But I think that the the most patently
obvious falsehood of the six is number
three. Three says "The temptation to
attribute the appearance of design to a
designer is a false one because the
designer hypothesis immediately raises
the larger problem of who designed the
designer. "Now
Dawkins' claim here is that we're not
justified in inferring design as the
best explanation for the appearance of
design in the universe because a new
problem immediately arises, namely, who
designed the designer? If you say there's
a cosmic designer to explain the complex
order in the universe, then a new
question arises, who designed the
designer, and he takes that to mean that
therefore the hypothesis of a cosmic
designer is not a good hypothesis, that
this is a bad or false hypothesis. Well
it seems to me that this rejoinder is
flawed on at least two counts. Number one, in order to recognize that an
explanation is the best, you don't have
to have an explanation of the
explanation. In order to recognize that
an explanation is the best, you don't
have to be able to explain the
explanation. Folks, this is an elementary
point in the philosophy of science. For
example, if archaeologists were digging
in the earth and they came across
objects that were shaped like arrowheads
and pottery shards and tomahawks and so forth, can you imagine one of the
archaeologists saying Jones, look
how the processes of metamorphosis and
sedimentation have formed these uncanny objects! Well of course not; they would immediately recognize
that these are artifacts, the products of
intelligent design of some unknown
people group in the past. Now in order to
recognize that design is
the best explanation of these artifacts,
the archaeologists don't need to be able
to explain who the people group was,
where they came from, what their origin
was, or anything of that sort. They may
have no explanation of this unknown
people group who produced the artifacts,
and yet it's clear that these artifacts
are best explained not by metamorphosis
and sedimentation, but by intelligent
design. Or again, suppose astronauts were to find on the backside of the moon a
pile of machinery there that had not
been left by American or Russian
cosmonauts. What would be the best
explanation for that machinery? Well
clearly it would be some sort of
extraterrestrial intelligence that had
left the machinery there, and you don't
have to have an explanation of who these
extraterrestrials were or came from or
how they got there or anything of that
sort in order to recognize that the best
explanation of this machinery is
intelligent design. In order to recognize
an explanation as the best, you don't
have to have an explanation of the
explanation. In fact when you think about
it, requiring that would immediately lead
to an infinite regress of explanations.
You would need an explanation of the
explanation, but in order to recognize
that as best, you need an explanation of
the explanation of the explanation, and
then an explanation of the explanation
of the explanation of the explanation,
and so that nothing could ever be
explained, because it would lead to an
infinite regress of explanations. So that
this principle, that in order to
recognize an explanation is the best you
have to have an explanation of the
explanation, would destroy science. This
is a principle that is antithetical to
the very project of science at whose
altar of course Dawkins worships, so
ironically Dawkins has enunciated a
principle, or presupposed a principle
here, which is whole
unscientific and would destroy the
entire scientific enterprise if ever
taken seriously. So in the case at hand,
in order to recognize that intelligent
design is the best explanation of the
complex order in the universe, you don't
have to have an explanation of the
explanation. You may not know what the
explanation is of the intelligent
designer that produced the cosmos, but
that doesn't in any way count against
the credibility of the hypothesis that
the complex order in the universe is
best explained by there being an
intelligent designer. That was the first
point.
