In other words, as the weight of evidence in support of natural laws, like, for example, the law of gravity, greatly outweighs (no pun intended) the evidence for any miracle, the evidence in support of the miracle must be rejected. Hume has been criticised by the philosopher John Earman on the basis “that if a solid turns the same face in a million tosses, there is only a probability, not a certainty, that the solid will turn the same face in the next trial — a probability of 1,000,001/1,000,002 according to the Bayes-Laplace rule.”116 This highly technical pedantic criticism still comes up with a probability against miracles of close to 100%, leaving very little chance for a miracle to slip by. And especially when it comes to an extreme miracle like raising the dead, for example, which lies at the heart of Christianity, I would have little hesitation in following Hume’s commonsense approach:
When any one tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened… If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates, then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.117
But if God is omnipotent, as most religions believe, why does he need to override the laws of nature — which are all his own, God’s, laws anyway — in order to prove his power? The laws of nature are themselves proof of his power. Of course, the answer that religion generally provides to this conundrum is that miracles prove not only God’s power but also his rewards to the faithful. This belief is useful to religion, because it will tend to inculcate faithfulness and obedience among believers. But this in itself creates yet further problems, above all the question of why good so often goes unrewarded and evil unpunished.
Afterlife: The problem of good and evil is then conveniently kicked upstairs to an afterlife where the inequities of earthly life are put right. Most of the major religions believe in some form of life after death, sometimes involving elaborate images of heaven and hell, with or without purgatory in between. Despite the huge amount of anecdotal evidence of people who claim to have come back from the dead, near-death experiences, and of course ghosts, there is not a shred of hard evidence that there is an afterlife of any kind, and the same applies to reincarnation — which takes the idea of an afterlife to a whole new dimension.
Toleration: This is a serious problem, both as regards toleration of other religions and also of other denominations, sects or groupings within the same religion. This issue is dealt with in Chapter 4, because creed religions have an inherent tendency towards intolerance while communal religions tend to be tolerant — both communal and creed religions of course being believers in a theistic personal God.
Why Deism is Superior to Theism
Deism, or belief in an impersonal God, is not hobbled by any of the problems affecting theism, or belief in a personal God. There are many varieties of deism, which is not organised as a conventional religion. What follows is a summary of some of the dominant beliefs found among those who regard themselves as deists.
Creation: Deists believe that God designed the universe and life on earth, and possibly the laws that govern evolution.
Omniscience vs. Omnipotence: This is not a problem for deism, which sees God as the Designer or Creator of the universe but without any control over or involvement in the day-to-day affairs of the world.
Reason: Deism is based on reason as opposed to revelation or dogma.
Revelation: Deism does not accept the sacred status of any scriptures and does not believe that God has revealed himself to any individuals in history.
Dogma: Deists do not accept religious dogmas of the kind found in theistic religions.
Miracles: Deists don’t believe in miracles.
Prayer: The impersonal God of deism is not responsive to prayer, which does not therefore form part of a deist’s religion.
Goodness: Unlike the God of theism, who is a God of love (and
sometimes of hate) and stands for the triumph of good over evil, the deist God is amoral and neither good nor bad.
Evil and suffering: Deists believe that man has free will. The impersonal God of deism is not therefore responsible for any evil or suffering in the world.
Reward and punishment: This again is irrelevant to the impersonal God of deism, who does not interfere in the day-to-day affairs of the world.
The afterlife: Deists generally harbour no illusions about life after death. They simply do not believe there is life after death.
Toleration: Deists are in general by far the most tolerant religious category. They are not usually organised in formal churches or temples and also generally do not actively seek converts.
Life, the Universe & Everything
Which offers the most credible explanation of the different stages in the development of the universe — atheism, theism or deism? My own view is that deism is the most plausible of the three. This question was largely covered in Chapter 1, so here I will essentially draw the threads together. The main stages of the development of the universe, condensed into three, again are:
i. The coming into existence of the universe, including the earth.
We found in Chapter 1 that this first stage was far more complex than is commonly assumed, being made up of several “epochs”. Even if the “Big Bang” theory is correct, that does not mean that the universe came into existence in a momentary flash. The “Big Bang” theory itself estimates that it took 9 billion years after the Big Bang for the solar system, including the earth, to take shape.118
Popular though the Big Bang theory is among scientists and non-scientists alike — including Pope Pius XII — it is certainly not impregnable.
