Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit

The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is an argument for the improbability of the existence of God. It was introduced by Richard Dawkins in chapter 4 "Why there almost certainly is no God" of his 2006 book The God Delusion. Dawkins offers it as a counter-argument to the modern form of the argument from design.
== Context and history ==
Richard Dawkins begins The God Delusion by making it clear that the God he talks about is the Abrahamic concept of a personal god who is susceptible to worship. He considers the existence of such an entity to be a scientific question, because a universe with such a god would be significantly different from a universe without one, and he says that the difference would be empirically discernible. Therefore, Dawkins concludes, the same kind of reasoning can be applied to the God Hypothesis as to any other scientific question. 
After discussing the most common arguments for the existence of God in chapter 3, Dawkins concludes that the argument from design is the most convincing. The extreme improbability of life and a universe capable of hosting it requires explanation, but Dawkins considers the God Hypothesis inferior to evolution by natural selection as explanations for the complexity of life. As part of his efforts to refute intelligent design, he redirects the argument from complexity in an attempt to show that God must have been designed by a superintelligent designer, and then goes on to present his probabilistic argument against the existence of God. Also available here, second review on page. 
Dawkins' name for the statistical demonstration that God almost certainly does not exist is the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit. This is an allusion to Hoyle's fallacy. Fred Hoyle reportedly stated that the "probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747."The God Delusion, p. 113 The basic argument against empirical theism dates back at least to David Hume, whose objection can be popularly stated as "Who designed the designer?", but according to Daniel Dennett the innovation of Dawkins' argument is, first, to show that where design fails to explain complexity, evolution by natural selection succeeds and is the only workable solution, and, second, to argue how this should illuminate the confusion surrounding the anthropic principle.
== Dawkins' statement ==
Dawkins summarizes his argument as follows.The God Delusion, p. 157–8 The references to "crane" and "skyhook" are ideas from Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
A central thesis of the argument is that evolution by natural selection is a simpler and thus, according to Occam's razor, a better explanation than the God Hypothesis. He cites a paragraph where Richard Swinburne agrees that a simpler explanation is better but reasons that theism is simpler because it only invokes a single substance, God, as a cause and maintainer of every other object. This cause is seen as omnipotent, omniscient and totally free. Dawkins argues that an entity that monitors and controls every particle in the universe and listens to all our thoughts and prayers cannot be simple. His existence would require a "mammoth explanation" of its own. The theory of natural selection is much simpler than the theory of the existence of such a complex being, and thus preferable.The God Delusion, p. 147–149 
Dawkins then turns to a discussion of Keith Ward's views on divine simplicity to show the difficulty "the theological mind has in grasping where the complexity of life comes from." Dawkins writes that Ward is sceptical of Arthur Peacocke's ideas that evolution is directed by other forces than only natural selection and that these processes may have a propensity toward increasing complexity. Dawkins says that this scepticism is justified, because complexity doesn't come from biased mutations. Dawkins writes: 
[Natural selection], as far as we know, is the only process ultimately capable of generating complexity out of simplicity. The theory of natural selection is genuinely simple. So is the origin from which it starts. That which it explains, on the other hand, is complex almost beyond telling: more complex than anything we can imagine, save a God capable of designing it.The God Delusion, p. 151
=== Dawkins' response to criticism ===
Dawkins writes about his attendance at a conference in Cambridge sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, where he challenged the theologians present to respond to the argument that a creator of a universe with such complexity would have to be complex and improbable.The God Delusion, p. 153 According to Dawkins, the strongest response was the objection that he was imposing a scientific epistemology on a question that lies beyond the realm of science. When theologians hold God to be simple, who is a scientist like Dawkins "to dictate to theologians that their God had to be complex?"The God Delusion, p. 154 Dawkins writes that he didn't get the impression that those employing this "evasive" defence were being "wilfully dishonest," but were "defining themselves into an epistemological Safe Zone where rational argument could not reach them because they had declared by fiat that it could not." 
The theologians, he writes, demanded that there must be a first cause, which can be given the name God. Dawkins responds that it must have been a simple cause, and he contends that God is not an appropriate name for it, unless God is divested of its normal associations. Dawkins wants the first cause to be a "self-bootstrapping crane" that slowly lifts the world to its current complexity. Postulating a prime mover that is capable of indulging in intelligent design is in Dawkins' opinion "a total abdication of the responsibility to find an explanation." He says that he doesn't require a narrowly scientific explanation, but what any honest theory that accounts for the complex phenomena of the natural world requires is a crane and not a skyhook.The God Delusion, p. 155
== Assessment and criticism ==
Theist authors have presented extensive opposition, most notably by theologian Alister McGrath in The Dawkins Delusion?, and philosophers Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne. Another such negative review, by biologist H. Allen Orr, has sparked heated debate. Norman Levitt disagrees with Orr, asking why theologians are assumed to have the exclusive right to write about who "rules" the universe. Daniel Dennett also took exception to Orr's review and the two had an exchange of open letters.The full exchange of open letters is in Edge The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny also considers this argument to be flawed. Anthony Kenny 2007 Presidential Royal Institute of PhilosophyAnnual Lecture, Published in Philosophy Volume 82 number 321 July 2007 pp381-397
=== Simplicity of God and materialist assumptions ===
Both Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne raise the objection that God is not complex. Swinburne gives two reasons why a God that controls every particle can be simple. First, he writes that a person is not the same as his brain, and he points to split-brain experiments that he has discussed in his previous work, thus he argues that a simple entity like our self can control our brain, which is a very complex thing. Second, he argues that simplicity is a quality that is intrinsic to a hypothesis, and not related to its empirical consequences. 
Plantinga writes "So first, according to classical theology, God is simple, not complex. More remarkable, perhaps, is that according to Dawkins' own definition of complexity, God is not complex. According to his definition (set out in The Blind Watchmaker), something is complex if it has parts that are "arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone." But of course God is a spirit, not a material object at all, and hence has no parts. A fortiori (as philosophers like to say) God doesn't have parts arranged in ways unlikely to have arisen by chance. Therefore, given the definition of complexity Dawkins himself proposes, God is not complex." He continues "But second, suppose we concede, at least for purposes of argument, that God is complex. Perhaps we think the more a being knows, the more complex it is; God, being omniscient, would then be highly complex. Given materialism and the idea that the ultimate objects in our universe are the elementary particles of physics, perhaps a being that knew a great deal would be improbable—how could those particles get arranged in such a way as to constitute a being with all that knowledge? Of course we aren't given materialism."
In an extensive analysis published in Science and Christian Belief Patrick Richmond suggests that "It seems that Dawkins is right to object to unexplained organised complexity in God" but that God is simply specified and lacks the sort of real composition and limitations found in creatures, so the theist can explain why nature exists without granting unexplained organised complexity or the extreme improbability of God."Patrick Richmond "Richard Dawkins' Darwinian Objection to Unexplained Complexity in God" Science and Christian Belief Vol 19 No 2 pp99-106 (2007)
=== Necessity of external explanations ===
There are many variations on how to express this objection. William F. Vallicella holds that organized complexity as such does not need explanation, because when in search of an ultimate explanation, one must in the end accept an entity whose complexity has no external explanation.Vallicella's discussion with Wielenberg is here And Plantinga writes that when not in search for an ultimate explanation of organized complexity, it is perfectly fine to explain one kind of complexity, that of terrestrial life, in terms of another kind of complexity, namely divine activity.
Alister McGrath suggests that the leap from the recognition of complexity to the assertion of improbability is problematic, as a theory of everything would be more complex than the theories it would replace, yet one would not conclude that it is less probable. He then argues that probability is not relevant to the question of existence: life on earth is highly improbable, and yet we do exist. The important question in his view is not whether God is probable, but whether God is actual.The Dawkins Delusion?, pp. 24–25 On the point of probability, Alvin Plantinga says that since according to classical theism, God is a necessary being, he is by definition maximally probable, and thus to show the improbability of God, one has to present an argument showing that there is no necessary being with the qualities attributed to God.
==References==
Category:Atheism
God, arguments against the existence of
Category:Arguments against the existence of God
Category:Richard Dawkins
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