The reference to Wielenberg’s argument as an example of DH7 is an interesting one. This anlysis might be a bit off-topic, but the poster mentioned it so here goes.
Wielenberg is saying a couple of things in the article:
Dawkins’ central argument won’t work if God is conceived as a necessary being, rather than a contingent being.
Also, it won’t work if God is conceived of (or just defined as) a simple being rather than a complex being.
Now on point 1, to be fair to Dawkins, he probably has not met real theists who have wanted to seriously defend (in an open debate, with a straight face) the idea that God is a necessary being. This is because the claim is rhetorically very vulnerable to a couple of simple counter-arguments:
“What? If you’re going to insist that God exists necessarily then you’re just being dogmatic, and shutting off all reasonable discussion on the subject. I could just as easily claim that an anti-God (such as the most evil being possible) exists necessarily. Or that the universe exists necessarily without being created. So now we’re at a stalemate. To get past the stalemate, we need to concede the possibility that we each are wrong. I’m quite prepared to do that. Will you?”
Or this:
“What? There is no such thing as a necessary being. It seems quite possible to me, and to anyone listening with an open mind that there could have been nothing in existence at all. We all understand the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ and we are puzzled by it precisely because we understand that there could have been nothing. But, in that case there cannot be any being which exists necessarily. So if you’re going to define God as existing necessarily, then you’ve just defined a contradiction in terms. When writing my book, I was assuming that you’d have the good sense to define God as something possible, rather than something contradictory.”
Notice that either of these should convince anyone who’s not already been sucked into the Plantinga-inspired black hole of modal theism. In that black hole, you just deny as possible various inconvenient states of affairs which any normal human being would judge to be possible (including the overwhelming majority of actual theists). And, better still, you don’t have to give any real proof that the denied state of affairs really is impossible (in the same way as proving that there is no largest prime number). That would be too hard. Instead you just have to assert it, and claim that you are within your epistemic rights to assert it.
As I said, this black hole is not rhetorically very effective… And it is certainly not rational as LW would understand the term.
On point 2, Dawkins does actually address this simplicity reply in The God Delusion: he is just mystified by it. The reason is that he is really convinced of his proposition that any designer of a complex being is itself a complex being.. So in his mind, defining God to be simple (when he has already shown it to be complex) is again just defining a contradictory being.
Now I think a legitimate criticism of Dawkins is that he doesn’t provide a detailed argument for the principle that a designer of a complex being must itself be complex. So to that extent his argument has a hole, though there are a number of approaches to patch the hole. If Wielenberg were really trying DH7, he would have tried such patches.
For example, we could collate inductive evidence from lots of designers we know about like humans, chimpanzees and CAD tools (they are all complex) or from lots of simple things we know about like quarks, electrons and atoms (they are not designers). Or we could try to use formal complexity definitions (such as logical depth, which seems the closest analogue of physical and biological complexity as Dawkins describes it).
Notice that If the hole does get closed, or looks like getting closed, the theist is in trouble. And then it won’t do to present a “simple” God as a counter example to Dawkins’ principle, since this will be like presenting “phlogiston” as a counter example to the principle that objects gain mass when burned. Or worse, presenting a “squircle” (defined as a square circle) as a counterexample to the principle that all squares have straight sides...
The reference to Wielenberg’s argument as an example of DH7 is an interesting one. This anlysis might be a bit off-topic, but the poster mentioned it so here goes.
Wielenberg is saying a couple of things in the article:
Dawkins’ central argument won’t work if God is conceived as a necessary being, rather than a contingent being.
Also, it won’t work if God is conceived of (or just defined as) a simple being rather than a complex being.
Now on point 1, to be fair to Dawkins, he probably has not met real theists who have wanted to seriously defend (in an open debate, with a straight face) the idea that God is a necessary being. This is because the claim is rhetorically very vulnerable to a couple of simple counter-arguments:
“What? If you’re going to insist that God exists necessarily then you’re just being dogmatic, and shutting off all reasonable discussion on the subject. I could just as easily claim that an anti-God (such as the most evil being possible) exists necessarily. Or that the universe exists necessarily without being created. So now we’re at a stalemate. To get past the stalemate, we need to concede the possibility that we each are wrong. I’m quite prepared to do that. Will you?”
Or this:
“What? There is no such thing as a necessary being. It seems quite possible to me, and to anyone listening with an open mind that there could have been nothing in existence at all. We all understand the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ and we are puzzled by it precisely because we understand that there could have been nothing. But, in that case there cannot be any being which exists necessarily. So if you’re going to define God as existing necessarily, then you’ve just defined a contradiction in terms. When writing my book, I was assuming that you’d have the good sense to define God as something possible, rather than something contradictory.”
Notice that either of these should convince anyone who’s not already been sucked into the Plantinga-inspired black hole of modal theism. In that black hole, you just deny as possible various inconvenient states of affairs which any normal human being would judge to be possible (including the overwhelming majority of actual theists). And, better still, you don’t have to give any real proof that the denied state of affairs really is impossible (in the same way as proving that there is no largest prime number). That would be too hard. Instead you just have to assert it, and claim that you are within your epistemic rights to assert it.
As I said, this black hole is not rhetorically very effective… And it is certainly not rational as LW would understand the term.
On point 2, Dawkins does actually address this simplicity reply in The God Delusion: he is just mystified by it. The reason is that he is really convinced of his proposition that any designer of a complex being is itself a complex being.. So in his mind, defining God to be simple (when he has already shown it to be complex) is again just defining a contradictory being.
Now I think a legitimate criticism of Dawkins is that he doesn’t provide a detailed argument for the principle that a designer of a complex being must itself be complex. So to that extent his argument has a hole, though there are a number of approaches to patch the hole. If Wielenberg were really trying DH7, he would have tried such patches.
For example, we could collate inductive evidence from lots of designers we know about like humans, chimpanzees and CAD tools (they are all complex) or from lots of simple things we know about like quarks, electrons and atoms (they are not designers). Or we could try to use formal complexity definitions (such as logical depth, which seems the closest analogue of physical and biological complexity as Dawkins describes it).
Notice that If the hole does get closed, or looks like getting closed, the theist is in trouble. And then it won’t do to present a “simple” God as a counter example to Dawkins’ principle, since this will be like presenting “phlogiston” as a counter example to the principle that objects gain mass when burned. Or worse, presenting a “squircle” (defined as a square circle) as a counterexample to the principle that all squares have straight sides...
Again sorry if off-topic.