A Popular Argument for Atheism Reconsidered

Exploring the advancement of science from an open theist’s perspective

There is a well-known argument against theism that goes something like this:

Originally it was believed that the supernatural realm was responsible for everything — the rain, earthquakes, natural disasters, mental illness, and of course biological complexity. Yet, as science advanced it became clear that most of the things presumed to be supernaturally caused were, in fact, fully explicable by natural means.

And so if this trend continues it is likely that the existence of God will be rendered less and less probable until his existence will be completely disproven.

This is one of those arguments that does seem convincing on its face. But I can’t help but feel it’s missing a step somewhere.

I propose this thought experiment to demonstrate.

We’ll make two assumptions to simplify the thought process:

1. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it is more likely than not that there is an intelligent designer as the ultimate source of all that exists.
2. Let’s also say, for the sake of argument, that we know nothing about science and so we must assume that natural mechanisms do not exist.

Given those two assumptions, it would be reasonable for us to believe that everything we experience is a direct consequence of divine intervention, just as many of the ancients did. For all we know, God not only created animals, for instance, but he literally willed each one into existence out of thin air.

Like… ‘poof’ there’s a rhino. And ‘boom!’ there’s a pony!

Then, we learn about re-production and we realize that there is a complex mechanism by which rhinos and ponies come into existence.

Would it follow that that discovery casts doubt on our belief that an intelligent mind is the source of everything?

If we consider our two basic assumptions:

1. An intelligent source exists
2. Natural complex mechanisms do not exist

We can see that the discovery of mechanisms only changes assumption #2. It has no bearing on #1 at all.

The reason the discovery has no bearing on assumption #1 is that there is nothing logically incompatible with the existence of an intelligent source and the existence of a complex mechanism. If anything, the existence of a complex mechanism reinforces the likelihood that an intelligent source is at the bottom of everything, since complex mechanisms don’t typically create themselves out of nothing.

Consider William Paley’s watch maker analogy. If we found a watch in the middle of nowhere, we would be correct in believing that it had a designer. But if we found out that that specific watch was not made by a person at all, but was produced in a fully automated factory, and that all of the equipment in that factory itself was built by AI robots, we would be incorrect to assume that the existence of those mechanisms invalidates our original inference. All it does is suggest that the designer(s) themselves were much more sophisticated — and perhaps less directly involved — than we previously imagined.

This is why thinkers like Richard Dawkins lose me when they claim that evolution disposes of any need for a creator. The claim is additionally problematic when we consider the fact that the evolutionary process itself is dependent on several conditions that the process cannot explain:

1. The process of reproduction
2. The existence/behavior of genes
3. The origin of life
4. The constants of nature

To be clear, I’m not making a “God of the gaps” argument and claiming that the four things I just listed are evidence that God exists.

My point is that evolution cannot account for conditions on which its very existence depends. To say otherwise would be to reason in a circle.

After all, Paley’s observation was that the existence of a complex mechanism infers the existence of a designer. Yet the evolutionary process is itself a complex mechanism which is much more intricate than the workings of a watch.

That means that the watch maker argument is in no way affected by the discovery of complex mechanisms such as the evolutionary process. Science only compels us to re-imagine God as a less magical and simplistic being than we had thought previously.

Of course, all of that stems from the original assumption that God exists. And I am fully aware that that is by no means a given.

But at the very least we can see that the “science disproved God before and so it will probably do it again until God is completely disproven” argument is an unjustified extrapolation. Science has only disproved naive conceptions of God. And that’s not saying a whole lot since humanity’s ignorance of the natural world until the birth of modern science gave us a very naive starting point to begin with.