Swinburne vs. Dawkins on the Mystery of Existence Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Welcome back to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. Hey, it’s Kevin Harris! Let’s pick up where we left off last time with this panel discussion that produced some interesting exchanges between the two Richards – that’s Dawkins and Swinburne.^[1] Dr. Craig has so much to say about the topics they discussed. As always, you can dive deep into the free resources available at ReasonableFaith.org. You can also donate to the work and ministry of Reasonable Faith right there on our website. We pray that God will multiply and use whatever gift you give. We so appreciate it. ReasonableFaith.org. Now let’s get back into the studio with Dr. Craig.

This next clip pretty much spells out Dawkins’ main objection, and results in an exchange between him and Swinburne. Watch this – this is clip number four.

MODERATOR: Richard Swinburne a moment ago said any scientifically-minded person would believe that God is the ultimate cause. What is it about this explanation that you're not happy to entertain, Richard?

RICHARD DAWKINS: Don't you know? Isn't it obvious?

MODERATOR: Is it simplicity the main point though? Or is it just something non-physical?

RICHARD DAWKINS: Richard Swinburne is saying that God is simple because he's a single entity. How can he be a single entity if he's simultaneously controlling the universe – every particle in the universe? He's forgiving our sins. He's giving us free will. He's deciding whether or not you'll die or not on a certain day. Such a thing is not a single, simple entity. It's a highly complicated, mammoth, great big fat entity.

RICHARD SWINBURNE: Well, take another example of a very simple entity – a particle of matter here. This particle of matter is influencing all sorts of other particles of matter all over the universe. How can it do that with just being one particle of matter? Well, it does according to a law of gravity.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, yes, so what?

RICHARD SWINBURNE: You were saying that in order to have a large number of effects it had to be a big thing.

RICHARD DAWKINS: In order to do the things that God is supposed to be doing he cannot be simple. He's an entity of subjective consciousness. He thinks about things. He has free will. He has the power to influence anything in the world that he wants to do. He even does the things that the Christians believe and all the other religions believe. How can you possibly say that such an entity is a single, simple entity?

RICHARD SWINBURNE: Well, I'm giving you the example of an entity, which is a pretty small and unconscious entity, that can have a very large number of effects. And if God can have a large number of effects and yet be virtually even smaller than an electron (in other words, having no spatial extension), why shouldn't he say so? It is the nature of science to postulate entities which are unobservable and have strange properties in order to explain observable entities. We postulated atoms, etc. with their properties in order to explain irregular combinations of substances by weight and volume. We postulate fundamental particles to explain this. These fundamental particles turn out to be rather strange in having both wave-like and particle-like properties. But if they are able to produce this effect then that’s reason for believing them to be true. And of course you need an omnipotent being in order to produce all that, but you should go for the simplest one you can have, and the simplest one will have simple properties and it will not be extended because if it is extended it would have parts and they would have ways of behaving.

KEVIN HARRIS: I just want to turn you loose on all that, Bill, but please include Swinburne's illustration of a tiny particle having big effects, and God is smaller than an electron, so to speak, because he's not extended in space.

