36 Arguments for the Existence of God (50 page)

D. The Argument from the Original Replicator

1. Evolution is the process by which an organism evolves from simpler ancestors.
   

2. Evolution by itself cannot explain how the original ancestor—the first living thing—came into existence (from 1).
   

3. The theory of natural selection can deal with this problem only by saying that the first living thing evolved out of non-living matter (from 2).
   

4. That original non-living matter (call it the Original Replicator) must be capable of (a) self-replication, (b) generating a functioning mechanism
   out of surrounding matter to protect itself against falling apart, and (c) surviving slight mutations to itself that will then result in slightly different replicators.
   

5. The Original Replicator is complex (from 4).
   

6. The Original Replicator is too complex to have arisen from purely physical processes (from 5 and The Classical Teleological Argument). For example, DNA, which currently carries the replicated design of organisms, cannot be the Original Replicator, because DNA molecules require a complex system of proteins to remain stable and to replicate, and could not have arisen from natural processes before complex life existed.
   

7. Natural selection cannot explain the complexity of the Original Replicator (from 3 and 6).
   

8. The Original Replicator must have been created rather than have evolved (from 7 and The Classical Teleological Argument).
   

9. Anything that was created requires a Creator.
   

10. God exists.
    

FLAW
1: Premise 6 states that a replicator, because of its complexity, cannot have arisen from natural processes, i.e., by way of natural selection. But the mathematician John von Neumann proved in the 1950s that it is theoretically possible for a simple physical system to make exact copies of itself from surrounding materials. Since then, biologists and chemists have identified a number of naturally occurring molecules and crystals that can replicate in ways that could lead to natural selection (in particular, that allow random variations to be preserved in the copies). Once a molecule replicates, the process of natural selection can kick in, and the replicator can accumulate matter and become more complex, eventually leading to precursors of the replication system used by living organisms today.

FLAW
2: Even without von Neumann’s work (which not everyone accepts as conclusive), to conclude the existence of God from our not yet knowing how to explain the Original Replicator is to rely on The Argument from Ignorance.

1. The Big Bang, according to the best scientific opinion of our day, was the beginning of the physical universe, including not only matter and energy, but space and time and the laws of physics.
   

2. The universe came to be ex nihilo (from 1).
   

3. Something outside the universe, including outside its physical laws, must have brought the universe into existence (from 2).
   

4. Only God could exist outside the universe.
   

5. God must have caused the universe to exist (from 3 and 4).
   

6. God exists.
   

The Big Bang is based on the observed expansion of the universe, with galaxies rushing away from one another. The implication is that, if we run the film of the universe backward from the present, the universe must continuously contract, all the way back to a single point. The theory of the Big Bang is that the universe exploded into existence about fourteen billion years ago.

FLAW
1: Cosmologists themselves do not all agree that the Big Bang is a “singularity”—the sudden appearance of space, time, and physical laws from inexplicable nothingness. The Big Bang may represent the lawful emergence of a new universe from a previously existing one. In that case, it would be superfluous to invoke God to explain the emergence of something from nothing.

FLAW
2: The Argument from the Big Bang has all the flaws of The Cosmological Argument—it passes the buck from the mystery of the origin of the universe to the mystery of the origin of God, and it extends the notion of “cause” outside the domain of events covered by natural laws (also known as “the universe”), where it no longer makes sense.

1. There are a vast number of physically possible universes.
   

2. A universe that would be hospitable to the appearance of life must conform to some very strict conditions. Everything from the mass ratios of atomic particles and the number of dimensions of space to the cosmological parameters that rule the expansion of the universe must be just right for stable galaxies, solar systems, planets, and complex life to evolve.
   

3. The percentage of possible universes that would support life is infinitesimally small (from 2).
   

4. Our universe is one of those infinitesimally improbable universes.
   

5. Our universe has been fine-tuned to support life (from 3 and 4).
   

6. There is a Fine-Tuner (from 5).
   

7. Only God could have the power and the purpose to be the Fine-Tuner.
   

8. God exists.
   

Philosophers and physicists often speak of “the Anthropic Principle,” which comes in several versions, labeled “weak,” “strong,” and “very strong.” They all argue that any explanation of the universe must account for the fact that we humans (or any complex organism that could observe its condition) exist in it. The Argument from the Fine-Tuning of Physical Constants corresponds to the Very Strong Anthropic Principle. Its upshot is that the upshot of the universe is … us. The universe must have been designed with us in mind.

FLAW
1: The first premise may be false. Many physicists and cosmolo-gists, following Einstein, hope for a unified “theory of everything,” which would deduce from as-yet unknown physical laws that the physical constants of our universe had to be what they are. In that case, ours would be the only possible universe. (See also The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe, #35 below.)

FLAW
2: Even were we to accept the first premise, the transition from 4 to 5 is invalid. Perhaps we are living in a “multiverse” (a term coined by William James), a vast plurality (perhaps infinite) of parallel universes with different physical constants, all of them composing one reality. We find ourselves, unsurprisingly (since we are here doing the observing), in one of the rare universes that does support the appearance of stable matter and complex life, but nothing had to have been fine-tuned. Or perhaps we are living in an “oscillatory universe,” a succession of universes with differing physical constants, each one collapsing into a point and then exploding with a new big bang into a new universe with different physical constants, one succeeding another over an infinite time span. Again, we find ourselves, not surprisingly, in one of those time slices in which the universe does have physical constants that support stable matter and complex life. These hypotheses, which are receiving much attention from contemporary cosmologists, are sufficient to invalidate the leap from 4 to 5.

