Abstract
Richard Dawkins has a dilemma when it comes to design arguments. On the one hand, he maintains that it was Darwin who killed off design and so implies that his rejection of design depends upon the findings of modern science. On the other hand, he follows Hume when he claims that appealing to a designer does not explain anything and so implies that rejection of design need not be based on the findings of modern science. These contrasting approaches lead to the following dilemma: if he claims that Darwinism is necessary for rejecting design, he has no satisfactory response to design arguments based on the order in the laws of physics or the fine-tuning of the physical constants; alternatively, if Humean arguments are doing most of the work, this would undermine one of his main contentions, that atheism is justified by science and especially by evolution. In any case, his Humean arguments do not provide a more secure basis for his atheism because they are seriously flawed. A particular problem is that his argument for the improbability of theism rests on a highly questionable application of probability theory since, even if it were sound, it would only establish that the prior probability of God’s existence is low, a conclusion which is compatible with the posterior probability of God’s existence being high.
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Notes
The quotation is taken from an expanded version of this paper, which is available at http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/design%20argument%2011%202004.pdf and to which the page numbers refer. Interestingly, in the original version of this text Sober cites Dawkins as an example of the Darwinian position. As we shall see, however, Dawkins also appeals to Humean arguments.
Furthermore, Dawkins (2006, p. 157) seems to accept that his argument is no different from Hume’s, and so presumably no more dependent on science, since he quotes these remarks of Dennett with approval. Dennett points out that Hume could not think of an alternative explanation, and so in the end he ‘caved in’ to the design argument, but the clear implication is that Hume’s arguments had shown that the design argument was flawed, and so his caving in was a failure of nerve on Hume’s part that was not grounded on rational considerations.
Dawkins’ discussion of natural selection as a consciousness-raiser (Dawkins 2006, pp. 114-119) seems consistent with it having a psychological rather than logical role.
An alternative way would be to say that something counts as evidence for God’s existence if it would be more probable given God’s existence than it would be if God does not exist. As far as I am aware Dawkins does not address this conception of evidence, which is based on confirmation theory.
From ‘Lecture from ‘The Nullifidian’ (Dec 94)’ which is available at http://richarddawkins.net/articles/89 (last accessed 5/07/10).
Actually, this is not quite right. Ganssle formulates Dawkins’ argument in terms of God requiring an explanation outside himself. Hence, God’s necessity would not rule out premise 1 as I have formulated it or even the conclusion of the argument. However, now there would be an explanation for God’s complexity in terms of it being a necessary attribute of God (if Dawkins is right that God would possess organised complexity) and the necessity of God’s existence. Hence, argument 1 would lose its force and premise 4 in argument 2 would be false.
Interestingly, Philo is ‘a little embarrassed and confounded,’ and it is Demea who responds by essentially claiming Cleanthes’ argument assumes an anthropomorphic view of God, whereas God is really incomprehensible. Needless to say, proponents of the design argument deny that God is incomprehensible. Irrespective of what view one takes on this, however, it is clearly incompatible with Dawkins’ view of theism as a scientific hypothesis.
Even taking into account the background knowledge, there is still a question as to whether it makes sense to ask what the prior probability of God’s existence is. The question assumes there is a single value, but this will be denied by subjective Bayesians who think that the probability values an individual assigns to his beliefs should only be constrained by the probability calculus and Bayesian rules for updating. Nevertheless, many reject this subjectivity, and so Dawkins’ position here is mainstream.
By independent I mean that they are conditionally independent given God’s existence or non-existence. More formally, P(E | G, E2) = P(E | G) and P(E | ¬G, E2) = P(E | ¬G).
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference on Religious Responses to Darwinism 1859–2009 at the University of Oxford in July 2009. I would like to thank participants at the conference as well as Harry Bunting, Richard Smith and Puran Agrawal for comments on that version of the paper. I am very grateful to Graham Veale and Lydia McGrew for extremely helpful comments on the paper and discussions on the design argument. Finally, I would like to thank anonymous reviewers for making a number of suggestions that have helped to improve the paper.
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Glass, D.H. Darwin, Design and Dawkins’ Dilemma. SOPHIA 51, 31–57 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-011-0232-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-011-0232-x