In another debate with Bill Craig, atheist Christopher Hitchens gave this objection: “Who designed the Designer? Don’t you run the risk… of asking ‘Well, where does that come from? And where does that come from?’ and running into an infinite regress?” But this is an elementary misunderstanding in philosophy of science.
I agree that Hitchens should have looked to see what answers theists give to that question. (And he might have; since theists usually respond instead by saying that God is eternal, meaning outside of time and cause and effect, and therefore in no need of having a cause.) But I disagree that there are any more substantive objections to theism. “Who designed the designer?” is the best single knockdown argument against theism.
The question “where did God come from?” is not qualitatively the same as the question “how do you know your observation that a dropped bowling ball falls is correct?” In science, the answer to every “why” is something that is known with more certainty. Entropy decreases as you trace the epistemological/causal chain back up its causes. Theism, by contrast, boils down to the claim that entropy always increases as you trace back the causal chain. A being X must have been created by some being Y with greater entropy (complexity). The scientific epistemological chain converges; the theistic one diverges.
ADDED: This is basically the same as Tim Tyler’s comment below.
And I’ll give the same reply as i gave to Tim Tyler. :)
Hitchens did not mention entropy or complexity. He mentioned exactly and only the why-regress, the exact same why-regress that all scientific hypotheses are subject to. Perhaps the objection you raise to theism would have been good for Hitchens to give, but it is not the objection Hitchens gave.
It looks to me like people are trying to make Hitchens look good by putting smarter words in his mouth than the ones he actually spoke.
It looks to me like people are trying to make Hitchens look good by putting smarter words in his mouth than the ones he actually spoke.
I think it’s more the principle of charity. Unless the other person has been mentally designated as an enemy, people tend to look for the most charitable plausible interpretation of his words. People are pointing out that what you gave as an example is a poor example to give, because your wording doesn’t do enough to exclude the most charitable interpretation of Hitchens’ words from the set of plausible interpretations. Therefore people will, upon hearing your example, automatically assume that this is actually what Hitchens was trying to say.
(I’ve been known to take this even further. Sometimes I’ll point an article to a friend, have the friend ruthlessly criticize the article, and then I’ll go “oh, of course the thing that the author is actually saying is pretty dreadful, but why would you care about that? If you read it as being about [this semi-related insightful thing he could have been saying instead if he’d thought about it a bit more], then it’s a great article!”)
If Hitchens meant what people are charitably attributing to him, why didn’t he make those points in the following rebuttal periods or during the Q&A? Craig gave the exact rebuttal that I just gave, so if Hitchens had intended to make a point about complexity or entropy rather than the point about infinite regress he explicitly made, he had plenty of opportunity to do so.
You are welcome to say that there are interesting objections to theism related to the question “Who designed the designer?” What confuses me is when people say I gave a bad example of non-scholarship because I represented Hitchens for what he actually said, rather than for what he did not say, not even when he had an opportunity to respond to Craig’s rebuttal.
The argument people here are attributing to Hitchens is not the argument he gave. Hitchens gave an objection concerning an infinite regress of explanations. The argument being attributed to Hitchens is a different argument that was given in one form by Richard Dawkins as The Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit. Dawkins’ argument is unfortunately vague, though it has been reformulated with more precision (for example, Kolmogorov complexity) over here.
I didn’t suggest that he meant that, I suggested that what you said didn’t do enough to exclude it from the class of reasonable interpretations of what he might have meant.
Suppose someone says to me, like you did, “there’s this guy Hitchens, he said the following: “Who designed the Designer? Don’t you run the risk… of asking ‘Well, where does that come from? And where does that come from?’ and running into an infinite regress?‘”. The very first thing that comes to mind, and which came to my mind even before I’d read the next sentence, is “oh, I’ve used that argument myself, when some religious person was telling me ‘but the Big Bang had to come from somewhere’, that must be what Hitchens meant”. That’s the default interpretation that will come to the mind of anyone who’s willing to give Hitchens the slightest benefit of doubt.
