Mt Improbable

kcrady

The biggest problem with creationism/"intelligent design" as an explanation for our existence, is that it doesn't even address the question.

The mystery we're trying to solve is, "How did Universe and intelligence (us) get here?" Creationism proposes, as its "answer," that another Universe ("the Kingdom of Heaven"/"supernatural realm"/whatever you want to call it) existed, and that another Intelligence, vastly larger and more complex than ours lives there, and is responsible for creating us. Rather than answering the question of where existence and intelligence comes from, this merely proposes some other form of existence (the "supernatural realm") and an even bigger mystery, i.e., where did the Creator's intelligence come from.

When confronted with this, the creationist says, "Well, God was always there. Hey, look! A butterfly!" We still have no answer as to where intelligence and existence come from.

The creationist begins by feigning a deep, burning urgency to have an answer. "Where did all of this come from? Oh, come on! It couldn't just 'happen!' Complex intelligent beings like us, fearfully and wonderfully made, demand an explanation!" Then, they marshall whatever resources they have to attack any proposed scientific model offered.

After going around that mulberry bush a few times, the atheist will eventually turn to the "Goddidit" hypothesis and point out that it leaves the question unanswered. In other words, "Where did God come from?" However, as soon as the theist reaches God, suddenly their desperate need to know where intelligence and an existence "fine-tuned" to be amenable to its existence1 came from vanishes.

"God is outside of time, so I don't have to explain how he got there."

"What? Could you explain what 'outside of time' is supposed to mean?"

"Umm... >mumblemumble, hand-wave< ...can we move on to the Romans Road to Salvation now?"

The creationist's vast incredulity about the improbability of intelligent beings "just happening" to exist also disappears. The incredulity, were it genuine, would be understandable. Intelligent beings are highly complex entities, with lots and lots of component parts that have to be in the right places before they can "work" (live). Obviously, you can't just put a bunch of chemicals and some water in a blender, turn it on for awhile, and produce a human being. Human beings are highly improbable arrangements of matter.

The theist would be right to ask how such an improbability came to be, if they were really sincere in their desire to know. That they are not sincere is shown by the fact that they cease to care about the question at all if they can just be allowed to say "Goddidit." "God," being far more intelligent, capable, etc. than a human being, would also be far more complex, hence, a far more improbable arrangement of whatever he's made of.

The Bible itself is clear that Yahweh has component parts. Even if we ignore the many anthropomorphic references to him having hands, arms, nostrils, a mouth, etc., there is still the passage where Moses asks to see Yahweh's face, but is shown his "back parts" instead. Even if the distinction between Yahweh's "face" and his "back parts" does not mean the same thing for him as it does for humans, it is clear that seeing the different parts of Yahweh has different effects.

Since Yahweh has parts, he is not irreducibly simple2. Since he is supposed to be far more intelligent than us3 he would be more complex than we are, for the same reason that a Cray supercomputer is more complex than an abacus. Therefore, he would also be more improbable than us. If a mere human being can't "just happen," surely a God couldn't "just happen" either. So, instead of answering how humans managed to "climb Mt. Improbable," the theist merely says, "the human summit got there as a landslide, from up there," pointing at a much, much higher mountain of improbability.

The theist offers us no way to climb Mt. Improbable4. They can only imagine things coming down the slope. By their premises, complex things can only arise from things more complex still, which leaves them unable to offer any explanation for the actual origin of complexity.

The discoveries of science, in particular the principle of evolution by natural selection (along with other examples of self-organizing properties of matter, such as the creation of complex snowflakes from simple drops of water) have shown us a way to climb Mt. Improbable--not by taking the forward cliff face in a single bound, but by climbing up the gentler back slope, taking one not-too-improbable step at a time over hundreds of millions of years. Abundantly demonstrated in every relevant field of science from paleontology and genetics to anatomy and physics (radiometric dating), evolution shows us that the complex arises from the simple. And the simple, by definition, is easier to explain.

Even though some questions about our origins remain, we have much good reason (based on what we already know) to expect that whatever lies at the source of existence will be something simple, yet all-encompassing, like the "equation that fits on a T-shirt" (and explains the behavior of all things in Universe) sought by those looking for the "Grand Unified Theory."

NOTES:

1. In this case, the intelligence is that of God, and the existence with "fine-tuned" cosmological constants suitable for the existence of complex life is the "supernatural realm" he and his minions lived in before creating our Universe.

2. This raises a whole new issue: what is Yahweh made of? How does this "Yahweh-stuff" (assuming it's not any form of matter/energy we know of) interact with matter? What equations model its behavior? If the theist asks how we got our cosmological constants and other generalized operating principles (misnamed "laws") of physics, with Yahweh as the proposed answer, where did Yahweh get his physics from?

3. Apart from the claim that he's the "intelligent designer," he is never portrayed in the Bible behaving in a very intelligent manner. There is no deed of his a Christian can point to which anyone reading it will say, "That is absolutely friggin' brilliant!" Nothing comparable to Hannibal's tactics at Cannae, Newton's Principia Mathematica, or the music of Mozart. To the contrary, he's usually portrayed acting like a spoiled two-year-old supervillain whose parents are too busy to pay attention to him.

4. This is from the title of one of Richard Dawkins' books (Climbing Mount Improbable). I have not read this book, but I've seen a video in which he summarizes the argument that I'm using here.