkins' critique would have been better served if he had argued that design arguments (or, at least, biological design arguments) are, to a large extent, dependent upon cosmological arguments. Once one has established the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, self-existence Being, via the cosmological argument, it is easy to see that this Creator-God is also the Designer of life; but going directly from 'Designer' to 'God of theism' requires making a significant leap in logic.

Acknowledgements: In writing this response, I read many critiques of the Dawkins. Although my construction of the argument is slightly different from the way it is constructed by each of these scholars, I have incorporated each of their criticisms into my response in such a way that it is difficult to tease apart the parts of my critique and identify which points came from whom. So, I’ll mention their works here. This response is based heavily on the critiques by philosopher of religion William Lane Craig,[16] epistemologist Alvin Plantinga,[17] mathematician and philosopher of science John Lennox,[18] physicist Edgar Andrews,[19] mathematician David Berlinski,[20] and philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer.[21]

The last objection was based heavily on two articles: one by philosopher Eric Wielenberg[22] and the other by theoretical physicist David Glass.[23] It is interesting to see how scholars from a variety of disciplines, not just the theologians Dawkins so despises, all find significant aspects of Dawkins’ argument deeply flawed.

Just to be fair to the theologians, whom Dawkins insists never refuted his argument, I should mention that Rev. Dr. Patrick Richmond also wrote a critique of Dawkins’argument.[24]  Overall, this is a good critique, making many of the same criticisms that other scholars have made. However, it makes one significant mistake: I think Richmond mislabels Dawkins argument as Darwinian, when it is really Humean. This is because Richmond blends the a priori Humean and a posteriori Darwinian elements of Dawkins’ critique together, when they are clearly separate, being two different types of argument. This is hardly Richmond’s fault, of course. Dawkins, although seeing the difference between the two arguments, blends them together in The God Delusion. In doing so, however, he fails to see the inconsistency of using both arguments to prop each other up. (Its’ like straddling two leaky row-boats in the middle of a large river, and hoping all goes well.) Also, I think Richmond fails to see that Dawkins (who apparently assumes this idea is a scientific inference, rather than a metaphysical extrapolation) uses Darwinism as a kind of universal principle to prop up his ‘Ultimate’ argument.

Transforming Darwinism into a metaphysical schema and including of this schema as a key, unstated premise in the Humean argument (sub-premise 3.2), Dawkins objects to design inferences by insisting that all things must evolve. But he can’t assume a materialist neo-Darwinian view of the world in order to support his materialist neo-Darwinian view of the world. When his Darwinian metaphysical assumptions are exposed, Dawkins is actually advancing two different arguments: (1) the Darwinian, where he attempts to present an naturalistic explanation for the appearance of design; and (2) the Humean, where the argument for design is rejected a priori, because (supposedly) there’s no point in making design inferences in the first place. For the reasons discussed above, both arguments fail, so the attempt to use both arguments to support each other must also fail.

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[1] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Bantam Press, 2006).

[2] Note that I wrote self-existent, not self-caused. Atheists, and neo-atheists in particular, have confused these two ideas, frequently. To be self-caused is a contradiction – something cannot cause itself. To be self-existent, however, simply means that God does not require an external cause in order to exist.

[3] It is remarkable how many logical fallacies Dawkins has managed to fit into such a simple argument.

[4] Contra-Dawkins, the existence of God is a philosophical/theological question; but, whether the appearance of design in nature is real and real design can be identified – that is a scientific question. Dawkins doesn’t distinguish between the theory of ID and its broader metaphysical implications, and so he concludes that the existence of God is a scientific question. He makes a similar mistake with Darwinism, failing to distinguish the theory from his own metaphysical interpretations of the theory. This leads him to mistakenly assume that he doesn’t need to understand basic philosophy or theology in order to refute the existence of God. He does, actually, as the poor quality of his arguments reveals. Had Dawkins studied some basic texts in the philosophy of religion, he would (hopefully) have written a different, and much more intellectually engaging, book.

[5] Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (Norton & Company, Inc., 1986), p. 4-8.

[6] William Lane Craig, ‘Richard Dawkins on Arguments for God’ in God is Great, God is Good (Intervarsity Press UK, 2009), pp. 19-28.