Yes, if people click on the links you provided they will see that the interpretation is wrong, but most people aren’t going to do that. And people shouldn’t need to click on a link to see that the most plausible-seeming interpretation of what they’ve read is, in fact, incorrect. If it’s important for conveying your message correctly, then you should state it outright. If you give an example about a person’s non-scholarship and people start saying “oh, but that doesn’t need to be an example of non-scholarship”, then it’s a much worse example than one that doesn’t prompt that response.
You are technically correct. Your initial remarks misled me, for the reasons given by Kaj Sotala below. But it’s a good example, if I read it carefully and literally, so don’t take that as a criticism.
Whether or not the first cause argument should be a concern in science, i think Bertrand Russell summarizes its problems quite well:
“Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God. That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality that it used to have; but apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man, and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: “My father taught me that the question, Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?” That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu’s view, that the world rested upon an elephant, and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, “How about the tortoise?” the Indian said, “Suppose we change the subject.” The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.”
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm
I think the logical incoherence of theism is a stronger knock down argument. The most devastating criticism of theism relates not to what caused god but what causes his actions. God is conceived as an all-powerful will, subjecting it to the same simple argument that disposes of libertarian “free will.” Either God’s conduct is random or determined. But conceiving of god as something other than a will makes god otiose. If god acts randomly, the description is indistinguishable from the universe simply being random; if god is determined that is indistinguishable from the universe is simply determined.
Who created the creator is a good argument, but it isn’t decisive. To say god must be more complex than the universe 1) is denied by theists, who call god uniquely simply; and 2) leaves the theist with one (weak) counterargument, inasmuch as it means treating god as a mechanism rather than something that is, well, supernatural. The theist says the causal requirements that govern matter don’t apply, and we’re unwarranted in generalizing our observations about the material world to the characteristics of god.
Ultimately, you can’t avoid getting down to the really basic question: what is this god. If he’s not a deterministic entity, what’s the alternative to his behavior being random? [Actually, I’m not sure raw randomness is coherent either, but you don’t have to take the argument that far.]
I agree that Hitchens should have looked to see what answers theists give to that question. (And he might have; since theists usually respond instead by saying that God is eternal, meaning outside of time and cause and effect, and therefore in no need of having a cause.) But I disagree that there are any more substantive objections to theism. “Who designed the designer?” is the best single knockdown argument against theism.
The question “where did God come from?” is not qualitatively the same as the question “how do you know your observation that a dropped bowling ball falls is correct?” In science, the answer to every “why” is something that is known with more certainty. Entropy decreases as you trace the epistemological/causal chain back up its causes. Theism, by contrast, boils down to the claim that entropy always increases as you trace back the causal chain. A being X must have been created by some being Y with greater entropy (complexity). The scientific epistemological chain converges; the theistic one diverges.
ADDED: This is basically the same as Tim Tyler’s comment below.
PhilGoetz,
And I’ll give the same reply as i gave to Tim Tyler. :)
Hitchens did not mention entropy or complexity. He mentioned exactly and only the why-regress, the exact same why-regress that all scientific hypotheses are subject to. Perhaps the objection you raise to theism would have been good for Hitchens to give, but it is not the objection Hitchens gave.
It looks to me like people are trying to make Hitchens look good by putting smarter words in his mouth than the ones he actually spoke.
I think it’s more the principle of charity. Unless the other person has been mentally designated as an enemy, people tend to look for the most charitable plausible interpretation of his words. People are pointing out that what you gave as an example is a poor example to give, because your wording doesn’t do enough to exclude the most charitable interpretation of Hitchens’ words from the set of plausible interpretations. Therefore people will, upon hearing your example, automatically assume that this is actually what Hitchens was trying to say.
(I’ve been known to take this even further. Sometimes I’ll point an article to a friend, have the friend ruthlessly criticize the article, and then I’ll go “oh, of course the thing that the author is actually saying is pretty dreadful, but why would you care about that? If you read it as being about [this semi-related insightful thing he could have been saying instead if he’d thought about it a bit more], then it’s a great article!”)
Kaj_Sotala,
If Hitchens meant what people are charitably attributing to him, why didn’t he make those points in the following rebuttal periods or during the Q&A? Craig gave the exact rebuttal that I just gave, so if Hitchens had intended to make a point about complexity or entropy rather than the point about infinite regress he explicitly made, he had plenty of opportunity to do so.
You are welcome to say that there are interesting objections to theism related to the question “Who designed the designer?” What confuses me is when people say I gave a bad example of non-scholarship because I represented Hitchens for what he actually said, rather than for what he did not say, not even when he had an opportunity to respond to Craig’s rebuttal.
The argument people here are attributing to Hitchens is not the argument he gave. Hitchens gave an objection concerning an infinite regress of explanations. The argument being attributed to Hitchens is a different argument that was given in one form by Richard Dawkins as The Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit. Dawkins’ argument is unfortunately vague, though it has been reformulated with more precision (for example, Kolmogorov complexity) over here.
I didn’t suggest that he meant that, I suggested that what you said didn’t do enough to exclude it from the class of reasonable interpretations of what he might have meant.
Suppose someone says to me, like you did, “there’s this guy Hitchens, he said the following: “Who designed the Designer? Don’t you run the risk… of asking ‘Well, where does that come from? And where does that come from?’ and running into an infinite regress?‘”. The very first thing that comes to mind, and which came to my mind even before I’d read the next sentence, is “oh, I’ve used that argument myself, when some religious person was telling me ‘but the Big Bang had to come from somewhere’, that must be what Hitchens meant”. That’s the default interpretation that will come to the mind of anyone who’s willing to give Hitchens the slightest benefit of doubt.
Yes, if people click on the links you provided they will see that the interpretation is wrong, but most people aren’t going to do that. And people shouldn’t need to click on a link to see that the most plausible-seeming interpretation of what they’ve read is, in fact, incorrect. If it’s important for conveying your message correctly, then you should state it outright. If you give an example about a person’s non-scholarship and people start saying “oh, but that doesn’t need to be an example of non-scholarship”, then it’s a much worse example than one that doesn’t prompt that response.
Another thing to think about was that Hitchens was in a debate. The Christians in the audience that he is trying to convince will not be charitable.
You are technically correct. Your initial remarks misled me, for the reasons given by Kaj Sotala below. But it’s a good example, if I read it carefully and literally, so don’t take that as a criticism.
Thanks.
Whether or not the first cause argument should be a concern in science, i think Bertrand Russell summarizes its problems quite well:
“Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God. That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality that it used to have; but apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man, and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: “My father taught me that the question, Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?” That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu’s view, that the world rested upon an elephant, and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, “How about the tortoise?” the Indian said, “Suppose we change the subject.” The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.” http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm
I think the logical incoherence of theism is a stronger knock down argument. The most devastating criticism of theism relates not to what caused god but what causes his actions. God is conceived as an all-powerful will, subjecting it to the same simple argument that disposes of libertarian “free will.” Either God’s conduct is random or determined. But conceiving of god as something other than a will makes god otiose. If god acts randomly, the description is indistinguishable from the universe simply being random; if god is determined that is indistinguishable from the universe is simply determined.
Who created the creator is a good argument, but it isn’t decisive. To say god must be more complex than the universe 1) is denied by theists, who call god uniquely simply; and 2) leaves the theist with one (weak) counterargument, inasmuch as it means treating god as a mechanism rather than something that is, well, supernatural. The theist says the causal requirements that govern matter don’t apply, and we’re unwarranted in generalizing our observations about the material world to the characteristics of god.
Ultimately, you can’t avoid getting down to the really basic question: what is this god. If he’s not a deterministic entity, what’s the alternative to his behavior being random? [Actually, I’m not sure raw randomness is coherent either, but you don’t have to take the argument that far.]