"God" - Design Argument

Avijit Roy

Email: avijitroy@hotmail.com

It is a response to Mr. Faisal Halim's post in NFB

Dear Mr. Halim,

Your wood and boat story is quite nice but those stories actually make impact on those common (generally not educated) people who have no science background or who do not want to put down their knowledge on the area of metaphysics, modern astronomy, or philosophy. Your boat story no doubt is one of the most convincing of all "proofs" for the existence of a god like the watchmaker argument of William Paley which (you may not know) has been refuted by skeptics/agnostics /atheists long time ago, and today this type of argument is no longer utilized in any meaningful discussion.

Let's take the conclusive statement from your boat story - "Well then, Mr. Avijit, if even a small boat cannot be created by accident, how can a system the likes of our own bodies be created by accident? How can a system as complex as the universe be produced without proper, prior planning?"

Your arguments covers "Argument of design" which can be refuted in following way:

Believers always provide the most common type of the cosmological argument, postulating a god as a "First Cause" (which you think most logical) can be summarized as follows:

1. Everything that exists or begins to exist has a cause. The universe exists and began to exist.

2. The universe must have a cause.

3. The cause of the universe is God.

Theists always dogmatically believe that every creation should have a creator and every event should have a cause. But practically it is not true always. There are many events in this universe happening without the need of prior cause or the involvement of the creator. There are many spontaneous reactions occurring without having the anterior cause. Many radioactive particles are radiating freely and spontaneously without involving the anticipation of any creator. If you are familiar with quantum mechanics you may know that quantum electrodynamics reveals that an electron, positron, and photon occasionally emerge spontaneously in a perfect vacuum. When this happens, the three particles exist for a brief time, and then annihilate each other, leaving no trace behind. (Energy conservation is violated, but only for a particle lifetime DelT permitted by the uncertainty delT *delE~h where delE is the net energy of the particles and h is Planck's constant.) The spontaneous, temporary emergence of particles from a vacuum is called a vacuum fluctuation, and is utterly commonplace in quantum field theory. A particle produced by a vacuum fluctuation has no cause. Since vacuum fluctuations are commonplace, god cannot be the only thing that is uncaused. So all the Theist's argument (like Hugh Ross) "If the universe arose out of a big bang, it must have had a beginning. If it had a beginning, it must have a beginner." also comes from the limitation of thinking.

An Uncaused Universe

The more important point is this: not only is there no evidence for the theist's causal assumption, there's evidence against it. The claim that the "beginning of our universe has a cause" conflicts with current scientific theory. The scientific theory is called the Wave Function of the Universe. It has been developed in the past 15 years or so by Stephen Hawking, Andre Vilenkin, Alex Linde, and many others. Their theory is that there is a scientific law of nature called the Wave Function of the Universe that implies that it is highly probable that a universe with our characteristics will come into existence without a cause. Hawking's theory is based on assigning numbers to all possible universes. All of the numbers cancel out except for a universe with features that our universe possesses, such as containing intelligent organisms. This remaining universe has a very high probability - near 100% - of coming into existence uncaused.

You can read the following two articles for more details:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_schick/bigbang.html

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/smith_18_2.html

By the by, the fact is, if there is a god, then god exists. And then god exists without the need for a creator. So, those who always invoke the need for a creator to account for the creation of universe claim, in the same breath, that the "problem" of the creation of the universe is solved by invoking something infinitely more complex than the universe -- that wasn't created.

Simply, my objection of your arguments is that your arguments conclude that a "god" exists, but if so, then this god must have a cause for his creation (according to the same argument). This would result in an infinite regress of causes (gods) unacceptable to the theist, so most believers make an exception for their god, asserting that it doesn't need a cause. Unfortunately, there is no obvious reason why this exception cannot be applied to the universe, too. If a god "just is," why can't the universe "just be?". For this reason, many using the argument say "everything that begins to exist has a cause" - asserting that their god never "began" and, hence, needs no cause. The problem here is that you did not provide any support offered on behalf of your contention except the so-called "popular belief" that your god must be "eternal." From the law of Physics we know that order cannot come from disorder, then this god must be highly ordered rather than chaotic. Therefore, this god requires another god as an explanation. Of course, this once again drops us into an infinite regress of gods. If the believer wishes to exempt an ordered god from requiring explanation, then they will have to demonstrate that the universe cannot also get such an exemption and scientifically irrational.

