Contra Dawkins, Part 8

Part VIII: The Magic of Large Numbers

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the Heaven and say there is no God – Abraham Lincoln

In recent decades, the book of arguments for the existence of God has had a couple of new chapters written. These two chapters deal with what is generally referred to as ‘fine-tuning’, a term used to describe just how unlikely the existence of life, and particularly intelligent life, is in the cosmos. Gone are the days when Carl Sagan could enthusiastically declare that the universe, even our own galaxy, must be teeming with intelligent life. There are two lines of argument against the view that the universe is simply the product of chance and necessity.

1.)    The argument from the fine tuning of the cosmological constants, in physics.

2.)    The argument from the extreme improbability of intelligent life in the universe.

Of these two, the first is the most fundamental and the most persuasive. However, Dawkins deals with the second one first, and so will I.

Before he gets into the substance of his argument, however, Dawkins opens his discussion of this topic by referring to those who would argue from nature to the existence of God as ‘gap theologians’, that is, those who believe in a ‘god of the gaps’. He is referring back to his earlier accusation that Michael J. Behe is arguing from ignorance, i.e., from the ‘gaps’ in scientific knowledge, in making his ‘irreducible complexity’ argument. This accusation is one of the most common made by the new atheists, who tend to throw it around at anyone who irks them, so it is worth making a few comments about it.

Firstly, as I have pointed out on several occasions so far, Dawkins has a habit of pre-supposing materialism and/or naturalism in his attacks on theistic arguments, such as when he insisted that any God capable of designing a complex eye or complex universe must be complex. Dawkins’ argument there turned out to be bogus, as we have seen. Here, when throwing around the ‘god of the gaps’ accusation, the new atheists, again, tend to presuppose materialism. The reasoning goes something like this:

1. ‘Creationists’ say that X is too complex to have arisen by natural processes, so ‘God’ must have done it.
2. However, science has successfully explained so many aspects of reality without reference to ‘God’ that we must accept that science will continue to do so in the future.
3. Therefore, any appeal to ‘God’ is no more than an argument from the gaps in science.

However, there are several problems with this argument. Firstly, this argument only works if you assume that ‘reality’ equals ‘material reality’. If it does not, then appeals to the absolute hegemony of science are not rational. They are actually harmful to rational debate and to science itself, as the arguer is making claims for science that science cannot satisfy. The claim that science can explain every aspect of reality is not a claim of science, but a claim about science, i.e., a metaphysical claim. So, appeals to the hegemony of science alone cannot be sufficient to justify rejecting theistic arguments. Instead, atheists must (1) address the arguments themselves, to show that they are invalid and (2) respond to their critics, who argue that naturalism and materialism are incoherent. As we have seen, Dawkins has epically failed to do the former. Even worse, he doesn’t even attempt to address the latter.

Secondly, Dawkins and other new atheists – as well as many other critics of design arguments – grossly misrepresent the logic of design arguments. In fact, I would argue that this misrepresentation is so bad that it can’t simply be explained as the result of ignorance. I would argue that such distortions are wilful acts to make the arguments seem stupid, so that they are easier to dismiss.

Design arguments do not simply claim, “I can’t think of how it could have happened, therefore God did it.” Indeed, as stated, the argument is so obviously silly that Dawkins’ more perceptive readers would probably realise that no one would actually defend such an argument. So, then, what do design arguments say?

The original logic of the design argument, as stated by Paley, goes something like this:

1. If we were to come upon an object that has the features of organisation and complexity, such as a watch, we would immediately, and quite rationally, infer that intelligence played a role in its creation.
2. If, then, when we study biological structures, like eyes, we again see a similar pattern of organisation and complexity together, it would be perfectly natural and reasonable to infer that these structures, also, are the products of intelligence.
3. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that intelligence has played a role in the creation of certain biological structures.

  Note that this is an appeal to knowledge, not ignorance. We know that certain patterns can be, and often are, the product of intelligence. Furthermore, we know that similar patterns exist in nature. Science has shown both of these things to be true. So, the argument, as Paley stated it, was not an argument from ignorance.

What about the contemporary design argument? Well, since the mid-nineteenth century, it has been common to claim that Darwin provided an alternative to design: random variation plus natural selection plus eons of time. The combination of these three factors, Darwinists say, can explain everything in biology. So the question is: Can Darwinism, or its neo-Darwinian descendant, actually explain everything in biology? Specifically, can it actually explain those structures that combine the features of organisation and complexity, from which we, often, rightly infer intelligence? Because, if it can’t, then there is no non-question-begging reason why the design argument should not be valid. Appeals to the ‘rules’ of science, such as that science can only appeal to natural explanations to explain natural phenomena, are not sufficient. Why? Because such rules are artificial and, therefore, should not be used to exclude plausible explanations of the facts.

