True Reason: Tom Gilson Replies & My Response

My review of True Reason was posted to Skeptic Ink several weeks ago and one of the authors and editors replied to one of the chapters written by him. Tom Gilson is the author of the Thinking Christian website and he authored three of the chapters in the book. The chapter he responded to was the first one where he made a number of errors, one of which was failing to respond effectively to Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker. As of this writing, Tom's reply can still be seen on the review posted at Skeptic Ink.

Tom Gilson:

Thank you for the review!

I'm not sure you caught the point of my criticism of Dawkins' book, however. You are defending Dawkins for "rebut[ting] the claims of Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates who argue that some feature of evolution could not possibly have occurred naturally." I agree with you that Dawkins did not fail to address those sets of claims.

But recall that the subtitle of the book was, "Why The Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design." Recall also that the climax of his argument was that God is "superfluous."

So suppose that Dawkins was completely successful in demonstrating that evolution happened as he described. I doubt that he was, but that's another matter, and for now we can take it for the sake of argument that he did succeed. Suppose he even demonstrated that God was superfluous to the natural history of biological creatures. Would this show (as he claims) that there is no God? How? There's still a disappointingly fallacious logical leap from, "Here's one aspect of the world we can explain without God," to, "There is no God." He reasoned poorly there.

Again: suppose evolution happened as he supposes: does that reveal a universe without design? Once you get done with studying evolution, there's still a whole lot of universe left over! There's cosmogony, cosmology, fine-tuning, the rationality and explainability of reality, and the full panoply of as-yet-unexplained human characteristics including consciousness, rationality, free will, and worth, which Dawkins didn't touch in that book (as I recall), and of which no evolutionary account has given an adequate treatment.

So in that sense he made a large and fallacious logical leap, too.

Dawkins is simply wrong, by the way, in his insistent and undying assertion that God must be "organized complexity." The God of classical Christian theism could not be "organized complexity." But he's never taken the effort to look into that, as far as I can tell.

(I did read the whole book, by the way.)

So I don't think I made the logical error you think I made when I wrote that chapter. But thank you again for interacting with it.

Arizona Atheist:

Hi Tom, thanks for stopping by. I am, however, confused by many your comments.

You write, "I'm not sure you caught the point of my criticism of Dawkins' book, however. You are defending Dawkins for "rebut[ting] the claims of Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates who argue that some feature of evolution could not possibly have occurred naturally." I agree with you that Dawkins did not fail to address those sets of claims." Then you say, "But recall that the subtitle of the book was, "Why The Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. Recall also that the climax of his argument was that God is 'superfluous.' Suppose he even demonstrated that God was superfluous to the natural history of biological creatures. Would this show (as he claims) that there is no God? How?” (emphasis mine)

In your chapter you say explicitly that you were looking for a “serious challenge” against the notion of god-guided evolution. You said, “I picked up the book because of its subtitle: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. I had no idea how he – or anyone – could make a case for […] disprov[ing] design in the universe [and] I wanted to test my mettle against it.” (True Reason, p.2)

You say nothing about the very existence of god in your chapter, which is not even addressed by Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker, so why you seem to be changing your argument from one purely about god-guided evolution to one about the existence of god confuses me.

You seem to be contradicting yourself here.

In your chapter, you are clearly responding to Dawkins' case against god-guided evolution. Your chapter presents an accurate description of Dawkins' intentions in The Blind Watchmaker. But here, you're arguing that you agree that Dawkins did successfully argue that point (that there is no evidence of god-guided evolution) and are now claiming Dawkins' intention was to disprove the very existence of god. But Dawkins nowhere says anything about disproving the very existence of god in the entire book.

In fact, where you quote Dawkins as saying that “God is "superfluous” he is not referring to god at all, but a certain belief about god's role in evolution. Here is the text from The Blind Watchmaker: “We cannot disprove beliefs like these, especially if it is assumed that God took care that his intervention always closely mimicked what would be expected from evolution by natural selection. All that we can say about such beliefs is, firstly, that they are superfluous and, secondly, that they assume the existence of the main things we want to explain, namely organized complexity.”

He said nothing of the kind, that there is no god. Only that the belief in god-guided evolution has no evidence going for it, and because natural selection explains the evolution of all creatures on this planet so well, the idea of “smuggling god in the back door,” to quote Dawkins, is unnecessary.

Hopefully you can help me to better understand what your intentions were because you're saying two completely different things here and in your chapter. I considered that perhaps you updated your chapter in the 2014 edition, because I own only the edition published by Patheos Press from 2012. But I read your chapter on Amazon in the newer edition and you make the same argument, so I'm even more confused. You're clearly contradicting yourself here.