DR. CRAIG: You've just got to love listening to these two gentlemen speak. They're so articulate and urbane. I think there are two issues here that need to be differentiated. First, Dawkins wrongly assumes that simplicity is the only and indeed most important criterion that scientists use in assessing the explanatory adequacy of a theory, and that is simply mistaken. It is not true that scientists simply pick which theory is simpler. There are other theoretical virtues that need to be weighed as well, such as explanatory power (how well does the postulated entity explain the phenomena?), explanatory scope (how wide is the explanation of the data?), plausibility, accord with accepted belief, degree of ad hocness. Simplicity is just one of many of these criteria by which scientists weigh competing hypotheses and choose the best. And, in fact, simplicity is not even the most important. Probably the most important of these would be explanatory power. It was so interesting to hear Swinburne focus on that in that last answer. He talked about what gives the best explanation of the physical phenomena that we observe, and it will be postulating these rather strange subatomic particles such as are featured in the Standard Model of particle physics. So it is explanatory power that will be most important and not just simplicity as Dawkins seems to assume. The second issue is whether or not God is a simple entity or a simple explanation. Dawkins thinks that because God can do lots of things and have variegated and multiple effects that therefore God is not simple. Now, by Dawkins’ own definition of what simple means, this doesn't follow. Let me read to you from Dawkins’ book The Blind Watchmaker on page 11 how he defines these terms. There he says, and I quote, “a complex object, as opposed to a simple one, has many parts, these parts being of more than one kind.” So in Dawkins’ analysis, a simple entity is the one that is composed of the fewest parts of different kinds. When you apply that to God, immediately God comes out as a remarkably simple entity because as an unembodied mind God has no parts, much less parts of various kinds. So on Dawkins’ own account of what counts as simplicity, God turns out to be incredibly simple as an explanation. Moreover, Dawkins is confused when he thinks that an explanation or an entity is complex because it has complex effects. That's simply a non-sequitur. God can be a very simple entity and yet cause complex effects. That's what Swinburne tries to illustrate with his example of the subatomic particle. The particle, like an electron, is very simple. It's not composed of parts, and yet it has effects throughout the entire universe because it is gravitationally connected to every other particle in the universe. So this little, small, simple entity has enormous and manifold effects. Swinburne, I think here, he's kind of teasing in a way. He says God's even smaller because he's not extended in space, and so he's even tinier than the subatomic particle! He has zero extension, which makes him even simpler. I thought that was very cute when he did that. So Dawkins, I think, is just very confused here in thinking that because something is simple it can't have multiple and variegated effects. People have pointed this out to him. I thought one of the most effective refutations of Dawkins on this was a video that I saw of him and another thinker on a panel together, and this other gentleman said to Dawkins, “Think of the difference between an electric razor and a straight razor.” An electric razor is incredibly complex, but you can only do basically one thing with it, and that's shave. But, he says, with a straight razor you can do all kinds of things – not only shave but, for example, you can cut somebody's throat with it! Whoa! That was a wonderful illustration of how a very simple thing could have complex and variegated and multiple effects. Dawkins is, I think, just patently mistaken here. This has been pointed out to him, and he just keeps repeating the same points over again without any further response to his many critics.

KEVIN HARRIS: Real quickly, Swinburne brings up that subatomic particles in particular can be very mysterious. When he was talking about they can have both wave and particle type functions. I suppose he's talking about light there. There are plenty of things that are very, very small and very simple that have nevertheless mysterious properties.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, and that again provides an analogy with God for unbelievers who find God to be a weird object, something strange. Swinburne would point out that, for the sake of explanatory power or for the sake of explanatory adequacy, scientists are quite prepared to posit the existence of objects which are extremely strange and of which we have only partial understanding.

KEVIN HARRIS: In this clip, Swinburne talks again about the fundamental constituents behaving the same way, and it results in this exchange with Dawkins. Clip number five.

RICHARD SWINBURNE: I have no quarrel at all with anything Richard Dawkins said. I highly agree. But the question is: Why are these laws operative? And the answer is, of course, because, as you said, the laws of physics are crucial here. But then why are the laws of physics operative? And, OK, there's a multiverse. But that will only produce these laws if it itself has laws. And so, in the end, you are left with the laws of science, and the laws of science postulate that every thing in the world (it might be the atoms of our world or the chunks of the so-called nothingness in the big space out of which universes evolve) behaves in exactly the same way. That’s what the law of likeness means. It means that everything – just to take that we're talking about atoms, but the same applies of whatever the constitution of the multiverse is – behaves in exactly the same way. The question is: Why? It's no good just saying there's a law of nature. The law of nature just is that they behave in this way. Full stop. So why do they behave in this way? They are a large number of separate things and unless something causes them to behave in the same way we're left once again with a multitude of things. And that's why I think there's no scientific explanation of these things because scientific explanation just consists in postulating that a lot of things behave in exactly the same way. We want something a little simpler than that. And, in fact, there is a model of causality which is the question you were coming onto . . .

MODERATOR: Just before we do the model of causality, can we give Richard an opportunity to . . .

