A response to Richard Dawkins' argument against the existence of God.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

As has been already pointed out, Dawkins’ argument is directed against the popular theistic assertion that since the universe couldn’t have come about on its own (something never really supported by more than ignorance in itself), god is needed as a creator. All that Dawkins now does is point out the self-defeating nature of this argument, in a logically cogent way: either one would have to have the same questions one has regarding the existence of the universe regarding the existence of god, or one would have to accept that if god can come into existence spontaneously/exist eternally/timelessly, then so could the universe; thus, either the argument doesn’t solve the problem at all and just ‘pushes it back’, or it fails to demonstrate the necessity of a creator god.

Besides, even if the argument did show god (or some creating entity) to be necessary, to show that this entity is something that bears some relation to the Christian (or any) deity is another task altogether, yet something that is always conveniently glossed over by theists. It might, for instance, just be a completely insentient, inanimate god-particle (not to be confused with that other god-particle!), that has some way of bootstrapping itself into existence (or exists eternally, timelessly, transcendentally, whatever your favourite gloss might be), whose mere existence causes the creation of a universe. Even if this were a genuinely supernatural phenomenon, i.e. in principle inexplicable through scientific means, doesn’t mean its son can turn water into wine; there’s quite a leap of unfounded assumptions there.

Sophistry and Illusion, are you by any chance familiar with Lee Smolin’s ‘fecund universes’-proposal? (Also known as cosmological natural selection.) In brief, Smolin attempts to answer the question of why our universe seems so uniquely fit for supporting life by proposing a mechanism by which universes can ‘give birth’ to daughter universes – through the creation of black holes --, whose fundamental constants (and thereby, whose laws of physics) may differ slightly from those in the mother universe. Thus, the multiverse becomes dominated by universes having the greatest capacity for self-reproduction – those that easily create black holes --, which also makes them hospitable to complex molecules, and thereby, life.

I’m not sure I put much stock in this hypothesis – in particular, there seems to be a need for a peculiar sort of top-level concept of multiverse-time in which this evolution supposedly takes place, something I’m not all that certain is consistent at all --, but it’s a bold and fascinating proposal nonetheless.

[SentientMeat]

Interesting OP, ITR. I’ll try to engage here as best I can but apologies if real life intrudes and I suddenly become silent.

I happen to agree that the question of God coming into existence is something of a red herring. As I set foth in this thread (which you contributed to), neither God nor the universe necessarily came into existence. Both could simply have never not existed. Science says precisely nothing about a God which has never not existed, and theological arguments say nothing about a universe which has never not existed (unless they are hopelessly contrived a la William James Craig’s mangling of the Kalam Cosmological argument).

Therefore, IMO, Dawkins falls into the common trap of assuming a nothing-to-something transition - in this case for God, although many other excellent writers do the same for the universe. While I happen to disagree, he is rather a product of his age in this respect. (My friend Simon Singh did the same in “Big Bang” - and he’s a physicist!). Indeed, the more I read that passge in full the more he seems to be presenting a reductio ad absurdans argument: If the universe required a creator, then so must that creator! There is nothing illogical or ludicrous about assuming a proposition’s truth in order to explore possible absurd consequnces.

Regardless of this, Dawkins’ general point is still valid IMO. “God”, ie. a Heavenly Father who loves us and has some effect on the universe in some way, is a heck of a thing to exist at all. As an explanatory entity in an Ockham’s Razor sense, it really is quite an extraordinary leap from our usual everyday explanations. We must ask ourselves whether such an extraordinary entity is necessary. To whit:

@ITRChampion

I know that God exists because I have experience of God, just as I know my mother exists because I have experience of her.

Ah, but your experience of God could be mistaken, just as a dream of your mother would not strictly be you “experiencing your mother”. We debated precisely this point in this thread.

People believing that they experience God is the phenomenon to be explained. There are alternative explanations for this phenomenon (or candidate explanations, at least). Some candidates involve real gods or supernatural entities. Some candidates involve only natural, neurophysical entities. I argue that the latter are all that are necessary to explain the phenomenon.

