A Planet Wholly Inhabited by Spiders
Welcome to the Philosophy Carpark, where you can leave a ding in the bodywork of truth and drive off without leaving a note, because frankly they were parked too close to the line and got what was coming to them.
As this is only the second episode, I’m still thinking about origins. And so I thought that this week on the Philosophy Carpark we might talk about the origins of the universe. But then I realised that this wasn’t actually very interesting — It’s God! It’s Science! — and probably isn’t a well-defined question anyway. So instead, we are going to talk about the origins of a particular way of thinking about the origins of the universe. And more importantly, why all those popular science books you’ve read about evolutionary biology have absolutely nothing of philosophical value to add to the conversation. (You might as well thrown them out now. Or not. What do I care?)
In particular, we are going to look at the idea that the development of modern science has undermined the conviction that the universe must have been designed by some all-powerful deity. This in turn is part of a wider assumption that science and religion are somehow in conflict, and that the progress of the former therefore comes at the expense of the latter. And this is clearly an embarrassingly stupid thing to say, not least because the whole idea that the universe is even amendable to scientific investigation was originally rooted in the theological conviction that it was made by Someone Who Knew What They Were Doing. And no, while we’re at it, the Church has never been involved in the systematic persecution of scientists — that particular myth has its origins in the mid-19th-century, when a newly emerging class of professional scientists found it expedient to rewrite history in order to help secure more funding (fortunately, this never happens today).
Moreover, the growing picture of physical and biological complexity that resulted from the Scientific Revolution only served to revitalise theological speculation. How could the universe be so well-ordered without it being deliberately designed that way? Such reasoning is known as the Design Argument, and while the line of thought goes all the way back to Antiquity — more-or-less to the moment when someone first looked up at the stars and thought “gosh” — it was the English philosopher and clergyman William Paley who popularised the idea by comparing the complexity of nature with that of a man-made artefact. He argued that if we discovered something as complex and well-designed as a pocket-watch abandoned on the moors, we would instantly suppose that it was the deliberate work of a craftsman; by parity of reasoning therefore, when we discover the infinitely greater complexity and design of the natural world around us, we should conclude that it was the deliberate work of an infinitely greater Craftsman.
Now, there are clearly a number of glaring weaknesses with the argument. Actually, it’s a truly dreadful argument that no-one should take seriously; and it was the Scottish philosopher David Hume who provided the ultimate demolition job in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (published posthumously in 1779). To begin with, Hume noted that the starting point of the argument — that the world is wonderfully well-designed — is a tiny bit subjective, and may not actually appear that way to everyone (this is basically everything you need to know about Existentialism). He then noted that you do not need a Divine Craftsman to explain biological complexity, since there are other ways in which it could have arisen, including spontaneous generation or as the result of random processes. And finally, Hume points out that even if we suppose that complex biological phenomena could not have arisen through random chance, it seems peculiarly self-important to suppose that the ultimate cause must resemble some kind of intelligent human design. As Hume puts it:
The Brahmins assert, that the world arose from an infinite spider, who spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels, and annihilates afterwards the whole or any part of it, by absorbing it again, and resolving it into his own essence. Here is a species of cosmogony, which appears to us ridiculous; because a spider is a little contemptible animal, whose operations we are never likely to take for a model of the whole universe. But still here is a new species of analogy, even in our globe. And were there a planet, wholly inhabited by spiders, (which is very possible), this inference would there appear as a natural and irrefragable as that which in our planet ascribes the origin of all things to design and intelligence ... Why an orderly system may not be spun from the belly as well as from the brain, it will be difficult for him to give a satisfactory reason.
I am not familiar with the elements of Hindu cosmogony to which Hume refers; but I take it that no-one missed the insinuation that the advocate of the Design Argument is — just like the spider — pulling it out of his arse.
But all of that is besides the point. For Hume, the biggest problem with the Design Argument is that it has to satisfy two competing demands. On the one hand, in order for the argument to be as compelling as possible, the analogy between material artefacts and the natural world has to be as close as possible. The more that we can convince ourselves that pocket-watches and opposable thumbs display the same sort of deliberate design, the more plausible it will be to conclude that both require a similar sort of explanation. Yet on the other hand, the analogy between material artefacts and the natural world cannot be too good, or else we will end up inferring the existence of a creator not all that dissimilar to ourselves — a rather lacklustre deity whose abilities barely outstrip those of the local artisan, and who would certainly not justify much in the way of religious devotion and praise. These two demands therefore pull against one another. The more convincing the analogy, the less impressive the conclusion. It’s a lose-lose situation.
And all of this raises some interesting questions. Not about the origins of the universe. But about the continuing obsession with certain arguments about the origin of the universe. There is no meaningful conflict between science and religion. Even if there were, it has long been accepted by philosophers that the Design Argument is the weakest argument for the existence of God (although admittedly, there is some stiff competition). Moreover, it is also pretty obvious that refuting one argument for the existence of God hardly constitutes an argument for the non-existence of God. Yet many of our intellectual superiors still see attacking the Design Argument as constituting some sort of major victory towards the establishment of a more rational i.e. secular society. And they attempt to do so by writing ever more books illustrating how biological complexity can emerge in the absence of divine oversight, even though Hume made exactly the same point a good half century before Darwin even set foot aboard the Beagle.
Of course, sometimes first-rate scientists can also make third-rate philosophers (this is basically everything you need to know about Bioethics). And there are those of a less charitable disposition who might suggest that many of our intellectual superiors are simply fanatical atheists who feel an evangelical zeal to promulgate the one true faith for the benefit of the unenlightened masses. It is important to remember that while a well-functioning natural world can emerge without the benefits of top-down central planning, social and political order can only be established through the guidance of our benevolent experts.
But perhaps the truth is that sometimes even the most critical of thinkers will need to peddle some half-baked nonsense now and then in order to earn a living — and there is no way the management at the Philosophy Carpark is going to criticise that sort of behaviour (incidentally, if you want to read more about all of this, you can purchase my book here).