Link: Richard Dawkins and Circular Reasoning

Over at The Cumulative Case, I've made a recent post about Richard Dawkins and his circular reasoning, which echoes a post from a while back here at the Two Books Approach.  In essence, I have attributed a statement to Dr. Dawkins that, if followed to its logical conclusion, means to deny that the fine-tuning of the universe implies the existence of God, is predicated on first assuming God cannot exist.  That is, the probability of God existing is identically zero.  Of course, this isn't logic or reasoning, it is simply blind faith.  Now, I don't suppose I'll know for sure if Dr. Dawkins really holds to this view, so for the benefit of the doubt, I will say that he does not.  Even so, I think it is interesting to unpack what the following statement means: "No matter how improbable this universe is by chance, the probability of God is even less."

An excerpt from the relevant post from The Cumulative Case:

If you start off assuming that God cannot exist, then no amount of evidence, no matter how strong, can budge you.  Dawkins is essentially saying, "I don't care what the scientific evidence for fine tuning says, I will choose to believe that God does not exist." That is not reason or rationality, that is blind belief. Belief, as it were, in spite of the evidence.

For the readers' convenience, I've pasted the relevant point from my old post (note the edit where I have made my statements more circumspect by inserting [many] where the word "all" used to be):

[T]he statement "no matter how improbable this universe is by chance, the probability of God is even less" is tantamount to saying "the probability of God existing is zero." Think about it. The only non-negative number that is guaranteed to be smaller than all positive numbers is zero. This is quite a strong statement. It goes far beyond saying God doesn't exist. It says that God cannot exist. In other words, Dawkins is using an assumption that God cannot exist to try to prove that God does not exist. It is a completely circular argument.

Here's another way to think about it, for the more math-oriented folks. In probability and statistics, the proof we're trying to make is something called a conditional probability. We see an improbable universe around us. What is the probability that God exists given we live in an improbable universe (ie, what's P(G|U))? Using Bayesian inference, we can easily come up with:

P(G|U) = P(G)/(epsilon + P(G)).

Here P(G) is the prior probability that God exists, and "epsilon" is the small chance that this universe came together by coincidence ([many] scientists would agree that epsilon is very small...something like 10^-50 or less). When doing Bayesian inference, you often have to bring in some a priori assumptions to assign prior probabilities (hence the name), so we have to guess at what P(G) is. But you never outright assume that P(G) is identically zero (or one). That would be the same as saying "no matter what our studies tell me, I will choose to believe X." (That's called blind faith.) Usually, when you don't know, you simply set your prior probabilities equal to 1/2. It's easy to see that P(G|U) (the probability that God exists given the universe we live in) would be extremely close to one for any reasonable choice of P(G). The only choice that makes P(G|U) small is P(G) = 0. Which is apparently what Dawkins wants to say.

Is Dawkins spreading propaganda?

Well, despite the sensationalistic title of this post, I think the answer is probably "no, I wouldn't go that far as to say that."  But I have been amazed at some of the things he keeps on saying, held in tension with some things I know people talk to him about.  For example, he continues to deride all believers as people who do not think, yet he is acquainted with one of the greatest proponents for Christian thinking: fellow Oxford professor (and prolific author) John Lennox.

This all came together for me in an "aha!" moment when I read the first four sentences of this article about William Lane Craig (which by the way is a great article in and of itself and I recommend reading it; the first four sentences are almost irrelevant to the rest of the article) where the author depicts Dawkins as decrying the notion of giving a Christian apologist publicity.

This made me wonder: it is really about the search for truth and advancing science and reason for Dawkins?  Or is it about empty rhetoric, sound bytes, and attempting to control what people hear?  The irony of it all is that Dawkins (and now many others) blames the spread of religion on "memes".  Originally, memes didn't have to be funny images with catchy phrases; they can also be just what your parents taught you, or what your friends like, or what's cool at school.  Any cultural element that gets passed from one person to another could be a meme.  Yet, through the use of sound bytes, etc. (which appeal so much to this generation), it is actually atheism that is now propagating* by meme.  Very interesting.

* - By the way, the word "propaganda" has the same root as the word "propagate".  We now come full circle.

I agree with Richard Dawkins

OK, first, I want to apologize for riding Richard Dawkins so much. This isn't a blog about him, and regardless of his views about Christianity, we really should not view him as some sort of "enemy".

That being said, this post is about him, but with an unusual twist: I agree with him. To some extent.