To those interested in a philosophical defence of the epistemic status of design inferences, I would recommend Stephen C. Meyer’ essay, “The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design: The Methodological Equivalence of Naturalistic and Non-Naturalistic Origins Theories” in Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe (Ignatius Press, 2002).

Darwin's attacks on his creationist and idealist opponents in part expressed and in part established an emerging positivistic "episteme" in which the mere mention of unverifiable "acts of Divine will" or "the plan of creation" would increasingly serve to disqualify theories from consideration as science qua science. This decoupling of theology from science and the redefinition of science that underlay it was justified less by argument than by an implicit assumption about the characteristic features of all scientific theories—features that presumably could distinguish theories of a properly scientific (that is, positivistic) bent from those tied to unwelcome metaphysical or theological moorings. Thus, both in the Origin and in subsequent letters one finds Darwin invoking a number of ideas about what constitutes a properly scientific explanation in order to characterize creationist theories as inherently "unscientific." For Darwin the in principle illegitimacy of creationism was demonstrated by perceived deficiencies in its method of inquiry such as its failure to explain by reference to natural law, and its postulation of unobservable causes and explanatory entities such as mind, purpose or "the plan of creation."

I should point out that, even if you were to arbitrarily re-define ‘science’ in such a way that you could exclude design inferences as ‘non-scientific’, this would be nothing more than a rhetoric victory. You would not have refuted the argument, at all. You would only have ‘defined it away’. Whether you choose to label the argument ‘scientific’, ‘philosophical’ or ‘theological’, is more a reflection of your own psychology than a reflection of the quality or validity of the argument itself. Some people assume that to label an argument ‘scientific’ or ‘non-scientific’ or even ‘anti-scientific’ somehow affects the validity of the argument. If you label it ‘non-scientific’ or ‘anti-scientific’, then that somehow means you don’t have to address or refute the argument itself. This is clearly wrong-headed. How you choose to label the argument does not change the validity or invalidity of the argument. And, if you assume naturalism a priori, in order to dismiss the argument, then you are arguing in a circle. You cannot use naturalism as a methodological principle to exclude design inferences, then claim Darwinism is ‘true’ because there is no better alternative explanation, and finally go on to further claim that the ‘truth’ of Darwinism supports naturalism.

So, to exclude the possibility of design a priori is to simply give up thinking about the issue at all. Of course, if you exclude design inferences, and all other appeals to the intelligence or ‘the divine’, then you will end up with a naturalistic universe. But if you appeal to naturalism to exclude design, then you must prove naturalism first. However, the primary evidence for naturalism, according to atheists like Dawkins, is Darwinism. It’s a vicious circle.

Meyer, again, comments in the article cited above:

The use of demarcation arguments to settle the origins controversy is…problematic because the whole enterprise of demarcation has now fallen into disrepute. Attempts to locate methodological "invariants" that provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing true science from pseudoscience have failed. Most philosophers of science now recognize that neither verifiability, nor testability (nor falsifiability), nor the use of lawlike explanation (nor any other criterion) can suffice to define scientific practice. As Laudan puts it, "If we could stand up on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like ‘pseudo-science’…they do only emotive work for us."

‘Emotive work’, like convince people who don’t know any better, or those who should know better, that if you re-define science to exclude design and/or intelligence, that somehow refutes the design argument, because science is awesome and ‘non-science’ is ‘nonsense’, right?

OK, enough preliminary discussion. Suffice it to say that Dawkins’ simple-minded accusation that appeals to ‘design’ or ‘God’ are nothing more than ‘gaps theology’ is, at best, question-begging and, at worst, dishonest. Now, let’s get down to the substance of the debate over ‘fine-tuning’ in astronomy.

Astronomers have, over the last several decades, discovered that getting life, and particularly complex, multicellular life, is not nearly as easy as was once assumed. Specifically, they have discovered that there a numerous pre-conditions for the existence of complex life at the level of astronomy - the absence of which would make life impossible or else highly improbable, depending on which pre-condition you are discussing. Philosopher of science Jay Richards briefly lists some of these pre-condisions in his essay 'List of Fine-Tuning Parameters' (see, specifically, the section '"Local" Planetary Conditions').

Dawkins also discusses fine-tuning arguments, though in an entirely inadequate way.

After briefly discussing some of the pre-conditions necessary for the existence of life (pp. 135-6), Dawkins then goes on to state that:

Two main explanations have been offered for our planet's peculiar friendliness to life. The design theory says that God made the world, placed it in the Goldilocks zone, and deliberately set up all the details for our benefit. The anthropic approach is very different, and it has a faintly Darwinian feel. The great majority of planets in the universe are not in the Goldilocks zones of their respective stars, and not suitable for life. None of that majority has life. However small the minority of planets with just the right conditions for life may be, we necessarily have to be on one of that minority, because here we are thinking about it (p. 136).