Stephen Hawking’s basing the Big Bang on the law of gravity, as discussed in Chapter 1, immediately begs two questions: First, how could the law of gravity have existed before there was any matter for it to operate on? And secondly, if the law of gravity existed, how did that law come about? We could do worse than to follow Sir Fred Hoyle, who, though an atheist, concluded that “the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars.” Hoyle added: “If not, then we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents.”119 Deliberately designed — but by whom? Enter the impersonal God of deism, who obviously has a better claim not only than an atheistic “monstrous sequence of accidents” but also than the personal theistic God of conventional religion with all his baggage. Moreover, if we choose theism over deism, which personal God will we select — the Jewish God, the Christian Trinity or Islam’s Allah? Whichever one was chosen would amount to an endorsement of the truth of that particular religion. On balance then deism must surely be preferred to either atheism or theism in this regard.
ii. The origin of life
As we saw in Chapter 1, there is a welter of scientific and pseudo- scientific theories on the origin of life, none of which is based on any real evidence. Some evolutionists have tended to fudge the divide between the origin of life and the start of evolution by natural selection. But the point is that natural selection, as a gradual process of biological change and variation, could not start until there was life on earth, so any attempt to explain the origin of life in terms of evolution is doomed to failure from the start. The subtitle of Dawkins’s Blind Watchmaker gives the impression of attributing to evolution not only the origin of life but possibly even the existence of the universe itself: “Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design.” But, as we saw in Chapter 1, Dawkins does in fact appear to realise that evolution cannot possibly explain the two stages of the universe’s existence that predate evolution and are prerequisites for the start of evolution. Theories of the origin of life such as the so-called Clay Theory and “abiogenesis”, which postulate a gradual step-by-step process, are equally unhelpful.
It was in fact specifically in opposition to “abiogenesis” that Sir F
red Hoyle made his famous “junkyard tornado” remark: “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”120 Hoyle calculated the probability of the gradual evolution of cellular life was about 1 in 10 to the power of 40,000. Hoyle also pointed out that, “Life as we know it is, among other things, dependent on at least 2,000 different enzymes. How could the blind chances of the primal sea manage to put together the correct chemical elements to build enzymes?”121 On the basis of these arguments Hoyle argued in favour of panspermia, the theory that life on earth came from outer space.122 But this is no better than the theories that Hoyle rejected, because it begs the question of how life in the galaxy concerned arose in the first place.
The complexity of even a single cell is indeed mind-boggling, as we saw in Chapter 1, where Michael Denton is quoted as describing a cell as “far more complicated than any machinery built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world”.123 So much therefore for the various attempts to attribute the origin of life to an absence of Design. But what about the theories that link life on earth with a theistic personal God? At first sight there does not appear to be much difference between attributing the origin of life to a personal God and attributing it to an impersonal God. However, the problem for theism is the leap of faith required to accept all the baggage that is inextricably linked with belief in such a God: including omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, control of the day-to-day affairs of the world and the doling out of rewards and punishments. All in all, then, deism would seem to be the best fit for the origin of life on earth.
iii. Variation and change in living organisms
It was only after the emergence of life on earth that evolution by natural selection could take off, which Dawkins describes as “the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered” and which “has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”124
Dawkins is at pains to stress that natural selection is not random:
Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed, design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer? Chance and design both fail as solutions to the problem of statistical improbability, because one of them is the problem, and the other one regresses to it. Natural selection is a real solution.125
There is some biological evidence for natural selection, but there is no proof of Dawkins’s belief that the process is non-random, and, if it is non-random does that not presuppose some guidance at least if not design?