[SentientMeat]

On review, I see Mangetout’s question immediately below the OP provides an almost perfect compression of all the posts thereafter, including mine. I would urge ITR to engage with this question before all others. Why is a designing God required at all? (“How are His characteristics explained” is a question that only arises after this.)

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@SentientMeat

Therefore, IMO, Dawkins falls into the common trap of assuming a nothing-to-something transition

Not necessarily – even if one assumes the possibility that something that exists need not have come into existence (thanks to existing eternally, or transcendentally), or that it never didn’t exist (both, IMO, at least as big assumptions as that something can come from nothing is), perhaps thanks to some beginningless-time model (i.e. the past is finite, but there’s no first moment, akin to the open interval (0, 1) being finite, yet not containing a smallest – or, in this case also, largest – number), Dawkins’ criticism of first-cause-like arguments (which really is not all that original to Dawkins) carries through: if it is mysterious that the universe exists, then the existence of a god necessary to solve this mystery is at least as mysterious; if it is not mysterious, there is no need for god. Phrased like this, there’s no reference to anything coming into existence.

[SentientMeat]

@HMHW

Phrased like this, there’s no reference to anything coming into existence.

Yes, you’re right - like I said, the more I read Dawkins’ quote in context, the more it merely reads like an if … then reductio ad absurdans - ie. neither ludicous nor illogical, but an example of possibly the most important tool in logic of all.

[monavis]

@ITR_champion

Our latest Dawkins thread began with an atheist worrying about Dawkins’ tone distracting religious readers away from his arguments. It does exactly that. But even if someone rewrote the book in a polite manner, the arguments would still be extremely weak. I’ve discussed many examples in many threads. Dawkins fans can rationalize them all away sure, but Glenn Beck’s fans can do the same for their man. Having a fan club willing to defend anything you say doesn’t make you right. More moderate Dawkins defenders take a second line of defense. They say (paraphrased) “Yes, Dawkins is wrong about a lot of stuff, put religious people only point out that stuff because they’re unable to refute his argument against the existence of God.” In fact , Dawkins’ argument against the existence of God has been refuted thousands if not millions of times, and most of those refutations were written centuries or millenia ago. But some people apparently missed it.

Here’s Dawkins’ argument against the existence of God:

That sentence, like “Colorless green words sleep furiously”, is grammatically correct, but it’s nonsense. Probability is a mathematical concept that describes events, not objects, as can be verified from the nearest math textbook. (The probability of an event is the number of outcomes in the event divided by the total possible numer of outcomes.) So you can find the probability that a cow will go moo, but you can’t find the probability of a cow. And of course Dawkins knows this, so he tries to elide over the fact that he’s really talking about the probability of God coming into existence, not about the probability of God. He claims that the probability of God coming into existence is very small. As usual, he offers no reasons. No reason why God must be complex, no reason why that complexity should make the probability of God coming into existence small. But most of all, no reason why God had to come into existence in order to exist.

The best refutation to this argument is written in Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth”. In other words, God existed before the opening event; God has always existed. Hence trying to insist that God can’t exist because He couldn’t start existing is an inane category mistake, like saying that cars can’t exist because there’s no way for a care to hatch from an egg. In his only attempt to deal with this, Dawkins claims that the statement of God being eternal is “vague” and “pseudo-philosophical”. It is neither.

So in short, the best argument against the existence of God is an extremely bad argument that was knocked down millenia ago, and even the more intelligent atheists would probably be embarrassed to be caught making it. If that’s the best argument against God’s existence, then it bolsters my confidence in God’s existence quite a bit, because apparently there aren’t any good arguments against God’s existence. But besides that, Dawkins offers this claim: “The argument from improbability is easily today’s most popular argument in favor of the existence of God”. This is perhaps the most ludicrous statement in a book that contains mostly ludicrous statements. I know that God exists because I have experience of God, just as I know my mother exists because I have experience of her. Some ignorant yahoo offering a pitiful argument for the non-existence of God would be treated the same as a similar argument concerning my mother.

It depends on what god you are talking about and what the word ‘God’ means, there is much discord even among believers. I ask again;who created the Place for God to be? A being requires a place before it can exist so I am asking who created existence?

