NOT Designed for Life

Part 1:  In the Beginning...

There are a number of theists who maintain that rules which apparently govern the universe are clear indicators for the existence of God. This is known as the teleological argument, which is defined thus;

“The name “the teleological argument” is derived from the Greek word telos, meaning “end” or “purpose”. When such arguments speak of the universe being ordered, they mean that it is ordered towards some end or purpose. The suggestion is that it is more plausible to suppose that the universe is so because it was created by an intelligent being in order to accomplish that purpose than it is to suppose that it is this way by chance.” (Source: Philosophy of Religion)

Basically the teleological argument states that the universe must have been designed and created for an end purpose, that the creator must have been God (usually of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic variety), and that the end purpose must have been life and ultimately humankind as God's greatest creation.

The teleological argument was first made popular by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who included it in his Quinque viæ - five 'proofs' - of the existence of God. The five proofs can be summed up thus;

1: The Unmoved Mover; that things in motion must have had a cause to start that motion, and that cause must be God.

2: The First Cause; that all things (including the universe) must have had a first cause, and that cause must be God.

3: Contingency; that It is impossible for everything in the universe to be contingent, for then there would be a time when nothing existed, and so nothing would exist now, since there would be nothing to bring anything into existence, which is clearly false. Therefore, there must be a necessary being whose existence is not contingent on any other being or beings, and that being must be God.

4: Degree; that varying perfections of varying degrees may be found throughout the universe. These degrees assume the existence of an ultimate standard of perfection. Therefore, perfection must have a pinnacle and that pinnacle must be God.

5: Design (teleological argument); that all natural bodies follow laws of conduct but are unintelligent. Laws of conduct are characteristic of intelligence, there must be an intelligent being that created the laws for all natural bodies, and that being must be God.

There is just one wee problem with the Quinque viæ – it's utter bollocks.

The arguments of Thomas Aquinas are in fact deeply problematic, they throw up more questions and ultimately are based upon assumptions, without offering any proof.

All things in motion must have been set in motion? Agreed. Now what set that “unmoved” mover in motion? There was no time when nothing existed, for the simple fact that if time existed, then it cannot be nothing. And of course, Aquinas makes the huge assumption that his mover was unmoved.

All things must have a first cause? Then what started the first cause?

“Nothing” is in fact a very difficult concept for anyone to grasp; we are not talking a black void, an empty space, or anything of the like here, for these are all something. Nothing means just that – nothing whatsoever. Go ahead, try to imagine that concept, and you will discover just how difficult it is. I would imagine that Thomas Aquinas would have had the same problem.

Firstly, the perfection that we see in the universe is merely of our own perception, and as I have already illustrated with the concept of nothing, human perception is limited. Therefore if there were an “ultimate perfection”, we would not be able to conceive it. And if we cannot perceive an ultimate perfection, then we cannot comprehend degrees thereof – one man's meat is indeed another man's poison. The theist may argue that is why God is beyond our comprehension. I would argue that if we cannot perceive perfection, then we would not have dreamed up god(s) in the first place. Asides from that, who says there has to be an “ultimate” perfection? Given that all things, no matter how beautiful are ultimately flawed (every silver lining has a cloud), I would argue that an ultimate perfection is an impossibility. I'm really sorry if that pisses on anyone's parade, but it happens to be a fact.

I would strongly argue that the assumption “Laws of conduct are characteristic of intelligence” is deeply flawed. Is it intelligence, or is it our perception thereof? I have a geranium on my windowsill which I recently cut back and one of the new stalks is growing sideways, seeking out the sun. Some may argue that the plant is showing intelligence. I would counter that it is merely a genetic predisposition. Right away I can hear the ID proponents screaming that such a predisposition must be intelligent. Really? Okay, let me talk about another genetic predisposition which I know more than a little about – psoriasis. I suffer from plaque psoriasis, which is an inherited genetic predisposition in which skin renewal, which usually takes 21-28 days, is vastly speeded up in patches on the body, renewing in days or in severe cases, even hours. Plaque psoriasis therefore not merely defies the 'laws' of nature, it shoves two fingers firmly up to them. Yet by it's same token, psoriasis (all forms) follows it's own 'laws' in forming. Does it therefore follow an intelligence? To the human body, it is following a reaction to stress and other factors, but that reaction can hardly be called intelligent. Of course, the theist may argue that somehow I am being punished for my sins, then I would ask not only why me, but given that we are all supposedly sinful due to the fall of man, how come only 3% of the world population suffers from psoriasis? And if God did it concerning my geranium seeking out the sun, he can bloody well water it as well.

