April 6, 1984

Dear John Clayton,

      Rather than commenting on the other things that were brought up (I had only intended for my question-answer paper to be used for future reference if we ever happened to approach those subjects in our discussions, and I felt that the segments on the origin of life and on the natural ordering of ordered systems were appropriate at this time since they are used in my criticisms of the argument from design), I want to reiterate, defend, and try to clarify the arguments made in my last letter. I fail to see where these arguments are incorrect. I believe I correctly represented your arguments for God (at least as outlined in the beginning chapters of The Source) as being the cosmological and the teleological arguments. The theist may not want these arguments to result as a 'scapegoat' argument, but this is what they boil down to. But let me get into the flow again...

      My questions remain unanswered and were not addressed in your last letter. There is this idea (or hypothesis, if you will) that God has created the universe. What are the observable consequences of this idea? What explanations and solutions to problems does this idea give us concerning this origin process? What insights does this idea give us concerning possible routes of further exploration? So far, at least, I have found that the answer to each of these questions is: none.

      But let me repeat your statement of the argument before I proceed. "The question is that in each choice that a person can make about the Cosmos and its origins, what is the scientific data in support of? Is it in support of the fact that there is a specific beginning to the Cosmos...or is it in support of the atheist's position that there was no beginning? Is it in support of the position that the Cosmos was caused, or that the Cosmos was not caused? Those are clear, precise choices...."

      Now if we wish to make the terms universe and cosxos synonomous then the answer is, of course, in the affirmative that the evidence indicates the cosmos had a definite beginning. However, there are many (myself included) who would say that the universe and the cosmos are not necessarily the same thing. There is also a further complication in the possibility that our universe (and nothing more) did exist before the big bang in one form or another (but whether we are dealing with an oscillating system or something else is not relevant at this point). If we choose to use cosmos to refer to everything that has ever existed or will ever exist, then it is possible we may be talking about two very different things when we discuss the universe and the cosmos. Who's to say whether or not the cosmos consists of myriad bubbles of universes of which ours is only one? One of the points in my last letter is what I believe to be the only valid answer we can give for this question at this time of human exploration: No one knows.

      Your statement that the atheistic position is one of believing that the universe did not have a beginning is not representative of the atheistic position in general, and this belief is not implied by the atheistic position. I think it is more accurate to define costos as defined above and then show that atheists believe the cosmos has no beginning.

      And you have repeated in your letter a connection you made in The Source that does not exist, and can only serve to prejudice your audience. Again, it, too, rests on a confusion of cosoos and universe. Here is what you have said in a diagram:

      Atheists do not necessarily believe that the cosmos was not caused (and I've never heard or read an atheist say the universe was not caused — quite the contrary — I've read much speculation about what the cause may have been). In my previous letter I said that the words "unknown" and "uncaused" are not synonymous. Similarly, the terms "no beginning" and "not caused" are not synonymous either.

      But to clarify things a bit, let me now use universe and cosmos consistently in the sense of possibly referring to different things as stated above (the universe possibly being only a small part of the cosmos). In this sense atheists (at least most of them) believe the universe, as science indicates, began with the big bang scenario, and that this was, of course, caused in some way. This is what we have evidence for. This is what we can intelligently discuss and explore right now. (And I will point out that most outspoken fundamentalists, if not most fundamentalists, disagree with this scenario — it requires far, far too much time for them. They require thousands of years and will not accept billions.) Furthermore, atheists state that this origin of the universe was indeed caused, but that no one really knows what that cause was. And we may never find out.

      If we wish to deal with the philosophical aspect, then my questions are these: Where did God come from? What caused God? These questions assume God's existence, but once we assume God then we must ask where God came from. The ideas from Sagan that I quoted last time are inescapable. Answer that this question cannot be answered and I will say that we do not need to assume God at all: I will say that the question of the cause of the big bang cannot be answered. Answer that God was not caused, he has always been, and I will say that the cause of the big bang (purely natural) was itself uncaused, or, similarly, I could say that the big bang itself was uncaused. Theistic logic is not very consistent. Theists ridicule atheists for saying the cosmos was uncaused (even though many atheists would choose an infinite chain of cause-effect) and then proclaim that God was uncaused and expect everyone to agree that their belief is more logical, more reasonable.

