Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (5 page)

But Dawkins’s answers to (4) and (5) are correct; the argument is still in trouble. Recall that his answer to question (3) is yes, “provided only that we allow ourselves a
sufficiently large
series”; his answer to (4): “My feeling is that, provided the difference between neighboring intermediates in our series leading to the eye is
sufficiently small
…” But even if he is right about the answers to (3) and (4), it doesn’t follow that the whole path is plausibly possible in his sense—that is, it doesn’t follow that the path is not astronomically improbable. That is because of the temporal constraint imposed. Suppose there have been multicellular organisms for, say, a billion years. This means that the series can’t be arbitrarily long and the distance between the points arbitrarily small.

Dawkins’s argument, therefore, is pretty weak. But what about the truth of his conclusion?
Is
there a Darwinian series for the eye, and for the other forms of life? Is Dawkins right? How can we tell? How could we determine a thing like that? Michael Behe is by no means the only biologist who thinks it’s at best extremely unlikely that there is such a series; for example, according to the biologist Brian Goodwin,

It appears that Darwin’s theory works for the small-scale aspects of evolution: it can explain the variations and the adaptations with species that produce fine-tuning of varieties to different habitats. The large-scale differences of form between types of organism that are the foundation of biological classification systems seem to require another principle than natural selection operating on small
variation, some process that gives rise to distinctly different forms of organism. This is the problem of emergent order in evolution, the origins of novel structures in organisms, which has always been one of the primary foci of attention in biology.
²⁹

Others, like Dawkins, think there is such a series.

On this point there is likely to be a difference between theists and nontheists. For the nontheist, undirected evolution is the only game in town, and natural selection seems to be the most plausible mechanism to drive that process. Here is this stunningly intricate world with its enormous diversity and apparent design; from the perspective of naturalism or nontheism, the only way it could have happened is by way of unguided Darwinian evolution; hence it
must
have happened that way; hence there
must
be such a Darwinian series for each current life form. The theist, on the other hand, has a little more freedom here: maybe there is such a series and maybe there isn’t; God has created the living world and could have done it in any number of different ways; there doesn’t
have
to be any such series. In this way the theist is freer to follow the evidence where it leads.

But the main point here lies in another direction. Dawkins claims that the living world came to be by way of unguided evolution: “the Evidence of Evolution,” he says, “Reveals a Universe Without Design.” What he actually argues, however, is that there is a Darwinian series for contemporary life forms. As we have seen, this argument is inconclusive; but even if it were air-tight it wouldn’t show, of course, that the living world, let alone the entire universe, is without design. At best it would show, given a couple of assumptions, that it is not astronomically improbable that the living world was produced by unguided evolution and hence without design.

But the argument form

p is not astronomically improbable

therefore

p

is a bit unprepossessing. I announce to my wife, “I’m getting a $50,000 raise for next year!” Naturally she asks me why I think so. “Because the arguments against its being astronomically improbable fail! For all we know, it’s not astronomically improbable!” (Well, maybe it
is
pretty improbable, but you get the idea.) If he’s successful, what Dawkins really shows is that the arguments against there being a Darwinian series are not conclusive. What he shows, if he’s successful, is that
for all we know
there is such a series, so that for all we know it’s possible that the living world came to be in this fashion. We could put it like this: what he shows, at best, is that it’s epistemically possible that it’s biologically possible that life came to be without design. But that’s a little short of what he claims to show.

It is perhaps worth noting and stressing the difference between claim and performance here. Dawkins claims that he will show that the entire living world came to be without design; what he actually argues is only that this is possible and we don’t know that it is astronomically improbable; for all we know it’s not astronomically improbable. But mere possibility claims are not impressive. To put to better use an example proposed by Bertrand Russell and mentioned by Dawkins in his book
The God Delusion
, it’s possible that there is a china teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars, out of reach of our telescopes; this ought not to dispose us favorably to the thought that indeed there is a china teapot orbiting the sun between Earth
and Mars.
³⁰
But the same goes for the claim that a certain state of affairs is not astronomically improbable. Perhaps it isn’t; but that, so far, gives us no reason whatever to endorse it, and in fact doesn’t so much as make it sensible to endorse that claim.

Have I perhaps misinterpreted Dawkins? Some with whom I have discussed his argument have thought that he couldn’t possibly have intended an argument as weak as the one I’ve attributed to him; he must have additional premises in mind. Perhaps they are right; of course it is difficult to consider an argument when one is obliged to guess at its premises. Still, what might be other possibilities? What might Dawkins be thinking? Yehuda Gellman and Dennis Monokroussos have suggested (in personal communication) that perhaps Dawkins intends an argument connected with his claim, made in
The Blind Watchmaker
, that an attempt to explain the stunning variety of life by a hypothesis involving design is misguided in that any being able to create life would itself have to be too complex:

Organized complexity is the thing that we are having difficulty in explaining. Once we are allowed simply to
postulate
organized complexity, if only the organized complexity of the DNA/protein replicating machine, it is relatively easy to invoke it as a generator of yet more organized complexity…. But of course any God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as the DNA/protein machine must have been at least as complex and organized as that machine itself… To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.
³¹

Design doesn’t
explain
organized complexity (says Dawkins); it
presupposes
it, because the designer would have to be as complex as what it creates (designs). Perhaps, therefore, Dawkins means to argue along the following lines: there are really just two explanations of life: unguided Darwinism and an explanation,
guided Darwinism, perhaps, that involves design. But the latter is really no explanation at all. Therefore the only candidate is the former.