So Mr. Halim, your comment "How absurd the idea of a self creating boat is, it is as if a pot of ink was spilt, and it took the form of the Webster's Dictionary." is just misplaced and wrongly applied here. Your argument sounds like The "Watchmaker argument" of William Paley who said -
"suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there."

From those observation he came with a biased conclusion like you -

"Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation."

His arguments were refuted long time ago in scientific arena. Some of the several points I wish to put below:

1. The watchmaker's father:

Just like all watches have watchmakers, so do all watchmakers have fathers. Therefore, with the watchmaker analogy, god has a father. Who is the father of god? And who is the father of the father? And so forth. This leads to an endless series that I pointed out before.

2. Boat maker makes boat, watchmakers makes watch:

Let's begin with the story describing that you had to go to a friend's house for a party, but I was delayed. Suddenly you found a boat. Would you assume that a watchmaker made that boat? Of course not, you would assume a boat maker did. Therefore, according to the analogy, created life must have a life maker, the sun a sun maker and snowflakes a snowmaker. This implies that there are several creators in the world, responsible for all kinds of creation (not one god!).

3. Watches out of nothing:

The things (components) used by the watchmaker to make watches (or component for boat maker to make boat) already exists, but the theists claim that their god created things ex nihilo, from nothing. So the analogy is false here, too.

4. False analogy:

The watchmaker is a false analogy because it assumes that because two objects share one common quality, they must have another quality in common.

a. A watch is complex
b. A watch has a watchmaker
c. The universe is also complex
d. Therefore the universe has a watchmaker

The last step is wrong, because it concludes something that is not supported by the criteria. It is best clarified by another example:

a. Leaves are complex structures
b. Leaves grow on trees
c. Money bills are also complex structures
d. Therefore money grow on trees (which, according to the idiom, they don't)

5. Contradiction:

Faisal Halim: "How can a thing as complex as even a simple boat take form without prior planning?"

The argument first assumes that a boat is different from nature, which is uncomplicated and random. It then states that since the universe is so complicated, complex, and ordered it too must have a creator. Thus, the argument gives the universe two incompatible qualities.

6. Circular argument:

Watchmaker argument assumes that the universe, black holes, stars, planets, snowflakes, life, etc., are created. Actually physics, chaos theory and evolutionary theory tell us how most complex things in the world could have evolved on their own, without any help from any "watchmaker". When we see a beautiful cloud formation in the sky we perceive the laws of nature playing there, not the watch maker's! When we see rain falling from the sky, we comprehend "water cycle" behind the scene not any "Mikyl Feresta" or any imaginary watchmaker/boat maker!

Eventually there are a lot of fallacies in William Paley's watchmaker's argument. Mr. Halim can read the following book for his reference:

The Blind Watchmaker : by Richard Dawkins

In conclusion, Like Paley's watchmaker's argument, Mr. Halim's Boatmaker argument also is not a proof, it is an analogy. As most other analogies it is quite lame. It is contradictive, misses many important features, does not aid us in knowing who the watchmaker is, and most important does not stand alone as evidence of god, but must rely on external evidence. Therefore, the argument does not the least prove that the world was designed by a superhuman being.

Conclusive result:

F.Halim: when a religious person told his atheist host a story similar to the one I told above, at a party, the atheist converted to Islam.

Avijit: when a technical skeptic person pointed out the fallacies of those religious arguments, the person turned back to atheism again.

Thanks.

~ Avijit Roy