      But I will remain with my previous statements: The cause of the universe is something we have no information about. We can fantasize about any idea that we wish to imagine as an explanation for the origin of the universe, but these ideas can be nothing more than pure speculation. We can play philosophical games if we like concerning the ultimate origin of the cosmos, but they are just that — games. We have no direct information about these things and we have no indirect information (information we can extrapolate from).

      You say in your letter that "if we establish a cause, then there has to be a causation, and...the causation itself being uncaused is more realistic than continuing to work through a series of causes." Where is the justification for this? Whenever we explore a process or an event we try to find its causes. We assume it is an effect, and we look for the cause of that effect. But then we see that the cause itself is an effect which in turn has a cause. This is the axiom of causality that science relies so heavily upon. It works. It solves problems. And because of this we assume it is real — we assume this is the way the universe really works (similar to believing that gravity and entropy are universal). And then you say it is sore realistic to say a cause is not itself an effect. I must disagree and ask for some justification for this statement (and the ideas in my eighth paragraph apply here also). Furthermore, even assuming an uncaused cause does not give you God — it gives you an unknown, uncaused cause.

      Looking back at the clear, precise choices you mention — beginning or no beginning, caused or uncaused — I choose a beginning and a cause. I realize there is scientific evidence that indicates a beginning for the universe (at least for the form we can observe around us now) and I accept the idea that it was caused. Where is God? The beginning can be seen. The cause cannot. The cosmological argument for the existence of God (at least as concerns the origin of the universe) is based on an unknown cause. This is the "scapegoat" argument you speak of. You show (rightly enough) that the universe has a beginning, but then, with no information at all about what came before or what caused the big bang, you say God began the universe (this is a pessimistic view of your line of argumentation; see the comments in my next to last paragraph). This is an argument that relies on ignorance for its basis.

      I thought you would understand the import of my question "Why must we speculate beyond what we know to things that we have no information about?".

      I was not speaking of extrapolative ideas. There are many ideas that are not based an present observable realities but are simply possible extensions of those realities that we do observe. I like the analogy of a vast darkness that contains a small intricate web of illumination that is being slowly constructed segment by segment. But the web is one that will never be completed. And as the web grows previously constructed parts of it will even have to be taken apart and discarded and have different, reconstructed parts put in their place. And always the web casts faint passages of light throughout the dark space, The web, of course, represents those ideas that we consider to be facts, the way nature really is. The faint passages of light do not represent what we have discovered but those things we may discover that are consistent with the realities we believe we have observed. These passages of light represent several different possibilities and alternatives.

      With my question I was decrying the attempt to put forth ideas that we have no information about and that are not even extrapolations from the information that we do have. But I can even go along with fantasy. I like to play too. But to take it seriously and expect and try to persuade others to take it seriously also is what I am criticizing. (And then I further become angry with those creationists who would teach me to believe ideas that are not only fantasies, but fantasies that contradict the information that we do have.)

      Personally, I would put Sagan's book Cosmos in the information and "faint passages of light" categories.

      So I do agree that "there is great value in dealing with things where we have to deal indirectly with the subject matter at hand."

      Here is an example of the weakness of the design argument. The earth has the right amount of water for life. A neat design feature? No. It appears to be the case that all terrestrial type planets have this water initially and it is other conditions that determine what will happen to the water in the future of any particular planet. But my criticism is that any feature can be called a design feature regardless of its function. There is no qualification for design. Design is given no definition and no qualifications. No criteria for design are given. Then various arguments are made using this vague concept of design. Kitcher, a philosopher of science at MIT, discussed this aspect of the design argument in the part of his book that I sent to you. You did not address this weakness either from what I pointed out in my letter or from Kitcher's comments. The design argument is bad because of the fact that, since no criteria have been given, there is no way in which design can be predicted or falsified. Anything and everything that we wish to show design shows design.

      Another result of this problem of an undefined concept of design that should be pointed out is that of misplaced attribution. Are we to describe the order apparent in a snow crystal as design or as naturally produced order? Though you did not define design in The Source, a strange contradiction seems to be implied by some of the examples that you use. What we come up with is a designed system that has been brought about by unconscious, nonpurposive forces (such as that of the snow crystal). We get:

          design ==> designer ==> unconscious force

I don't believe you want a concept of design that is vague enough to be able to include ordered systems that have been ordered by unconscious, nonpurposive forces. These are the problems that must be overcome somehow in the design argument. The construction of the argument must establish valid ways to distinguish between designed order and undesigned (natural) order.

