The Ultimate Boeing 747 argument has been known to go straight over people's heads

The "Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit" is an argument for the improbability of the existence of God introduced by Richard Dawkins in chapter 4 "Why there almost certainly is no God" of his book The God Delusion. His statement is as follows: A Qantas Boeing 747-400 (registration unknown) lands over the roofs of Myrtle Avenue at the south east corner of London (Heathrow) Airport. ... A Qantas Boeing 747-400 (registration unknown) lands over the roofs of Myrtle Avenue at the south east corner of London (Heathrow) Airport. ... Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941) is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. ... The God Delusion is a non-fiction book by British ethologist Richard Dawkins, Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. ...

"However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747" ^[1]

Background

The reference to the "Boeing 747" is an allusion to Fred Hoyle who reportedly stated that the "probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane sweeping through a scrap-yard would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747." ^[2]. Dawkins objects to this argument being deployed on the grounds that it is made "...by somebody who doesn't understand the first thing about natural selection.". Not only in the God Delusion book but in a theme that runs though all of Dawkins' books, chance has nothing to do with the evolution of life but presents that natural selection is the mechanism that is at work and that the apparent improbability of something does mean evidence of design or a designer. He goes further in this chapter of The God Delusion to present examples of apparent design. The chapter concludes that his argument from improbability or his "Ultimate 747 gambit" is a very serious argument against the existance of god and that he has yet to hear "a theologian give a convincing answer despite numerous opportunities and invitations to do so." ^[3]. Dawkins finds support for his claim from Dan Dennett in which he quotes him as stating that it is "an unrebuttable refutation..." ^[4]. Sir Fred Hoyle (June 24, 1915 in Bingley, Yorkshire – August 20, 2001 in Bournemouth, England) was a British astronomer, notable for a number of his theories that run counter to current astronomical opinion, and a writer of science fiction, including a number of books co-authored by his son Geoffrey... Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts), is a prominent American philosopher. ...

Philosophical statement of the Argument

Comments by notable commentators

Alister McGrath in The Dawkins Delusion? suggests that "Dawkins points out the sheer improbability of our existence. Belief in God, he then argues, represents belief in a being whose existence must be even more complex – and therefore more improbable. Yet this leap from the recognition of complexity to the assertion of improbability is highly problematic. Why is something complex improbable? A “theory of everything” may well be more complex than the lesser theories that it explains – but what has that to do with its improbability?...The one inescapable and highly improbable fact about the world is that we, as reflective human beings, are in fact here. Now it is virtually impossible to quantify how improbable the existence of humanity is. Dawkins himself is clear, especially in Climbing Mount Improbable, that it is very, very improbable. But we are here. The very fact that we are puzzling about how we came to be here is dependent on the fact that we are here, and are thus able to reflect on the likelihood of this actuality. Perhaps we need to appreciate that there are many things that seem improbable – but improbability does not, and never has, entailed non-existence. We may be highly improbable – yet we are here. The issue, then, is not whether God is probable, but whether God is actual."^[5] Alister E. McGrath (b. ... The Dawkins Delusion? is a non-fiction book by the biochemist and Christian theologian Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, written as a critical response to Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion. ...

H. Allen Orr in The New York Review of Books^[6] suggests that Dawkins "suffers from several problems when he tries to reason philosophically" and complains of "excercises in double standards" - specifically he suggests that objections of the kind Dawkins raises to the "proofs" of the existence of God apply to his "Ultimate Boeing 747 argument". "one needn't be a creationist to note that Dawkins's argument suffers at least two potential problems. H. Allen Orr is an Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester He is an evolutionary geneticist with several broad interests. ... The New York Review of Books (or NYREV or NYRB) is a biweekly magazine on literature, culture, and current affairs published in New York which takes, as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity. ...

• First, as others have pointed out, if he is right, the design hypothesis essentially must be wrong and the alternative naturalistic hypothesis essentially must be right. But since when is a scientific hypothesis confirmed by philosophical gymnastics, not data?
• Second, the fact that we as scientists find a hypothesis question-begging — as when Dawkins asks "who designed the designer?" — cannot, in itself, settle its truth value. It could, after all, be a brute fact of the universe that it derives from some transcendent mind, however question-begging this may seem. What explanations we find satisfying might say more about us than about the explanations. Why, for example, is Dawkins so untroubled by his own (large) assumption that both matter and the laws of nature can be viewed as given? Why isn't that question-begging?"

Alvin Plantinga suggests that there are two basic flaws in the argument^[7]: Alvin Cornelius Plantinga (born 15 November 1932 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, of Frisian ancestry) is a contemporary American philosopher known for his work in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. ...

• "First, is God complex? According to much classical theology (Thomas Aquinas, for example) God is simple, and simple in a very strong sense, so that in him there is no distinction of thing and property, actuality and potentiality, essence and existence, and the like. Some of the discussions of divine simplicity get pretty complicated, not to say arcane...[indeed] according to Dawkins' own definition of complexity, God is not complex. According to his definition (set out in The Blind Watchmaker), something is complex if it has parts that are "arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone." But of course God is a spirit, not a material object at all, and hence has no parts. A fortiori ... God doesn't have parts arranged in ways unlikely to have arisen by chance. Therefore, given the definition of complexity Dawkins himself proposes, God is not complex."

• "But ... suppose we concede, at least for purposes of argument, that God is complex...why does Dawkins think it follows that God would be improbable? Given materialism and the idea that the ultimate objects in our universe are the elementary particles of physics, perhaps a being that knew a great deal would be improbable—how could those particles get arranged in such a way as to constitute a being with all that knowledge? Of course we aren't given materialism. Dawkins is arguing that theism is improbable; it would be dialectically deficient in excelsis to argue this by appealing to materialism as a premise. Of course it is unlikely that there is such a person as God if materialism is true; in fact materialism logically entails that there is no such person as God; but it would be obviously question-begging to argue that theism is improbable because materialism is true. So why think God must be improbable? According to classical theism, God is a necessary being; it is not so much as possible that there should be no such person as God; he exists in all possible worlds. But if God is a necessary being, if he exists in all possible worlds, then the probability that he exists, of course, is 1, and the probability that he does not exist is 0. Far from its being improbable that he exists, his existence is maximally probable. So if Dawkins proposes that God's existence is improbable, he owes us an argument for the conclusion that there is no necessary being with the attributes of God — an argument that doesn't just start from the premise that materialism is true. Neither he nor anyone else has provided even a decent argument along these lines; Dawkins doesn't even seem to be aware that he needs an argument of that sort."

Saint Thomas Aquinas [Thomas of Aquin, or Aquino] (c. ... Cover illustration by the zoologist Desmond Morris The Blind Watchmaker is a 1986 book by Richard Dawkins in which he presents an explanation of, and argument for, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. ...

Notes & References

1. ^ The God Delusion p114
2. ^ The God Delusion p113
3. ^ The God Delusion p157
4. ^ The God Delusion p157
5. ^ The Dawkins Delusion?p24-25
6. ^ H. Allen Orr (January 2007). "A Mission to Convert". New York Review of Books (54.1). Retrieved on 2007-03-03. 
7. ^ Alvin Plantinga (2007). The Dawkins Confusion - Naturalism ad absurdum. Books & Culture, a Christian Review. Retrieved on 2007-03-02.