Excursus on Natural Theology (Part 18): Objections to the Design Hypothesis

Objections to the Design Hypothesis

Today we are going to draw our discussion of the argument for a Designer of the universe based on the fine-tuning of the universe to a close.

We saw last time that neither chance nor physical necessity provides a plausible explanation of the remarkable fine-tuning of the universe for the existence of embodied, conscious observers. These explanations are highly implausible.

But we cannot infer immediately to design because sometimes you can be justified to believe in an improbable explanation. You would be justified in believing in some improbable explanation just in case there were no better explanation available of the phenomenon in question. Imagine a batter in a baseball game standing at home plate who hits the ball over the fence, and it hits a pigeon flying by. That would be amazingly improbable. And yet you would doubtlessly say that it was just by chance that he hit the pigeon. Why is the chance explanation of this highly improbable event acceptable? Because there is no better explanation available in that case. The idea that the batter aimed at the pigeon and intended to hit it is even more incredible and unbelievable. You can’t hit a pigeon with a baseball by swinging a bat and aiming to hit it. So in a case when there is no better explanation available, accepting the highly implausible explanation can be justified.

But suppose a better explanation is available. To illustrate, suppose that there is someone standing with a rifle at home plate, and he shoots a pigeon in the distant outfield and kills it. In this case it would be enormously improbable to say that he just fired randomly into the air and struck the pigeon. You wouldn’t accept that explanation. Why not? Because there is a better explanation available, namely, that he aimed to hit the pigeon and he could do with a rifle what you couldn’t do with a baseball bat, namely, put a bead on that pigeon and bring it down. In this case, the improbable explanation (namely, it is just by chance that he shot the pigeon) would not be the best explanation because there is a better explanation available.

The question we are facing now with regard to the fine-tuning of the universe is: is design a better explanation than chance or physical necessity? If it is a better explanation, then we ought to adopt it. But if it is just as implausible as chance or necessity, then it would enjoy no advantage over them. So let’s ask ourselves what objections might be raised against the inference that there is an intelligent Designer of the cosmos who fine-tuned the universe to be life-permitting.

Sometimes detractors of design will object to the design hypothesis because the cosmic Designer himself remains unexplained. It gives an explanation of the design in the universe, but what about the cosmic Designer? What explanation is there of his design? This is what Richard Dawkins calls “the central argument of my book” The God Delusion.[1] He summarizes this argument in six steps as follows:

1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.

3. The temptation is a false one because the Designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the Designer.

4. The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. (Here he is talking about biological complexity – the appearance of design in animals and plants.)

5. We don’t have an equivalent explanation for physics. (Here he is talking about fine-tuning. He is no longer talking about the appearance of design in the animal and plant kingdoms. Here he is talking about physics and the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants and quantities for the universe.)

6. We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.

Conclusion: Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

I think everyone in this class will find that conclusion jarring because the atheistic conclusion “Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist” doesn’t follow from the previous six statements even if we concede that every single one of them is true. There are no rules of logic that would permit you to derive such an inference from the truth of those six statements. Dawkins’ argument is just plainly invalid. The central argument of The God Delusion is a patently invalid argument.

Even if Dawkins’ premises were true, what would follow from his argument? At most, I think what would follow is that we should not infer God’s existence on the basis of the appearance of design in the universe. We ought not to infer that there is a cosmic Designer on the basis of the appearance of design in the universe. That would be the most, I think, that his argument would prove if its premises were all true. But notice that conclusion is entirely compatible with God’s existence, and it is even compatible with our justifiably believing in God’s existence. The fact that you shouldn’t infer to a Designer on the basis of the appearance of design says nothing about whether God exists or not. It is entirely compatible with the existence of God. Maybe we should believe in God, not on the basis of the design argument, but maybe we should believe in God on the basis of the cosmological argument or the argument from contingency or the moral argument. Maybe our belief in God isn’t based on arguments at all. Maybe it is properly basic, grounded in our religious experience or in divine revelation. The point is that rejecting design arguments for God’s existence doesn’t do anything to prove that God doesn’t exist or even that belief in God is unjustified. Dawkins’ lack of philosophical depth is plainly on display here.

