I noticed the following in Dawkins' arguments that were aimed at trying to show the untenability of God, which I present in the chronological order of occurrence.
1. Re. the mechanism of evolution. Dawkins posed the question of why, if God wanted evolution to produce humans,would God use such a "wasteful" mechanism as natural selection. Especially since this mechanism would make God logically redundant. Why did God not create humans immediately? My immediate responses were:
2. Re simplicity and complexity. Dawkins holds that evolution is a process that brings complexity out of simplicity, and that is wonderful. He argued I think that 'the God hypothesis' damages that. But why is complexity somehow 'better' than simplicity? And, before we address that one, what are simplicity and complexity? Take the arrangement of all the atoms together (or, if even more, the subatomic particles): is that not highly complex? In what sense is it more complex when the atoms happen to be in animal bodies rather than in the stars? "In what sense?" is a question of meaningfulness. Is Dawkins 'smuggling in' meaningfulness from the analytical aspect (the aspect under which the distinction between simple and complex becomes an issue)?
3. Re. God being outwith time. To several hard questions, such as the Big Bang, one answer is that God is outwith Time. So past and future are alike to God, in a way we cannot understand. Dawkins said that such an answer is a "cop-out". Personally, I got the impression that he was calling it a "cop-out" because he has no answer to it and so wants to avoid that question. However, it could be a bit of a cop-out if we don't understand Time.
What is Time? And by "Time" are we really talking about destiny? I suspect that both Dawkins and those who say "God is ouwith time" presuppose Time is somehow like a railway track along which the universe travels (maybe with points for alternative routes) - a metaphor. My view is that Time is the result of Creation functioning in response to the laws of each aspect. Especially since time takes on a different form in each aspect. e.g. physical time differs from psychological time. Dooyeweerd discussed Time - though not very clearly. If Time is not a railway track but something that is generated as Reality functions in the laws of each aspect, then we must link that with God's affording dignity to Creation. But if we are talking about Destiny, then maybe God designed the laws of the aspects so wonderfully that God's intended Destiny will be arrived even though we are free to function differently en route (that metaphor again!) to it.
4. Fine-tuned Physical Cosmos. Many argue that the cosmic physical constants are so finely tuned that if they were only slightly different the physical cosmos as we know it would be impossible. That is a strong argument in favour of a Designer. Dawkins, of course, rejects that. But he did admit that this is the argument that would most likely make him a deist rather than an atheist. It is good that he was able to say that. As I listened, I realised that this is somehow tied up with meaningfulness more than the other issues, which Dawkins treated as issues of being or process. However I cannot remember how I made that link, at this time of whiting. If I remember it, I will put it in here.
5. On Morality. Dawkins threw in the remark that if the morals that come from the Abrahamic religions governed us, "it would be a horrible world." Now, I wondered: Why does Dawkins call it "horrible"? Is he not 'smuggling in' meaningfulness from a juridical or ethical aspect? It is certainly not "horrible" from a biotic perspective, which is the one that he deifies.
6. My conclusion. Several times, I have detected Dawkins 'smuggling in' meaningfulness from various non-biotic aspects or perspectives. Wasteful, simplicity, horribleness do not make any sense from a biotic perspective, but only an economic, analytical and moral one. That, to me, is a recurring flaw in Dawkins' arguments: 'smuggling in' meaningfulness from other aspects when it suits him, but denying their salience at other times, trying to reduce them all to biological processes. Notice, the importance of meaningfulness, and its diverse aspects, in all these, and also in the argument about fine tuning.
Might meaningfulness be the key to countering Dawkins?
I purchased Richard Dawkins' book The Magic of Reality: How we know what's really true because I hoped it would explain the process and validity of science ("How we know what's really true") clearly. Though it began clearly, I became disappointed. The book is very nicely produced and some parts are clearly explained, but it seems to me that Dawkins has a flawed understanding of science, which comes out in the assumptions he makes.
