Posted: Jun 25, 2010 5:10 pm
AMR wrote:This was the line of reasoning I was responding to in the originial post:I take it that Dawkins' argument for the improbability of God is rather simple...
1. God himself would have to be more complex than the highly complex universe.
2. What is complex is improbable, and is improbable to the degree it is complex.
3. God is highly improbable. That is, he almost certainly does not exist.
Assuming this is a correct summation of Dawkins' argument: God's complexity>Universe complexity, & complexity=rare, then it should follow that God is rare or improbable. I just upended his argument that the progenitor of highly complex phenomena must be even more complex, it doesn't.
I don't think he ever said that any progenitor of any complex phenomenon must be even more complex; he was just talking about the particular case of something deliberately created, and contrasting the case where you assume something complex to start with against a satisfying 'bottom up' explanation starting with simple things, like evolution.