After thinking more and more about the topic that I posted the other day, I decided that I might want to read his The God Delusion. So, I was browsing for it on amazon.com and found a short video interview where Dawkins is talking about his book.

In short, he says three things that I would agree with. (The rest of what he said, I pretty much disagree with.) First, he says that the question of whether God exists is an interesting, exciting question. Not much else to say about that.

Second, he says that the question of whether God exists is a scientific question. This is not to say it is purely a scientific question. It is also philosophical, historical, personal, and, of course, theological, to name a few other adjectives. But what he is saying here is that we can discover whether God likely exists or not based on our study of the natural world. That sounds like what I've been saying all along. He is basically refuting those atheists that are trying to keep God and science apart, who say that science can only discover natural phenomena, and can say nothing about the supernatural.

Then he goes on to say why he thinks it's a scientific question, which is the third point of agreement for me. He says a universe created by God (or one in which a god or gods exist(s)) would look completely different from one in which no supernatural being or force acted. I agree wholeheartedly. I just disagree about his conclusion. He goes on to say that this universe looks more like one in which there is no supernatural.

And that's the sticking point. But this is a good thing. If people are ready to put their theories to the test, then in the end, the truth will eventually come out. (I think.)

The Probability of God

I had a revelation this morning while I was swimming.

I had been thinking of something I read regarding a common atheist response to the anthropic principle (see my post from June 1). There is so much design apparent in the universe, it would be a monumental coincidence for all of this to happen by chance. But the atheists say that that does not prove God exists, because no matter how improbable our universe is, the statistical probability of God existing is even more remote. (Apparently, this is one of Richard Dawkins' arguments in The God Delusion; I haven't read it, but I was reading a book that critiqued it.)

The more I thought about it, the more absurd that argument seemed. First, my response was, "Who sez?" Or perhaps more eloquently, "How can you demonstrate that?" It seems to me that there is a fallacy of burden of proof here. After a statement like Dawkins', proponents of the Christian faith may be left sputtering, trying to figure out how to show that the probability of God existing is not as remote as Dawkins says it is. However, that is overlooking two things. First, perhaps Dawkins should be proving that it is remote, rather than the other way around. Looking at it that way, Dawkins' counterargument here to the anthropic principle seems to rest on an unprovable assumption. But even more intriguing is that this is a red herring fallacy as well. Simply saying that God, as an explanation for the improbability of this universe, is Himself improbable does not explain how we got here. It's just a negative argument against one explanation of how we got here. What we're left with in Dawkins' treatment of the situation is that we are here because we are here. Which doesn't answer any of the big questions at all.

So that's two logical fallacies Dawkins seems to be committing here. (And please forgive me if I'm not representing his case very well. I really should do my homework before critiquing someone else's position.) First is shifting the burden of proof, and second is the red herring fallacy.

But it gets worse.

The second thing I realized this morning is that the statement "no matter how improbable this universe is by chance, the probability of God is even less" is tantamount to saying "the probability of God existing is zero." Think about it. The only non-negative number that is guaranteed to be smaller than all positive numbers is zero. This is quite a strong statement. It goes far beyond saying God doesn't exist. It says that God cannot exist. In other words, Dawkins is using an assumption that God cannot exist to try to prove that God does not exist. It is a completely circular argument.

Here's another way to think about it, for the more math-oriented folks. In probability and statistics, the proof we're trying to make is something called a conditional probability. We see an improbable universe around us. What is the probability that God exists given we live in an improbable universe (ie, what's P(G|U))? Using Bayesian inference, we can easily come up with:

P(G|U) = P(G)/(epsilon + P(G)).

Here P(G) is the prior probability that God exists, and "epsilon" is the small chance that this universe came together by coincidence (all scientists would agree that epsilon is very small...something like 10^-50 or less). When doing Bayesian inference, you often have to bring in some a priori assumptions to assign prior probabilities (hence the name), so we have to guess at what P(G) is. But you never outright assume that P(G) is identically zero (or one). That would be the same as saying "no matter what our studies tell me, I will choose to believe X." (That's called blind faith.) Usually, when you don't know, you simply set your prior probabilities equal to 1/2. It's easy to see that P(G|U) (the probability that God exists given the universe we live in) would be extremely close to one for any reasonable choice of P(G). The only choice that makes P(G|U) small is P(G) = 0. Which is apparently what Dawkins wants to say.

Perhaps I'll write more on this later, but for now, I'd appreciate any comments.
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