A while back Stephen Jones claimed that atheists had no choice
but to believe in evolution. I gave two alternatives, one based on
the idea that the universe might be infinite (though, obviously, it
would only need to be very large for my argument to work). I did
not claim that either of these alternatives was in fact true, though
Stephen consistently treated my exposition of them as claims of
their truth, apparently because he has not yet resolved his
problems with reading that were pointed out to him over a year
and a half ago by others and myself (perhaps he was unable to
read our remarks pointing out that he had this problem!).
I began and nearly finished a rather lengthy response, but decided
that it would be more to the point to simply state my views on
this and refer to his remarks only on an as-needed basis.
First, a probabilistic argument: If there is a small but non-zero
probability in an average good-sized chunk of the Universe that
intelligent life would be accidentally formed spontaneously during
some specified period of time, then it is a simple matter to
calculate that, given a sufficiently large number of such chunks of
space and time, such intelligent life will almost *certainly* occur.
Now, *if* our universe is sufficiently large and/or old, and if it is
*possible* for intelligent life to form, then it *will* almost
certainly do so. This intelligent life, having by sheer chance come
into existence, might then have "seeded" Earth with life and may
have continued to manipulate life on Earth to this day.
I do not believe that this theory is true, but it *is* an alternative
to a theistic design theory, *and* an alternative to conventional
naturalistic evolutionary theory.
The second alternative to both theistic design theory and
conventional naturalistic evolutionary theory is that life *evolved*
somewhere else and then "seeded" Earth, etc. This is an
alternative because, even if one believes that there have never
been naturally-occurring conditions for the evolution of life on
Earth, it does not mean that one may not believe that conditions
elsewhere in the Universe may have been suitable to the evolution
of life.
----------------------------
Is the Universe infinite? Stephen claims that it is not, though there
is no known way of proving this, even if it happens to be true. He
is confusing what scientists typically *call* "the Universe" with
what the Universe might in fact *be*. Even if we assume that our
local "miniverse" did indeed come from a "Big Bang" some dozen
or more billion years ago, this does not mean that it is all there is
to the *actual* Universe. Even some scientists think that our
universe may be nothing more than a blip in a vast "multiverse."
What I've read on this view suggests that they believe that each
"miniverse" would be isolated from all the others, so the question
of where life came from in any *one* of them would not be well
answered by my first alternative to theistic design theory.
However, *all* of this area of scientific investigation is so
*deeply* speculative that there is no trusting such theories at all,
one way or another. An alternative to the mutually isolated
multiverse theory is the theory that each miniverse is merely
spatially or otherwise *remote* from other miniverses, just as
most stars are spatially remote from each other (in relation to their
sizes, etc.).
Stephen argues that whether the Universe is infinite or not is
scientifically untestable. I'm not sure about this, but I think he
may be right on this. But it doesn't matter; I used the notion of an
infinite universe merely to make the exposition of my argument
easier. Essentially the same probabilistic considerations apply to a
universe that is merely *so* large that its size raises the *overall*
probability of the spontaneous occurrence of intelligent life to
near certainty, given that there is any possibility at *all*.
Stephen's wonderful claims of near-omniscience about the nature
and scope of the Universe are ironic coming from someone who
urges radical skepticism concerning ordinary naturalistic evolution
on Earth. The great mass of high-quality support for evolution
from facts here on Earth is rejected while the view that *all* the
Universe there *is* came into existence from a Big Bang, that our
little "ball" of a universe probably no more than 40 billion light
years across (*maximum*) is absolutely all there is to *the*
Universe. For all I know, this may be true, but there is no reason
to believe it, given established observational facts. In any case,
the "this is absolutely all there is" theory of the universe is
certainly *not* an established fact, so Stephen cannot logically
use it as strong argument against my alternative to theistic design
theory.
-----------------------------------------------------
Stephen does incidentally bring up a good point about testability,
with respect to the work of Behe, et al. It is this: *If* Behe (or
someone) *could* successfully eliminate naturalistic evolution
(*and* all other naturalistic mechanisms) as the path of
origination for some feature of living things (such as some
molecule, for example), then it would be evidence for *some* sort
of design. For example, if the first ten million digits of pi were
found encoded in a blatantly obvious way into a single unbroken
string of human DNA, I think this would be very good evidence
for design of some sort (though it is vaguely conceivable that
some naturalistic process in effect *calculated* pi via molecular
means and left the result in human DNA, but this seems *so*
unlikely that I'd go for design in such a case, especially if there
was also some sort of mechanism for ensuring that *exactly*
these ten million digits were protected from corruption).
