universe is not simple in its contents. That is quite true. But simplicity is not constituted by the small number or the small range of things implied by a theory. (Indeed, if it were, theism would be more complex than atheism, as I pointed out earlier on; it would have all the “things” to account for that atheism has, plus God.) The simplicity we are looking for lies in the structure of the theory itself. How many laws does it need to generate the variety of its contents? It may be that physics will end up with a single theory (the so-called Theory of Everything) to account for all the forces and particles we have at present; and this will be a massive simplification indeed! Yet the contents of the universe—Myra’s teacups and ladybirds and so on—remain exactly the same. That’s why I cannot see that bringing God into it is going to make things any simpler than treating the universe (or a preceding vacuum) as “brute fact.”
leslie
It is also why I think it does make things simpler to believe in God. The theory of a creator God is simpler in structure than the theory of a “brute fact” universe complete with contents and laws, even granted the great simplification that would doubtless be brought about by a Theory of Everything, if it were ever reached.
myra
I’m not too sure how either of you is going to convince the other. I suggest, therefore, that we bring this first Dialogue to a close and move on to another topic—presumably Leslie’s “second group.” That was composed of those arguments which begin from “the detailed constitution of the world,” was it not? So, when we meet again, perhaps you would tell us, Leslie, how you would split this into sub-groups.
leslie
OK. See you tomorrow!
A clear account of the history of “big bang” theories (including the “quantum vacuum” ones) is given in Gribbin’s In Search of the Big Bang (Corgi, 1989). The relation of these theories to natural theology is discussed at length in W. L. Craig & Q. Smith, Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford, 1993); this also includes material on whether the universe must have a beginning in time. Both Craig (a theist) and Smith (an atheist) discuss and reject “oscillating” models of the universe. Craig has also collaborated with Paul Copan in Creation Out of Nothing (Baker Academic and Apollos, 2004) which covers biblical, philosophical and scientific aspects of its subject. For a defence of the “steady state” theory by one of its original developers, see Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe (Michael Joseph, 1983), chapter 7.
The literature on the “cosmological argument” is enormous. My own doctoral thesis in 1970 was on the subject, and lots more has been added since; Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (OUP, 1979; second edition 2004) contains a magisterial defence of it (including a discussion of what is meant by “simplicity”), and of the arguments from “the detailed constitution of the world.” Hawking’s ideas are to be found in A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988), pages 134–41; a more popular presentation, with jokes and pictures, is to be found in The Universe in a Nutshell (Bantam, 2001), pp. 59–63 and 82–85. Cf. also John Barrow, The Origin of the Universe (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), chapter 6.
Dialogue II
Alleged Evidence for Design within the World
Dialogue II looks at the evidence for design in the world, especially in living things. Evolution by natural selection is doubtless true, but does it eliminate the need for a God? Could divine action in or on the process of evolution, even if it took place, be detected? Does the existence of life, and more particularly of conscious life, suggest a God at work? And can actual altruism (as contrasted with altruistic behavior) be accounted for by natural selection?
leslie
I said I’d try and outline some of the arguments from special features of the world. The most celebrated used to be that associated above all with Archdeacon Paley in the 18th century: the comparison of living things, and the organs that make them up, to artefacts like watches, and hence the conclusion that they, like the watch, must have a Designer. Paley himself was, of course, only one in a tradition of apologists which began long before and went on long after. Indeed, perhaps its finest flowering was in the Bridgewater Treatises, in which some of the best scientists of the early 19th century found evidence of design not just in biology but in other disciplines too, such as geology and astronomy.
myra
Let’s leave geology and astronomy out of it, for the time being at least. Biology will keep us going for the present. For you still meet apologists who point to things like the human eye as evidence of design.
Design and Evolution
geoffrey
Which is ridiculous, so long after Darwin and Wallace. We do not need a Designer to explain facts that natural selection will account for.
myra
But natural selection does not mean that there was no Designer: only that He designed the whole process.
geoffrey
It does not disprove the existence of a God. But it does make it impossible to argue for his reality in the way that Paley and the Bridgewater Treatise authors hoped to do. And what sort of a God does it give us anyway? In the first place, he seems to be rather remote. He is more the God of eighteenth-century Deism than of Christianity: a God who gets the world started and then leaves it to its own devices. And in the second place, a God who leaves things to chance: for it was by no means inevitable that human life should evolve. Our ancestors might have been wiped out by a disaster like that which wiped out the dinosaurs; or, alternatively, the dinosaurs might not have been wiped out, so that our ancestors remained insignificant; and so on. The “Cambrian explosion” of life-forms, 500 plus million years ago, produced not only all the main groups of animals that survive but others as well, which became extinct—and it might quite easily have been they who survived and our ancestors who died out. It was largely a matter of historical luck. We are not the crown of creation but a by-product of accident.
myra
Surely “by-product of accident” is putting it too strongly. The word “chance” can be misleading. It can mean “not predetermined, not produced purely by laws of nature”; in human terms the toss of a coin or the turn of a card is a matter of chance in this sense.
leslie
But they aren’t really undetermined.
myra
Very likely not, but as far as we are concerned they can be treated as if they were. And quantum phenomena surely are. Now evolution may be a chance process in this sense. On the other hand, “chance” may mean something more like “unplanned, unintended,” like that time you and I met on a street in Stockholm without either of us knowing the other was going to be there. And I don’t think it is legitimate to argue from the first to the second.
geoffrey
I see the distinction, but is it relevant? The two overlap, and surely if a thing is “chance” in the first sense it will be “chance” in the second as well. If the human race did not evolve inevitably from the beginnings of life, I don’t see how its emergence can have been planned by God.
myra
Because
