“We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a brivale shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by a man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows”.
(ibid., p.71)
Richard Dawkins argues that the evidence to support Darwin’s theory is so overwhelming that the Argument from Design is now redundant. He claims that Paley was “gloriously and utterly wrong”. Natural selection is a blind and automatic process with no foresight or purpose:
“The only watchmaker in nature is the blind force of physics”
(ibid, p.71)
Those that still believe the universe has a Creator hold a metaphysical speculation that can not be examined scientifically. It is just assumed that God is responsible without explaining how. Whereas Natural selection can and does empirically explain the organised complexity of the universe:
“Our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but…it is a mystery no longer….Darwin and Wallace solved it”.
(The Blind Watchmaker, p.13)
Theist, Richard Swinbuurne believes that Dawkins is misleading because he ignores a chief premise of the Argument from Design; whether or not there is a sense of purpose of our existence. For those who believe there is, Darwin has not provided an ultimate explanation one way or the other:
“The watch may have been made with the aid of some blind screwdrivers (or even a blind watchmaking machine), but they were guided by a watchmaker with some very clear sight”.
(Is there a God?, p.63)
It seems unfair for Dawkins to discount Paley as ‘gloriously wrong’. The fundamental assumption of the Argument from Design is that there is an Intelligent Being who is essentially responsible for the existence of the universe; Darwin has not done enough to disprove this. Anthony Kenny asserts that Darwin may be correct that the natural system is mechanistic in structure, but it can still operate teleologically:
“The argument was only that the ultimate explanation of such adaptation be found in intelligence; and if the argument was correct, then any Darwinian success merely inserts an extra step between the phenomena and their ultimate explanation “.
(Destiny, Purpose and Faith, p.72)
For an ultimate explanation, there must be an account as to why and how the laws of evolution occurred in the first place. Dawkins assumes that we must just accept that they came about by some fortuitous coincidence. Most advocates of the Argument from Design do not dispute that Darwin was correct about natural selection, only that it cannot be assumed that there is not a Higher Intelligence responsible for guiding the evolutionary process. And furthermore, can use modern scientific research to support this.
Physicist and theist, Russell Stannard puts forward the reviewed argument; in order for evolution to happen the characteristics of the physical world and the conditions under which they met were of such remarkable precision that it is practically impossible to believe they were subject to chance and not controlled by a Mind or Designer.
For example, if the Big Bang explosion had been the slightest bit greater, the matter of the universe would have dispersed before the stars and planets could have condensed. Had the explosion been lesser, the universe would have collapsed before planet life could have developed. In between these extremes lies an acutely narrow band of conditions conductive to human life. Stannard goes on to identify an array of highly improbable conditions which allowed the production of carbon, without which subsequent life could not have evolved:
“Thus, in a variety of apparently unconnected ways, there seems to have been a conspiracy to fix the conditions.”
(ibid, p.199)
Stannard shares an example of the apparent conversion of fellow scientist, Fred Hoyle to illustrate just how convincing this evidence is: Prior to his discovery of the process of resonance Hoyle was a ‘militant atheist’. In subsequent lectures he began referring to ‘he who fixed things’ and wrote:
“A common sense interpretation dictates that a super intellect has monkeyed around with physics. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
(CD 7, track 2)
An atheistic counter example is to assume that an infinite number of universes were created instead of just our own. Each one would operate by their own different laws of physics. Purely by chance a few would be conductive to life.
Similarly, we may just have the one universe, but during the Big Bang it could have split into a colossal amount of different domains. The physical constraints of each of these domains all are very different. Our own observable universe would be just a very minute part of one of these domains.
To adopt this proposal however is equally as problematic as accepting the alternative. The theory cannot be tested. Different universes would never be able to interact with each other. Although, in principle, different domains of the same one could, the chances are virtually zero.
The assumption of infinite universes is just as speculative and extravagant as the assumption of an Omnipotent Being. In fact Stannard suggests the existence of God is the easier and more rational option to accept. Therefore Stannard appeals to Occam’s razor to endorse his persuasion; choosing the existence of a single Designer God over the possibility of an infinite number of universes as the simplest conclusion. Richard Swinbourne appeals to the same argument:
“If we can explain the many bits of the universe by one simple being which keeps them in existence, we should do so-even if inevitably we cannot explain the existence of that simple being”.
(Is there a God? p.49)
However, Stuart Brown (p.77) advises against this because it is controversial as to which proposal is less complex, so could theoretically be adopted by either side of the argument. God is the only unknown quantity in the theists’ argument as oppose to the infinite unknowns in the infinite universes theory. But God is an entirely unknown entity, immune to empirical investigation, whereas the universe is physical in nature so at least, in principle, can be studied.
Although for theists’ like Stannard and Swinbourne God is not an unknown. The believer feels validation of God’s existence in their everyday human experience. To ask someone of religious persuasion to accept that this God was ultimately responsible for fine tuning the universe is not asking them to accept anything new and is surely the ultimate and the only explanation which they seek.. For atheists like Dawkins though, there is no sufficient reason to postulate a designer God to explain the existence of the universe.
However, Dawkins is also unsuccessful in concluding that Darwin completely undermined the Argument from Design. In light of Darwin’s discoveries, Paley was wrong to assume that the existence of a designer God could be inferred from the apparent purpose serving order of the natural world. Yet, evolution theory fails to account for the mysterious series of coincidences under which the fabrics of the universe were formed. Neo-Darwinians have not provided enough evidence to disprove that a Higher Intelligence was ultimately responsible. Therefore Darwin’s theory of evolution does not completely undermine the Argument from Design.
Bibliography
Brown. S. (1999) Destiny, Purpose and Faith. The Open University. Alden Press.
Swinburne. R. (1996) Is there a God? Oxford University Press
Thompson. M. (1997) Philosophy of Religion. Hodder Headline ltd. London.
Midgely, M. (1985) Evolution as a Religion. Methuen, New York.
McGraph. A.E. (1999) Science and Religion. Oxford, U.K.
Everitt. N. (2004) The Non-existence of God. London and New York.