[monavis]

@Ludovic

Thank you for pointing out that the answer is right there, in the Bible. For that is an argument which has never been advanced before, and furthermore, is airtight, unlike, for instance, a circular argument.

One could ask"What beginning are you referring to? The beginning of God, the beginning of the earth. Or the beginning of existence?

[SentientMeat]

Erratum for ITR: We debated whether people believing that they had experienced gods or spirits actually required those entities to exist (ie. whether all religions required divine inspiration and none could be explained naturally) in this thread.

I’d be happy to continue said debate here if you like. One of your final posts there stated that you still thought it ludicrous that anyone could believe that they had experienced a god or gods when they actually hadn’t. Is that still the case?

[SentientMeat]

Oh, and this also needs some clarification:

@ITR

“The argument from improbability is easily today’s most popular argument in favor of the existence of God”. This is perhaps the most ludicrous statement in a book that contains mostly ludicrous statements. I know that God exists because I have experience of God

So what you’re saying is that you ascribe a tiny (or even zero) probability that your experiences are not actually divine in origin, yes?

Like I’ve said many times, personal experience is perhaps the last bastion of the God of the Gaps. And even here, those Gaps are shrinking rapidly.

[Sage_Rat]

My refutation of your cite in Genesis:

@Kojiki

THE ISLAND OF ONOGORO

Hereupon all the Heavenly deities commanded the two deities His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites and Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites, ordering them to “make, consolidate, and give birth to this drifting land.” Granting to them a heavenly jeweled spear, they thus deigned to charge them. So the two deities, standing upon the Floating Bridge of Heaven pushed down the jeweled spear and stirred with it, whereupon, when they had stirred the brine till it went curdle-curdle, and drew the spear up, the brine that dripped down from the end of the spear was piled up and became an island. This is the Island of Onogoro.

COURTSHIP OF THE DEITIES THE MALE-WHO-INVITES AND THE FEMALE-WHO-INVITES

Having descended from Heaven on to this island, they saw to the erection of a heavenly august pillar, they saw to the erection of a hall of eight fathoms. Then Izanagi, the Male-Who-Invites, said to Izanami, the Female-Who-Invites, “We should create children”; and he said, “Let us go around the heavenly august pillar, and when we meet on the other side let us be united. Do you go around from the left, and I will go from the right.” When they met, Her Augustness, the Female-Who-Invites, spake first, exclaiming, “Ah, what a fair and lovable youth!” Then His Augustness said, “Ah what a fair and lovable maiden!” But afterward he said, " It was not well that the woman should speak first!" The child which was born to them was Hiruko (the leech-child), which when three years old was still unable to stand upright. So they placed the leech-child in a boat of reeds and let it float away. Next they gave birth to the island of Aha. This likewise is not reckoned among their children.

Hereupon the two deities took counsel, saving: “The children to whom we have now given birth are not good. It will be best to announce this in the august place of the Heavenly deities.” They ascended forthwith to Heaven and inquired of Their Augustnesses the Heavenly deities. Then the Heavenly deities commanded and found out by grand divination, and ordered them, saying: “they were not good because the woman spoke first. Descend back again and amend your words.” So thereupon descending back, they again went round the heavenly august pillar. Thereupon his Augustness the Male-who-Invites spoke first: " Ah! what a fair and lovely maiden!" Afterward his younger sister Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites spoke: " Ah! what a fair and lovely youth! " Next they gave birth to the Island of Futa-na in Iyo. This island has one body and four faces, and each face has a name. So the Land of Iyo is called Lovely-Princess; the Land of Sanuki is called Princess-Good-Boiled-Rice; the Land of Aha is called the Princess-of-Great-Food, the Land of Tosa is called Brave-Good-Youth. Next they gave birth to the islands of Mitsu-go near Oki, another name for which islands is Heavenly-Great-Heart-Youth. This island likewise has one body and four faces, and each face has a name. So the Land of Tsukushi is called White-Sun-Youth; the Land of Toyo is called Luxuriant-Sun-Youth; the Land of Hi is called Brave-Sun-Confronting-Luxuriant-Wondrous-Lord-Youth; the Land of Kumaso is called Brave-Sun-Youth. Next they gave birth to the Island of Iki, another name for which is Heaven’s One-Pillar. Next they gave birth to the Island of Tsu, another name for which is Heavenly-Hand-Net-Good-Princess. Next they gave birth to the Island of Sado. Next they gave birth to Great-Yamato-the-Luxuriant-Island-of-the-Dragon-fly, another name for which is Heavenly-August-Sky-Luxuriant-Dragon-fly-Lord-Youth. The name of “Land-of-the-Eight-Great-Islands” therefore originated in these eight islands having been born first. After that, when they had returned, they gave birth to the Island of Koo-zhima in Kibi, another name for which island is Brave-Sun-Direction-Youth. Next they gave birth to the Island of Adzuki, another name for which is Oho-Nu-De-Hime. Next they gave birth to the Island of Oho-shima, another name for which is Oho-Tamaru-Wake. -Next they gave birth to the Island of Hime, another name for which is Heaven’s-One-Root. Next they gave birth to the Island of Chika, another name for which is Heavenly-Great-Male. Next they gave birth to the islands of Futa-go, another name for which is Heaven’s Two-Houses. (Six islands in all from the Island of Ko in Kibi to the Island of Heaven’s-Two-Houses.)

