I have to take a break from JB Peterson, and I will not be posting the next section for some time. Here is a recent argument I got into regarding design and God. I thought Richard Dawkin’s sledgehammer approach converted all the believers years ago, at least persuaded them that we cannot possibly be designed. Of course, he did not since people believe what they want to believe. This may not be new stuff for most of us, but I want someone special to read it because they believe in the design argument.
I have not thought about God for a long while. However, a recent conversation that I had reminded me that I can still get agitated when someone does not see it as I see it. That is interesting in itself and worthy of its own post. I get especially perturbed when someone is unfamiliar with the topic and doggedly persists without considering my points. But my points were not articulated well, and I have forgotten what my favorite authors’ names and arguments were. This post will revisit this topic as well as ask an important question. Are we too hard on believers? I think so. The argument from complexity is not that bad, yet I am still an atheist.
Those Stubborn Beliefs
Two things said by my opponent were that we do not all use the same criteria when evaluating arguments and that the theory of evolution cannot account for all of life’s complexity are good points. For the former point, our myside bias, which is what we want to believe, will make us weigh evidence in favor of our belief more heavily. Our belief becomes a hypothesis which is a kind of confirmation bias. That is, we seek evidence that supports our belief and discount other evidence. But all of science works this way because that is how the mind works. We cannot imagine two beliefs and simultaneously filter two different kinds of evidence. But what if our belief is not the right explanation? Obviously, we must always challenge our beliefs, despite how stubborn they can be.
Beliefs are stubborn things because we probably show an emotional commitment to them, and our identities may be tied to them. What I mean is that these beliefs become “etched” over time in our brains and become reinforced the more we access them. The more emotion that is tied to them, then the more difficult it is to “rewire” them [1]. These beliefs or “frames” become filters for how we view the world and can create much meaning in our lives. Beliefs are reinforcing because when we find that something fits our beliefs, then we do not feel dissonance. What my opponent said, however, was misleading because although we may not all accept the same evidence because of our bias, there are objective ways and criteria for determining which explanation is better.
The best way of determining the strength of our explanations within an argument is by ABE or Argument to the Best Explanation*. In fact, this can be framed in terms of Bayes’ theorem which is just a mathematical way of expressing ABE. ABE tells us a lot of obvious but important things. One, our explanation needs to be plausible, which is a measure of how typical our explanation is. Two, it must have explanatory power which means that it must fare better than other hypotheses. Three, the explanation must have explanatory fitness and not contradict our background knowledge. Four, it must have explanatory scope and be able to explain a wide range of observations. Lastly, we cannot add a bunch of other arguments (ad hocness) to make our argument work.
I do not wish to bash anyone for their beliefs unless they are harmful to others. Believing in God is mostly innocuous, so I respect this person’s belief. But if we are posing it as a hypothesis to explain phenomena, then it is open to criticism as much as the next one. We cannot just throw our hands in the air and say that this is a matter of opinion. Our preference for believing in God is subjective, but the claim of whether or not God caused complexity has an answer. Let us look at the evidence and reasoning used. Note, for those who say that God works in mysterious ways and that evidence and reasoning are irrelevant, then their beliefs are nothing more than beliefs. They forfeit any rights that they may have had to have any sort of intellectual conversation.
It’s Complex; Ergo Godditit
Argument: Life is complex, therefore God designed it.
Evidence: consciousness is too complex; science is not the only way to understand; it hasn’t explained everything
The argument that was given is shown above. This is the God of the gaps fallacy which says that if there is a gap in our scientific understanding, therefore God did it. The God of the gaps argument has historically been the wrong position to take. It would be incorrect, however, for me to say since it has been wrong in the past, then it is wrong now. This is the problem of induction, for which there exists no solution. But this type of reasoning works nevertheless. It probably works because nature over time seems to be uniform and predictable. In any event, I will not rely on this type of reasoning. The argument as it stands is circular, and it does not tell us anything new. It is missing premises and is a last-ditch effort to save God. I suspect that it is also a somewhat more acceptable way of smuggling in a personal God. Science easily explains why we may have a belief in an intimate God, so unless God operates against all reason and logic, we have no reason to give credence to the idea that there is a personal God.
To help my opponent, we can easily change any circular argument into a valid argument by adding premises. In fact, Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute did just that. Meyer says that since our experiences tell us that many complex things are designed, then we can make the inference that life was designed. This is a perfectly reasonable argument. Atheists use this same type of argument to illustrate that Jesus Christ, like all the Gods before him, is just another God. We do not believe in any of those dozens of other Gods, so why should we believe in this God? No, you see because this God is special. As true as this reasoning probably is, we cannot just dismiss the divinity of Jesus (ii). Jesus may be a “special” God and defy our analogous reasoning (iii). But the same thing is true then for Meyer’s reasoning. Meyer could say that just because major gaps have been filled by science, it does not mean that the inference that life was designed will also be filled. In both cases, we must appeal to the actual evidence at hand.
It is very intuitive for us to think that things are designed because they often are—technology obviously is one such thing. But not all things that we observe have a designer other than nature. I could give an exhaustive list, but for many, this will not suffice. It will not suffice because comparing snowflakes to human cells is not believable. This is why we must turn to natural selection as a force of nature that is guided by a species’ environment and random mutation. But to some scientists, like Marc Kirschner who wrote “The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma”, Darwin’s theory of natural selection is not the complete picture. I plan on using this evidence to at least show that life is, as the book states, very plausibly not designed…
References
[1] The Bias That Divides Us. Stanovich, Keith E.