RICHARD DAWKINS: I find this a most extraordinary idea. Richard Swinburne is saying that we need a special explanation for why every electron, every proton, every neutron, every particle behaves in exactly the same way. How could they not behave in the same way? They're all the same kind of thing. That's what they do.

RICHARD SWINBURNE: OK. But why are the constitutions of the universe exactly the same kind of thing? If you define the kind of thing in terms of its powers, and I agree that's a reasonable way to do it, why are all the things in the universe have the same powers in the sense of attracting, for example, every other one in accordance with Newton's law of gravity or whatever else the law is? That question remains.

RICHARD DAWKINS: There are two separate questions there. One is why do these particles have the properties that they do? And that is a profound question. The other is why do they all have the same properties (which is the one you're stressing)? That's not profound at all. That simply follows from the . . .

RICHARD SWINBURNE: Well, in that case, if you say they have the same powers because that's what they are, the question then is why are all the things in the universe the same in this respect – they have the power to attract every other body in the universe in accordance with M-M-over-R-squared?^[2]

RICHARD DAWKINS: If you are saying that you need a God to explain why all these electrons and protons are behaving the same way, a God capable of doing that would have to be supremely complicated, and yet you're saying that he is supremely simple.

RICHARD SWINBURNE: But why? Why do you think he's got to be exceedingly complicated?

RICHARD DAWKINS: Because he's got to hold all these electrons in his little hands. How can he possibly be simple?

RICHARD SWINBURNE: He’s not that sort of God at all. He has no extension in space.

RICHARD DAWKINS: OK. The answer is obviously a trouble point.

KEVIN HARRIS: What I'm going to say here is Swinburne is starting to explain divine simplicity, and Dawkins cuts him off saying he doesn't want to quibble about that. Dawkins apparently wants a Zeus-like God who would be subject to the laws of nature and therefore a little easier for him to refute.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. When Dawkins talks about God's holding things “in his little hands” or being a “great big fat” explanation, it doesn't give you a lot of confidence in his philosophical analysis. I think Swinburne is posing here profound questions, and I would even sharpen them further by saying it's not just that the universe operates according to natural laws but, as I say, that these natural laws are fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life which doesn't at all need to be the case. That's highly contingent. And moreover the universe came into being a finite time ago with apparently no physical cause which points to a transcendent creator and designer of the universe. And this is vastly different from a Zeus-like God who would himself need to be explained.

KEVIN HARRIS: In this next clip, Swinburne spells out his famous causality argument, differentiating between a scientific explanation and a personal explanation. Check this out.

RICHARD SWINBURNE: It comes back to the question of causality, in fact. Because there is a model of causality which is entirely not the scientific law – one which we use all the time. The nature of a scientific model of causality is it postulates laws of nature acting on initial states producing from them other states. But if you are a model of personal action, it is not at all like that. If you ask anyone in the audience, “Why are you here?,” they're not saying, “Well, there was a scientific law in virtue of which, etc. which led to my being here.” They say, “Well, there were some interesting talks going on, I believe. I believe that they're coming at this time and that the way to get there is this, and I have a purpose of having these, and I have the purpose of getting here.” So we explain all human behavior in terms of the powers of humans in terms of their beliefs about what the effects of their actions will be and in virtue of their desires to produce these beliefs. And that is a model by which we explain ordinary human behavior, which of course consists in a large number of atoms buzzing around in our bodies. But what explains them is something fairly simple – me!

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, you've talked about this distinction many times. What do you like about it?

DR. CRAIG: I like it because I think it is so intuitively clear. What Swinburne is differentiating here are two types of causal explanation. One is a scientific explanation in terms of natural laws operating on initial conditions. The other is a personal explanation in terms of an agent and his volitions. These types of explanation are quite different, and they are both legitimate and in certain contexts it would be completely wrong-headed to offer one rather than the other. For example, if I were to walk into the kitchen and ask Jan, “Why is the kettle boiling?,” and she said, “It's because the heat of the flame is being conducted by the copper bottom of the kettle causing the molecules of the water to vibrate more rapidly so that some is thrown off in the form of steam.” That would be a scientific explanation, but it would be more appropriate if she said, “I put it on to make a cup of tea. Would you like some?” So I think that in cases where there cannot be a scientific explanation (for example, the first physical state of the universe) then a personal explanation is available in terms of a transcendent creator and designer of the universe that is altogether appropriate.

