Over at a blog called An Atheist Debater is an author who attempted to tackle what he thoughtfully considers to be “one of the most useless and easily refutable” arguments for the existence of God: the Argument from Design. According to this gentleman, the teleological argument “is so ridiculously fallacious it’s laughable.” What I intend to explore here are two things. First, did he succeed at proving it commits a fallacy? And second, did his own argument commit a fallacy?

To begin, let us examine the argument as he recounts it. (His email address indicates his name as “C.R. Gordon.” Therefore, in this article we shall call him Mr. Gordon and his initial participant Ms. Christian.)

Ms. Christian: The complexity of the human brain is more than a computer. If the computer is designed, how can the brain not be designed?

Mr. Gordon: If you continue this line of questioning, we’ll arrive at the same place again: Who designed the Designer?

Ms. Christian: No one designed God. He was always there.

Mr. Gordon: If it’s okay to assume that God was always there and needed no designer, it’s okay to assume that the universe was always there and needed no designer.

Ms. Christian: How?

Mr. Gordon: Well let me ask a few questions. Would you say that in order to create the universe God must have been equally or more complex?

Ms. Christian: More.

Mr. Gordon: Which would look more designed to you: a lump of clay, or a perfect ball of clay?

Ms. Christian: A ball.

Mr. Gordon: Then comparatively it is harder to make the assumption that God (the perfect ball) did not have a designer since he is more complex. It is easier to assume that the universe (the lump) did not have a designer since it is less complex. This is your own logic.

Ms. Christian: I don’t know. Maybe this wasn’t the best argument.

Gordon said that in a subsequent conversation the young lady retracted her comment and “now insists that the above was a good argument” and that she wanted Gordon’s readers to be made aware of that. “Some people never learn,” he sighed.

Did he succeed at proving it commits a fallacy?

Did Gordon succeed at proving that her argument commits a fallacy? On the surface it seems not, for he does not specifically identify any. However, from his responses to her we can infer that he was probably indicating a Special Pleading fallacy—such that she was trying to except God from the rule without an appropriate justification for the exception. In a fashion similar to that of Dawkins in The God Delusion (and that may very well be where he got it from), it seems that Gordon is arguing that if a complex universe requires a Designer then surely that Designer himself requires a designer, since he is far more complex than the universe.

So now we can ask the question. Did Ms. Christian commit the Special Pleading fallacy? Certainly not, for she actually did present an appropriate justification for excepting God from the rule—namely, her point that God “was always there,” that he is eternal, without beginning or end. For anyone to inquire about the beginning of some x, such a question carries the assumption that x had a beginning to inquire about. However, an eternal being has no such beginning. Ergo, it is a relevant and appropriate exception.

Regardless of whether or not there exists a better explanation for the appearance of design that we find—a claim that shoulders its own burden of proof—the reader must keep in mind Gordon claimed that the design argument is fallacious, which is quite a different matter. Since the Christian is presenting a characteristic that is a relevant exception to the rule, there is no special pleading taking place. Ergo, Gordon did not succeed at proving it commits a fallacy.

Did his own argument commit a fallacy?

What about Gordon’s argument itself? Ironically, it does commit a fallacy. And not to put too fine a point on the matter, it actually commits two different fallacies.

First, he commits the Loaded Question fallacy. The standard atheist response tends to be, “Well who designed the Designer?” which consists of two separate questions. The popular example used to illustrate a loaded question fallacy is, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” Notice the two questions being asked: (1) “Do you beat your spouse?” and (2) “If so, have you stopped?” The second question is the essential one being asked; but it is a meaningless question without first presupposing an affirmative response to the first one, which by clever sophistry is veiled from the respondent. The question coerces the person into conceding spousal abuse.

The same analysis applies to the question Gordon asked. There are really two questions lurking within it: (1) “Is the Designer himself designed?” and (2) “If so, who designed him?” Once again, the second question is the essential one being asked; however, it is a meaningless question without first presupposing an affirmative response to the first one, which is veiled from the respondent. It is a clever sophistry that attempts coerce the Christian into conceding that God had a designer, and is thus question-begging.

Second, he also commits the fallacy of Faulty Analogy. “If it is okay to assume that God was always there and needed no designer,” he said, “then it is okay to assume that the universe was always there and needed no designer.” The reason why it commits the Faulty Analogy fallacy is because there is precisely zero similarity between the nature of God and the nature of the universe (cf. “extreme dissimilarity”). In virtue of it being a fallacy, the comparison is logically bankrupt and may be dismissed. (Moreover, it is not okay to assume the universe was always there because there is a vast wealth of scientific data that counts against such an assumption.)

But Gordon asked another question to Ms. Christian pertinent to our analysis here and deserving some attention: “Would you say that in order to create the universe God must have been equally or more complex?” he asked. Notwithstanding Ms. Christian’s naïve response, the answer is, “Neither” (for God is not complex under any recognized definition of the term; see the Thomistic explications on the nature and meaning of divine simplicity, that God does not consist of interconnected parts). In order to make a complexity argument, one has to assume a deity that is unrecognizable to Christian theism and, therefore, fails to count against it (see Straw Man fallacy).

