Bit of new book for comments. I did something similar to the following in the Humanism book.
Another version of semantic goalpost shifting is the unexplained analogy.
In the introduction I outlined an objection to a certain sort of argument for theism – the argument that the universe appears, for example, to be fine-tuned, and that a designer god provides the best available explanation for its fine-tuned character. The objection is based on the thought that if God is a non-temporal agent, a sort a cosmic super-intelligence that creates time and space, then we run up against the objection that talk of a non-temporal agent appears to make scarcely more sense than, say, talk of a non-spatial mountain.
To recap: for something to be a mountain is for it to have parts spatially arranged in a particular way. It must have a summit and sides, for example, which requires that one part must be higher than another. If we strip away the spatial context, talk of a mountain no longer makes sense.
Similarly, to talk of an agent is to talk about a being that has beliefs and desires on the basis of which it more or less rationally acts. However, the concepts of belief and desire are concepts of psychological states having temporal duration. If desires are states with temporal duration, how could this agent possess the desire to create the universe? And how did this agent perform the act of creation if there was not yet any time in which actions might be performed?
In order to deal with this sort of difficulty, we might, as some theists do, insist that theistic talk of an intelligent designer should not be understood literally. We are positing, not literally an intelligent agent, but something merely analogous to such an agent.
But does this appeal to analogy, as its stands, succeed in salvaging the explanation of fine-tuning in terms of an intelligent designer? No.
Compare s similar case. Suppose I try to explain some natural phenomenon by appealing to the existence of a non-spatial mountain. Critics point out that talk of non-spatial mountains is nonsensical. I roll my eyes and insist they have misunderstood. I am not talking about a literal mountain, but something merely analogous to a mountain. Does this save my explanation?
It depends. Suppose my analogy is this: that the guilt of a nation concerning some terrible deed weighs like a huge mountain on the collective psyche of its citizens. This is an interesting analogy. Moreover, it does actually avoid the conceptual problem that plagues the claim as literally understood. Guilt, it would appear, isn’t the kind of thing that occupies space in the way a literal mountain does. So there’s no conceptual problem with talk of a non-spatial mountain of guilt.
But remember – I am supposed to be explaining some natural phenomenon by means of this analogy. Suppose the phenomenon is a major earthquake. People wonder why the earthquake occurred. I maintain that the earthquake is a result of the vast weight of this something-analogous-to-a-mountain pressing down and causing a seismic shift.
Now that my analogy is clear, it is also clear that my explanation is hopeless. Collective guilt doesn’t cause earthquakes. Something merely analogous to a mountain doesn’t possess the same causal and explanatory powers that a real mountain would possess.
You can now see why those who try to explain features of the universe by appealing to something merely analogous to an intelligent agent have a great deal of explaining to do. The onus is on them to explain:
(i) exactly what the intended analogy is,
(ii) how the analogy avoids the charge of nonsense levelled at the literally-understood version of the claim, and
(iii) how this something-merely-analogous-to-a-so-and-so is supposed to retain the relevant explanatory powers that a literal so-and-so would possess.
My explanation of the earthquake by appealing to a non-spatial mountain did answer (i) and (ii). However, I failed to explain how my something-analogous-to-a-mountain could cause or explain an earthquake.
Often, theists don’t even bother to explain (i) and (ii). When asked how we are supposed to make sense of such a non-temporal intelligent designer, they simply say, “Oh dear – you’ve misunderstood, my talk of an intelligent designer is not meant to be understood literally. It’s merely an analogy.” As if this remark, by itself, were sufficient to deal with the objection. It is not.
Unless the theist can provide satisfactory answers to all three questions, their “explanation” is hopeless. They haven’t explained anything. Such appeals to unexplained analogy bring the debate about intelligent design, not up to a level of sophistication and profundity, but down to the level of evasion and obfuscation.
None of this is to say that the use of analogy might not provide us with a useful tool in thinking about God. The objection is not to the use of analogy per se, but to the use of the unexplained analogy to deal with objections: “Ah, it’s merely analogy. So, problem solved!”
