"What are the odds..?"

In the comments section of my previous entry, a frequent visitor to this blog named Robert shared some excerpts from encounters he had with religious apologists trying to push their mysticism. As is often the case, the apologist insisted on certain conditions which he as a non-believer needed to satisfy in order just to participate in an exchange, such as the alleged need to “provide a 'valid' explanation as to exactly HOW the genetic code created 'itself' WITHOUT the advantage of 'intelligent' thought'.” I can only suppose from statements Robert has made in numerous comments on my blog, that he does not in fact hold to the view that “the genetic code created itself,” either with or “WITHOUT the advantage of ‘intelligent’ thought.”

What such insistence suggests is that the theist imagines himself in possession of a “valid explanation” of certain actual phenomena, such as the existence of the universe, the development of life on earth, the genetic code, moral norms, logic, etc., simply by virtue of ascribing to a worldview that asserts that all these things were brought into being by a supernatural consciousness which essentially wished them into being. The appeal to wishing, then, is treated as a “valid explanation,” and if those who do not appeal to wishing cannot provide alternative explanations which do not include an appeal to wishing, then they are dismissed as having no position worth taking seriously.

The irony of confusing mystical fantasies with explanations on a par with scientific discovery while dismissing other thinkers for less extravagant claims, is apparently lost on such persons. No objectively verifiable evidence even remotely suggests that conscious activity brought into being a little pebble you find in your backyard, let alone “the genetic code.” We have no objective evidence that such a conscious power could actually exist, and we do not observe physical things coming into existence by mere wishing. However, we do have piles of evidence that human beings have not only tremendous powers of imagination (think of Stephen King novels, Harry Potter stories, Alice in Wonderland, Grimms’ tales, sci-fi movies, etc.), but also the capacity to ignore the fundamental distinction between what they imagine and what is actually real (think of doomsday cults, for example). I do not observe any invisible magic being wishing anacondas into existence, but I can still imagine that supernatural wishing is the generative source of their existence. And if I ascribe to a worldview which in effect buries the signposts warning me that I’ve ventured beyond objective evidence and into the realm of the imagination, I might very well delude myself that what I’m only imagining is actually real.

Failing to produce an alternative to fantasy does not validate the fantasy. If my wife asks how our cat got out and I explain that an invisible humanoid intruder broke into our house, picked up our cat out of his easy chair and carried him outside, letting him go on the lawn, would my wife’s lack of an alternative explanation validate my intruder story? My wife may still wonder how our cat got outside – he’s so insufferably lazy and thoughtless that he could never figure out how to get out by himself, but her lack of knowing how our cat got outside does not in any way support the many fantasies my inventive mind can muster.

Similarly, if I cannot tell a theist how DNA “came into being” (as though it had just magically appeared on the scene sometime in the distant past, with no material antecedents), would my lack of such an explanation validate the notion that Allah wished DNA into existence? The overt dependence on human ignorance of such an apologetic would be extraordinary. But when we consider that the elements composing the four nucleobases of DNA – cytosine, guanine, adenine and thymine – are common to our “material universe” and in no way alien to the world in which we live, why even suppose that some otherworldly force, available only to the human imagination, is needed to call these into being? Perhaps it’s the believer’s own ignorance of science which fuels the fantasy that an all-knowing supernatural consciousness wished DNA into existence ex nihilo? After all, we find no informed discussion of these matters in either Leviticus or the Epistle to the Romans, yet their authors are not to be faulted for any ignorance on such topics.

One of the questions which Robert reported getting from a sparring theist was the following:

“[W]hat are the odds of some small lifeforms coming up out of a pond and turn into what we see in man today without a designer?”

For one, I don’t think anyone has ever argued that a small lifeform came out of a pond and turned into a human being, or that a group of small lifeforms came out of a pond and then together turned into a human being. The characterization here is intended to smear the entire category of evolving life forms as evidence in its own right for the development of biological diversity. If natural selection has occurred at all, it has occurred over millions of years, with innumerable causal steps contributing to what we find in nature today.

