Dawkins on the God Hypothesis: A Scientific Question

The Quote

"The God Hypothesis... is that there is a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us... The God Hypothesis is a scientific hypothesis about the universe, and it is amenable, at least in principle, to scientific investigation." So Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, stated the methodological premise of the new atheism.

Context

The God Delusion (2006) was the most widely read and most influential of the "new atheist" books — the cluster of works by Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens that argued, against the tolerant assumption that religion and science occupy separate spheres, that religious claims are empirical claims about the world and must be evaluated as such. Chapter 2, "The God Hypothesis," sets out the methodological premise. Dawkins does not dismiss religion as meaningless (the older positivist move); he takes the existence of God as a hypothesis about the world and evaluates it by the standards of evidence and probability. The result, he argues, is that the God hypothesis is less probable than its denial.

Meaning

The passage makes three claims. First, that the God of theism — "a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe" — is a hypothesis about reality, not a category immune to investigation. Second, that this hypothesis is scientific in character: it makes a claim about the world, and claims about the world are amenable, at least in principle, to scientific investigation. Third, that the hypothesis can be evaluated by the standards of evidence and probability — and, in the chapters that follow, Dawkins argues that it fails them. The deepest move is the second: the rejection of the claim that religion and science occupy separate spheres, that religious claims are immune to scientific examination. Dawkins's methodological premise is that there is no such separate sphere; that any claim about reality is open to rational examination, and that the theist who claims evidence for God must be willing to consider evidence against.

Philosophical Interpretation

Dawkins's argument has two parts. The methodological part — that the God hypothesis is a scientific question — has been both influential and contested. Philosophers of religion have argued that the existence of God is not, in the relevant sense, a scientific hypothesis: science investigates the natural world by natural means, and the hypothesis of a supernatural designer is a metaphysical hypothesis that science, by its methods, cannot confirm or disconfirm. The theist who takes this line — Plantinga is the most prominent — argues that belief in God can be rational without being a scientific hypothesis, in the way that belief in other minds or the reliability of memory is rational without being a scientific hypothesis. The substantive part of Dawkins's argument — that the God hypothesis is less probable than its denial — has been criticized on the grounds that complexity is not a measure of improbability (a complex thing can be more probable than a simple one, depending on the background), and that the God of classical theism is not complex in the way the argument requires (the God of Aquinas is simple, without parts, not an assemblage whose improbability compounds). The deepest philosophical question Dawkins raises is not whether God exists but what kind of question that is — a scientific question, a philosophical question, or a question of a different kind altogether.

The Ultimate Boeing 747

Dawkins's substantive argument against the God hypothesis is sometimes called the argument from complexity, and he himself calls it the "Ultimate Boeing 747" (a reference to Fred Hoyle's argument that the universe is as improbable as a tornado assembling a Boeing 747 from a junkyard). The argument is that any designer capable of creating the universe would have to be more complex than the universe, and a more complex being is less probable than a less complex one. So the God hypothesis is less probable than the hypothesis that the universe exists without a designer. The argument has been criticized on several grounds. Philosophers have noted that the inference from complexity to improbability is not valid in general: complexity is not a measure of improbability, and a complex thing can be more probable than a simple one, depending on the background distribution. Theologians have noted that the God of classical theism is not complex in the way the argument requires: the God of Aquinas is simple, without parts, not an assemblage whose improbability compounds. And philosophers of religion have noted that the hypothesis of a designer is not, in the relevant sense, a scientific hypothesis at all — it is a metaphysical hypothesis, and the methods of science, however powerful, are not the only rational methods of inquiry.

Legacy

The God Delusion sold millions of copies and provoked an enormous response, both supportive and critical. It became the public face of the new atheism, and its argument became the standard popular case against theism. The philosophical response has been extensive: Alvin Plantinga replied in Where the Conflict Really Lies (2011) that the conflict between science and religion is superficial, and that the deeper conflict is between science and naturalism, not science and theism. Richard Swinburne has argued, on Bayesian grounds, that the evidence of the order of the universe makes theism more probable than its denial. The debate continues, and Dawkins's argument is a permanent provocation — not because it settles the question but because it insists that the question be settled, or at least engaged, by evidence and reason rather than by the appeal to separate spheres that has often shielded religion from examination.

The Deeper Lesson

The deepest lesson of Dawkins's passage is methodological rather than substantive. The claim that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis is contestable, and most philosophers of religion, including many non-theists, would deny it. But the deeper claim — that religious claims are not immune to rational examination — is harder to deny. Any claim about reality, whether it is called scientific or philosophical or theological, is open to the question of evidence. The theist who offers the cosmological argument has accepted this; the theist who insists that the question of God is off-limits has not. Dawkins's wisdom is the wisdom of the examiner: take the claim seriously, ask for the evidence, evaluate it, and be willing to follow it where it leads. The corresponding weakness of Dawkins's argument is its confidence that the evidence leads only one way; the deeper wisdom is in the method, not in the conclusion. The question of God, on Dawkins's own showing, is a question to be engaged — and engagement, if it is honest, may lead in directions that neither the theist nor the atheist has anticipated.

Relations

This quote is the central methodological statement of the new atheism and the popular case against theism. It belongs to Dawkins, was answered by Plantinga and Swinburne, and engages the philosophy of God and the question of whether God exists. It connects to Mackie's challenge and to the long tradition of arguments from design.

Sources

1. "Atheism." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/atheism/
2. Richard Dawkins. The God Delusion. London: Bantam Press, 2006. Chapter 2, "The God Hypothesis."
3. "Teleological Arguments for God's Existence." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleological-arguments/