Why Not Atheism — VacantTomb

Who Designed the Designer?

Richard Dawkins considers this his most powerful argument. He returns to it repeatedly. It is, he says, the argument that "knocks the socks off" any design argument for God. The argument is: if the universe requires a designer to explain its complexity, the designer must be at least as complex as the universe, and therefore the designer requires an even more complex designer, leading to an infinite regress that makes the design hypothesis explanatorily useless.

The argument, examined carefully, commits several elementary philosophical errors.

The regress fallacy — demanding explanation of the explanation

The first error is the demand that any proposed explanation must itself be explained before it can count as an explanation. This is not a reasonable epistemic standard. It is a standard that, applied consistently, would destroy all explanation everywhere.

When we infer that a particular geologic formation was produced by a volcanic eruption, we do not require a complete account of what caused the volcanic eruption before accepting the volcanic explanation. When a detective concludes that a particular person committed a crime, he does not require an explanation of what caused that person's psychology before accepting the explanation. When physicists accept quantum mechanics as the best explanation of subatomic phenomena, they do not require an explanation of why quantum mechanics is true before accepting it as explanatory.

William Lane Craig:

In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one doesn't need to be able to explain the explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. The demand that we explain the designer before the design hypothesis can be accepted is a logical fallacy that, applied consistently, would eliminate all explanatory reasoning.
William Lane CraigChristian scholar— Dawkins' Delusion, 2007

Science itself proceeds by inference to the best explanation — identifying the hypothesis that best accounts for the evidence — without requiring that the explanatory hypothesis be itself explained. The demand Dawkins makes of theism is a demand he does not make of any naturalistic explanation.

God is not a complex physical object

The second error is Dawkins's assumption that God would be complex in the same way that physical objects are complex. Dawkins writes that "a designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right." This assumes that God is a complex physical object — built from many interacting parts — and therefore subject to the same demand for explanation as complex physical systems.

But classical theism does not hold that God is a complex physical object. God is conceived, in the tradition from Aquinas to Alvin Plantinga, as a simple, non-physical, necessary being — one who is not composed of parts, who has no physical structure, who exists by his own nature rather than by the assembly of components. The complexity that requires explanation in physical systems is complexity of physical structure — multiple parts interacting according to physical laws. God, on the classical account, has no such complexity. He is simple in the philosophical sense: not composed of parts.

This is not a theological dodge invented to escape Dawkins's objection. It is the account of divine simplicity developed by Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, and the entire Western philosophical tradition long before The God Delusion was written. Whether one accepts divine simplicity or not, Dawkins's objection requires engaging with it — not ignoring it.

Necessary existence and the regress stopper

The third error is Dawkins's failure to engage with the concept of necessary existence. The Leibnizian cosmological argument, as described in Section 07, argues that the explanatory regress must terminate in a necessary being — one whose existence is not contingent on any external cause, whose non-existence is impossible, who exists by its own nature.

A necessary being is a regress-stopper by definition. The infinite regress of "what caused the cause?" terminates when we reach something that is uncaused — not because we have given up looking, but because the nature of a necessary being is precisely to be uncaused. God, on the classical account, is not a contingent thing that happened to exist and therefore requires explanation. He is a necessary being whose existence is part of what he is.

The question "who designed the designer?" assumes that God is the kind of thing that requires a designer. On the classical theistic account, God is not. He is the uncaused first cause — the necessary being that explains everything contingent without itself requiring external explanation. This is not special pleading. It is the application of the same reasoning that leads to postulating a necessary being in the first place: contingent things require causes; the regress terminates in something non-contingent.

Dawkins's argument is powerful against a naive designer who is himself contingent and complex. It is not powerful against the God of classical theism — the necessary, simple, non-physical ground of all existence. And it is the God of classical theism that the philosophical tradition has always defended.

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Who Designed the Designer?

Dawkins's "who designed the designer?" objection commits the regress fallacy: demanding explanation of the explanation before accepting it as an explanation — a standard that destroys all scientific reasoning. God as a necessary being is not subject to the same explanatory demand as contingent physical objects. The classical concept of divine simplicity is not engaged by Dawkins.

Key claims

—Craig: demanding explanation of the explanation leads to an infinite regress that destroys all explanatory reasoning including science
—Dawkins assumes God is complex in the same way physical objects are complex — a category error
—Classical theism: God is "simple" — not composed of parts, not subject to the complexity that requires external explanation
—God as necessary being: whose non-existence is impossible, who exists by his own nature, who is therefore a regress-stopper
—The objection applies to a naive designer; it does not apply to the God of classical theism that the philosophical tradition defends

Scholars cited

Richard DawkinsAtheist biologist
William Lane CraigPhilosopher

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