Thus, it might be fruitful to call for some clarity. Is the apologist arguing that incremental changes among life forms, occurring over vast periods of generation as a result of biological causality, are impossible, and yet a supernatural consciousness wishing matter into being and guiding all biological events, from the minutest micro-movements of each individual living cell to the development of entire species, is possible?

One point that I think we need to be careful not to overlook is the fact that we do actually observe remarkable changes in just a single organism over a span of time. Consider a human baby: months before it was born, it was (as some put it) “a clump of cells,” then it was a much bigger “clump of cells” with organs, limbs, a head, digestive, respiratory, circulatory and nervous systems, etc., and one day becomes a doctor, an even more complex “clump of cells.” The genetic maturation involved here is all a process of biological causality. It’s not magic, it’s not supernatural, it’s not a product of cosmic wishing. It can be studied scientifically and understood as a sequence of natural causes to the extent that it is predictable. On the so-called “macroscopic scale,” why wouldn’t changes within species be similarly possible over stretches of time as various organisms either adapt to changing environments or die off?

As for debating “what are the odds?” questions, this is practically inert in my view, at best a useless distraction in the context of the issues under dispute here. No matter what the odds for or against something happening might be, if it happened, it happened regardless of whatever odds we calculate against its occurrence. Before I have used the example of a banknote in my wallet containing a wholly unique serial number – for example, I have a $20 bill with the number MB 62724525 J right now. There is presumably only one banknote with that particular serial number in existence, and yet it somehow found its way into my possession. What are the odds, we may ask, that this wholly unique banknote would come into my hands? Of the billions of banknotes otherwise just like it, and the assortment of denominations which can serve as adequate monetary substitutes (e.g., twenty singles, a ten and two fives, three fives and five singles, etc.), the probability here may be what Plantinga would call “inscrutable,” and literally so if assessing those odds would require comprehensive knowledge of when and where that banknote entered circulation and how it passed from vendor to consumer, back and forth who knows how many times in different places, finally ending up in the drawer of a cash register when I happen to show up needing change for a Benjamin. Under the conditions and given the causation involved, no other alternative was possible, not because some invisible magic being willed it since the dawn of time as part of some “divine plan,” but because the causal steps, including human choices (volition being a type of causation!) allowed for no other outcome.

Given the habitable zone that the earth enjoys in its orbit around the sun, the conditions for liquid water, the development of an atmosphere, the kinds of elements in abundant supply throughout the earth, etc., it seems to me that the emergence of life was essentially guaranteed if not unstoppable, all through natural processes.

The questioner continued:

”Look at the human brain how it works and your body how it’s made was that a big accident? Doesn’t that suggest that someone designed it and created it not just happenstance?”

So did the “someone” who allegedly “designed” the human brain also have a brain, or was this alleged designer itself brainless? How does someone design anything without first having a brain? An immaterial being would have no brain, so the apologist needs to explain how something can be conscious without a brain or at least some kind of nervous system.

As is often the case in apologetics, much of the heavy lifting is borne on pitting the preferred religious view against a single alternative that is characterized as something so despicably unattractive that no one could enthusiastically endorse it. Consequently, on this stratagem, the religious view prevails as a matter of default. In the present case, we have the dichotomy that either the human brain was designed by some supernatural person (one which would have to be brainless, of course), or the human brain the product of an accident, of chance, of “happenstance,” of some random occurrence that would at best be a completely isolated, causeless fluke. While there is no rational basis to accept such a dichotomy, notice how the theist’s own denigrating characterization can rightly be put back on the theist’s preferred “explanation”: assuming the existence of a supernatural being, it’s just an accident that it happens to exist, since its existence would not have been the result of the kind of intentionality which, it is believed, could only explain the existence of the human brain. Thus, the apologist’s own position falls on the sword of his own vicious dichotomizing.