Or here, some Native American myths:

In the beginning was only Tepeu and Gucumatz (Feathered Serpent). These two sat together and thought, and whatever they thought came into being. They thought Earth, and there it was. They thought mountains, and so there were. They thought trees, and sky, and animals etc, and each came into being. But none of these things could praise them, so they formed more advanced beings of clay. But these beings fell apart when they got wet, so they made beings out of wood, but they proved unsatisfactory and caused trouble on the earth. The gods sent a great flood to wipe out these beings, so that they could start over. With the help of Mountain Lion, Coyote, Parrot, and Crow they fashioned four new beings. These four beings performed well and are the ancestors of the Quiché In the beginning was only Tepeu and Gucumatz (Feathered Serpent).

When the Earth was young it had a family. The moon, or Grandmother and the sun, called Grandfather. The Earth was a woman - Mother Earth - because from her came all living things. Mother Earth was given four directions - East, South, West, and North, each with physical and spiritual powers.When Mother Earth was young Creator, or Gichi-Manidoo as Ojibwe people call him, filled her with beauty. He sent singers in the form of birds and swimmers in the water. He placed plants, trees, insects, crawlers and four-legged animals on the land.Gichi-Manidoo then blew into four parts of Mother Earth using the sacred megis shell. From the union of these four and his breath, two-leggeds or man, was born. Thus, man was the last form of life to be put on Earth. From this original man came the Anishinaabe - or The Original People.

The Lakota recount in their version of demiurge that the gods lived in the heavens and humans lived in an underworld without culture. Creation was initiated by Inktomi (“spider”), the trickster, who conspired to cause a rift in the heavens between the The Sun God Takushkanshkan (“something that moves”) and his wife, the Moon. Their separation marked the creation of time. Some of Inktomi’s co-conspirators were exiled to the Earth where the gods of the four winds were scattered and created space.

To populate the Earth, Inktomi traveled to the underworld in the form of a wolf and met with humanity, telling them about a paradisical world aboveground. Inktomi convinced a man named Tokahe (“the first”) to travel to the surface for a brief visit. When Tokahe emerged through a cave (Wind Cave in the Black Hills), he found the world to be strikingly beautiful. Returning to the underworld, Tokahe persuaded other families to accompany him to the surface, but upon arrival they discovered that the Earth was full of hardship. Inktomi had by this time prevented humanity from returning below ground, so the families had no choice but to scatter and eke out their livelihoods.

The Bible is only one account out of thousands. Just looking at odds, the great odds are against it having any fashion of accuracy. And looking at practicality, I can find a million stories about dragons and giant monsters, but until there’s any reason to think that there are dragons and giant monsters, I’m better off to assume that stories are just fiction.

[CurtC]

@SentientMeat

As I set foth in this thread (which you contributed to), neither God nor the universe necessarily came into existence. Both could simply have never not existed. Science says precisely nothing about a God which has never not existed, and theological arguments say nothing about a universe which has never not existed (unless they are hopelessly contrived a la William James Craig’s mangling of the Kalam Cosmological argument).

