Could God create a universe more complex than God?
If the answer is "yes," where does that leave the Ontological Argument? Consider: God is the being greater than which nothing can be conceived. Yet we have conceived of a universe more complex than God. Is this problematic, perhaps logically impossible, or a true reductio?
If the answer is "no," where does that leave the Argument from Design? Consider: The evidence for design is "specified complexity," and God, ergo, would be more complex than (or equally complex as) any part of creation. Wouldn't that mean that God would be brimming with evidence for design? Does ID lead theists into an infinite regress?
3 comments:
I'm not at all confident in the success of your argument. Greatness and complexity are not the same thing--in fact, many classical thinkers would suggest that their relationship is inverse (the simpler a thing is, the greater it is). This stronger claim isn't necessary to deflate your argument though--all the theist need posit is that complexity has no necessary relation to greatness. God's being the greatest possible being doesn't entail, then, that he is the most complex.
Furthermore, if Dembski's SC is coherent--is it a conceptual apparatus that can be applied to God? SC, as far as I understand (although Dembski seems to flip-flop on this) is applicable only to information. What Godish information is to be under the microscope is puzzling to me; is the information in question the contents of God's mind? A linguistic list of his metaphysical parts and properties? A string of true propositions with God as a referent?
If simpler things are greater, the greatest thing, the simplest thing, would then be nothing--unless there is some (arbitrary?) lower bound on simplicity. Also, the fact that the ontological argument limits the definition of "greatness" into certain (again, arbitrary?) classifications likely damns it as subjective. There have to be good, non-question-begging reasons for certain attributes to be greater than others.
Your question about applying Dembski's SC to God is what I'm interested in. Can we properly conceive of a designer that can manipulate matter into "designs," but itself has no internal information content? (How we would go about measuring or detecting it would be a separate question.) Is excusing God from the SC framework a form of special pleading?
I'm not inclined to think that nothing is a thing. There is not any thing such that it is nothing.
And I think you're right that the theist shouldn't resort to the move that "necessarily, simplicity contributes to greatness." There's just not any good reason to think this is true.
But likewise, I know of no good reason to think that "necessarily, complexity contributes to greatness," which seems to be assumed by the second horn of your dilemma.
As for SC, Dembski's writing is so confused on this matter that I have no idea what it is. Employing SC in an argument for *any* conclusion is thus unwise, I think. =)
Post a Comment