A commenter recently reminded me of the pie argument used by apologist John Lennox:
John Lennox puts it well (and similarly to what I gave earlier) when submitting the example that his wife bakes a pie, which he submits for scientific study. We can conclude the pie is 12″ in diameter and 3″ deep. It’s made of apples and crust which consist of their own elements. It’s one day old, and weights 2 pounds. In a way, that’s a complete representation of the pie. But what it doesn’t tell us, is that the pie was baked for their granddaughters birthday. That is the meaning and implications of the pie itself.
I first heard of this argument years ago and find it just as amusing today. What’s more worrying to me is that Lennox is considered an old-school intellectual apologist. He is also a philosopher of science. I’m not sure how respected he is in the field but the fact that he’s making this type of argument does not reflect well on apologetics or philosophy of science.
The problem is so obvious that it pains me to spell it out. The reason that an object exists need not reside in the object. Usually it doesn’t. I could bake a pie to eat. Someone else could bake an identical pie to copy my pie. A third person could bake the pie in the hope that I would choke on it. The 3 pies might be identical to the level of precision that we can’t tell them apart. So, where does the difference reside? In the brains of the people who baked the pies! (Embarrassing as it is to have to say it.) Or in any other matter that was causally influenced by our motivations for baking the pie.
This relates to my previous post on scientism. I find it astounding that so many arguments that state that science must “humble itself” are forced to use a ludicrously-narrow definition of science, and possibly exclude some sciences all together. Of course we can’t [yet] scan brains to read off motivations. But Lennox must pretend that even psychology, sociology or the possibility of talking to his wife doesn’t exist. He’s trying to focus on just the pie because it’s only by framing it so narrowly that he can hope to argue that science can’t answer why-questions (and make the unjustified leap that apparently therefore religion can).
The counterarguments I’ve sometimes seen would be that physical science should have nothing to say about human experience because (supposedly) a world made of atoms should not have any beings at all, only machines. This tries to shift the question into philosophy of mind, which I’ll have more to say about later. But still, it’s a distraction from the fact that organised empirical enquiry does include the study of humans, motivations, why-questions, meaning and intentionality. The idea that science “doesn’t explain why” seems to be a blatant attempt to ignore the real whys that we can answer and smuggle in the unjustified whys that assume that the universe itself needs to have a purpose.
The other alternative is that Lennox simply assumes (contrary to pretty much everything we know from various sciences) that the thoughts of his wife do not arise as the result of the atoms that make up her brain and therefore that we can’t read them off on principle. If this were true, there really would be reasons that are inaccessible to science. But Lennox’s argument already requires that dualism be true, it’s pretty much pointless — he just needs to show dualism and his job would be done.
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Just because we can ask why something is, doesn’t mean there’s an answer.
Best example: “Why is a flower?” (Meant to be said in a hyper-serious way while looking puzzled and with the kind of British accent that pronounces why as “hwy”).
Excellent Michael. Incidentally, this is, probably, the pie that auntie Matilda bakes. I think the argument will be known as the auntie Matilda argument, soon.
Incidentally, Lennox said, in his 2009 Edinburgh debate with Hitchens (I was there), that he does not support creationism. Yet, recently, he accepted the Phillip Johnson award.
More on his auntie’s pies and the award in my recent posting
Thanks, I was trying to remember the name of the auntie but it kept slipping my mind.
I think Lennox is like William Lane Craig or Alvin Plantinga — people who have made a career of seeming intellectual and a cut above the “standard” apologists who still have naive and clueless views about evolution and must obfuscate their way out of questions to avoid being pinned down and exposed.
Indeed, but, a closer look, shows that they are just as bad.
Take, for instance, another Lennox argument (not original…). It goes, roughly, like this: “The chance that life to have been formed, as we know it is, 10^(-100). [He `justifies' this.] There are 10^80 particles in the universe. Therefore, the chance of life is the same as the chance of having lost a particle and then finding it, by selecting at random, from all particles in the universe.”
This kind of thing makes me shiver. First, who told him that the two experiments are equivalent? In picking a particle from the universe, he *assumes* that all particles are equally likely to be picked. But who told him that all possible scenaria leading to our DNA are equally likely? Second, he compares apples with oranges.
By the way, here is his aunt Matilda nonsense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVallWIA4G8
Quel con!
I used to write on his site (it allowed comments), but, recently, he disallowed them. I sent the site’s administrator a message asking why, and never got a response.
Of course they’re just as bad — in fact I have another upcoming post about this (the supposedly “intellectual” apologists).
As for the probability, I think the biggest problem is is calculation of 10^100. If we thought that was actually right, the argument would stand up (not sure how it would be apples and oranges? it’s similar to saying you’re more likely to die of lightning than of terrorism). But we don’t and it doesn’t!
To estimate the probability that we are here, one needs a quite sophisticated model. People are working towards this, both in the probability community and mathematical biology. I’m pretty sure that the numbers quoted by Lennox are arbitrary. (Let alone the fact that I doubt whether he has read or can read the papers I have in mind. Lennox had done work in classical algebra, and he doesn’t appear [to me] as the kind of person who could understand other areas.) The “life” probability is pretty sophisticated. The other one, picking a particle at random, is based on a trivial model, the one you learn at a beginning probability class. That’s what I meant.
By the way, Dembski’s models, the one he uses in his pseudo mathematical papers are equally trivial.
Incidentally, I saw Dembski briefly on YouTube the other day, part of the movie “expelled”. Have you seen the movie? (Pretty revolting.)
I see, well that makes sense. I’d say the problem is still in the “model” Lennox uses for life as opposed to anything else. But other times, people get even more ridiculous with attempts to calculate the probability of the universe existing and so on — extrapolating the idea of what probability is to an area where it clearly seems not to belong.
I’ve seen Expelled — personally I thought it was hilarious! It’s like Ray Comfort’s banana video but much longer…
[...] The best examples are probably William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga and possibly (as highlighted by a recent post) John [...]