1. Scientists use aesthetic principles (simplicity, symmetry, elegance) to discover the laws of nature.
   

2. Scientists could only use aesthetic principles successfully if the laws of nature were intrinsically and objectively beautiful.
   

3. The laws of nature are intrinsically and objectively beautiful (from 1 and 2).
   

4. Only a mindful being with an appreciation of beauty could have designed the laws of nature.
   

5. God is the only being with the power and purpose to design beautiful laws of nature.
   

6. God exists.
   

FLAW
1: Do we decide an explanation is good because it’s beautiful, or do we find an explanation beautiful because it provides a good explanation?
When we say that the laws of nature are beautiful, what we are really saying is that the laws of nature are the laws of nature, and thus unify into elegant explanation a vast host of seemingly unrelated and random phenomena. We would find the laws of nature of any lawful universe beautiful. So what this argument boils down to is the observation that we live in a lawful universe. And of course any universe that could support the likes of us would
have
to be lawful. So this argument is another version of the Anthropic Principle—we live in the kind of universe that is the only kind of universe in which observers like us could live—and thus is subject to the flaws of Argument #5.

FLAW
2: If the laws of the universe are intrinsically beautiful, then positing a God who loves beauty, and who is mysteriously capable of creating an elegant universe (and presumably a messy one as well, though his aesthetic tastes led him not to), makes the universe complex and incomprehensible all over again. This negates the intuition behind Premise 3, that the universe is
intrinsically
elegant and intelligible. (See The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe, #35 below.)

1. The universe contains many uncanny coincidences, such as that the diameter of the moon as seen from the earth is the same as the diameter of the sun as seen from the earth, which is why we can have spectacular eclipses when the corona of the sun is revealed.
   

2. Coincidences are, by definition, overwhelmingly improbable.
   

3. The overwhelmingly improbable defies all statistical explanation.
   

4. These coincidences are such as to enhance our awed appreciation for the beauty of the natural world.
   

5. These coincidences must have been designed in order to enhance our awed appreciation of the beauty of the natural world (from 3 and 4).
   

6. Only a being with the power to effect such uncanny coincidences
   and the purpose of enhancing our awed appreciation of the beauty of the natural world could have arranged these uncanny cosmic coincidences.
   

7. Only God could be the being with such power and such purpose.
   

8. God exists.
   

FLAW
1. Premise 3 does not follow from Premise 2. The occurrence of the highly improbable can be statistically explained in two ways. One is when we have a very large sample: a one-in-a-million event is not improbable at all if there are a million opportunities for it to occur. The other is that there are a huge number of occurrences that could be counted as coincidences, if we don’t specify them beforehand but just notice them after the fact. (There could have been a constellation that forms a square around the moon; there could have been a comet that appeared on January 1, 2000; there could have been a constellation in the shape of a Star of David, etc., etc., etc.) When you consider how many coincidences are possible, the fact that we observe any one coincidence (which we notice after the fact) is not improbable but likely. And let’s not forget the statistically improbable coincidences that cause havoc and suffering, rather than awe and wonder, in humans: the perfect storm, the perfect tsunami, the perfect plague, et cetera.

FLAW
2. The derivation of Premise 5 from 3 and 4 is invalid: an example of the Projection Fallacy, in which we project the workings of our mind onto the world, and assume that our own subjective reaction is the result of some cosmic plan to cause that reaction. The human brain sees patterns in all kinds of random configurations: cloud formations, constellations, tea leaves, inkblots. That is why we are so good at finding supposed coincidences. It is getting things backward to say that, in every case in which we see a pattern, someone deliberately put that pattern in the universe for us to see.

ASIDE
: Prominent among the uncanny coincidences that figure into this argument are those having to do with numbers. Numbers are mysterious to us because they are not material objects like rocks and tables, but at the same time they seem to be real entities, ones that we can’t conjure up
with any properties we fancy but that have their own necessary properties and relations, and hence must somehow exist outside us (see The Argument from Human Knowledge of Infinity, #29, and The Argument from Mathematical Reality, #30, below). We are therefore likely to attribute magical powers to them. And, given the infinity of numbers and the countless possible ways to apply them to the world, “uncanny coincidences” are bound to occur (see Flaw 1). In Hebrew, the letters are also numbers, which has given rise to the mystical art of gematria, often used to elucidate, speculate, and prophecy about the unknowable.

1. People experience uncanny coincidences in their lives (for example, an old friend calling out of the blue just when you’re thinking of him, or a dream about some event that turns out to have just happened, or missing a flight that then crashes).
   

2. Uncanny coincidences cannot be explained by the laws of probability (which is why we call them uncanny).
   

3. These uncanny coincidences, inexplicable by the laws of probability, reveal a significance to our lives.
   

4. Only a being who deems our lives significant and who has the power to effect these coincidences could arrange for them to happen.
   

5. Only God both deems our lives significant and has the power to effect these coincidences.
   

6. God exists.
   

FLAW
1: The second premise suffers from the major flaw of The Argument from Cosmic Coincidences: a large number of experiences, together with the large number of patterns that we would call “coincidences” after the fact, make uncanny coincidences probable, not improbable.

FLAW
2: Psychologists have shown that people are subject to an illusion called Confirmation Bias. When they have a hypothesis (such as that day-
dreams predict the future), they vividly notice all the instances that confirm it (the times when they think of a friend and he calls), and forget all the instances that don’t (the times when they think of a friend and he doesn’t call). Likewise, who among us remembers all the times when we miss a plane and it
doesn’t
crash? The vast number of non-events we live through don’t make an impression on us; the few coincidences do.