Showing posts with label intelligent design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intelligent design. Show all posts
My notes for the McGrath debate
Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 12:31 PM
Here are the notes I used for the debate with Professor Alister McGrath on the 29th October. I ended up only alluding to the second objection as I thought it too technical on the night.
Does the natural world point to God?
Cosmic fine-tuning arguments - that God provides the best, or even a half-decent, explanation of the character the natural world in which we find ourselves - face FIVE main types of objection.
I am going to briefly outline all five. But, I intend to rest my case on just the last two. So the first three will just be sketched out, and are merely for your information only.
FIRST OBJECTION. As Alister acknowledges in his book, the science on which fine-tuning arguments are based is by no means uncontroversial.
For example, some scientists believe there may well be a multiverse – a plethora of universes governed by a wide range of different physical laws. If there is a multiverse, then it’s not particularly unlikely that there should happen to exist a universe that has the Goldilocks property of being “just right” for life.
Even if there’s only one universe, a number of scientists in any case question whether there is only a very narrow range of physical parameters within which life can plausibly emerge.
Physicists including Victor Stenger, Anthony Aguire, and Craig Hogan have studied those universes that result when six cosmological parameters are simultaneously varied by several orders of magnitude, and have found that stars, planets and life can plausibly emerge within many of them.
According to these physicists, then, it simply is not true that there is only a very narrow set of physical parameters within which life can plausibly arise.
But still, let’s concede, for the sake of argument, that Alister is correct, and these physicists incorrect, about the science on which cosmic fine-tuning arguments are based.
SECOND OBJECTION. Even if there is only a very narrow set of physical parameters within which life might plausibly emerge, it doesn’t follow that the chances of the actual universe falling within these parameters is low. In fact, several philosophers reject the suggestion that we can even assign such a chance to the physical universe.
Take Professor Hugh Mellor of Cambridge University, who is an acknowledged expert on probability theory.
According to Mellor, there are two kinds of probability: epistemic probability and physical probability (or chance). Epistemic probability is, roughly speaking, the likelihood of something’s being true given the evidence. Suppose I am looking at a roulette wheel on which I can see the ball has landed on slot 26. For me, the epistemic probability that the ball is in slot 26 very high – I have overwhelming evidence that’s were it is because I can just see it there. On the other hand, the physical probability of the ball being there – by which I mean the chance of the ball landing there given the laws of nature and a certain specification of the conditions under which the ball was thrown into the wheel - is pretty low: only about one in 37.
Now when proponents of fine-tuning, such as Alister, insist the “probability” of the universe producing life is low, they clearly do not mean epistemic probability. The epistemic probability of life is very high – we can see it all around us. So the notion of probability proponents of fine-tuning are appealing to must, according to Mellor, be physical probability.
But then notice that if the physical universe is the only physical universe there is, it cannot have a physical probability.
The universe will only appear to have such a probability if we smuggle in a quasi-physical setting for its creation, supposing, for example, that the cosmological constants were fixed by something like the spin of a cosmic roulette wheel. So, concludes Professor Mellor, the fine-tuning arguments are just confused.
Other philosophers, such as Neil Manson, Elliot Sober, and also Timothy and Lydia McGrew (who incidentally, are religious) concur with that conclusion, for other, independent reasons.
Still, let us also concede, for the sake of argument, that Alister is correct, and these various objectors are all mistaken. Let’s suppose we can talk meaningfully about the chances of the universe having a life-producing character.
THIRD OBJECTION. Even if we concede that the probability of the universe having a life-producing character by chance is otherwise low, that still does not provide any significant support for the suggestion that some intelligence designed the universe that way, if either (i) the probability of such an intelligent being is itself very low (as Richard Dawkins suggests), or (ii) if the very idea of such a being actually makes no sense (as I am about to suggest).
Suppose I claim that there exists a special sort of chair – a chair that transcends physical reality, existing in a non-spatial, non-temporal way. You would rightly be sceptical. Not just because there is no evidence for such a chair, but because the idea of such a chair is nonsensical. In order for something to be a chair, it must have arms, legs, a seat, and so on, and these are features that require spatial extension. The idea of a non-spatial chair is just confused.
