Contact Aletheia: 715-849-8328
A Review of
Nov 2, 2007, Wausau, Wi — In this
installment of my review of Richard Dawkins’, “The God Delusion” I come to what Dawkins calls “the
central argument” of his book. About this argument he claims that if it “is
accepted, the factual premise of religion – the God Hypothesis – is untenable.
God almost certainly does not exist.” (pp 157, 8) This central argument centers around the apparent
design we see in the natural world around us. He summarizes his argument in the following
six points:
1 – The
appearance of design is one of the greatest challenged to the human intellect.
2 – The “temptation”
is to attribute design to a designer.
3 – The
designer hypothesis is false because it does not explain who designed the
designer.
4 –
Evolution, the best explanation so far, shows that design at least for biology
is an illusion.
5 – Since
in evolution, apparent design is an illusion, it could be an illusion in other
areas such as physics.
6 – We
should not give up hope of finding better explanations elsewhere and the
weak explanations we do have are better than explanations that rely on God.
I have to
admit that when it became clear to me what his actual argument was, I was both
shocked and disappointed. I was disappointed
because, despite his simplistic approach to the whole subject of religion up to
this point, I was still expecting something a little more substantial. This was particularly the case when, in a
section on Irreducible Complexity, he spends several pages refuting the claims
made in a Jehovah Witness’s track.
This again
reveals a major flaw in Dawkins thinking and his approach, though in his
defense, it is one common to all groups.
All groups of any size, be they political, religious, or whatever, have
those who are on the fringe. By their very nature of being on the fringe they
often make arguments that are not representative of the whole, but despite
this, opponents often see refuting the fringe to be the same as refuting the
whole.
Jehovah’s
Witnesses are a small group that are not orthodox Christians and thus not even
representative of Christianity, much less theism in general. They are also marked by strong tendency
towards anti-intellectualism. Yet
Dawkins still spends several pages on one of their tracts, refuting a source
that even most theists would not take seriously.
Not only was I disappointed, I was shocked as
to just how bad his argument actually was.
In fact, given point six, it is more an expression of hope than an
actual rational argument.
If taken as
an argument, there are problems with each of his six points. At first blush,
point one may seem reasonable, particularly since it claims the problem of
apparent design is only “one of the greatest challenges.” Yet it has a hidden assumption that is very
much a problem. In short, apparent
design would only be a problem if there wasn’t a designer.
To be
clear, it may be a very great challenge to discover the identity of the designer and perhaps how they executed
their design, but the design itself would
not be. To see this, imagine that that the
first explorers to Mars were to find a watch laying on the ground. While it might be a very difficult problem to
discover how the watch came to be there, the fact that the watch had been
designed would probably not be an issue at all.
As such, apparent design in the natural world around us is only a great
problem if design is something that needs to be explained away without resorting
to a designer. Thus Dawkins argument
falls victim to circular reasoning right off the bat, as his initial premise
assumes his conclusion.
This circular reasoning probably underlies the slanting
found in point two when Dawkins talks about the “temptation” to attribute
apparent design to a designer as if it this were somehow inherently a false
choice to be resisted. While no doubt
this is Dawkins’ view, to build it into his argument in this fashion is
illegitimate and perhaps shows that even he sees the weakness of his argument
and feels a need to push the reader with his choice of words, rather than
relying on the strength of his reasoning.
The problem
in point three, who designed the designer, again results from Dawkins’ simplistic
approach to the entire subject. The key
problem for Dawkins is that whether something was designed or not designed, only
comes into play for things that had a beginning. The issue of design is inherently linked with
the question of how something came into existence. It is therefore meaningless when discussing
things that have always existed. By
definition design must precede existence.
As such, when talking about an eternal God, the question of who designed
God is an irrational question, akin to asking ‘What is the difference between a
duck?’ It may at first sounds like a question, but the more you think about it
the less sense it makes.
So, Dawkins
third points, is simply false, at least if one is referring to a God such as
the eternal God of the Bible. I will
look at the problems in the remaining points next time, but it is important to
remember that if the premises of an
argument are flawed, the argument itself is unsound. Based on the first
three points, Dawkins argument already fails.
This is
Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
See www.consider.org for additional information.
The book and press materials are available upon request.
To schedule an interview or to have
Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. speak at your chruch or event
contact Aletheia at 715-849-8328