Alternately, one might argue that the process is a combination of both divine and natural processes. Dawkins' 'either/or' mentality would certainly not be accepted by all theists. In determining which of these explanations is the most plausible, there are two questions that must be answered: (1) ‘Just how improbable are earth-like planets?’ and (2) ‘Is the vastness of the universe, and the multiplicity of galaxies, solar systems and planets, sufficient to explain the existence of earth by chance?’ Now, I know Dawkins claims that his preferred explanation, ‘the anthropic approach’, has “a faintly Darwinian feel”; but, in reality, this has nothing to do with Darwinism and everything to do with chance – unless Dawkins is suggesting that planets reproduce and are 'naturally selected' over billions of years until they achieve the status of ‘earth-like-ness’. Fortunately, there is no reproduction going on at the astronomical level. Considering the distance between different planets and galaxies, and the fact that gravity tends to prevent most planets from going anywhere much, finding the right mate would be pretty tricky.

So, the only real options here are design or chance – or perhaps, God and chance, but that option doesn’t help Dawkins any. Appeals to Darwinism from this point on are more evidence of how obsessed Dawkins is with Darwin, than they are evidence of anything like Darwinism going on at the astronomical or cosmic levels.

Dawkins continues his discussion:

The origin of life was the chemical event, or series of events, whereby the vital conditions for natural selection first came about. The major ingredient was heredity, either DNA or (more probably) something that copies like DNA but less accurately, perhaps the related molecule RNA. Once the vital ingredient - some kind of genetic molecule - is in place, true Darwinian natural selection can follow, and complex life emerges as the eventual consequence. But the spontaneous arising by chance of the first hereditary molecule strikes many as improbable (p. 137).

The origin of life is a distinct issue from that of the probability of earth-like planets. (It is interesting how quickly Dawkins shifts from a discussion of the 'rare earth' hypothesis, suggesting that he, again, has not read widely or deeply on the subject.) The origin of life pre-supposes life-friendly planets, like this one. Dawkins, in his discussion of the probability of the origin of life, seems to not be aware that the origin of life, by blind, unguided natural processes, is insanely improbable. Precisely calculating the probability of a naturalistic origin of life by chance is very difficult, of course. However, scientists have known for decades now that the ‘chance’ explanation of the origin of life that Dawkins favours in The God Delusion, could simply not work. There’s not enough time or space in the universe for life to have originated by chance. Nevertheless, Dawkins confidently states:

I watch from the sidelines with engaged curiosity, and I shall not be surprised if, within the next few years, chemists report that they have successfully midwifed a new origin of life in the laboratory (p. 137).

This quote demonstrates a couple of levels of confusion in Dawkins’ thinking, here. Firstly, even if scientists were able, after expending much thought and effort, to create life in the lab, this would not show that a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life is possible. It would, instead, show that highly intelligent people, with a great deal of knowledge of molecular biology and chemistry, using very precise technology and a blue-print that already exists in nature, can create life. In other words, the design hypothesis, i.e., “certain features we see in nature can be explained as the result of intelligence”, would be proven in the lab. To suggest that this bears any resemblance to naturalistic origin of life theories, let alone Dawkins’ preferred option of ‘chance’, is blind, wishful thinking.

Secondly, Dawkins fails to see that, the fact that (after 150 years of searching for a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life) scientists still can’t explain it, is strong evidence that the origin or life is extremely complex and improbable. After all, if it were a simple, non-improbable process, it is reasonable to assume that scientists, who are actively looking for such an explanation, would have discovered the solution fairly quickly. Indeed, Darwinists have been anticipating such a solution for over a century. The fact that the solution has continued to elude them up to this day shows that either: (1) life did not originate by natural processes, or (2) if indeed life did originate naturalistically, that process was highly complex and, therefore, extremely improbable.

Dawkins continues his discussion by claiming that, “Just as we did with the Goldilocks orbits, we can make the point that, however improbable the origin of life might be, we know it happened on Earth because we are here” (p. 137). Now, again, there are two levels of confusion in this quote. Firstly, and most obviously, it is true that we know that life must exist on earth, because we are here. However, what Dawkins appear to be saying is, ‘We know that life had a naturalistic origin, because we are here.” But a naturalistic origin or life does not follow from the mere existence of life, unless Dawkins is, again, presupposing naturalism. In which case, he is, again, arguing in a circle. Are question-begging arguments the best Dawkins can do?