You write, “Again: suppose evolution happened as he supposes: does that reveal a universe without design? Once you get done with studying evolution, there's still a whole lot of universe left over! There's cosmogony, cosmology, fine-tuning, the rationality and explainability of reality, and the full panoply of as-yet-unexplained human characteristics including consciousness, rationality, free will, and worth, which Dawkins didn't touch in that book (as I recall), and of which no evolutionary account has given an adequate treatment. So in that sense he made a large and fallacious logical leap, too.”

Yes, it's true that Dawkins' book only addressed the belief of god-guided evolution, but evolution is Dawkins' main area of expertise and he wanted to address this specific claim. And this is what he means by “design.” He's not referring to all design arguments, but only the specific subset dealing with biological design. If someone writes a book with the intention of covering a single topic I think it's unfair to criticize it for failing to address other related topics. It's like criticizing a historian for only covering the Middle Ages when there is so much more history to tell. Well, of course. It's not that they're unaware these other periods exist (keeping with the analogy), they just decided to focus on one time period. Similarly, Dawkins is aware of other forms of the design argument, his chosen topic was the issue of biological design.

Once again, Dawkins wasn't arguing in that book that god does not exist. He was only discussing god's alleged role in the evolutionary process, which you acknowledge in your chapter, but not here in the comments.

Now that we've got that sorted out, let's address your last argument. You write, “Dawkins is simply wrong, by the way, in his insistent and undying assertion that God must be "organized complexity." The God of classical Christian theism could not be "organized complexity." But he's never taken the effort to look into that, as far as I can tell.”

I would agree with you that theologians have often described god as simple, but at the same time I've never been able to understand how someone can make such strong assertions about the nature of something to which we have no evidence for. What is the basis for this assertion? It is philosophy, theology, the bible? I would be much appreciative if you could answer this for me.

Finally you write, “So I don't think I made the logical error you think I made when I wrote that chapter. But thank you again for interacting with it.”

1) I believe I did point out an error in your chapter;

2) You've contradicted yourself here in the comments, since you say nothing in your chapter about the existence of god, and only discuss (correctly) Dawkins' arguments against the claim that god guided the evolutionary process. What do arguments against the existence of god have to do with your chapter and my response? The issue was the argument that god helped to guide the evolutionary process, nothing about arguments for god's existence. This is my main point of confusion and why I believe you're contradicting yourself. You make one argument in the chapter and a completely different one here that are not related.

You're very welcome. It was a good read, but I honestly do not believe you or any of your co-authors were successful in making your case. Over the course of the next few weeks I will be rolling out my responses to each chapter.

I welcome an open dialogue with you and the other authors if you choose to. It should be interesting.

I'm looking forward to your response. Thanks again and take care.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm still hoping Tom comes by to respond to my reply and my follow up questions. I truly do not know how he can square away this contradiction, but I'm looking forward to a dialogue if he ever returns.

After thinking about this contradiction, it dawned on me that this is not the first time I've seen such strange tactics from a Christian apologist, where their defense of their argument does not appear to match their initial argument I responded to, and they accuse me of misreading it. It seems as if Tom is taking a page from David Marshall's “School of Apologetics” play book, but I believe I've effectively pointed out this contradiction, which will make it hard for Tom to continue to claim he didn't really mean what he said in this chapter of his. Thinking further about this, it made me wonder why so many Christians accuse atheists of misreading their arguments, even when it is perfectly clear that was not the case. Is it purposeful deceit or is it merely some kind of cognitive dissonance? An innocent cognitive error they do not even realize they're making? Lying for the Christian faith is not unprecedented since Martin Luther argued for lying to protect the Christian church. He wrote, concerning the bigamy of Philip of Hesse, “Is it not a good plan to say that the bigamy had been discussed and should not Philip say that he had indeed debated the matter, but had not yet come to a decision? All else must be kept quiet. What is it, if for the good and sake of the Christian Church, one should tell a good, strong lie?” [1]

With seeing such glaring contradictions it is hard for me to understand how someone can't possibly see such errors, but I've learned that cognitive errors and biases are a very strong force and can blind even the most intelligent and honest persons. I believe this is the most likely cause of Tom's contradiction, but now the question becomes: how to make him aware of his mistake? Hopefully by placing his comments side by side as I did in my reply it will help him see the contradiction. If he ever comes to defend his chapters I very much hope that he takes the time to respond, because I think he is inclined to do so, having made such a large mistake.

1. The Life and Letters of Martin Luther, by Preserved Smith, Ph.D., Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911; 381