But is the idea of an intelligent cosmic designer any less confused? If this designer is the creator of space and time, then he exists, or existed, non-temporally. But how can an intelligent agent exist non-temporally? The concept of an agent is the concept of someone or thing with beliefs and desires on which they might more or less rationally act.
But just as the concepts of chair arms and legs are essentially rooted in a spatial context, and make no sense when applied outside it, so the concepts of belief and desire are essentially rooted in a temporal context, and make no sense when applied outside it.
For example, beliefs and desires are psychological states, and as such necessarily have temporal duration. They are held for periods of time. The idea of a non-temporally held desire makes about as much sense as a non-spatially extended chair leg.
The concept of design is also essentially rooted in the temporal. You draw up a design, and then you subsequently realize it – a temporally ordered sequence of events. If the design does not precede the realization, then it was not designed at all.
So far as I can see, then, talk of some sort of super-agent or designer transcending time and space is just so much gibberish, like talk of a non-spatial chair.
We have taken a concept with which we are familiar – a chair, or an intelligent designer – and projected into a realm where its application no longer even makes sense. That’s not profundity. That’s meaningless twaddle.
But let’s suppose that even this third class of objection – which includes both Dawkins’s objection, and this objection concerning meaningless twaddle - and can be overcome.
Let’s just sweep all three categories of objection to one side. There still remain two more. It is on these last two – the fourth and fifth objections - that I rest my argument that the natural world does not “point to” God.
FOURTH OBJECTION. It is a huge leap from the conclusion that the universe is the product of an intelligence to the conclusion that this intelligence is the all-powerful and limitlessly benevolent God of love that Christians worship.
As the Templeton-prize-winning physicist Paul Davies points out at the end of his book The Goldilocks Enigma, even setting aside all the other difficulties, (I quote)
“The other main problem with intelligent design is that identity of the designer need bear no relation at all to the God of traditional monotheism. The “designing agency” can be a committee of gods, for example. The designer can be a natural being or beings, such as an evolved super-mind or super-civilization existing in a previous universe, or in another section of our universe, which made our universe using super-technology. The designer can also be some sort of superdupercomputer simulating this universe. So invoking a super-intellect…is fraught with problems.”
Davies is correct, of course.
Alister’s supposedly fine-tuned features, even if they did point towards a designer, no more “point towards” the existence of the Christian God than they point towards the universe being a computer-generated Matrix-type simulation, or the creation of an earlier super-civilization.
Which of course they don’t really “point to” at all.
FIFTH OBJECTION. I come now to my final, and most important, objection to the suggestion that the natural world points towards anything remotely like the Christian God.
It seems to me that, unlike the suggestions that the universe was designed by an earlier super-civilization, or superdupercomputer, the suggestion that the universe was designed by Alister’s God is just straightforwardly empirically falsified.
There is abundant empirical evidence that, if even if the universe was designed, it was not designed by the particular deity Alister believes in.
I am talking of course about the evidential problem of evil.
Last week I watched an episode of the BBC TV series Life. At the end of the programme, one of the cameramen was interviewed, and I was struck that he said that, after just a few weeks on the job, he was already considering of giving up wild-life photography because it was too emotionally harrowing – he was struggling to cope with the extraordinary degree of suffering the creatures he was filming were going through. That kind of suffering – appalling suffering, on a vast, global scale – has been going on, not just for two weeks, but for many hundreds of millions of years, long, long before we humans made our very recent appearance.
And of course, we humans suffer too. Consider a not uncommon occurrence [EDITIED: I have removed this second example as touches on matter in which I have some personal involvement and do not want posted on the internet).
Perhaps the universe is the product of an intelligence. I don’t think that’s likely, but even if it were, surely it is pretty obvious that the intelligence in question is not the Christian God of love – in all his limitlessly powerful and benevolent glory.
If you think that’s not obvious, well, consider another possible cosmic designer – suppose there is just one god – a supremely powerful and evil being. His cruelty and malice and know no bounds.
How likely is that? I am sure you will agree it is an absurd suggestion. Why – because it is straightforwardly empirically falsified by the enormous amounts of good that there are in the universe. Why would an evil God create love, laughter and rainbows? Why would he allow us to reduce suffering?
In short, just as, if you believe in a good God, you face the problem of evil, so if you believe in an evil God, you face the problem of good.
Because of the problem of good, it is clearly absurd to suggest that the natural world points towards an evil God.
But then why isn’t it equally absurd to suggest that natural world points to a good God?
Alister’s position, it seems to me, is like that of someone who wanders into a concentration camp, notes the stoves designed to provide meals and warmth and the mattresses designed for sleeping on, and concludes that not only was this camp designed by an intelligence with some interest in sustaining human life, it actually “points towards” a wonderfully loving and benevolent designer
The truth is, not only does the available empirically evidence not point towards the camp having such a wonderfully benevolent designer, it actually points very firmly away from the camp being the creation of any such being.
Ditto the universe.
Does the natural world point to God?
Cosmic fine-tuning arguments - that God provides the best, or even a half-decent, explanation of the character the natural world in which we find ourselves - face FIVE main types of objection.
I am going to briefly outline all five. But, I intend to rest my case on just the last two. So the first three will just be sketched out, and are merely for your information only.
FIRST OBJECTION. As Alister acknowledges in his book, the science on which fine-tuning arguments are based is by no means uncontroversial.
For example, some scientists believe there may well be a multiverse – a plethora of universes governed by a wide range of different physical laws. If there is a multiverse, then it’s not particularly unlikely that there should happen to exist a universe that has the Goldilocks property of being “just right” for life.
Even if there’s only one universe, a number of scientists in any case question whether there is only a very narrow range of physical parameters within which life can plausibly emerge.
Physicists including Victor Stenger, Anthony Aguire, and Craig Hogan have studied those universes that result when six cosmological parameters are simultaneously varied by several orders of magnitude, and have found that stars, planets and life can plausibly emerge within many of them.
According to these physicists, then, it simply is not true that there is only a very narrow set of physical parameters within which life can plausibly arise.
But still, let’s concede, for the sake of argument, that Alister is correct, and these physicists incorrect, about the science on which cosmic fine-tuning arguments are based.
SECOND OBJECTION. Even if there is only a very narrow set of physical parameters within which life might plausibly emerge, it doesn’t follow that the chances of the actual universe falling within these parameters is low. In fact, several philosophers reject the suggestion that we can even assign such a chance to the physical universe.
Take Professor Hugh Mellor of Cambridge University, who is an acknowledged expert on probability theory.
According to Mellor, there are two kinds of probability: epistemic probability and physical probability (or chance). Epistemic probability is, roughly speaking, the likelihood of something’s being true given the evidence. Suppose I am looking at a roulette wheel on which I can see the ball has landed on slot 26. For me, the epistemic probability that the ball is in slot 26 very high – I have overwhelming evidence that’s were it is because I can just see it there. On the other hand, the physical probability of the ball being there – by which I mean the chance of the ball landing there given the laws of nature and a certain specification of the conditions under which the ball was thrown into the wheel - is pretty low: only about one in 37.
Now when proponents of fine-tuning, such as Alister, insist the “probability” of the universe producing life is low, they clearly do not mean epistemic probability. The epistemic probability of life is very high – we can see it all around us. So the notion of probability proponents of fine-tuning are appealing to must, according to Mellor, be physical probability.
But then notice that if the physical universe is the only physical universe there is, it cannot have a physical probability.
The universe will only appear to have such a probability if we smuggle in a quasi-physical setting for its creation, supposing, for example, that the cosmological constants were fixed by something like the spin of a cosmic roulette wheel. So, concludes Professor Mellor, the fine-tuning arguments are just confused.
Other philosophers, such as Neil Manson, Elliot Sober, and also Timothy and Lydia McGrew (who incidentally, are religious) concur with that conclusion, for other, independent reasons.