A nitpick here - it’s William Lane Craig. He’s a philosopher who does Christian apologetics, but I find that his arguments are filled with fallacies and misunderstandings just like all the rest of them. However, Craig seems to be popular because he’s a very experienced and aggressive debater. He knows how to debate in a way that makes the audience think he has a good case, even though the point dissolves under a little analysis.

Craig is an excellent example of why debates are such a poor way sort out what’s true.

[SentientMeat]

Ah, thanks for that.

@CurtC

Craig is an excellent example of why debates are such a poor way sort out what’s true.

Intellectually dishonest debates, yes. If we all agree to avoid mischaracterising or misquoting our opponent, the debate/dialectic/quaestio is IMO the best route to ‘truth’ there is (if indeed there is such a thing).

[RaftPeople]

@42fish

I’m now morbidly curious about what ITR considers the second-best refutation.

It’s actually a little bit of an interesting situation, turns out there are multiple third-best refutations (one of which is simply “peanut butter”), but there is no second-best refutation.

[DanBlather]

ITR why is the universe always existing less likely than a supreme being always existing?

[Sandwich]

@ITR_champion

… If that’s the best argument against God’s existence, then it bolsters my confidence in God’s existence quite a bit, because apparently there aren’t any good arguments against God’s existence.

We really need to keep an archive of these gems, for posterity’s sake.

Does anyone know of any good internet resources which explain logical methods, for all our sakes?

[FinnAgain]

@42fish

the second-best refutation.

“‘Shut up.’ He explained.”

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Sandwich

We really need to keep an archive of these gems, for posterity’s sake.

Fear not. A fresh one comes quarterly.

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Sophistry and Illusion, are you by any chance familiar with Lee Smolin’s ‘fecund universes’-proposal? (Also known as cosmological natural selection.) In brief, Smolin attempts to answer the question of why our universe seems so uniquely fit for supporting life by proposing a mechanism by which universes can ‘give birth’ to daughter universes – through the creation of black holes --, whose fundamental constants (and thereby, whose laws of physics) may differ slightly from those in the mother universe. Thus, the multiverse becomes dominated by universes having the greatest capacity for self-reproduction – those that easily create black holes --, which also makes them hospitable to complex molecules, and thereby, life.

I’m not sure I put much stock in this hypothesis – in particular, there seems to be a need for a peculiar sort of top-level concept of multiverse-time in which this evolution supposedly takes place, something I’m not all that certain is consistent at all --, but it’s a bold and fascinating proposal nonetheless.

I have read the concept, although I don’t recall the name associated with it, nor have I read many of the details. Thanks for the link; I’ll check it out.

Having made an elaborate reply, I have to agree with SentientMeat–the fundamental point for **ITR **to respond to is Mangetout’s–he cut right to the heart of the issue. But as a professional philosopher I can’t help but pontificate at length.

[Sage_Rat]

@ITR_champion

I know that God exists because I have experience of God

In a world where there is such a thing as mental disorders, this really isn’t evidence on anything. If a person can wake up knowing that he has been anally probed by aliens, experience of god isn’t all that convincing. The more likely answer is going to be self-delusion, an elevated level of endorphin production, drugs, or very minor mental illness.

It would be nearly impossible to rule those out, but even if you did the fact that any of them could easily explain the “experience of God” while not particularly affecting your day-to-day life, it would make far more sense to extrapolate that there isn’t some sort of mystical power at force. It would probably be more likely that you were being mentally probed by aliens than that there be some intelligent creator of the universe making himself known to just you.

[ITR_champion]

@Mangetout

If no reason is required for the complexity of God’s nature, why is God required as a reason for the complexity of the universe?

I’m not asserting in this thread that God is required as a reason for the complexity of the universe. I’m instead responding to a specific argument that Richard Dawkins makes. (In ch. 4 of The God Delusion, for those who wanted the cite.)

Now there are responses to your exact question; I can point you to some books if you’d like, but it’s not the topic of this thread.