Dawkins makes much of the “counter-intuitive” theory of the atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett:
[Dennett] pointed out that evolution counters one of the oldest ideas we have: ‘the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation. You’ll never see a spear making a spear maker. You’ll never see a horse shoe making a blacksmith. You’ll never see a pot making a potter.’ Darwin’s discovery of a workable process that does that very counter-intuitive thing is what makes his contribution to human thought so revolutionary, and so loaded with the power to raise consciousness.126
Amusing stuff! But does natural selection really prove that smaller simpler things can create bigger more complex things? Even Darwin’s own defence of that idea in regard to the famous example of the eye is expressed in guarded terms (quoted from the 1872 edition of Origin of Species):
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances… could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree… Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.127
With his usual frankness, Darwin is here effectively admitting that there is no proof of natural selection. And even Darwin’s champion, Thomas Huxley (1825–95), was never convinced of natural selection. Huxley, himself a distinguished biologist and known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his dogged and enthusiastic advocacy of Darwinian evolution, starting with the famous debate with Bishop “Soapy Sam” Wilberforce in 1860, never made a secret of his doubts about natural selection. For example: “Until selection and breeding can be seen to give rise to varieties which are infertile with each other”, he wrote in 1862 and on a number of occasions later on, “natural selection cannot be proved.”128
Darwin’s repeated response to Huxley’s objection was along these lines:
The empirical evidence you call for is both impossible in practical terms, and in any event unnecessary. It’s the same as asking to see every step in the transformation (or the splitting) of one species into another. My way so many issues are clarified and problems solved; no other theory does nearly so well.129
Also worth noting are Sir Fred Hoyle’s doubts about natural selection, expressed in his characteristically down-to-earth (no pun intended) witty manner:
Well, as common sense would suggest, the Darwinian theory is correct in the small, but not in the large. Rabbits come from other slightly different rabbits, not from either soup or potatoes. Where they come from in the first place is a problem yet to be solved, like much else of a cosmic scale.130
In other words, natural selection works in regard to small variations but does not explain the larger ones. Dawkins’s use of Dennett’s “counter-intuitive” theory is primarily intended to knock God or any designer off his pedestal and to suggest that the “counter-intuitive” theory provides a simpler explanation than design — and he assumes that simpler means better. Dawkins advisedly does not invoke the principle of Occam’s Razor, which is discussed in Chapter 2, where it is shown that Dawkins’s vaunted justification of his supposedly simple solution does not conform to the requirements of that time-honoured principle.
Other Mechanisms of Evolution
Although natural selection is central to the Darwinian theory of evolution, it is not the only mechanism identified by that theory, other basic mechanisms of evolution including what are termed “genetic drift”, “mutation” and “migration” (or “gene flow”), all of which are admitted by evolutionists to be essentially random — which however still does not solve the problem identified by Hoyle.131
Random Genetic Drift
Dawkins appears to assume that natural selection is the main driving force of evolution.132 But, as P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula explains, “Neutral Theory” and “Nearly Neutral Theory” was victorious over natural selection, and that “random, not selective changes dominate our history”.133 Larry Moran at Sandwalk explains: “What Neutral Theory tells us is that a huge number of mutations are neutral and there are far more neutral mutations fixed by random genetic drift than there are beneficial mutations fixed by natural selection. The conclusion is inescapable. Random genetic drift is, by far, the dominant mechanism of evolution.”134 But Moran also cautions us against equating genetic drift with Neutral Theory.
Dawkins “Not a Scientist”
Another major disagreement amongst evolutionists is the heated exchange between Dawkins and the famous Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. Dawkins condemned Wilson’s 2012 book The Social Conquest of Earth as containing “many pages of erroneous and downright perverse misunderstandings of evolutionary theory” and concludes: “[T]his is not a book to be tossed lightly aside. It shou
ld be thrown with great force. And sincere regret.”135 Wilson’s reply was withering. Dismissing Dawkins as an “eloquent science journalist”, he explained: “What else is he? I mean journalism is a high and influential profession. But he’s not a scientist, he’s never done scientific research. My definition of a scientist is that you can complete the following sentence: ‘he or she has shown that…’.”136 And what is the dispute about? It is about Wilson’s rejection of “kin selection” in favour of “group selection” as an evolutionary mechanism for altruism. The biologist Jerry Coyne agrees with Dawkins, writing: “[L]ittle evidence exists that selection on groups has promoted the evolution of any trait.”137 And David Sloan Wilson (no relation to E.O.) in turn damned Coyne with faint praise: “When it comes to his research area of speciation, Jerry is a world-class authority… When it comes to the topic of group selection, however, he hasn’t written a single paper and there’s little evidence that he’s read the literature.”138
These major disagreements among evolutionists only underline just how tenuous the evidence is for their various theories, which all clash with one another. Does this not leave room for some guiding force, such as an impersonal God?
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