Plantinga on Dawkins (The Authorized Version)

There have been plenty of reviews of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion. Today Alvin Plantinga's has appeared, officially this time (there was an unauthorized pre-release a month or so ago, which a few of us bloggers ran until we were notified that it was not released for publication). Plantinga, a faculty member at Notre Dame, is among the handful of most respected Christian philosophers in the world today.

Plantinga sets context by hearkening back to Dawkins's earlier work, The Blind Watchmaker, to which he objects on grounds nearly the same as I have written.

I wrote it this way:

Here's a summary of [Dawkins's] argument:
1. Assume a universe without a designer.
2. It's really hard to imagine how the complexity of life could have arisen without a designer, but here's an analogy to show how it might have happened.
3. Therefore there was no designer.

Plantinga says:

"1. We know of no irrefutable objections to its being biologically possible that all of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes;

"and Dawkins supports that premise by trying to refute objections to its being biologically possible that life has come to be that way. His conclusion, however, is

"2. All of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes.

"It's worth meditating, if only for a moment, on the striking distance, here, between premise and conclusion. The premise tells us, substantially, that there are no irrefutable objections to its being possible that unguided evolution has produced all of the wonders of the living world; the conclusion is that it is true that unguided evolution has indeed produced all of those wonders. The argument form seems to be something like
"We know of no irrefutable objections to its being possible that p;
Therefore
p is true.
"Philosophers sometimes propound invalid arguments (I've propounded a few myself); few of those arguments display the truly colossal distance between premise and conclusion sported by this one."

Plantinga has brought this earlier book into the discussion in order to deal thoroughly with one of Dawkins's major points in both books: that positing God as the explanation for life explains nothing. Dawkins says that it explains organized complexity by invoking organized complexity, which is no explanation at all. And organized complexity on the scale it must be exhibited by a God is even more exceedingly improbable than that which is exhibited by life on earth.

The answer begins with classical theology, which denies that God is complex. Aquinas taught that

"God is simple, and simple in a very strong sense, so that in Him there is no distinction of thing and property, actuality and potentiality, essence and existence, and the like."

So Dawkins is objecting to a God that Christians don't believe in either. Ho hum.

But what if Aquinas was wrong? As Plantinga says, this is a very technical and difficult matter, and the way in which God is simple is not as simple as the way some other things are simple. On the other hand, God cannot be complex in the way Dawkins has defined complexity:

"According to [Dawkins's] definition (set out in The Blind Watchmaker), something is complex if it has parts that are 'arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone'. But of course God isn’t a material object at all and hence has no parts. God is a spirit, an immaterial spiritual being, and therefore has no parts at all."

Whereupon Dawkins might decide to revise his definition of complexity; he would certainly be free to do that. Still, he has a problem. We don't actually need to affirm God's simplicity to answer his objection:

"[S]uppose we land on an alien planet orbiting a distant star and discover machine-like objects that look and work just like tractors; our leader says 'there must be intelligent beings on this planet who built those tractors.' A first-year philosophy student on our 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 that 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 the moment) 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. Similarly, in invoking God as the original creator of life, we aren't trying to explain organized complexity in general, but only a particular kind of it, i.e., terrestrial life. So even if (contrary to fact, as I see it) God himself displays organized complexity, we would be perfectly sensible in explaining the existence of terrestrial life in terms of divine activity."

There's more, of course. Be sure not to miss the part about Dawkins approving Dennett approving Dawkins--it's hilarious.

Posted: Tue - February 27, 2007 at 08:25 AM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Plantinga on Dawkins (The Authorized Version)

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson