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Last Updated December 6, 2003


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"Reasons to Believe: The Argument from Design" Rebuked

Introduction

I don't know Peter Kreeft. I've never met him. I just found his essay and felt like writing a rebuttal. He begins by rattling off a series of ultimately meaningless philosophical questions, making nearly half of the entire essay a superfluous preface, presumably to give the reader the idea that he knows logic backward and forward. This is clearly not the case when we actually look at his reasoning.

I harbor no resentment toward Mr. Kreeft (I do, in fact, agree with him on a few issues), unlike Winky Pratney. Peter Kreeft is obviously not a religious bigot, but he does like to misrepresent atheists and our beliefs. This and a general misrepresentation of logic and some science is what I criticize him for, albeit, somewhat ruthlessly.

Reasons to Believe: The Argument from Design

Peter Kreeft

Can you prove that God exists? Before we answer this question, we must distinguish five questions that are often confused. First, there is the question of whether something exists or not. A thing can exist whether we know it or not.

I like this first little statement. Yes, something can exist without us knowing about it. The Andromeda Galaxy has always existed, and we only recently discovered it. What's the difference between Andromeda and God? Andromeda is observable. The "something can exist without us knowing" approach is based in circular logic. We know God exists, because something can exist without us knowing. This approach requires no empirical evidence. It would be like scientists saying that they knew the Andromeda Galaxy exists because they know it does, without providing a scrap of empirical proof. Why does this question even matter?

Second, there is the question of whether we know it exists. (To answer this question affirmatively is to presuppose that the first question is answered affirmatively, of course; though a thing can exist without our knowing it, we cannot know it exists unless it exists.)

The answer to this question is quite obvious: No, we don't know that God exists. That is a matter of faith. It becomes a matter of logic when empirical and testable evidence for God's existence is provided. Otherwise, this question lies outside the realm of logic and reason. Again, this is totally superfluous.

Third, there is the question of whether we have a reason for our knowledge. We can know some things without being able to lead others to that knowledge by reasons. Many Christians think God's existence is like that.

I'm not entirely sure what he's trying to say here. I'm guessing that he is saying, "Even though I know God exists because of whatever reason, I can't convince other people that he exists for that same reason." I fail to see the relevance of this question to what he's trying to say. Again, a totally irrelevant question.

Fourth, there is the question of whether this reason, if it exists, amounts to a proof. Most reasons do not. Most of the reasons we give for what we believe amount to probabilities, not proofs. For instance, the building you sit in may collapse in one minute, but the reliability of the contractor and the construction materials is a good reason for thinking that very improbable.

Again, he's being unclear. When he says "we," to whom is he referring? People, in general, or people who try and give logical reasons for belief in God?

Fifth, if there is a proof, is it a scientific proof, a proof by the scientific method, i.e., by experiment, observation, and measure-ment? Philosophical proofs can be good proofs, but they do not have to be scientific proofs.I believe we can answer yes to the first four of these questions about the existence of God but not to the fifth. God exists, we can know that, we can give reasons, and those reasons amount to proof, but not scientific proof, except in an unusually broad sense.

He is correct, and I applaud him for admitting this, where so many Creationists and Bible-bashing bigots haven't. There is no logical reason to believe in God. Contrary to what he says, however, the "reasons" to believe do not amount to a proof. It's either a proof or it isn't. Also, his proofs have some serious flaws, as will be examined further. What does he mean scientific proof in an "unusually broad sense?" First of all, there is no such thing as scientific proof. This is something that I relentlessly criticize when someone tries to talk about scientifically "proving" God's existence or Creationism. Science has no proof. Science is consistent of theories. Science has evidence that supports a theory which was formulated to fit observed phenomena. There is a vast difference between evidence and proof, when talking about science. The two are not interchangeable, and, if he wants to analyze something as science would, he should take care to make this distinction.

There are many arguments for God's existence, but most of them have the same logical structure, which is the basic structure of any deductive argument. First, there is 'a major premise, or general principle. Then, a minor premise states some particular data in our experience that come under that principle. Finally, the conclusion follows from applying the general principle to the particular case.
In each case the conclusion is that God exists, but the premises of the different arguments are different. The arguments are like roads, from different starting points, all aiming at the same goal of God. In subsequent essays we will explore the arguments from cause and effect, from conscience, from history, and from Pascal's Wager. This essay explores the argument from design.
The argument starts with the major premise that where there is design, there must be a designer. The minor premise is the existence of design throughout the universe. The conclusion is that there must be a universal designer.
Why must we believe the major premise, that all design implies a designer? Because everyone admits this principle in practice. For instance, suppose you came upon a deserted island and found "S.O.S." written in the sand on the beach. You would not think the wind or the waves had written it by mere chance but that someone had been there, someone intelligent enough to design and write the message. if you found a stone hut on the island with windows, doors, and a fireplace, you would not think a hurricane had piled up the stones that way by chance. You immediately infer a designer when you see design.
When the first moon rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, two U.S. scientists stood watching it, side by side. One was a believer, the other an unbeliever. The believer said, "Isn't it wonderful that our rocket is going to hit the moon by chance?" The unbeliever objected, "What do you mean, chance? We put millions of man-hours of design into that rocket." "Oh," said the believer, "you don't think chance is a good explanation for the rocket? Then why do you think it's a good explanation for the universe? There's much more design in a universe than in a rocket. We can design a rocket, but we couldn't design a whole universe. I wonder who can?" Later that day the two were strolling down a street and passed an antique store. The atheist admired a picture in the window and asked, "I wonder who painted that picture?" "No one, " joked the believer; "it just happened by chance.

This same argument can be applied to God. Who designed God? After all, God is so enormously complex that we can't possibly understand him, right? There's a lot of design in an entity who is supposedly omnipotent and omniscient, if you're to use his reasoning. Either way, you can't just magically stop applying logic when it suites you. If he wants to apply the logic of a designer to the Universe to "prove" the existence of a designer, he'd better apply the same principles to the designer, too.

Also, this whole argument is a strawman. Any reasonable atheist doesn't believe that the Universe just "happened by chance." They, or at least I, believe that it just has always been here. It is eternal, always has been, always will be. If you ask, "Well, who started the Big Bang?", then I'll refer you to the Oscillating Universe Theory, the theory that the Universe will eventually collapse in on itself. Gravity will pull everything back toward the center, and when the incomprehensible amounts of gravity given off by all the mass in the Universe begin to localize back at the center, the process will accelerate, eventually slamming the Universe back together at a single point so dense that it will spontaneously fission, and explode, making another Big Bang. This process has always gone on and will always go on.

Is it possible that design happens by chance without a designer? There is perhaps one chance in a trillion that "SOS" could be written in the sand by the wind. But who would use a one-in-a-trillion explanation? Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys.
Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe. We have a logical explanation of the universe, but the atheist does not like it. it's called God.
There is one especially strong version of the argument from design that hits close to home because it's about the design of the very thing we use to think about design: our brains. The human brain is the most complex piece of design in the known universe. In many ways it is like a computer.

As I've said before, he's misrepresenting atheists in general. Also, there is plenty of complexity in the sun. It's nuclear reactions give off massive amounts of molecular disorder. Are we to infer that it was "designed," instead of simply formed because of natural processes like gravity and nuclear fusion? Furthermore, describing God as a "logical explanation" is downright laughable. Frankly, the "random chance" explanation actually is more logical than God. God is supposedly something so ridiculously complex that we can't quantify, observe or interact with it. Simply slapping a three-letter name on it doesn't make it simple. Think of it this way, think of the most complex mathematical equation that you can. Now, substitute that with a variable x. Is the horribly-complex equation suddenly simplified and less complex?

Now just suppose there were a computer that was programmed only by chance. For instance, suppose you were in a plane and the public-address system announced that there was no pilot, but the plane was being flown by a computer that had been programmed by a random fall of hailstones on its keyboard or by a baseball player in spiked shoes dancing on computer cards. How much confidence would you have in that plane? But if our brain computer has no cosmic intelligence behind the heredity and environment that program it, why should we trust it when it tells us about anything, even about the brain?

More of the same strawman. I wonder if he's ever talked with an atheist about his or her views on the existence of the Universe.

Another specially strong aspect of the design argument is the so-called anthropic principle, according to which the universe seems to have been specially designed from the beginning for human life to evolve. If the temperature of the primal fireball that resulted from the Big Bang some fifteen to twenty billion years ago, which was the beginning of our universe, had been a trillionth of a degree colder or hotter, the carbon molecule that is the foundation of all organic life could never have developed. The number of possible universes is trillions of trillions; only one' of them could support human life: this one. Sounds suspiciously like a plot. If the cosmic rays had bombarded the primordial slime at a slightly different angle or time or intensity, the hemoglobin molecule, necessary for all warm-blooded animals, could never have evolved. The chance of this molecule's evolving is something like one in a trillion trillion. Add together each of the chances and you have something far more unbelievable than a million monkeys writing Hamlet.
There are relatively few atheists among neurologists and brain surgeons and among astrophysicists, but many among psychologists, sociologists, and historians. The reason seems obvious: the first study divine design, the second study human undesign.

This is an outright lie, either born from reading too many "scientific Creationism" journals or just a general misunderstanding of Evolution. The Universe is not suited to us. We are suited to it. That is the whole point behind Evolution: That organisms will either learn to grow and thrive in their environment, or they will die. Life formed from Earth's atmosphere millions of years ago because chemical reactions, infused with energy from ultraviolet rays, were able to produce very simple proteins or proteinoids. Chemical reactions are not a "chance" process. They work by very specific rules. That's why we simply can't make a compound consisting of gold, iron, platinum, diamond, et cetera. His comment on the atheist population found in various fields of study is completely unbacked. He presents no polls on the religious affiliations of any of these fields of study. From what does he draw this conclusion? He wants to try and give "proof" for God's existence, but he can't even give a source to verify his claims?

But doesn't evolution explain everything without a divine Designer? just the opposite; evolution is a beautiful example of design, a great clue to God. There is very good scientific evidence for the evolving, ordered appearance of species, from simple to complex. But there is no scientific proof of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, Natural selection "explains" the emergence of higher forms without intelligent design by the survival-of-the-fittest principle. But this is sheer theory. There is no evidence that abstract, theoretical thinking or altruistic love make it easier for man to survive. How did they evolve then?

If you've read my response to Winky Pratney's essay, you'll know that I'm in full agreement with him. If you believe there's a God, Evolution really makes you think that that God is really, really awesome. Although, his following statements are totally wrong. Natural selection basically states that, when a species develops mutations, those with advantageous mutations will thrive, and those with disadvantageous mutations won't. It makes a prediction, and the prediction is well in-line with what we've observed. Some misinterpret natural selection to mean that there is only one standard of being "fit" for survival. This is untrue. For example, cockroaches survived when the asteroid struck the Earth millions of years ago, but dinosaurs and other lifeforms didn't. Does this mean that natural selection is wrong? No, of course not. It simply means that, in this situation, cockroaches were more fit to survive than dinosaurs, because they lived underground. There is no universal "fittest." Being "fit" for survival depends on the environment and situation.

Furthermore, could the design that obviously now exists in man and in the human brain come from something with less or no design? Such an explanation violates the principle of causality, which states that you can't get more in the effect than you had in the cause. If there is intelligence in the effect (man), there must be intelligence in the cause. But a universe ruled by blind chance has no intelligence. Therefore there must be a cause for human intelligence that transcends the universe: a mind behind the physical universe. (Most great scientists have believed in such a mind, by the way, even those who did not accept any revealed religion.)

What is this mystical "principle of causality" that he speaks of? There is a physical Law of Causality, but it certainly doesn't state what he says it does (for reference, it states that if event A causes event B, there is no reference frame where A can be observed to be happening after B).

His conclusion is completely illogical. There is no evidence that intelligence must come from intelligence. There is only supposition. The most logical conclusion is to say that the Universe has always existed. It has no beginning, and no end. The Laws of Physics have always existed, no one made them up, they simply exist, along with the Universe.

He continues with his gross misrepresentation of atheists all the way through his essay. I do not believe that the Universe is governed by chance. I believe that it is governed by rules (the Laws of Physics, Probability, et cetera) that have always existed. Furthermore, if he's ever studied quantum physics (something I seriously doubt), then he'd know that, at the quantum level, chance rules. Take radioactive decay, for example. We know that there will be a certain number of nuclei in a sample that will decay. However, we have absolutely no way of knowing which of those nuclei will be the ones to decay in a given time period. All have an equal chance of being the ones to decay.

How much does this argument prove? Not all that the Christian means by God, of course-no argument can do that. But it proves a pretty thick slice of God: some designing intelligence great enough to account for all the design in the universe and the human mind. If that's not God, what is it? Steven Spielberg?

Kudos to him for admitting this. I'll give him credit, he's not bigoted, for the most part. Many Creationists simply assume that proof of God is proof of the Christian God and bigotously assume that everyone else is wrong. While he doesn't do this, he severely misrepresents atheists, evolution and probability. He also saturates the beginning of his essay with a slew of philosophical questions that, ultimately, have no effect on the conclusion. His "five question" spiel at the beginning of this piece is totally unnecessary. This would lead one to only conclude that he is either a bad writer or wants make start the essay off by making himself look philosophical and smart. Sure, a short introduction would be nice, but not one that makes up half of what we are to read.

This is simply another doomed attempt to connect faith and logic. Faith is blind belief. Blind belief is not logical. The two aren't compatible. I don't see how it can be made any simpler.

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