Still, let us also concede, for the sake of argument, that Alister is correct, and these various objectors are all mistaken. Let’s suppose we can talk meaningfully about the chances of the universe having a life-producing character.
THIRD OBJECTION. Even if we concede that the probability of the universe having a life-producing character by chance is otherwise low, that still does not provide any significant support for the suggestion that some intelligence designed the universe that way, if either (i) the probability of such an intelligent being is itself very low (as Richard Dawkins suggests), or (ii) if the very idea of such a being actually makes no sense (as I am about to suggest).
Suppose I claim that there exists a special sort of chair – a chair that transcends physical reality, existing in a non-spatial, non-temporal way. You would rightly be sceptical. Not just because there is no evidence for such a chair, but because the idea of such a chair is nonsensical. In order for something to be a chair, it must have arms, legs, a seat, and so on, and these are features that require spatial extension. The idea of a non-spatial chair is just confused.
But is the idea of an intelligent cosmic designer any less confused? If this designer is the creator of space and time, then he exists, or existed, non-temporally. But how can an intelligent agent exist non-temporally? The concept of an agent is the concept of someone or thing with beliefs and desires on which they might more or less rationally act.
But just as the concepts of chair arms and legs are essentially rooted in a spatial context, and make no sense when applied outside it, so the concepts of belief and desire are essentially rooted in a temporal context, and make no sense when applied outside it.
For example, beliefs and desires are psychological states, and as such necessarily have temporal duration. They are held for periods of time. The idea of a non-temporally held desire makes about as much sense as a non-spatially extended chair leg.
The concept of design is also essentially rooted in the temporal. You draw up a design, and then you subsequently realize it – a temporally ordered sequence of events. If the design does not precede the realization, then it was not designed at all.
So far as I can see, then, talk of some sort of super-agent or designer transcending time and space is just so much gibberish, like talk of a non-spatial chair.
We have taken a concept with which we are familiar – a chair, or an intelligent designer – and projected into a realm where its application no longer even makes sense. That’s not profundity. That’s meaningless twaddle.
But let’s suppose that even this third class of objection – which includes both Dawkins’s objection, and this objection concerning meaningless twaddle - and can be overcome.
Let’s just sweep all three categories of objection to one side. There still remain two more. It is on these last two – the fourth and fifth objections - that I rest my argument that the natural world does not “point to” God.
FOURTH OBJECTION. It is a huge leap from the conclusion that the universe is the product of an intelligence to the conclusion that this intelligence is the all-powerful and limitlessly benevolent God of love that Christians worship.
As the Templeton-prize-winning physicist Paul Davies points out at the end of his book The Goldilocks Enigma, even setting aside all the other difficulties, (I quote)
“The other main problem with intelligent design is that identity of the designer need bear no relation at all to the God of traditional monotheism. The “designing agency” can be a committee of gods, for example. The designer can be a natural being or beings, such as an evolved super-mind or super-civilization existing in a previous universe, or in another section of our universe, which made our universe using super-technology. The designer can also be some sort of superdupercomputer simulating this universe. So invoking a super-intellect…is fraught with problems.”
Davies is correct, of course.
Alister’s supposedly fine-tuned features, even if they did point towards a designer, no more “point towards” the existence of the Christian God than they point towards the universe being a computer-generated Matrix-type simulation, or the creation of an earlier super-civilization.
Which of course they don’t really “point to” at all.
FIFTH OBJECTION. I come now to my final, and most important, objection to the suggestion that the natural world points towards anything remotely like the Christian God.
It seems to me that, unlike the suggestions that the universe was designed by an earlier super-civilization, or superdupercomputer, the suggestion that the universe was designed by Alister’s God is just straightforwardly empirically falsified.
There is abundant empirical evidence that, if even if the universe was designed, it was not designed by the particular deity Alister believes in.
I am talking of course about the evidential problem of evil.