[7] Robin Colins, ‘The Teleological Argument: An Exploration of the Fine-Tuning of the Universe’, in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Blackwell Publishing, Ltd., 2009), pp. 202-281. See, specifically, Sections 6.1-6.3; Rodney Holder, Fine-Tuning, Multiple Universes and Theism,’ Nous 36(2): pp. 295-312.

[8] Robin Collins, ‘The Teleological Argument,’ in The Rationality of Theism (Routledge, 2003), pp. 132-148; Robin Collins, ‘God, Design, and Fine-Tuning,’ in God Matters: Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (Longman Press, 2002); Rodney Holder, Fine Tuning, Many Universes, and Design,’ Science and Christian Belief 13:, pp. 5-24.

[9] Stephen C. Meyer, ‘DNA and the Origin of Life: Information, Specification, and Explanation,’ in Darwinism, Design and Public Education (Michigan State University Press, 2003), pp. 223-285; ‘The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories,’ Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 17(2): pp. 213-239.

[10] Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: the Biochemical Challeng to Evolution, 10^th Anniversary Edition (Free Press, 2006).

[11] William A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, 1998); The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design (Intervarsity Press, 2004).

[12] See, for example, articles by Michael Behe, ‘Answering Scientific Criticisms of Intelligent Design,’ in Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, pp. 133-149, ‘Irreducible Complexity: Obstacle to Darwinian Evolution’, in Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, pp. 352-370; ‘Reply to My Critics: A Response to Reviews of Darwin’s Black Box’, Biology and Philosophy Vol. 16, pp. 685-709; ‘Whether Intelligent Design is Science: A Response to the Opinion of the Court in Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District’, available online: http://www.discovery.org/f/697. See, also, the article by William Dembski, ‘Still Spinning Just Fine: A Response to Ken Miller’, this article is available online here: http://www.designinference.com/documents/2003.02.Miller_Response.htm
 

[13] See Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (Norton & Company, Inc., 1986), Chapter 1 ‘Explaining the Very Improbable’, for a discussion of the inadequacies of Humean arguments. The Blind Watchmaker was one of the first times Dawkins used his ‘Ultimate Boeing 747’ Argument in print. This suggests that, even while he rejected the adequacy of Humean arguments, Dawkins kept them in reserve to be brought out when needed – lest some reader not be convinced by his Darwinian argument. So, the logical inconsistency of his overall argument was there as the very beginning. The argument had not improved in the intervening 20 years. It has not improved since the publication of The God Delusion, either. Dawkins hasn’t even acknowledged the criticisms other scholars have made of this argument. It seems that Dawkins’ faith in his own (unexamined) assertions is ‘immune to argument’, to use his own words (The God Delusion, p. 5).

[14] William Lane Craig, ‘The Ultimate Question of Origins: God and the Beginning of the Universe,’ Astrophysics and Space Science 269-270: 723-740; Alexander Pruss, The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

[15] Mark D. Linville, ‘The Moral Argument,’ in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2009), pp. 391-488; John Hare, God and Morality: A Philosophical History (Blackwell Publishing , Ltd., 2007); W.R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (Cambridge University Press, 1918).

[16] William Lane Craig, ‘Richard Dawkins on Arguments for God,’ in God is Great, God is Good (Intervarsity Press UK, 2009), pp. 13-31.

[17] Alvin Plantinga, ‘The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad Absurdum,’ in God is Great, God is Good (Intervarsity Press UK, 2009), pp. 247-258.

[18] John Lennox, God’s Undertaker – Has Science Buried God? (Lion, 2008).

[19] Edgar Andrews, Who Made God? Searching for a theory of everything (Evangelical Press, 2009).

[20] David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions (Basic Books, 2009).

[21] Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Design (HarperOne, 2009).

[22] Eric Wielenberg, ‘Dawkins’ Gambit, Hume’s Aroma, and God’s Simplicity’, Philosophia Christi 11(1): pp. 113-127.

[23] David Glass, ‘Darwin, Design and Dawkins’ Dilemma’, Sophia 51: pp. 31-57; see also, David Glass, Atheism’s New Clothes: Exploring and Exposing the Claims of the New Atheists (Apollos, 2012), Chapter 6: ‘Dawkins’s Dilemma’.

[24] Patrick Richmond, ‘Richard Dawkins’ Darwinian Objection to the Unexplained Complexity in God,’ Science & Christian Belief 19: pp. 99-116.