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{{Short description|Counter-argument to an argument for the existence of God}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2020}}
{{Atheism sidebar |arguments}}

The '''Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit''' is a counter-argument to modern versions of the <!--[surplus here?: [[William Paley|Paley]]-style --> [[Teleological argument|argument from design]] for the [[existence of God]]. It was introduced by [[Richard Dawkins]] in chapter 4 of his 2006 book ''[[The God Delusion]]'', "Why there almost certainly is no God".

The argument is a play on the notion of a "[[Junkyard tornado|tornado sweeping through a junkyard to assemble a Boeing 747]]" employed to decry [[abiogenesis]] and [[evolution]] as vastly unlikely and better explained by the existence of a [[Creator deity|creator god]] (although this quote is first attributed to [[Fred Hoyle]], who used it to argue for [[panspermia]], not creationism). According to Dawkins, this logic is self-defeating as the [[Theism|theist]] must now account for the god's existence and explain whether or how the god was created. In his view, if the existence of highly complex life on Earth is the equivalent of the implausible junkyard Boeing 747, the existence of a highly complex god is the "ultimate Boeing 747" that truly does require the seemingly impossible to explain its existence.

== Context and history ==
[[File:Richard dawkins lecture.jpg|thumb|upright|The "ultimate Boeing 747 gambit" was originally proposed by [[Richard Dawkins]] in his 2006 book ''[[The God Delusion]]''.]]
Richard Dawkins begins ''The God Delusion'' by making it clear that the God he talks about is the [[Abrahamic]] concept of a [[personal god]] who is susceptible to worship. He considers the existence of such an entity to be a scientific question, because a universe with such a god would be significantly different from a universe without one, and he says that the difference would be [[Empiricism|empirically]] discernible. Therefore, Dawkins concludes, the same kind of reasoning can be applied to the God hypothesis as to any other scientific question.

After discussing some of the most common arguments for the existence of God in chapter 3, Dawkins concludes that the [[argument from design]] is the most convincing. The extreme improbability of life and a universe capable of hosting it requires explanation, but Dawkins considers the God hypothesis inferior to [[evolution by natural selection]] as [[Evolution of biological complexity|an explanation for the complexity of life]]. As part of his efforts to refute [[intelligent design]], he redirects the [[Irreducible complexity|argument from complexity]] in order to show that God must have been designed by a superintelligent designer, then presents his argument for the improbability of God's existence.<ref name="shermer">{{cite journal |title=Arguing for Atheism |author=Michael Shermer |journal=Science |url=http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/315/5811/463 |volume=315 |issue=5811 |date=26 January 2007 |access-date=15 March 2007 |doi=10.1126/science.1138989 |pages=463 |s2cid=171030096 |url-access=subscription }} (also available via [http://www.screaming-penguin.com/node/6988 the second review here] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070210162827/http://www.screaming-penguin.com/node/6988 |date=10 February 2007 }}</ref>

Dawkins' name for the statistical demonstration that God almost certainly does not exist is the "Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit". This is an allusion to the [[junkyard tornado]]. [[Astrophysics|Astrophysicist]] [[Fred Hoyle]], who was an [[Atheism|atheist]], [[Antitheism|anti-theist]] and advocate of the [[panspermia]] theory of life,<ref group="n">Collisions of debris as the vehicle for the distribution of biological material across space.</ref> is reported as having stated that the "probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a [[Boeing 747]]."<ref name="tgd113">''The God Delusion'', p. 113.</ref> 

Arguments against empirically based theism date back at least as far as the eighteenth-century philosopher [[David Hume#Design argument|David Hume]], whose objection can be paraphrased as the question "[[Argument from design#Contradictory premises lead to an infinite regress|Who designed the designer?]]" According to philosopher [[Daniel Dennett]], however –&nbsp;one of Dawkins' fellow "[[Brights movement|brights]]"&nbsp;– the innovation in Dawkins' argument is twofold: to show that where design fails to explain complexity, evolution by natural selection succeeds as the only workable solution; and to argue how this should illuminate the confusion surrounding the [[anthropic principle]].<ref group="n">The notion that "observations of the physical universe must be compatible with [[Consciousness|conscious]] and [[Sapience|sapient]] life that observes it" (see [[Anthropic principle]]).</ref><ref name="dennett">{{cite journal |title=Review of Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion |author=Daniel Dennett |author-link=Daniel Dennett |journal=Free Inquiry |volume=27 |issue=1 |date=16 October 2006 |url=http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/dawkinsreview.pdf |access-date=5 December 2006}}</ref>

