Dawkins' Ultimate 747 Gambit

In The God Delusion, Dawkins makes the 'Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit'.

This depends on the claim that God must be complex and that such complexity is deeply improbable, and its from that he gets to the claim that God 'almost certainly does not exist'. His claim isn’t just that the God Hypothesis is a poor explanation and one that ignores Occam’s Razor: - his claim is that God 'very, very probably does not exist'. It seems deeply improbable that a complex physical thing - like a working 747 could arise arise due to a tornado going through a field of 747 parts, or some other ‘chance’ set of events. And it seems remarkably improbable to suggest a human could arise due to something like that as oppposed to a process of evolution. So the same must be true of the even more complex, intelligent God?

Well, yes, maybe, if you think God is a contingent (and physical?) being that came into existence… but then thats not a God anybody believes in is it? Its not even the God that I, as an atheist, don't believe in. God if He exists, necessarily exists - that just seems part of the concept (you can argue the concept is incoherent but that is a different mater).. You can argue against there being such a necessary being or claim that the notion of necessary existence is somehow unintelligible but thats not what Dawkins is arguing either. Can anybody, theist or atheist, even make sense of the claim that God is a statisical improbability?

Any thoughts?

I guess if we were to speak statistics one could say that after numerous attempts to provide empirical evidence of god’s existence none has yet to be presented. So we could conclude that statistically speaking it is very improbable that god exists.
I am maybe one of the few atheists that are not afraid to come out and say "God does not exist".
I am at a complete loss as to why someone would actually even consider the existence of god as possible. I can understand why someone would want to believe in a god, I can understand how someone could be convinced in god. But to actually worship a god and to speak to a god and to base your entire life perspective around god is a commitment I could never justify and struggle to comprehend.
The mind is a powerful organ, capable of manifesting ideas that our own intelligence struggles to comprehend. My own mind can manifest literally hundreds of explanations that could be responsible for creating the universe as we know it.
We could be part of a multi-verse, a parallel, an alien experiment, a matrix; our entire universe may exist in the mind of an advanced race of dolphins living on the planet meow? There are endless possibilities so why commit ourselves to just one? Because we like it? Or perhaps because it has been written down and added to over hundreds of years so it just makes sense to believe in it. Do theist' have any accurate un-bias explanation as to why there god is true and another god is not?
Am I being narrow minded for not seeing a world beyond what I can see or am I just being rational?
A theist once told me "in order to see God you must first believe in him” the problem for me is I must see God before I believe in him.
I have always believed that the man looking for the answer to that which is un-answerable will always find the answer he was looking for. To question that which we do not know must be left as just that.
In other words how does a theist know if the only reason he sees a world with God is because he believes that God is the creator of the world? How do you know that you’re no just convincing yourself into a false reality?
I can not claim to understand how the universe came to be but I know the laws of physics do exist. I can not claim to know how the origin of life came to be or claim to have a completely accurate understanding of evolution but I have seen the evidence that backs it up.
My point is if we are 100% honest with ourselves is there any real reason to believe in anything else rather than the physical reality that we live in everyday of our lives? Or do some people believe in God, Heaven, Hell, Souls & Spirits just because they want to believe that there has to be something better than the plain old scientific facts?
Because life, then eternal death isn't speacial enough for such an amazing, special, complex and intelligent being such as ourselves.
I am the first to admit I may have got it all wrong, for who am I to say that I the minority am the only one to have clear perspective in life.
Who am I to say that the majority who believe in a god or a deity have convinced themselves into believing in a false reality? All I can do is ask why? Why you and not I? We can both agree the sky is up there and the ground is down here. So what is it that you see that I can not?

Thank you for reading an I look forward to your opinions.

Well, yes, maybe, if you think God is a contingent (and physical?) being that came into existence… but then thats not a God anybody believes in is it?

I am afraid it is what most theists think that God is. This is why the question 'But who made God?' keeps cropping up.

Hi Belinda,

It has honestly never occurred to me that what the modern theist believes in and worships is a contingent physical being. Perhaps I associate 'theism' too much with 'the god of the philosophers'?