Where am I going with this, apart from sounding like a hound trying to get a squirrel down from a tree? Well, what appears to be order from our perception may not be 'order' in the truest sense. If you are dealt a hand of playing cards, there is a vast number of permutations of what those cards could be. If we happen to get a Royal Flush of Hearts, then we may think that is fantastic luck which shows order. But that is precisely what it is; luck, or more accurately random chance which has thrown up that order, and you win. Likewise, we perceive the order in the universe which came out of chaos to be 'perfect' for the rise of life – as we know it (very important point, actually). ID proponents had any of these laws been different, then life may not have arisen. Absolutely correct. And? That proves what? The universe would still be there, and while they may argue that this proves their God created it all for us, then we have to ask why their God made it so vast, and with some frankly fantastic things in it, which have no affect upon us. Others may argue that if the laws were different, then the universe would not have formed at all. Again, 100% accurate. And if there were no universe, where then is their God, and would the existence of god(s) then even matter?

But the greatest assumption of Thomas Aquinas of course, which he repeats in all five points, is that everything comes down to an invisible, omnipotent, omniscient deity which created all things. I have already poured cold water on his reasoning, but all those apart and looking just at his assumption that “God did it”, he offers absolutely no proof or evidence for that assumption. And even if we were to accept it, we then have to ask who or what created that god, and in turn, who/what created that god, etc, etc, and we are into the realms of infinite regression. Many theists may argue that their god had no beginning, to which I offer the simple two-word question; Prove it. And no, the Bible is not the proof; that is the claim, and a claim which we already know to be flawed.

Moving on from Aquinas, English theologian William Paley (1743-1805) put forward the “Watchmaker Argument” for a finely-tuned universe in his 1802 book, “Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature.” (someone may have been going for the world's longest book title) Paley wrote;

"In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. ... There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. ... Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation."

Paley's argument is equally as bollocks as that of Aquinas, for it again assumes that there is design in nature. How about if Paley was walking along a path on the heath one day, and found a sapling tree right in the middle of the path? Would he assume that his god had a look at that path, took a seed and decided “I'm just gonna leave this right HERE.”? Or is it far more likely that the seed fell from another tree, was carried on the wind, or dropped by a bird? And of course, just like Aquinas, we come right back to the question, who designed and created his god?  And again, we are then back to infinite regression.

But there more problems with the watchmaker analogy. Mechanical clockwork watches are beautiful precision instruments in which every single part is there for a purpose and finely-tuned to create the end result of telling the time. One does not tend most of the watch made up much bigger than it's purpose, and filled with things which are completely superfluous to the movement, much larger than the movement and which have absolutely no influence upon the end result. Likewise watchmakers tend not to include loose parts flying about all over the place, which are an ever-present danger of smashing into and damaging or even wholly destroying the movement, or anything else which may prove detrimental to their instruments.

Intelligent Design proponents would have us believe that the Earth and the entire universe were designed by a deity all for mankind. Sorry? Do they have any idea of the vastness of the universe?  The entire universe's size is at least 3x10²³ times larger than the size of the observable universe. We can only see a tiny, tiny part of the whole thing. Yet in that tiny sphere, we have found some amazing things. VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant star, 1200 times larger than our own sun, which would be imperceptible alongside it. That it is located some 5000 light years from Earth, output from it has absolutely no impact upon our planet or the creatures upon it. Given that we have found one such star, there is every chance that other such red hypergiants exist. And there is no proof that this is the largest star in the universe, it is merely the largest we have found so far, and there is absolutely no reason why larger bodies should not exist. Therefore, if the universe were designed wholly for the tiny ape-like creatures crawling across the surface of an insignificant blue-green planet in a small solar system, at the outward arm of a quite unremarkable galaxy, just what purpose does the vast universe, and objects like VY Canis Majoris fulfil?