And then he responds

Three hours later, Gordon had responded to me, as follows:

It’s important to keep in mind that every argument from design is unique to the individual making it. While you may claim to present a sound argument, hers was not, in any sense of the word, sound.

1. There are two entities which are in discussion: the universe, and a ‘god’. This particular theist claimed that the existence of the universe required or implied an outside Designer. Perhaps a more apt question (in light of your approach) is to ask if the Designer is free from this rule of entities requiring designers. If the answer is yes, the next question is, “Why?” And the next, “How do you know this?” Which ties into…

2. You have no problem accepting the idea that the universe requires an architect, yet you fail to reapply this principle to the architect itself. You claim that a god would be exempt from such a principle based on the dissimilarity of their ‘natures’. Well, again, “How do you know this? And what is the evidence for it?” Are you making judgments of when rules apply and when they do not for the preservation of parsimony; to avoid a chain of architects? And finally,

3. Remember, each argument is different. I gave her the option of accepting some choices but she did not have to. She was the one who labeled God more complex, not me. Thus, I was in my right to point out the flaw of such an assumption.

The ability to cite a few articles is nice and all, but your argument is not advanced when you must rely on a hypothetical conception of what ‘God’ is. Most everyone has a unique conception of God. You cannot negate the fallacies of an argument based on one definition of God, with your own definition of God. It’s like trying to point out the flaws of your imaginary friend based on my perception of your imaginary friend. Until a complete, structured, and supported definition of God is accepted unanimously, you have no basis to reject or assert any definition.

So how does this response hold up under critical evaluation? Not very well, I’m afraid. It would seem that Gordon missed the whole thrust of my original critique, for he is repeating very similar argumentation. Let’s have a closer look.

Who designed the Designer?

Whether or not Ms. Christian’s answers were philosophically robust is a rather moot point, for it can be observed that Gordon committed the Loaded Question fallacy well before she answers that God is ‘more’ complex than the universe. And since his entire line of reasoning was predicated on that fallacy, the whole lot can be dismissed straight out. She felt that her argument was solid; logically bankrupt counter-arguments are not any kind of challenge against it. Regardless of his clear opinion of her argument, at least hers did not commit such basic errors in reasoning.

If he esteems critical thinking—and I shall assume that he does—then he must abandon his bankrupt question and reframe his counter-argument anew, this time working to avoid bad reasoning. A commitment to critical thinking would force him to break the Loaded Question up and ask its component questions separately and in order. As I had pointed out previously, “Who designed the Designer?” is a complex of two separate questions: (1) “Is the Designer himself designed?” and (2) “If so, who designed him?” The fallacy inheres because the first question is begged; i.e., asking who designed the Designer assumes that he was designed at all—the way that “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” assumes you were beating her at all. Using clever sophistry to force the Christian into conceding that God had a designer invalidly begs the question.

The answer to the suppressed first question dictates the relevance of the second. And since the answer to the first question is, “No, the Designer is not himself designed,” the second question is altogether irrelevant and a different one must be asked instead, as Gordon’s response to me implied (e.g., “If not, why not?”). And the answer of course is because God is not complex. Even under the definition Dawkins provided in The Blind Watchmaker, God is not complex, as Plantinga indicated, for God does not have parts arranged in ways unlikely to have arisen by chance; that is, (1) God is not materially composed, and hence has no parts, and (2) God is eternal, and hence has no beginning about which one can inquire. But neither point can be claimed for the universe.

(And although Ms. Christian said God is ‘more complex’ than the universe, I would be inclined to attribute that to her being unfamiliar with or naïve about the finer points of Christian theology and philosophical argumentation. If Gordon wishes to dismiss the teleological argument, he would do well to engage the strongest formulations of the argument, not the weakest.)

How do you know?

The issue raised by the teleological argument, and the logically bankrupt riposte from atheists about who designed the Designer, regards the philosophical category known as metaphysics. And questions about how a person knows one thing or another regards the philosophical category known as epistemology. Gordon needs to understand that they are two very different categories entirely, and that it is fundamentally a categorical error to confront a metaphysical argument with an epistemological objection. If he does not have a logically valid counter-argument on the metaphysics, then the original argument stands unrefuted (and categorical errors cannot help him).

If he does have a categorically relevant counter-argument, then it would be prudent for him to submit it because his readers, I suspect, would be rather interested in seeing such a thing—as would I and our readers.

Miscellaneous clean up

As for the other points Gordon raised, they can likewise be dismissed as irrelevant. For example, the claim that there are other proposed gods is completely irrelevant to a critical evaluation of the Christian proposition. Whether or not his counter-argument works for some other proposed god does nothing to change the fact that it committed the indicated fallacies when confronting the God of the Bible. If he wants to leave the God of the Bible unchallenged for the sake of defeating these other gods, I am sure that Christians will not mind at all. And finally, I need to have “a complete, structured, and supported definition of God [that] is accepted unanimously” only if I want to argue that a particular definition of God is unanimously accepted—which is an argument I am not at all invested in, for the notion of “a complete, structured, and supported definition” of anything that is “accepted unanimously” is arbitrary and delusional.

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