I’ve been reading The Challenge of Creation by Natan Slifkin of late. While I will reserve a more complete judgment until I actually finish the book, there is one argument which Slifkin has made repeatedly which really doesn’t sit well with me. It is that argument (put forward by many proponents of intelligent design) that the universe is just too darn coincidental to be an accident. For example, Slifkin points out the improbability of the sun emitting light which we can see. (As he points out, there is a tremendously large EM spectrum, and the odds of it emitting the tiny fraction which we call visible light, and not say, X-rays which would be deadly to us is incredibly small).

This argument, to me, is an example of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. If the sun had emitted different light, we would have evolved to see different light, rather than be damaged by it. If this sun hadn’t been suitable for life, life could still have evolved on one of the practically infinite other worlds or stars. However this activity (trying to show that a coincidence is just a coincidence) could continue indefinitely as there are an infinite number of them to explore. The more convincing argument for me is this:

Let’s assume that there is a creator. If the creator wanted to be provable by man, then it wouldn’t be something as subtle as a series of coincidences which might be just coincidences. Rather it would be something so blatantly obvious that no man could argue with it. The absence of such an obvious proof can mean that either there is no creator, or that the creator does not want there to be reliable, obvious, scientific proof of its existence. In the latter case, trying to find such a proof would be obviously futile. (Unless of course you honestly think that you’re smarter than the creator).

In other words, maybe god actually wants us to have faith.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 5:10 pm by Ari and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.