Season 4 Podcast 141, A New Voice of Freedom, Argument for the Existence of God, Episode 2, “The Fallacy of the Anthropic Principle.”
Season 4 Podcast 141, A New Voice of Freedom, Argument for the Existence of God, Episode 2, “The Fallacy of the Anthropic Principle.”
In his Preface to “The God Delusion,” Richard Dawkins stated,
“If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.”
First let me point out the obvious. There are two assumptions we must accept.
1. Science and philosophers can never prove the existence of God.
2. Science and philosophers can never disprove the existence of God.
The existence of God is entirely based on faith. Once a person has faith, he sees the hand of God everywhere. The road to faith is to prayerfully read the scriptures and to obey the commandments of God. That will lead to all the proof one needs. Man’s belief in God or man’s disbelief in God has no effect on the existence of God. The entire world could deny the existence of God, but it would not affect his existence. It would limit his blessings to us because he only demonstrates his power through our faith. He chooses to remain invisible that faith may flourish and freewill be protected.
In this podcast I want to reveal the fallacy of the Anthropic Principle which is Richard Dawkins’s primary argument against the existence of God. He uses the Anthropic Principle as an alternative to intelligent design.
Mr. Dawkins defines the Anthropic Principle in the following way. All quotes of Mr. Dawkins are from his book, The God Delusion.
“We exist here on Earth. Therefore Earth must be the kind of planet that is capable of generating and supporting us, however unusual, even unique, that kind of planet might be.”
The Wikipedia Encyclopedia defines the Anthropic Principle in the following way:
“The anthropic principle, also known as the "observation selection effect", is the hypothesis, first proposed in 1957 by Robert Dicke, that the range of possible observations that we could make about the universe is limited by the fact that observations could only happen in a universe capable of developing intelligent life in the first place.”
It echo’s Descartes’ famous phrase, “Cogito, ergo sum.” I think therefore I am. However, the difference between Descartes principle and the anthropic principle is that Descartes affirms existence; the anthropic principle claims to affirm the reason for existence, but it doesn’t. It is circular. It says we exist because we exist. It adds no information for or against God or for or against intelligent design. It is a non-argument. Because earth supports existence doesn’t mean that earth has the power to generate existence. It is like claiming that a farm doesn’t need a farmer, or a machine doesn’t need an inventor or that architecture doesn’t need an architect.
Let’s first assume that the anthropic principle is true by necessity. Since it is circular, it is hard to refute that the earth has power to support life, but we cannot assume that earth is responsible for first cause.
Mr. Dawkins essentially said that “We exist because Earth is the kind of planet that allows us to exist.” Mr. Dicke essentially said the same thing, “Observations are only possible where intelligent life makes observations possible, and intelligent life exists only where it is possible for intelligent life to exist.” That too is acceptable but there is a gap between the ability to support existence and the ability to generate first cause.
All circular arguments are self-evident if the premises are true. But the information does not extend beyond the circle. We still don’t know anything about the origins of creation.
Then why bother to refute it? I bother because in some convoluted way Mr. Dawkins uses that circular argument as proof that God doesn’t exist. Mr. Dawkins’ argument against God could be worded this way:
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