KEVIN HARRIS: A couple more clips. In this next clip, Swinburne has asked whether he thinks God will ever be accepted as a scientific explanation and if science will ever develop to the point where it will embrace perhaps theism. Let's go to this next clip, number seven.

RICHARD SWINBURNE: Well, of course I don't know where science will get to, but what science will get to is a scientific law. I don't know what the law will be, but it doesn't matter what the law will be. It may get to a beginning or it may not. But it will get to laws, and laws are claims about how every particle or whatever it's made of is going to behave in certain respects in exactly the same way. I agree with Richard’s point – you can think that as a defining characteristic of the constituents. That’s fair enough. But the question is why do the constituents have just the same kind. That's why you need to get beyond that if you were to have an explanation because you've reached a terminus where everything is behaving in exactly the same way. So it's worth looking at the other mode by which we explain things and explain personal behavior.

KEVIN HARRIS: Several things there, but is he saying that one can only press explanations so far before one hits the wall? Everything behaving the same way, being a terminus as he puts it.

DR. CRAIG: That does seem to be the implication – that there are limits to scientific explanation beyond which one cannot go. Then he says it is perfectly appropriate to appeal to this other mode of causal explanation in terms of a personal agent and his volitions. I think that is a good reminder of the limits of science.

KEVIN HARRIS: In this final clip, Dawkins presses Swinburne on God's simplicity. Clip number eight.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Do you think God can read our thoughts? Can he read the thoughts of everyone in this room?

RICHARD SWINBURNE: Yes.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Eight billion people in the world?

RICHARD SWINBURNE: Yes.

RICHARD DAWKINS: And he's simple? He's reading all these thoughts, and he's simple?

RICHARD SWINBURNE: He's a simple entity in the sense that he has properties but they are very big properties.

RICHARD DAWKINS: But you're using simplicity as an argument in his favor on sort of Occam's Razor grounds.

RICHARD SWINBURNE: Yeah.

RICHARD DAWKINS: It's a simple explanation because he's one entity. But he's not a simple entity. He's reading eight billion people's thoughts simultaneously. The argument in favor of him being simple is that we want simple explanations. That's Richard Swinburne’s point. We want a simple explanation. And I'm saying God cannot possibly be a simple explanation. He's a very complex explanation.

KEVIN HARRIS: There have been two questions bouncing around for a while. God as a simple entity, and God as a simple explanation.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. As I differentiated earlier, these two gentlemen are working with different definitions of simplicity. Insofar as we talk about God as a simple entity, on Richard Dawkins’ own definition, God is completely simple because he has no parts. Remember for Dawkins an entity is complex if it is composed of many different kinds of parts, and God as a spiritual incorporeal being is not composed of parts. So it follows immediately that he is simple. The fact that a simple entity like a mind can have complex effects is in no way detracting from the fact that this entity is not made up of parts. Moreover Swinburne would say postulating God is a simple explanation of the existence of the contingent universe because it posits one entity of one kind with mathematical properties that are very simple – either zero or infinity – and that therefore this explanation is a simple one. And so I think that Dawkins needs to think more deeply about these subjects and respond to his critics about this argument.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we're wrapping up today, I just wonder if Dawkins will ever be open to exploring classical theism and views on God's simplicity. He's so adamant against theism of any kind. That, and your concluding thoughts.

DR. CRAIG: I think that any philosopher or scientist in the public square has an obligation to respond to his critics. This is an obligation that Richard Dawkins has not discharged. He continues simply to reiterate the same old objections over and over again even though they've been answered time and again. Even though I think he's clearly mistaken in his assertions. I take this to be symptomatic of someone who is just utterly closed-minded and has no interest in exploring these questions.^[3]