Last week I watched an episode of the BBC TV series Life. At the end of the programme, one of the cameramen was interviewed, and I was struck that he said that, after just a few weeks on the job, he was already considering of giving up wild-life photography because it was too emotionally harrowing – he was struggling to cope with the extraordinary degree of suffering the creatures he was filming were going through. That kind of suffering – appalling suffering, on a vast, global scale – has been going on, not just for two weeks, but for many hundreds of millions of years, long, long before we humans made our very recent appearance.
And of course, we humans suffer too. Consider a not uncommon occurrence [EDITIED: I have removed this second example as touches on matter in which I have some personal involvement and do not want posted on the internet).
Perhaps the universe is the product of an intelligence. I don’t think that’s likely, but even if it were, surely it is pretty obvious that the intelligence in question is not the Christian God of love – in all his limitlessly powerful and benevolent glory.
If you think that’s not obvious, well, consider another possible cosmic designer – suppose there is just one god – a supremely powerful and evil being. His cruelty and malice and know no bounds.
How likely is that? I am sure you will agree it is an absurd suggestion. Why – because it is straightforwardly empirically falsified by the enormous amounts of good that there are in the universe. Why would an evil God create love, laughter and rainbows? Why would he allow us to reduce suffering?
In short, just as, if you believe in a good God, you face the problem of evil, so if you believe in an evil God, you face the problem of good.
Because of the problem of good, it is clearly absurd to suggest that the natural world points towards an evil God.
But then why isn’t it equally absurd to suggest that natural world points to a good God?
Alister’s position, it seems to me, is like that of someone who wanders into a concentration camp, notes the stoves designed to provide meals and warmth and the mattresses designed for sleeping on, and concludes that not only was this camp designed by an intelligence with some interest in sustaining human life, it actually “points towards” a wonderfully loving and benevolent designer
The truth is, not only does the available empirically evidence not point towards the camp having such a wonderfully benevolent designer, it actually points very firmly away from the camp being the creation of any such being.
Ditto the universe.
Does the concept of an intelligent designer make sense?
Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 11:46 AM
Human beings explain features of the world around them in two main ways. One way is to supply naturalistic explanations that appeal to features of the natural world, such as natural events, forces and laws. The explanations of physics and chemistry fall into this category. The other way is to offer intentional explanations – explanations that appeal to the beliefs and desires of more or less rational agents. Why is there a tree in this spot? Because Ted wanted to see a tree from his bedroom window, and so planted a sapling here correctly supposing it would grow into a handsome tree.
When we are unable to explain something naturalistically, it is, of course, tempting to look for an intentional explanation instead. When we could not offer naturalistic explanations for why the heavenly bodies moved about as they did, we supposed that they must be, or must be moved by, agents - gods of some sort. When we could not otherwise explain diseases and natural disasters, we put them down to the actions of malevolent agents, such as witches and demons. When we could not provide naturalistic explanations for the growth of plants and the cycle of the seasons, we again invoked agents – sprites, fairies, and gods of various sorts.
As our scientific understanding of the world has increased, the need to invoke witches, fairies, demons and other such agents to account for features of the natural world has diminished. However, when we ask: why does the natural world exist at all, and what explains why it has the fundamental laws does? such naturalistic explanations are not available. So an explanation in terms of the activity of some sort of transcendent agent might seem attractive.
But does such an explanation even make sense? Suppose I claim that there exists a non-spatial mountain. It’s a mountain – with a sharp summit flanked by valleys and steep crags. Only it is not located or extended in space at all. It does not have spatial dimensions. This mountain transcends our spatial world.
You might well ask me why I suppose there is any such mountain. And if I cannot give you good reasons, you will rightly be sceptical. But actually, isn’t there a rather more fundamental problem with my claim that such a mountain exists? Can’t we know, before we get to the question of whether there is any evidence for the existence of my non-spatial mountain, that there can be no such thing?
For the very idea of such a mountain makes no sense. My hypothetical mountain has a summit and valleys and steep cliffs, but these are all features that require spatial extension. A summit requires that one part of the mountain be higher than another. A valley must be lower than the surrounding terrain. The concepts of a mountain, summit, valleys, and so on are concepts that can only sensibly be applied within a spatial context. Strip that context away and we end up talking nonsense.
