Re: [asa] Dawkins and PZ Myers and their 'attitude'

According to Plantiga Dawkins reasoning is circular:

"...suppose we concede, at least for purposes of argument, that God is complex. ..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... 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."
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Iain Strachan
  To: George Murphy
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 4:27 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Dawkins and PZ Myers and their 'attitude'

  George,

  Thanks for the link to your article - I'll look it up.

  But ...

  The fact remains that many people are reading TGD and using it against Christians. The fact that the book comes up as a topic of conversation surely leads to opportunities for evangelism - to talk about our faith, etc.

      BTW, has anyone pointed out that Dawkins' argument that "God" would have to be complex in order to create a complex world is just Dembski's supposed "conservation of information" notion in atheist garb?

  I hadn't thought of it that way, but it strikes me that Dawkins's argument is pretty silly. I think Dawkins's premise is that God must be more complex than us to have created us. I actually think it's a false premise to assume that you have to be more complex than what you create in the first place. We haven't done it yet, but I don't think it's inconceivable that given the rise in computer power, that one day someone will write an evolutionary simulation in a computer that will give rise to "virtual" entities inside the computer that are more complex than us. However, we as "programmers" are at a different level of reality than the entities that exist within the software simulation. I think Dawkins wants to reduce it all to one level. In the radio broadcast, he suggested that a Designer must be more complex than us, and so it must also have evolved, and as it's more complex, then it is even more unlikely than us. But his premise right at the start is that this material world in which things evolve is the only one there is. But he then wants to use this to "prove" the non-existence of God (or to be more precise, to demonstrate the near impossibility of God). But the thing he's trying to prove is the premise he's assumed in the first place.

  I think this argument is wrong for the same reason that the Design argument is wrong. When Paley stumbles upon the watch on the heath, the only reason he is justified in assuming it had a watchmaker is that he knows that watchmakers exist - there is independent empirical evidence of them - one has seen a man making a watch. But no-one has seen God zapping a flagellum into existence, so the analogy breaks down. The Design argument presumes the existence of God from the start. By the same token the Dawkins argument for the non-existence of God presumes the non-existence of God. Both sides are flawed in assuming what you're trying to prove in the first place. (I think there's some name for that logical fallacy, but the name escapes me for the moment).

  Iain

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Received on Sat Apr 7 21:59:12 2007