Secondly, Dawkins cannot keep using the vastness of the universe to explain things (e.g., the origin of life), if he has already used up these probabilistic resources explaining the existence of a life-friendly planet, that is, ours. As even Dawkins himself admits, the universe is not so vast or so old that you can explain everything by an appeal to chance. So, if Dawkins uses up all, or almost all, of his probabilistic resources explaining the fact that earth is life-friendly, he can’t use those same resources to explain the origin of life. In order to do so, Dawkins must continually down-play (1) just how improbable the existence of a life-friendly planet like earth is and (2) just how improbable his proposed 'chance' explanation of the origin of life is. He does this by avoiding discussing the details of each of these topics.

Thirdly, Dawkins seems entirely unaware of the fact that researchers estimating the probability of life originating by chance have shown that, even if you were to take into account every event that could ever have happened in the history of the universe, the odds against life originating by chance are even larger than the estimated number of events in the history of the universe. That is, the probability that it could have come about by chance is effectively zero in this universe.

As Walter L. Bradley pointed out in his essay “Information, Entropy and the Origin of Life” in Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA (Cambridge University Press, 2004):

In his classic book Chance and Necessity (1972), Nobel laureate Jacques Monod argues that life began essentially by random fluctuations in the prebiotic soup that were subsequently acted upon by selection to generate information. He readily admits that life is such a remarkable accident that it is almost certainly occurred only once in the universe. For Monod, life is just a quirk of fate, the result of a blind lottery, much more the result of chance than of necessity. But in view of the overwhelming improbability of encoding DNA and protein to give functional biopolymers, Monod’s reliance on chance is simply believing in a miracle by another name and cannot in any sense be construed as a rational explanation for the origin of life (p. 345).

Monod’s attempted explanation is almost identical to Dawkins, so Bradley’s comments apply to Dawkins, as well. For a technical discussion of ‘overwhelming improbability of encoding DNA and protein to give functional polymers’, see Bradley’s article. For a less technical discussion, see Stephen C. Meyer’s article, mentioned in a previous post, “DNA and the origin of life: information, specification and explanation”. 

When Dawkins refers to his explanation as invoking “the magic of large numbers” (p. 137), he doesn’t realise how apt his words are. When he asks his readers to suppose the origin of life “was so improbable as to occur on only one in a billion planets” by chance (p. 138), he is totally unaware of just how credulous he sounds. One in a billion? If he’d suggested one in an entire cosmos full of planets, that would still be too credulous. So, Dawkins entire discussion here is based on a lack of understanding of the relevant literature.

Even more ludicrous, still, Dawkins goes on to suggest that the origin of multi-cellular life, which he describes as “an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life” (p. 140), might be explained by chance, as well! Why? Precisely because explaining the origin of multi-cellular life by natural processes is so much more difficult than explaining the origin of life by natural processes! In other words, throughout his discussion of the origin of life (which cannot be explained by natural selection, as natural selection pre-supposes the existence of living, reproducing things) and the origin of multi-cellular life (which is just as intractable a problem for natural selection as the origin of life), Dawkins ‘evidence’ for chance as an ‘explanation’ is that natural processes can’t explain them! Again, we encounter a blatant example of circular reasoning.

Continuing his trip through Wonderland (the Lewis Carol version), Dawkins suggests that the origin of consciousness might also be “another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability” as the origin of life and multi-cellular life. So what does he do? He appeals, yet again, to the magic of large numbers! At this point, the perceptive reader should be asking, ‘Why isn’t this called The Dawkins Delusion?’ For, the book is a manifest example of the power of wishful thinking to completely distort one’s reason.

Let’s sum up. In his discussion in this section, he wants his readers to believe that chance, which he conveniently re-names ‘the anthropic principle’, can explain:

1. the fact that earth is life-friendly
2. the origin of life
3. the origin of multi-cellular life, and
4. the origin of consciousness

He admits that all of these are very improbable, but he doesn’t understand just how improbable. So, he confidently states that all of these things can be explained by chance. However, researchers into astrobiology have shown that life-friendly planets must be extremely rare. This point has been made in numerous books, including Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (Copernicus Books, 2000), a book by Peter Ward, a geologist and paleontologist, and Donald E. Brownlee, an astronomer and astrobiologist. The ‘rare earth hypothesis’, as it is called, has been advanced further by astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher Jay Richards in The Privileged Planet (Regenery Publishing, 2004). So, appealing to ‘the magic of large numbers’ might explain the fact that at least one life-friendly planet, that we know of, exists. (Gonzalez and Richards would strongly disagree.) But with most of his probabilistic resources used up in explaining the existence of a life-friendly planet, and the probability of the origin of life by chance being virtually zero, Dawkins cannot hope to explain the origin of life by chance. On top of this, he suggests that the origin of multi-cellular life and consciousness might also be explained by chance. To suggest that he is mad would be over-generous. We don’t expect mad people to research a topic carefully before babbling on about it.