      But as I indicated in my last letter, it is the order that is evident in the various systems that can be discussed, not the design. You have just arbitrarily stated that the order has been brought about by an intelligent, conscious ordering (and you have not given a positive reason for doing so; I have sent a cartoon along that I believe is most appropriate in this discussion). You base your argument against natural ordering on a concept of statistical improbability, but you keep using the idea of randomness to show the improbability, Creationists constantly misuse this same idea of randomness in their railings against evolution. But, even though we are dealing with randomness, we are dealing with a randomness that takes place only when certain conditions have been met or certain physical principles are followed. Are you aware of the fact that it can be shown that, statistically speaking, it is virtually impossible for rain to occur because droplets of any significant size cannot form initially? (Arguments against the initial formation of living organisms base part of their refutation on similar thinking.) But there are many things other than random formation that must be taken into account. We could say, well, the raindrops are here, and since they can't have come about randomly, God must have done it (a belief, incidentally, that many primitive cultures have). Is this really evidence for God? Or we could say, well, even though we are not yet fully aware of the physical processes that could have caused this ordering to take place, we are still trying to determine what those processes are (I am speaking generally here, because droplet formation is fairly well understood).

      You say on ps. 27-28 in The Source:

      We had a beginning, and that beginning was caused. The last question is what was that cause? Was it as the Bible claims — a thinking, planning, intelligent God who created the creation with purpose and design? Or have we come to be by chance — as Julian Huxley has written:

      We are as much a product of blind forces, as is the falling of a stone to earth or the ebb and flow of the tides. We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a long series of singularly beneficial accidents.

      We have indeed come to be by chance, but it is a chance that had to work within the bounds of physical processes. The forces may be blind (unconscious, nonpurposive), but they are physical principles that are followed nonetheless and that are capable of producing vastly complex, intricately ordered systems.

      So, you must first come up with valid criteria so you will be able to show that something has happened by design (conscious, purposive ordering) rather than by natural processes. Second, you must make sure that all your statistical arguments against a natural, nonpurposive ordering are taking all the relevant information into account. After all, statistics is simply mathematical probabilities computed after taking certain information into account, and if relevant information has been neglected or is not even known about then the statistical arguments based on the computed probabilities could be inaccurate or completely wrong. (And I must honestly admit, I fail to see how statistical arguments dealing with the likelihood of the occurence of a planet with particular characteristics in the formation of planetary systems can really be all that informative. After all, as you must admit, at the present time in human history, no other planetary systems have been explored, and we thus know very little about planetary systems in general, This criticism is also true, at least in part, of other negative arguments used by creationists.)

      Along this line I'm going to quote a part of Niles Eldredge's comments on design (ps. 132-135 in The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks At Creationism). He is specifically referring to evolution, but I think the ideas can also be applied generally.

      One of Darwin's first and most persistent critics after The Origin appeared was St. George Mivart. Mivart hounded Darwin on a problem he was already amply troubled with: How could one imagine a structure as complex and beautifully suited to perform its function as a human eye to have evolved through a series of simpler, less useful and efficient stages? Anatomists were among the last holdouts against accepting the idea of evolution, so entranced were they with the intricate complexities of the organ sustems they studied. Imagining intermediate stages between, say, the front leg of a running reptile and the perfected wing of a bird seemed to them impossible, as it still does to today's creationists. That the problem perhaps reflects more the poverty of human imagination than any real constraint on nature is an answer not congenial to the creationist line of thought.

      Interwoven with the difficulty in imagining the gradual evolution of complex organs are two separate themes: the more complex a structure is, the more eloquent a silent argument it is for the conscious work of a Designer. And the more complex a structure, the more improbable that it arose by 'chance alone.' Creationists go to town with both themes.