In my assessment, the theistic position actually represents a most lazy and uninterested view of anything it is promoted to “explain,” for it treats whatever phenomenon is thereby “explained” as an isolated primary with no causal connections to other things which exist, only to the creative act alleged to have occurred when the supernatural being wished it into being. Ignore all the similarities human brains have with the brains of other mammalian species and treat it as though it could have only been zapped into being as a finished product in its own right, without the use of schematics, drawings, problem-solving teams, testing, failure studies, fixes and improvements, etc., all of which are part of a real design process. If by ‘design’ the believer really means some infallible act of will by which an omnipotent consciousness just wished finished products into being by sheer fiat, then ‘design’ is really just another stolen concept, for it is being used apart from the genetic underpinnings of its true meaning.

Actual designers work with pre-existing materials and in fact have to become experts in the materials with which they work, knowing what those materials are capable of and what their limitations are. This takes discovery, learning, and integrating, not wishing and “just knowing.” Their task involves analysis, research, proportioning and specification, anticipating and solving problems, quality testing, and a readiness to acknowledge flaws as well as willingness to go back to the drawing board. Where is the evidence that such work was involved in developing the human brain? The enormity of the schematics needed to map out all the neural pathways in the human brain would be tremendous.

No theist that I know of has ever produced any evidence suggesting that an actual design process of such magnitude took place to fashion the human brain. But we do find many similarities between human brains and those of other mammals (e.g., the presence of neurons, glial cells, cerebral hemispheres, thalamus, cerebellum, medulla oblongata, etc.) suggesting that the human brain in fact has a remarkable relationship to those of other organisms, perhaps even a common origin. Do we just ignore this fact in order to pretend along with the theist that the human brain was just wished into being by a conscious (albeit brainless) agent which is available to the human mind only by means of imagining?

The questioner provided an analogy to drive home the apologetic argument;

"That’s like looking at a Rolex watch laying in a desert and believing that sand Blowing around came together over millions of years and formed how this watch works, except that doesn’t approach how intelligently designed humanity is, atheism is a ridiculous Leap"

Here we can safely say that this analogy begs the question by assuming what the theist needs to prove when he compares the human brain to a human artifact. The theist has not in any way demonstrated that the human brain is analogous to any artificial item. And the comparison breaks down with even the most superficial probing. Rolex watches were designed by human beings, organisms which themselves have brains which give them the ability to undertake rational activities, such as designing, and they are manufactured from materials which were sourced from the earth by means of labor, knowledge and techniques which have developed over time.

But the theist claiming that the human brain is the product of divine design insists that there were no pre-existing materials – that the materials making up human brains and everything else in the universe were wished into being, and that the designer of the human brain had no physical body, was not a biological organism, and itself had no brain. They have no alternative but to suppose that the alleged designer of the human brain built it without physical labor, but rather just thought the design out completely in its brainless mind, conjured all the neurons, ganglia, blood vessels, structures, etc., into being ex nihilo, and assembled those elements into finished products without any physical labor whatsoever. Rolex watches are designed and manufactured by entire teams of skilled experts working together in their specialized areas, but the theist insists that his deity did all the planning and assembly all by itself, essentially producing the human brain as a final product simply by uttering magic words.

So while the apologist erects a pretense to appear concerned for having a sensible position – given its presumed superiority over the alternative as he characterizes it, in the end the intolerable weaknesses of his own analogy prove that this is in fact just a pretense. And even more damning is the fact that the design argument suffers from the same self-defeating liability which plagues every theistic argument, namely that by the time we get to its conclusion, we still have no alternative but to imagine the god whose existence it is said to prove.

That is not the atheist’s problem. Theists need to own this inescapable defect in their worldview. Religion’s reliance on blurring the fundamental distinction between reality and imagination is undeniable. Just ask any theist to explain how we can reliably distinguish between the god they claim to worship from something they’re just imagining, and watch the reaction. If they’re honest, they’ll acknowledge that we cannot – even he cannot. But typically they’ll try to turn the tables and disown the deficiency that haunts their worldview. His devotion to mystical delusion is his motivation for rejecting any and all alternatives, fair hearings be damned!

by Dawson Bethrick