Dawkins is continuing his tour across the US, and recently landed on Alan Colmes’ radio show.
A few notes here.
I really appreciated (seriously) Dick talking about the religious pandering of our politicians. Of course McCain doesn’t care about religion. Hillary a Christian? Well, people certainly think so. It’s good to see Richard call Americans out on that bullshit (yes, that is two nice things I’ve said about Dick in a row. Don’t read into it.)
According to Dawkins, the argument from design is the only argument people take seriously. I don’t think this is true at all. In the philosophical world other arguments take precedence over the design argument. Perhaps a minority of “scientifically-minded” evangelical Christians use the design argument as the knockout punch, but that is about it. Even then, Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument or C.S. Lewis’s Moral Argument would probably get more airtime than the design argument. We just don’t hear about it as much because no one is trying to get those arguments placed in school curriculum.
“How does it help to postulate a Creator?” in response to the question of the origins of the universe. This is not very useful, Dick. I am thinking or writing something a little longer on this particular question, but in the meantime I’d check out Plantinga’s response to him here:
[S]uppose we concede, at least for purposes of argument, that God is complex. Perhaps we think the more a being knows, the more complex it is; God, being omniscient, would then be highly complex. Perhaps so; still, why does Dawkins think it follows that God would be improbable? Given materialism and the idea that the ultimate objects in our universe are the elementary particles of physics, perhaps a being that knew a great deal would be improbable—how could those particles get arranged in such a way as to constitute a being with all that knowledge? Of course we aren’t given materialism. Dawkins is arguing that theism is improbable; it would be dialectically deficient in excelsis to argue this by appealing to materialism as a premise. Of course it is unlikely that there is such a person as God if materialism is true; in fact materialism logically entails that there is no such person as God; but it would be obviously question-begging to argue that theism is improbable because materialism is true.
Beautiful as usual, St. Al.
Wow, Dawkins does have the patience of a saint. Those callers are absolutely retarded. He is right, they do “bleet like sheep” , and Dawkins was right about the bullshit thing.
March 25, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I’ve never found Alvin’s arguments very compelling on these points. First of all, I really think he misses or avoids where Dawkins is coming from: he’s responding to the suggestion that we should look at something complex, and demand an explanation for it, and then insist that only something more complex could ever explain it. Dawkins isn’t just arguing out of the blue that God is improbable because we can just assume materialism. He’s responding to this idea by pointing out that this answer is never particularly satisfying, because it never really explains complexity, it only banishes that explanation into a realm where we can conveniently fail to apply the very principle that got us there.
Second of all, Alvin’s metaphysics is basically a retreat into ambiguity. What use is it to claim that citing God “explains” anything? I might just as easily insist that there is simply a “supernatural” (i.e. inexplicable) force that simply does whatever it is we need it to do to explain whatever needs explaining. Oh, and it doesn’t have a mind or thoughts. It’s just this thing. But don’t ask me to explain it! Why should I, when Alvin doesn’t?
March 26, 2008 at 3:42 pm
But bad, there is no reason to think that God is any more complex than the event we are trying to explain. That is a very bad philosophical supposition. But let’s imagine that evoking some kind of design or the whole shebang (the entire universe) does end the chain of explanations. So what? Isn’t that we want? If explanations go on ad infinitum than nothing is really ever explained, and everything we know about anything is wrong.
March 27, 2008 at 5:12 pm
It is only if you a) don’t think through the implications of what would be needed to have a mind capable of designing a universe or b) simply assert, as Plantinga basically does, that he doesn’t have to think through those implications, because supernatural somehow just magically works, no explanation, no functional processes, etc.
For a) any being capable of designing the universe must have had an intelligence far exceeding modern mans’ because we are pretty sure we barely even understand a fraction of how it all works.
If the argument is that human minds are so amazingly complex that they demand explanation, then vastly superior minds demand an even vastly more superior explanation.
The only out from this, and the out Plantinga takes, is that a “supernatural” mind just sort of works. It may even be “unitary” whatever that means. So how does a non-complex mind work? Oh, er, um, we don’t have to explain that: it’s supernatural, you see.
But if that’s an allowable excuse, then this undermines the entire demand for natural explanations in the first place. If we can immagic into being inexplicable solutions for any problem, then we might as well just declare that the universe as it is was caused by some supernatural non-mind, is just a brute fact, or whatever. Or just not explain it at all.
The point is, if scientists stooped to playing under the pathetic set of rules that theologians use, then all questions and mysteries would go away instantly, and there wouldn’t be any reason to posit design in the first place. How does my mind work? Oh: supernaturally… which is to say, by some means I’ll never even try to explain. Why is evolution true? Oh, it just is. There’s a supernatural force that makes it so, and that’s that.
Are those satisfying “explanations?” In the least?
Because that’s basically no different than what Alvin is offering. And Dawkins is right to call him on it.
The problem is that evoking design doesn’t actually explain anything. And if there is no answer to where designer came from, then there doesn’t need to be any answer to where the claimed APPARENT design (i.e. the natural world) came from either (because remember, we’re only getting to that designer based on the argument that such things demand explanations!). Because people like Plantinga retreat into the inexplicable, they basically forfeit the entire game.
March 29, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Bad, I’m going to make this a new entry. I’ve been wanting to kick around Plantinga’s ideas anyhoo, so hopefully you don’t mind.
April 6, 2008 at 9:11 am
Not at all, looking forward to it. :)