Space is not finely-tuned, it is a hostile and unforgiving place, fraught with dangers. Comets, asteroids, and even planets dislodged from their orbits fly about here, there and everywhere, often crashing into other bodies. Our own moon, and even our little Earth, are testimony to that, as I'll address in a future article. Even in the outer orbit of our own Earth, where the International Space Station operates, temperatures can sink to -100 degrees Celsius, and can soar to 260 degrees Celsius. Radiation is everywhere in varying degrees. And then of course, there are those things which have only recently been confirmed, which space apparently is full of, and which are an ever-present danger to all other bodies in the universe; black holes.

In February 2016, physicists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) confirmed for the first time gravitational waves from two merging black holes. This confirmed a prediction in Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, 98 years previously, of such waves existing. It was an astounding discovery which confirms Relativity and the standard model of the universe once more. But that asides, it confirmed without a doubt the existence of black holes, which before the discovery, whilst largely accepted, were in fact purely hypothetical. The waves were picked up from two colliding black holes consuming each other 1.6 million years ago (before you ask, they would form one massive black hole). As space is so vast, it is impossible to calculate then number of black holes within it. However, they are quite common in space. Indeed, our own galaxy revolves around a supermassive black hole at it's centre, which is slowly (relatively) all the matter around it – most galaxies do. But it's not these black holes we need to worry about. Nope, its the 100 million smaller black holes floating about our galaxy, all but impossible to find, which could sneak up on us and engulf us at any minu...

If any watchmaker created an instrument which was too big for it's purpose and had deliberately included things which would cause it to stop working altogether, I for one would be asking for my money back.

Other analogies like the Watchmaker one are often heard, in which the ID proponent argues that if you set off a bomb in a scrapyard, or an aircraft factory, you wouldn't get a car or a jet airliner. No, you would get a mess – which is precisely what the universe is. Yes, the universe is governed by laws of physics. But these have come about within the confines of this universe, and only give us laws which we perceive to be perfect for life as we know it.  A little one way or another, and life may have evolved very differently, or perhaps not even at all.  Even if the bomb in the scrapyard had resulted in a number of parts lying in a semi-circle pattern due to the effects of the blast, would that illustrate an intelligence behind that blast?  Of course not, and neither has the universe any such intelligence.  And while I'm about it, the "Big Bang", contrary to what the ID believers claim, was not an explosion, but rather a rapid expansion from a singularity containing all matter in the universe.

It is an absurdity of the ID proponent to even claim that all the universe was made finely-tuned, just for life as we know it. And to illustrate this, let us look at the way we came to be here.

The entire universe was created 13.82 billion years ago, but the Solar System only came into existence 4.6 billion years ago, which begs the question that if a God created it, just what were they doing for the intervening 9.22 billion years? In this fledging Solar System, the third planet out was a large, molten ball of fire and thus completely lifeless. It would be another 30-50 million years until our moon would form, which is equally vital for life on Earth. More than likely the moon formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago from an object approximately the size of Mars smashing into the protoplanet Earth, taking a huge chunk out of it, then the debris from both slowly coalescing into one solid object (or more, rather – we now know that Earth has quite a number of natural satellites). But of course, it gets better, for life only began on Earth 3.8 billion years ago, the first hominids rose 55 million years ago, and Homo Sapiens Sapiens - a mere whippersnapper on the Earth - only put in an appearance a mere 200,000 years ago. If the universe, the Earth and all life on it were thus formed by a supreme being, with the end result being that it was made all for us, they took their bloody time over it and appear to have had really long tea breaks.

Now, some ID apologists claim that their God created the universe within the confines of it's own rules. Others may state that God created the universe, then left it to it's own devices to form itself. The former argument is self-defeating, for if their god were confined by the rules of the universe, then it therefore logically follows that the said deity cannot possibly be omnipotent – all powerful, and without omnipotence, they cannot be God. The second argument is equally self-defeating in that if the universe were left to it's own devices, then that completely refutes any argument of design and / or fine tuning.

We therefore see that the teleological argument of a finely-tuned universe is deeply flawed, is easily refuted, and is purely a matter of our own perception as a species. Indeed, when one considers how insignificant humankind is within the universe, it is the ultimate arrogance for us to assume to be so very important within it, that we think it was made all for us, when in reality we are tiny dots on a not spectacularly important blue-green planet, at the edge of a not particularly significant galaxy, in an unforgiving and uncaring universe which is fraught with dangers.

In the Part 2, I shall be looking at life on earth, why we are nothing really special, and why our planet is ill-tuned for our survival, and why we contribute nothing to it.