Here there are two problems. First, this argument doesn’t depend on the facts of biology; it is substantially independent of the latter. Is it likely that Dawkins would be offering an argument of that sort? If so, why would he claim that it is “the Evidence of Evolution” that “Reveals a World Without Design”?

Set that problem aside for the moment; there is another and deeper problem with this argument. Suppose we land on an alien planet orbiting a distant star and discover some machine-like objects that look and work just like a 1941 Allis Chalmers tractor; our leader says “there must be intelligent beings on this planet—look at those tractors.” A sophomore philosophy student on the expedition objects: “Hey, hold on a minute! You have explained nothing at all! Any intelligent life that designed those tractors would have to be at least as complex as they are!” No doubt we’d tell him a little learning is a dangerous thing and advise him to take the next rocket ship home and enroll in another philosophy course or two. For of course it is perfectly sensible, in that context, to explain the existence of those tractors in terms of intelligent life, even though (as we can concede for present purposes) that intelligent life would have to be at least as complex as the tractors. The point is we aren’t trying to give an
ultimate
explanation of organized complexity, and we aren’t trying to explain organized complexity
in general
; we are only trying to explain one particular manifestation of it (those tractors). And (unless you are trying to give an ultimate explanation of organized complexity) it is perfectly proper to explain one manifestation of organized complexity in terms of another. Hence it is not the case, contra Dawkins, that an explanation in terms of divine design is a nonstarter. Such an explanation doesn’t constitute an ultimate explanation of organized complexity (if God is complex, nothing could constitute such an explanation); but it is none the worse for that.

A second point: Dawkins argues that “the main thing we want to explain” is “organized complexity.” He goes on to say that “the one thing that makes evolution such a neat theory is that it explains how organized complexity can arise out of primeval simplicity,” and he faults theism for being unable to explain organized complexity. Now first, in biology we are attempting to describe and explain terrestrial life, not organized complexity generally. And second:
mind
would be an outstanding example of organized complexity, according to Dawkins. Of course it is uncontroversial that if there is such a person as God, he would be a
being who thinks and knows; so suppose we take Dawkins to be complaining that theism doesn’t offer an explanation of mind. It is perfectly obvious that theists won’t be able to give an explanation of mind in general—they won’t be able to offer an explanation for the state of affairs consisting in there being at least one mind—because, naturally enough, there
isn’t
any explanation of the existence of God. But that is certainly not a point against theism. Explanations come to an end; for theism they come to an end in God. For any other view of the same level of generality they also come to an end. The materialist or physicalist, for example, doesn’t have an explanation for the existence of elementary particles or, more generally, contingent physical or material beings; that there are some is, from that perspective, a brute fact. It isn’t easy to say precisely what counts as begging the question; but to fault theism for failing to have an ultimate explanation of mind is as good a candidate as any.

Here is a second attempt to reconstrue Dawkins’s argument.
³²
In
The God Delusion
he argues that the existence of God is monumentally improbable—about as probable as the assembly of a flight-worthy Boeing 747 by a hurricane roaring through a junkyard. Now it is not monumentally improbable, he says, that life should have developed by way of unguided Darwinism. In fact the probability that the stunning complexity of life came to be in that fashion is greater than the probability that there is such a person as God. An explanation involving divine design, therefore, is less probable than the explanation in terms of unguided Darwinism; therefore we should prefer unguided Darwinism to an explanation involving design; but these two are the only viable candidates here; therefore by an inference to the best explanation, we should accept unguided Darwinism.

Clearly a host of considerations clamor for attention here. Concede, for the moment, that unguided Darwinism is more probable than an explanation involving design; does it follow that the former is to be preferred to the latter? There is more to goodness in explanation than the probability of the
explanans
. And how secure is this alleged inference to the best explanation, as an argument form, or, more likely, maxim? If all the explanations are highly unlikely, am I obliged, nonetheless, to pick and endorse one of them? I hear a great roar from the Notre Dame stadium; either the Irish have scored a touchdown, or an extra point, or a field goal, or a safety, or completed a long pass, or made a long run
from scrimmage, or tackled the opposing runner for a loss, or intercepted a pass. Suppose these eight explanations exhaust the field, and suppose the first is slightly more probable than any of the other seven; its probability, on the evidence is .2. Am I obliged to believe that explanation, just because it is more probable than the rest, and even though its probability is much below .5? Whatever happened to agnosticism, withholding belief?

And why think the existence of such a person as God is unlikely in the first place? Dawkins is presumably speaking here of some kind of objective probability, not epistemic probability. Statistical probability hardly seems relevant; presumably, therefore, he’s thinking of something like logical probability, something like the proportion of logical space occupied by the possible worlds in which there is such a person as God; his idea is that the more complex something is, the smaller that proportion is. (“God, or any intelligent, decision-taking calculating agent, is complex, which is another way of saying improbable.”)
³³
But the first thing to note is that according to Dawkins’s own definition of complexity, God is
not
complex. According to his definition something is
complex
if it has parts that are “arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone.”
³⁴
Here he’s clearly thinking of
material
objects. Setting aside the excesses of mereological universalism, however, one thinks that
immaterial
objects, e.g., numbers, don’t have parts. But of course God isn’t a material object; strictly speaking, therefore, God has no parts. God is a spirit, an immaterial spiritual being; hence God has no parts at all.
A fortiori
God doesn’t have parts arranged in ways unlikely to have arisen by chance. Therefore, given the definition of complexity Dawkins himself proposes, God is not complex.