I’ve always regarded the arguments that Luke cites against Dawkins’ central argument as being awfully weak.
Yes, theists believe that God is eternal and necessary, a “non-contingent” being, as they say. But you could just as easily say that the universe itself is necessary and non-contingent. It doesn’t seem to have existed in its current form forever, but that doesn’t mean that the process which gave rise to the Big Bang ever had to be caused by anything, or could possibly have not existed.
Maybe the universe is necessary and non-contingent, maybe not. But the fact that it exists is established beyond reasonable doubt. We’re not taking up a big unnecessary complexity burden by positing the existence of the universe. God, on the other hand, is a big complexity burden. You can say that he’s non-contingent, that he couldn’t possibly not exist, but you could say that about anything, and we don’t have any actual evidence for that assertion.
When dealing with a causal chain, you’re ultimately going to end up with an infinite regression or an uncaused cause. What Dawkins argues is that if you’re going to posit an uncaused cause, God, as an intelligent being, is a far more complex explanation than a simple uncaused cause, such as some sort of basic physical principle.
Some believers will respond that God is simple, he has no moving parts and is ontologically basic. But of course, again, there’s no end to the hypothetical entities you could posit and say that they’re ontologically basic, but they can’t even establish that intelligent ontologically basic entities is a coherent idea, and even if they could, it would leave the question of how we single out their conception of God as the specific ontologically basic causal agent to believe in. He has qualities attributed to him which you could not attribute to an ontologically basic causal entity, so as an explanatory hypothesis he can’t be minimally complex.
An actual reply:
The question “How did the universe arise?” is equivalent to “How did God arise?”. You do not have to explain how the universe came into existence in order to accept that the universe exists, and the same applies to God.
Your main point in your reply is that God fails occam’s razor. He does not help us understand the universe nor the physical phenomena; He is just a less embarrassing replacement of the word magic. God has poor explanatory power, and this is a good argument.
If from the beginning you do not accept that God is a good explanation for our existence, you do not have to play the theist’s game. If you do, then you cannot afterwards tell the theist to provide an explanation for his God or you won’t believe in Him, because 1)this question is irrelevant as shown earlier and 2)his theology already provides an adequate answer for this question once you conceded/entertained the thought that God could provide a good explanation for our existence.
2)his theology already provides an adequate answer for this question once you conceded/entertained the thought that God could provide a good explanation for our existence.
I’d contest that it provides an adequate answer, although it certainly offers answers.
An actual reply:
The question “How did the universe arise?” is equivalent to “How did God arise?”. You do not have to explain how the universe came into existence in order to accept that it exists, and the same applies to God.
Your long reply can simply be summarized by saying God fails occam’s razor. He does not help us understand the universe nor the physical phenomena; He is just a less embarrassing replacement of the word magic. God has poor explanatory power, and this is a good argument.
If from the beginning you do not accept that God is a good explanation for our existence, you do not have to play the theist’s game. If you do, then you cannot afterwards tell the theist to provide an explanation for his God, because 1)this is a meaningless question and 2)his theology already provides an adequate answer.
For an example of DH7 in action, see Wielenberg (2009). Wielenberg, an atheist, tries to fix the deficiencies of Dawkins’ central argument for atheism, and then shows that even this improved argument does not succeed.
I’ve always regarded the arguments that Luke cites against Dawkins’ central argument as being awfully weak.
Yes, theists believe that God is eternal and necessary, a “non-contingent” being, as they say. But you could just as easily say that the universe itself is necessary and non-contingent. It doesn’t seem to have existed in its current form forever, but that doesn’t mean that the process which gave rise to the Big Bang ever had to be caused by anything, or could possibly have not existed.
Maybe the universe is necessary and non-contingent, maybe not. But the fact that it exists is established beyond reasonable doubt. We’re not taking up a big unnecessary complexity burden by positing the existence of the universe. God, on the other hand, is a big complexity burden. You can say that he’s non-contingent, that he couldn’t possibly not exist, but you could say that about anything, and we don’t have any actual evidence for that assertion.
When dealing with a causal chain, you’re ultimately going to end up with an infinite regression or an uncaused cause. What Dawkins argues is that if you’re going to posit an uncaused cause, God, as an intelligent being, is a far more complex explanation than a simple uncaused cause, such as some sort of basic physical principle.
Some believers will respond that God is simple, he has no moving parts and is ontologically basic. But of course, again, there’s no end to the hypothetical entities you could posit and say that they’re ontologically basic, but they can’t even establish that intelligent ontologically basic entities is a coherent idea, and even if they could, it would leave the question of how we single out their conception of God as the specific ontologically basic causal agent to believe in. He has qualities attributed to him which you could not attribute to an ontologically basic causal entity, so as an explanatory hypothesis he can’t be minimally complex.
An actual reply: The question “How did the universe arise?” is equivalent to “How did God arise?”. You do not have to explain how the universe came into existence in order to accept that the universe exists, and the same applies to God.
Your main point in your reply is that God fails occam’s razor. He does not help us understand the universe nor the physical phenomena; He is just a less embarrassing replacement of the word magic. God has poor explanatory power, and this is a good argument.
If from the beginning you do not accept that God is a good explanation for our existence, you do not have to play the theist’s game. If you do, then you cannot afterwards tell the theist to provide an explanation for his God or you won’t believe in Him, because 1)this question is irrelevant as shown earlier and 2)his theology already provides an adequate answer for this question once you conceded/entertained the thought that God could provide a good explanation for our existence.
I’d contest that it provides an adequate answer, although it certainly offers answers.
An actual reply: The question “How did the universe arise?” is equivalent to “How did God arise?”. You do not have to explain how the universe came into existence in order to accept that it exists, and the same applies to God.
Your long reply can simply be summarized by saying God fails occam’s razor. He does not help us understand the universe nor the physical phenomena; He is just a less embarrassing replacement of the word magic. God has poor explanatory power, and this is a good argument.
If from the beginning you do not accept that God is a good explanation for our existence, you do not have to play the theist’s game. If you do, then you cannot afterwards tell the theist to provide an explanation for his God, because 1)this is a meaningless question and 2)his theology already provides an adequate answer.
I will just leave this paper here, which lukeprog mentioned in his Better Disagreement article:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Wielenberg-Dawkins-Gambit-Humes-Aroma-and-Gods-Simplicity.pdf
To quote: