Empire State Building, Evolution and Absurdity

20Mar07

Recently, for the umpteenth time, I encountered a common creationist argument that is built on such gross misunderstandings on so many levels that I feel the need for some serious argument-smashing. A combination of the teleological argument (argument from design) and misunderstandings of both evolution and probability theory, it goes something like this:

When we look at the Empire State Building, we see great order and complexity. The odds that this building has just assembled itself right there are astronomical. Just as it is foolish to believe that a skyscraper has just appeared by itself, so it is foolish to think that humans, with our extremely complex bodies, have appeared by evolution. Obviously, like a building needs an architect, humans need an architect (i.e. God).

Notice the familiar form of teleological arguments. They go like this:

1. If a creator exists, then there would be order in the universe.
2. There is order in the universe.
3. A creator exists.

This is the fallacy called affirming the consequent. To see why it is wrong, let me show you my simple proof that there is no creator:

1. If a creator doesn’t exist, we would observe diverse god concepts in different cultures.
2. We observe diverse god concepts in different cultures.
3. A creator doesn’t exist.

Using this same form of argument, I can both prove and disprove God’s existence. If we allow this, absurdities will ensue.

Further, there is the misunderstanding of both probability and evolution. Let’s do a thought experiment to show the faulty understanding of probability. Pick up (mentally or physically) a die and throw it ten times, noting for every throw what number results. You should now have a series of ten numbers in the range 1-6, such as this: 1, 4, 6, 3, 1, 2, 4, 5, 2, 6. What are the odds that you’d get exactly that sequence? 6¹⁰ (that’s six raised to the tenth power). That’s roughly a one in 60 million chance! In hindsight, getting that exact sequence seems almost magical. This is only because in hindsight, we always get it right. This seems like an extraordinary event because the chance of getting this exact sequence is so low, but at the same time the probability that we will get one of the 60 million possible series is extremely high (events that could prevent this would be a die splitting, for instance: an example is in Snorri Sturlason’s king sagas (Heimskringla), where a Norwegian king supposedly won a piece of land from the Swedish king with a throw of dice where “God” split the die so that the result was 2 + 5, giving 7). Interestingly, though our intuition tells us otherwise, the series 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 is no less likely to occur than any other sequence.

In this thought experiment, there were only ten parameters and six possible values. The Empire State Building, of course, has many orders of magnitude more variables and possible values.

This brings us to the misunderstanding of evolution. As few creationists but most atheists have realized, evolution is not a game of blind chance but rather a systematic game where a non-random process (natural selection) operates on a set of lives with slight, random differences from their peers. The misunderstanding, assuming in good faith that the creationists framing the above argument are indeed aware of natural selection, lies with hindsight. The creationist sets a goal, namely producing a well-known building. However, natural selection has no goals. Natural selection doesn’t have the goal of producing progressively more advanced species. An elephant is no closer to the “goal” of natural selection than bacteria. Natural selection selects only for fitness in a given environment.

For the analogy to be right, there must be some process analogous to evolution with buildings. Buildings must fit the criteria for life, and further, since natural selection selects only for fitness, the environment must be such that the closer a building is to Empire State Building, the fitter it is (the more children it spawns). Now we can see how absurd this is. Even if there was a process analogous to evolution happening with buildings, it’s difficult to imagine what kind of environment would reward similarity to Empire State Building and punish dissimilarity.

So the problems with this argument are on three levels, no less: the use of faulty logic, the misunderstanding of probability and the misunderstanding of evolution, the last two being intertwined. I hope this is the last time I hear about this absurdity, but I doubt it.

In other news, like Lord J-Bar, I’ve received a free copy of The “God” Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper (actually, it came yesterday) for review. This is an expanded re-release, so obviously they’re looking for publicity, and publicity they’ll get. I’ll post a review of it when I’ve finished it. Off to read!

Filed under: atheism, bullshit arguments, evolution, intelligent design, science, superstition, theism   |  7 Comments