Given the poor showing of Behe and others in this respect, it
doesn't look like any such highly positive evidence is in the
offing.
Further, of course, such evidence would hardly prove any non-
naturalistic version of design theory. Non-naturalism always has a
relatively *greater* burden of proof than any equivalent
*naturalistic* theory, because of the radical metaphysical claim it
makes. Conventional *theistic* non-naturalism has an even
greater burden of proof because of the preposterousness of the
God that must be proved also. God supposedly created the
Universe. Since we have no evidence that *the* universe was in
fact created, this imposes *another* burden of proof. For all we
can tell, perhaps *some* form of our universe has existed
infinitely. Proposing anything *beyond* a naturalistic universe is
simply a needless exercise in superfluity.
Further still, even if we *accept* that there is a non-naturalistic
basis for the Universe, there is no reason to believe that it is
*anything* like a conventional Christian God. It may be nothing
more than a little guy with an IQ of 100, the education of the
average school child, and the power to create universes (perhaps
universes over which he has *no* subsequent control at all).
To make this clear, consider yet another of Stephen's ubiquitous
quotations:
<snip>
A chief feature of Swinburne's (Swinburne R., "The
Existence of God", 1991) argument is his application
of just such an Occam's razor type test to the
hypothesis that God exists uncaused. He regards this
as the simplest of hypotheses and therefore of higher
prior probability than other hypotheses, such as the
existence of an uncaused universe. By God,
Swinburne means a being who has omnipotence and
omniscience among his qualities. A being with
infinite power and knowledge is simpler than one
with a finite limited quantity of power or knowledge,
because in the latter case one would have to ask,
'Why is the limit just what it is?' Similarly the
existence of an uncaused universe is a complex
hypothesis compared with the existence of an infinite
being: it just cries out for an explanation." (Holder
R.D., "Nothing but Atoms and Molecules?" 1993,
pp.163-164)
If we must ask "Why is the limit just what it is?" we must also
ask of an infinite being, "Why is there no limit?"
If the existence of an uncaused universe "cries out for an
explanation," so does the existence of an uncaused infinite being.
*Nothing* epistemologically is gained by introducing such a
being into the discussion. Such a being is *absolutely* useless,
since any requirement for an explanation of a prospective fact
about the Universe has a *corresponding* requirement for an
explanation in the case of the infinite being.
Worse, the introduction of such a being always makes the original
problems *more* complex rather than *less* complex, *more*
elusive rather than *less* elusive, etc., because it is always
regressive. Every time such a being is introduced to explain
something, vastly *larger* questions are introduced along with it.
Saying that the universe (in *some* form) has simply always
existed is innocuous compared to saying that there's this bizarre
infinite *being* who has always existed, a being who is infinitely
intelligent, infinitely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, and who
can create universes from absolute nothingness. Perhaps Stephen
does not regard the infinite-past existence of a being with infinite
knowledge as being in need of more explanation than merely the
infinite-past existence of some sort of "Dumb Stuff" out of which
our current universe is made, but whether he is able to grasp this
or not, it's clearly a much stronger claim that such a thing exists at
all. We can *see* the natural universe. Any claim of such a being
must be based either on faith or on some sort of radical
*metaphysical* inference. So far, neither Swinburne nor Jones has
shown any signs of justifying such a bizarre kind of inference,
and as the remarks above show, the glib pretense that the infinite-
being theory is simpler collapses under even mild scrutiny (and
the situation gets much *worse* for it under more-sustained
scrutiny).
In short, design theory hot air continues to waft unexamined
arguments our way, arguments that are only accepted, even by
their proponents, because they refuse to examine them before
sending them forth into the world. Stephen, once again, has let
himself be led astray by the fact that he *wants* theistic design
theory to be true so strongly that even quite dimwitted arguments
(such as Swinburne's) are accepted and used without question or
pause -- or scruple.
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