Dawkins' Boeing 747 seems a fine response to the patently silly argument to design, and a great way to raise consciousness, about evolution and some of the absurdities of theology, and to inspire critical thinking about the origin of life and the universe. The 'argument from improbability' shows the naturalisitic deistic posited by Dawkins is 'very, very improbable'. if that is in fact what theists (as opposed to theolgians) believe in, then the lesson from Dawkins is that it is possible but almost certainly not the case that He exists. (Gods may exist in some possible worlds but there's no reason to think this is one of them). I do find it hard to think of the God I don't believe in as not meeting the conditions of being a necessary immaterial supernatural being but then I understand the notion 'God' more from philosophy than I do from talking to religious believers.


Hi Thinking Critical,

Thank you for your thoughts. It seems difficult to do you the courtesy of providing a suitably detailed response to your thoughts as I find very little to disagree with. I personally see no good reason to believe in a God, no good reason to entertain the notion and, to me, most conceptions of 'god' seems riddled with with conceptual confusion and self-contradiction.

As far as the Bible is concerned, there have indeed been numerous attempts to provide empirical evidence for some of the stories told therein (about the Exodus and so on) by very diligent Israeli archeologists very keen to find it. And, of course, much to their dissapointment, no such evidence was found. There seems no historical evidence that there ever was a Jesus that matched up to any of the inconsistent stories told about him in the Gospels. And as for God himself, well He does indeed seem to have been less keen to make Himself publically visible over the last few millenia. There is no evidence for previous miracles, and the Church of Rome does a fairly poor job of proving the same have occurred in modern times. Perhaps some religious people have had experiences that would convince me that God is real, but my saying that only amounts to an admission that I might become deluded if I suffered from hallucinations.

The claim to know that "God does not exist" is exactly what some, such as Russell, would say is required if you are to be an atheist as opposed to an agnostic. Russell always referred to himself as being an agnostic in philosophical contexts - though he would call himself an 'atheist' in less formal situations when he intended to make his position better understood. Russell denied there could be any proof of the claim that 'God does not exist'. A.C. Grayling accepts that usage of 'atheist' and though he is not quick to define himself in those terms, it would not be misleading to say that he is indeed an atheist by Russell's standards. Grayling criticizes Russell for taking his conception of 'proof' - something Russell only admits to being possible within the realms of demonstrative reason - and applying it outside the context of mathematicsa and logic. To Grayling it is quite apparent that supernatural beings do not exist outside fairy tales, be they Gods or faeries. Naturalism is true therefore supernatural beings (of which God is one in his conception) do not exist. He also makes out the claim that the traditional theological conceptions of God all collapse into incoherence and self-contradiction. I am not without sympathy for these view. At times I am inclined towards thinking "God exists" fails to be true because it fails even to be truth-apt.

There is nothing I see that you fail to as far as I can tell. I was never attempting to argue for God, I only ever had doubts about what Dawkins shows by his Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit. Even amongst atheists there can be doubts about what he does show (and the value of asking 'Who Designed the Designer?'). In my recent posts I merely intended to explore that.

Thank you for taking the time to share your views. I share most of them but it can be useful to hear the perpectives of like-minded folk, and I appreciate and value your input.

The 747 argument makes at least 1 major flaw, making it a horrible comeback to the design argument.

1.God is outside of linear time. In other words the argument "who designed God?" is nonsensical, because it is literally asking "Who created the being that was not created?"
God does not see time one day at a time. God knows all reality, from Creation on forever, in an eternal instant. He has no tomorrow, or yesterday, only "NOW". And His "NOW" encompasses all reality.
Therefore unlike the universe, God does not require a creator, because He is eternal. Not eternal in the sense that He has always existed (in which case we could well ask "who created God", because we know all things in time require beginnings), but rather eternal in the sense that He is not in linear time at all, and therefore asking "who created God" is nonsensical, because since He is outside of time He needs no creator. Aquinas was teaching eternity before Einstein was born.
As to your question about the idea of God being nonsensical, it is not. The reason people think Theology is stupid is because its almost always taught either by dumb people who don't understand it, or smart people who don't believe it.
It is a leap in logic to think that because many Christians are stupid, that Christianity is false.

If god is unknowable, how does it come to be that people claim to know so much about him?

Who says that God was the creator and God himself need not a creator?

How do you know that God does not see one day at a time?