It is in chapter 1 that Dawkins explains what (he thinks) science is.
| 1. "Reality is everything that exists." | But what ways of existing are there? He talks only about the physical and biological ways of existing. What about a poem existing: its real 'poemness' is not something that is meaningful in the physical or biological spheres of knowledge. 'Poemness' is only meaningful in the aesthetic sphere: a poem exists qua poem, in ways that are not physical but aesthetic. Similarly for the UK parliament, the UK pound, the vocabulary of English, the plans we make today, the concepts in our minds - do they all exist? Not physically (though some of them have a physical substratum). They are part of reality. So we need a way of understanding existence that goes beyond the physical. | I find Dooyeweerd's philosophy that existence depends foundationally on meaning convincing. It offers two sides to reality, what he called the law-side and fact-side, and the fact-side is the whole of Reality that exists in the way Dawkins meant, but only by virtue of the law-side, which is the diversity of meaningfulness that makes existing possible. We do not just exist; we exist-as: as physical beings, biological beings, aesthetic beings (poems), etc. Fifteen kinds or modes of being, which are what Dooyeweerd called aspects. | |
| 2. We know things via our senses. | But do we not know things through other ways too, such as our intuition? e.g. we often know when something is unfair, though we can never fully explain it. Actually, Dawkins does, later, mention jealousy, joy, happiness and love, but his treatment of them is cursory; see below. | Dooyeweerd has a carefully worked out understanding of intuition, sensing, etc. They are our modes of knowing, irreducibly different in different aspects. | |
| 3. Sometimes we have to 'magnify' our senses to know things using technical instruments, e.g. microscope or telescope. Sometimes we employ instruments that transform things into something we sense, e.g. radio waves converted into sounds by radio. | OK - But are we not relying on the magnification technology working, and also on understanding how it works? Usually that is OK with simple glass microscopes and telescopes because we think we understand what happens in glass, but sometimes it is not so clear. | Dooyeweerd discusses the extension of our faculties via instruments. | |
| 4. Sometimes we have evidence from the past through our senses e.g. fossils. We can use evidence like fossils because we understand how minerals crystallize, replacing the body of the living thing atom by atom, so we can work out that dinosaurs must once have existed. | OK - It might be reasonable to rely on our 'understanding' of how minerals crystallize - but how certain are we about this? Moreover, are we not relying on a theory about the past to translate what comes directly from our senses into 'evidence from the past'? | Dooyeweerd also discusses these. | |
| 6. "This is the wonder and joy of science: it goes on an don uncovering new things." [p.16] | OK - But he presupposes that humanity primarily wants to Discover; he forgets that humanity wants also to Do, to Achieve. | ||
| 7. Sometimes we find out reality by means of constructing a model of what might be there. We imagine (guess) what might be so, conceptualize it as a model, work out what it predicts, and then test whether that occurs or not. We refine the model if necessary. e.g. "Almost everything we know about DNA comes indirectly from dreaming up models and testing them." |
a) The scientific community makes up and tests models by treating certain aspects as meaningful and ignoring other aspects. For example the only aspects of DNA that enter the models about it are physical and biological, but the beauty of DNA is (officially) ignored.
b) He assumes scientists are mere logical machines. He ignores how people make up certain types of model and not others, based on the paradigm in which they work [Kuhn]. Paradigms emerge within research programmes [Lakatos, Feyerabend]. And these are directed by 'religious' ground-motives [Dooyeweerd]. | Dooyeweerd has a well-worked-out understanding of the influence of focus on different aspecrs and of ground-motives. | |
| 7. Emotions like jealousy, joy, happiness and love are real. But they depend on brains. |
Cheating. Unfortunately, Dawkins has slipped in emotions and glibly, in two short paragaphs, implies that they can be fully explained in terms of physical brain-functioning. He does not argue this; he does not even give due space to it.
a) Reductionism. Emotions might depend on physical brain-functioning, but can they be reduced to physical brain-functioning? Dooyeweerd differentiates between dependency and reducibility. b) More than physicality and emotion. Jealousy and happiness are emotions, but emotions are not the only supra-physical things. Beauty and justice are not emotions (even though they might evoke emotions). Nor is correctness of spelling. Nor is economic cost. Nor is the kind of faith that makes a person persevere despite lack of emotion. All these aspects need to be recognised for what they are, without attempting to reduce them to our physical or emotional aspects. | A far better approach is to recognise the distinct ways in which things of our everyday experience can be meaningful, as Dooyeweerd does, and recognise that each implies a distinct kind of science. |
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is on-going work, designed to stimulate discussion on various topics, as part of Andrew Basden's pages that open up various things from one of the Christian perspectives.
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Created: 4 December 2011. Last updated: 30 May 2022 added section on conversation with Francis Collins, and meaningfulness; added .nav, .end, bgc, canon. Tidied table and made links to Dooyeweerd.