We’ve talked about the invalidity of Dawkins’ argument, that is to say, even granted the truth of those six steps the conclusion doesn’t follow. But what about those six steps? Are they true? Does his argument succeed in undermining the argument for design? I don’t think it does at all because I think that some of the steps in Dawkins’ argument are plainly false.

Notice that step 5 (which says we don’t have an equivalent explanation for physics) is a reference to fine-tuning that we’ve been talking about. Dawkins admits that he has nothing by way of an explanation for it, and so the hope that is expressed in step 6 (that we shouldn’t give up hope of a better explanation) is just nothing more than the faith of a naturalist. It is the naturalist’s faith that some natural explanation will be forthcoming.

Moreover, consider step 3 of the argument. That was that the temptation to infer design is a false one because the Designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem: who designed the Designer? His claim here is that you are not justified in inferring design as an explanation of the complex order of the universe because then a new problem arises, namely, who designed the Designer?

I have a couple of objections to this step in Dawkins’ argument. First, this claim is problematic on at least two grounds.

First problem: In order to recognize an explanation as the best, you don’t need to have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point in the philosophy of science. For example, if archaeologists digging in the ground were to come across things looking like pottery shards and arrowheads and tomahawk heads, they would be justified in inferring that these were artifacts left by a lost group of people rather than the products of sedimentation and metamorphosis, even if they had absolutely no idea or explanation of who these people were. Similarly, if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that that was left there by intelligent agents, even if they had no idea whatsoever who those agents were or how they got there.

In order to recognize an explanation as the best, you don’t need to have an explanation of the explanation. In fact, if you think about it, that requirement would lead to an infinite regress of explanations so that nothing would ever get explained! For before any explanation could be accepted as the best, you’d need to have an explanation of the explanation, but before you could accept that you’d need an explanation of the explanation of the explanation. And so on and so forth. Nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed!

In the case at hand, in order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe, you don’t need to be able to explain the Designer. Whether the Designer has an explanation can simply be left an open question for further inquiry.

Second problem: Dawkins thinks that in the case of a divine Designer of the universe, since the Designer is just as complex as the thing to be explained, no explanatory advance is made. The problem with this objection is that it ignores all sorts of questions about the role played by simplicity in assessing competing explanations. For example, there are many other factors that scientists consider besides simplicity when they weigh the question of which explanation is the best. For example, they will consider explanatory scope, or explanatory power, or other theoretical virtues. An explanation which has broader explanatory scope might be preferred over a simpler explanation simply because it explains more things. So simplicity is not the only, or even the most important, criterion in assessing theories.

But we can just leave those two problems with step 3 to the side. I have a more fundamental objection to step 3 of his argument. Dawkins’ fundamental mistake lies in his assumption that a divine Designer is just as complex as the universe. This is plainly false. In his book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins defines complexity as follows: “A complex object, as opposed to a simple one, has many parts, those parts being of more than one kind.”[2] So on this definition, a thing is complex just in case it is composed of many different kinds of parts. But then it follows immediately that God is simpler than the universe! As a pure mind without a body, God is a remarkably simple entity. A mind (or soul) is not a physical object composed of parts. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all of its inexplicable constants and quantities, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly it is true that such a mind may have complex ideas—it might be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity having no parts out of which it is composed. Dawkins has evidently confused a mind’s ideas, which may, indeed, be complex, with a mind itself, which is a remarkably simple entity.

So, in fact, postulating a divine mind behind the appearance of design in the cosmos actually does represent an advance in simplicity. It is a simpler explanation than just saying the universe is fine-tuned the way it is by chance. So Dawkins is fairly compelled to embrace the God hypothesis.

Thus his objection to design fails on multiple accounts. (i) In order to recognize an explanation as the best you don’t need an explanation of the explanation. (ii) Simplicity is not the most important or only factor in assessing explanations. (iii) And the explanation of a divine mind is simpler than the complex and variegated universe.

So it seems to me that of the three alternatives before us—physical necessity, chance, or design—the most plausible of these three is design. We can now draw our conclusion that the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe is design. So now we have a fourth argument in our cumulative case for the existence of God.