But if we now turn to the concept of a transcendent designer, does that make any more sense?
The concept of an agent has its home within a temporal setting. An agent is someone or thing that performs actions as a result of its various beliefs and desires. But actions are events that happen at particular moments in time. And beliefs and desires are psychological states that have a temporal duration.
Now when we suppose that the spatio-temporal universe was created by some sort of agent, we are presumably supposing it was designed by a non-temporal agent – an agent that does not (or at least did not then) exist in time. For there was not yet any time for the agent to exist in. But if desires are psychological states with temporal duration, how, then, could this agent possess the desire to create the universe? And how did it perform the act of creation if there was not yet any time in which actions might be performed? It is hard to see how talk of a non-temporal agent makes any more sense than talk of a non-spatial mountain.
We could sidestep these puzzles by supposing that God exists, and has always existed, in time. This provides God with the necessary temporal dimension in which he might possess the desire to produce a universe, draw up a design, and perform the act of creation But it raises a host of other bizarre questions, such as: why did God wait so long before creating the universe (presumably, if God did not himself have a beginning, an infinitely long time)? And what was he doing in the meantime?
When we are unable to explain something naturalistically, it is, of course, tempting to look for an intentional explanation instead. When we could not offer naturalistic explanations for why the heavenly bodies moved about as they did, we supposed that they must be, or must be moved by, agents - gods of some sort. When we could not otherwise explain diseases and natural disasters, we put them down to the actions of malevolent agents, such as witches and demons. When we could not provide naturalistic explanations for the growth of plants and the cycle of the seasons, we again invoked agents – sprites, fairies, and gods of various sorts.
As our scientific understanding of the world has increased, the need to invoke witches, fairies, demons and other such agents to account for features of the natural world has diminished. However, when we ask: why does the natural world exist at all, and what explains why it has the fundamental laws does? such naturalistic explanations are not available. So an explanation in terms of the activity of some sort of transcendent agent might seem attractive.
But does such an explanation even make sense? Suppose I claim that there exists a non-spatial mountain. It’s a mountain – with a sharp summit flanked by valleys and steep crags. Only it is not located or extended in space at all. It does not have spatial dimensions. This mountain transcends our spatial world.
You might well ask me why I suppose there is any such mountain. And if I cannot give you good reasons, you will rightly be sceptical. But actually, isn’t there a rather more fundamental problem with my claim that such a mountain exists? Can’t we know, before we get to the question of whether there is any evidence for the existence of my non-spatial mountain, that there can be no such thing?
For the very idea of such a mountain makes no sense. My hypothetical mountain has a summit and valleys and steep cliffs, but these are all features that require spatial extension. A summit requires that one part of the mountain be higher than another. A valley must be lower than the surrounding terrain. The concepts of a mountain, summit, valleys, and so on are concepts that can only sensibly be applied within a spatial context. Strip that context away and we end up talking nonsense.
But if we now turn to the concept of a transcendent designer, does that make any more sense?
The concept of an agent has its home within a temporal setting. An agent is someone or thing that performs actions as a result of its various beliefs and desires. But actions are events that happen at particular moments in time. And beliefs and desires are psychological states that have a temporal duration.
Now when we suppose that the spatio-temporal universe was created by some sort of agent, we are presumably supposing it was designed by a non-temporal agent – an agent that does not (or at least did not then) exist in time. For there was not yet any time for the agent to exist in. But if desires are psychological states with temporal duration, how, then, could this agent possess the desire to create the universe? And how did it perform the act of creation if there was not yet any time in which actions might be performed? It is hard to see how talk of a non-temporal agent makes any more sense than talk of a non-spatial mountain.
We could sidestep these puzzles by supposing that God exists, and has always existed, in time. This provides God with the necessary temporal dimension in which he might possess the desire to produce a universe, draw up a design, and perform the act of creation But it raises a host of other bizarre questions, such as: why did God wait so long before creating the universe (presumably, if God did not himself have a beginning, an infinitely long time)? And what was he doing in the meantime?
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