      The argument that nature is so complexly organized, with each creature specially suited to the role it plays in the economy of nature that only a Creator could have fashioned things this way, is an old one, antedating Garner Ted Armstrong's use of the grunions by at least two centuries. It was the particular view of the theologian — naturalists prior to The Origin, and it is still in use today in the creationist literature. Creationists usually talk of watches.... Such complex machines, so admirably suited to the purpose they serve, require a watchmaker. All the parts must be premeditatedly put together by an expert craftsman. Alone, no spring or jewel can keep the time. Only when the watchmaker cleverly arranges the parts in precisely the right way does the watch become functional. Clearly, the very existence of watches directly implies the existence of a watchmaker.

      So too, creationists argue, does the existence of complex organisms imply a conscious Creator. Hearts and-hands alone do not a person make — they must be organized, assembled in just the right way to produce a functional human being — though, of course, it is the perfectly naturalistic translation of the genetic code that fashions and assembles the parts of organisms....

      I will further admit that, lacking a cogent alternative like evolution, the analogy with organisms (that they, too, bespeak a knowledgeable, conscious intelligence behind them) was a plausible argument — for the 1820s. But how compelling is the analogy today? The argument boils down simply to this: we can invoke a naturalistic process, evolution, for which there is a great deal of evidence, but which we still have some difficulties in fully comprehending. Or we can say, simply, that some Creator did it and we are, after all, only watches.... The analogy is as meaningless as that: it "proves" nothing. It could even be true — but it cannot be construed as science, it isn't biology, and in the end it amounts to nothing more than a simple assertion that naturalistic processes automatically cannot be considered as candidates for an explanation of the order and complexity we all agree we do see in nature.

      To bolster the argument from design, creationists jump to the other side of the complexity argument: evolution just could not, they say, produce these organic complexities because there is no way such complex structural systems could have developed by "chance alone." Just as a bunch of monkeys endlessly pounding typewriters would never duplicate the works of Shakespeare, no mindless, materialistic process such as evolution — portrayed as acting by blind chance alone — could ever have produced the myriad wonders of the organic realm.

      But evolutionary theorists are not the simpletons such statements would make them out to be. As we have seen, the dominant form of evolutionary theory these past fifty years, the "modern synthesis," has been almost rigidly dogmatic an just this very point: mutations are random, but random only with respect to the needs of an organism, But mutations are caused by real physico-chesical processes, and there is a limited number of forms that a mutation can take and still function as a viable gene. And then there is natural selection — typically portrayed (by biologists) as the vigilant monitor of environmental change, constantly picking only the most beneficial of the variations present in a generation to ensure their transmittal to the next generation. This view of natural selection is statistical — but nonetheless highly deterministic. It is, in fact, the evolutionary naturalistic alternative to a Creator.... Chance, design, and complexity are handled well, if not always stunningly, by evolutionary theory and in biological observation and experimentation — sufficiently well, on the one hand, to be scientific and not to require the ad hoc intervention of a supernatural Creator, on the other.

      Repeating Eldredge's statement, the argument from design "amounts to nothing more than a simple assertion that naturalistic processes automatically cannot be considered as candidates for an explanation of the order and complexity we...see in nature." Design as opposed to natural processes is asserted, with no real evidence, and this is why the teleological argument, like the cosmological argument, degenerates to the "scapegoat' argument you speak of.

      Here's the way it appears to me: With the cosmological argument you establish an origin and a cause. To discover something about the cause (since it is unknown) you use the teleological argument to say that the cause must be a conscious force with a purpose in mind. If this is what you are doing, then I fully agree with your cosmological argument, and it is only the teleological argument that I would deny for the reasons stated against the ad hoc concept of design that is used. Again, if this is the way you are using these arguments, then you agree with me that the cosmological argument does not tell us anything about the cause and, though you may disagree with me, the teleological argument says the cause is conscious, intelligent, and purposive (and obviously powerful) but still does not imply God (by which I'm referring to the biblical God). As you have said in a previous letter, we must establish God, then establish which God, then establish God's communication to humans, and then discuss evolution.

      We have yet to establish God.

In the spirit of Ecclesiastes 8:17b,
Todd Greene

March 23, 1984

Dear Todd:

      I appreciate your letter of March 13, and the fact that we can get down to some meaningful issues rather than beating around the bush in other areas. I think there are a great many misrepresentations in your material, but I will attempt to deal with them as quickly as possible, so that we don't get too involved in long and tedious discussions.