The description of God is scripted in such a way that it is impossible to be proven either for or against, thus resulting in the need for faith.
An entity which relies souly on faith to acknowledge it's existence can never be subject to that which exists in the physical reality. Therefore any description given of the said God can't be proven for or against. In saying that anyone can come up with these empirical laws that you have stipulated that protects the named God from interrogation of science or a non-believer.
Surely a wise man would attempt to try and understand the world through methods which are in our grasp of logical comprehension? If by observing the world we live in through the means of Physics, Biology, Math and many many more of the sciences, is this not the best way to provide logical explanations to such matters as origins of life? At least these principles are testable, revisable, tangible & most of all comply with the universal laws that surround us everyday, without having to rely on faith.

God is knowable. Those who say He isn't, lie.
If God is outside of time, then He needs no creator, anymore than a circle needs a starting point.
Because if God saw things one day at a time, then He would require a creator. Also, the Bible says so (WARNING: I absolutely hated having to say that) I do not mean that just because the Bible says it, it must be true, rather I mean that if the Christian God exists, He is outside of time, because that is how the hypothesis of God is stated.
Also, the description of God is provable and disprovable.
Also, the word "faith" has had its meaning changed. The modern "believe something without reason or evidence" is unbiblical. The original meaning meant "Something that isn't not perceived by the senses, but is still known by reason".

God is knowable. Those who say He isn't, lie.To state that someone else is lying in regards to this matter is not logical, it's an assertion.
If God is outside of time, then He needs no creator, anymore than a circle needs a starting point.I have yet to see some one create a circle with no starting point. Even an object of circular shape would have consisted of a starting point at some stage, unless of course it had existed for eternity which could not be proven
Because if God saw things one day at a time, then He would require a creator. Also, the Bible says so (WARNING: I absolutely hated having to say that) I do not mean that just because the Bible says it, it must be true, rather I mean that if the Christian God exists, He is outside of time, because that is how the hypothesis of God is stated.
Also, the description of God is provable and disprovable.
Also, the word "faith" has had its meaning changed. The modern "believe something without reason or evidence" is unbiblical. The original meaning meant "Something that isn't not perceived by the senses, but is still known by reason".

If something couldn't be perceived by our senses, what reason is there that it maybe known?

True, it is a statement. But one I am declaring is true. It was not intended as an insult.
I knew when I was writing it that a circle was an imperfect analogy. I meant this. "Does a being completely outside of linear time require a creator or not?"

And to answer your last question.
Deductive reasoning. I have never seen X (God in this case), but I have seen A, B, and C.
If A, B, and C are true, then X must be true, even if X is not seen (or heard, smelt, etc)

"If something couldn't be perceived by our senses, what reason is there that it maybe known?"
When it is imagined or detected by what we have imagined and made real...I guess.

Dawkins contends with the notion commonly held, in a vague sort of way, by the all too many believers of all faiths who believe that 'God' is the name of a supernatural Heavenly Kind Father, Judge, All-Knower, and Ruler who exists as other things exist except on a very very large scale and is invisible like air, but can and does intervene in nature and history. At least, this is what I have gleaned from believers over the years. This is the God that Dawkins says is very very improbable.

Dawkins is unlikely to speak up for the more reasonable version of what God is said to be because Dawkins is trying to keep his message as simple as possible. D is not a theologian but a biologist. Nevertheless Dawkins's writings imply his feelings of awe towards, and delight in, the living world.

I fail to see why God cannot be a transcendent super being, and a Father, Judge, and King.
It seems to me Dawkins strikes a straw-man, attacking Yahweh as a kind of zeus, instead of as the being the Bible potrays.

Because if God is apart from his creation he is not as great as if he is one with his creation.

[Scott]

I think the Ultimate 747 Gambit is not really meant to disprove (to the point of severe improbability) the existence of a god in itself. It is meant to disprove the premise that is the designer hypothesis often used by theists to philosophically argue for the existence of god. In that way, I think it is an argument of the form reductio ad absurdum, and one that I believe is clearly valid.

You have to ask, is it the concept or the description that atheists oppose? We can not deny the wonder, the power of nature and it's ability to influence all our lives. Just because it does not communicate with us in a way we can understand does it infer that nature is not god. Feelings or empathy may be expressed in a way that we do not fuly comprehend. We invent god in our image but the image is tainted by our ignorance and limited view of what god might be. We marvel at nature and the universe but we try to find a human kind of intelligence behind that wonder. We must accept nature , respect it's ability and look for god within us. I don't think Dawkins denies god but the description.