      First of all, may I point out to you that there is absolutely nothing in the book any place that suggests that we should resort to an explanation of God on the basis of the fact that there is no other way to explain it. If you will take a look at the new edition of the book, you will see that we have conceptualized that argument in a much more precise form. The question is that in each choice that a person can make about the Cosmos and its origins, what is the scientific data in support of? Is it in support of the fact that there is a specific beginning to the Cosmos as the Bible says, or is it in support of the atheist's position that there was no beginning? Is it in support of the position that the Cosmos was caused, or that the Cosmos was not caused? Those are clear, precise choices that have nothing to do with the scapegoat argument, and that is, therefore, the context of the discussion — not a scapegoat position.

      Your second summary that there is intuitive, mathematical and biblical design is correct and I think can be defended.

      You devoted two pages to this discussion in your letter and since it was an incorrect assumption there is not much else that needs to be said about it. I would like to point out to you that I did deal with "The Origin of God" in both editions of the book — an explanation that I believe is valid.

      The fact still remains that it is logically and philosophically reasonable point out that if we establish a cause, then there has to be a causation, and that the causation itself being uncaused is more realistic than continuing to work through a series of causes. There is also a considerable amount of support from the physics of the situation that supports that point of view.

      I am enclosing an article which is titled "Space, Time and Eternity" by Gustaf Stromberg, that approaches this from another direction which you may find useful. I also would point out to you that Sagan's comment about why must we speculate beyond things that we have no information about would totally eliminate his whole book and his whole presentation since 90% of what he presents is in the same area of discussion. There is great value in dealing with things where we have to deal indirectly with the subject matter at hand and to preclude this kind of knowledge is a very near-sighted point of view.

      You missed a basic point in the calculation of design. No one was suggesting that since we are here that we calculate the odds of being here. If you will look at that calculation again you will see that we went back before the beginning and asked what are the mathematical probabilities of any kind of life coming into existence by chance alone, by the big bang. You represent it as a reverse argument, suggesting that since we are here we could calculate the odds of being here and that was not what was presented.

      I am also enclosing an article dealing with "The Design of Life" which was written by Murray Eden of MIT, which I think will show you the mistakes in your argument. Once again, you have relied upon some very loose scientific sources and Philip Kitcher and others, without looking at the kinds of arguments that are available and the work of Frederick Hoyle, Murray Eden and others.

      If you are really interested in pursuing that you might want to get a copy of Frederick Hoyle's book written with Wickramsinghe, titled Evolution from Space in which he shows mathematically it is impossible for us to be the product of chance, just dealing with the basic concept of the probability of life's systems developing by chance alone.

      Another excellent source on that is James Coppedge's book which again does not deal with that in the same way, but comes to the same conclusion.

      Again, I suggest to you that you have to deal practically with the arguments that are at hand, and attempting to argue from what we don't know and ignoring logical arguments that can be made from areas that do not necessitate the use of our five senses as the only ways in which we can obtain truth is necessary — not only in this discussion, but in other discussions as well.

      In regard to the other questions, I think that you have to realize that heat death is an operating principle throughout the Cosmos, and any time you restrict that to either the Earth or to the Earth-Sun system, you have restricted it too much to be meaningfully discussed.

      The Cosmos as a whole is subject to the heat death principle and, therefore, can be used in that respect.

      Your second comment fails to recognize the fact that there are good chemical reasons why we can restrict the formation of life to specific initial conditions. Arguing that changing the conditions changes life precludes the chemical problems involved with and must be dealt with. The SP³ hybridization of the carbon atom, for example, necessitates by chemical laws that certain materials can be used in dealing with the creation and not others. You attempted to side-step that issue, but it cannot be done without negating a good part of biochemistry.

      I might also point out that the discussion of species is confused in your discussion with the word "kind" which is not even remotely related.

      Your last comment made a colossal assumption, in which you did exactly the thing you accused me of doing. You make the statement "The fossil record shows the history of evolution of life on earth though this history is very incomplete" — that is a statement of your conclusion — not a statement of what the fossil record actually shows. It is important to distinguish between conclusions and what the data really says.

      Thanks again for your letter, and I hope these comments are useful and that you will consider the sources that have been sent.

Sincerely,
John N. Clayton

Enclosures
Space, Time & Eternity, by Stromberg
Heresy in the Halls of Biology, by Eden