== Dawkins's statement ==
<!--This section heading linked below-->

Dawkins summarizes his argument as follows;<ref>''The God Delusion'', pp. 157–158.</ref> the references to "[[Darwin's Dangerous Idea#Skyhooks and cranes|crane]]" and "[[Darwin's Dangerous Idea#Skyhooks and cranes|skyhook]]" are two notions from Daniel Dennett's book ''[[Darwin's Dangerous Idea]]''.
{{Quotation |
# One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.
# The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. In the case of a man-made [[wikt:artefact|artefact<!--UK SPELLING: please don't change (Dawkins is British)-->]] such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer. It is tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a person.
# The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a "crane", not a "skyhook"; for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity.
# The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that{{spndash}}an illusion.
# We don't yet have an equivalent crane for physics. Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology. This kind of explanation is superficially less satisfying than the biological version of Darwinism, because it makes heavier demands on luck. But the [[anthropic principle]] entitles us to postulate far more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.
# We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.}}

A central thesis of the argument is that compared to supernatural abiogenesis, evolution by natural selection requires the supposition of fewer hypothetical processes; according to [[Occam's razor]], therefore, it is a better explanation. Dawkins cites a paragraph where [[Richard Swinburne]] agrees that a simpler explanation is better but reasons that theism is simpler because it only invokes a single <!--[is "substance" sic?:]-->substance (God) as a cause and maintainer of every other object. This cause is seen as [[omnipotent]], [[omniscient]] and totally "free". Dawkins argues that an entity that monitors and controls every particle in the universe and listens to all thoughts and prayers cannot be simple. Its existence would require a "mammoth explanation" of its own. The theory of natural selection is much simpler –&nbsp;and thus preferable&nbsp;– than a theory of the existence of such a complex being.<ref>''The God Delusion'', pp. 147–149.</ref>

Dawkins then turns to a discussion of [[Keith Ward]]'s views on [[divine simplicity]] to show the difficulty "the theological mind has in grasping where the complexity of life comes from." Dawkins writes that Ward is sc<!--UK SPELLING (please don't change)-->eptical of [[Arthur Peacocke]]'s ideas that evolution is directed by other forces than only natural selection and that these processes may have a propensity toward increasing complexity. Dawkins says that this sc<!--UK SPELLING (please don't change)-->epticism is justified, because complexity does not come from biased mutations. Dawkins writes:
<blockquote>
[Natural selection], as far as we know, is the only process ultimately capable of generating complexity out of simplicity. The theory of natural selection is genuinely simple. So is the origin from which it starts. That which it explains, on the other hand, is complex almost beyond telling: more complex than anything we can imagine, save a God capable of designing it.<ref name="tgd151">''The God Delusion'', p. 151.</ref>
</blockquote>

== Assessment and criticism ==

Theist authors have presented extensive opposition, most notably by theologian [[Alister McGrath]] (in ''[[The Dawkins Delusion?]]'') and philosophers [[Alvin Plantinga]]<ref>{{cite book |title=God Is Great, God Is Good |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rX3tGSzi16AC&pg=PA247|isbn = 978-0830868117|last1 = Craig|first1 = William Lane|last2 = Meister|first2 = Chad|year= 2010}}</ref><ref name="plantinga">{{cite web |url=http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html |title=The Dawkins Confusion – Naturalism ad absurdum |work=Books & Culture, a Christian Review |author=Alvin Plantinga |year=2007 |access-date=2 March 2007|author-link=Alvin Plantinga }}</ref><!--
 --> and [[Richard Swinburne]].<ref name="swinburne">{{cite web |first=Richard |last=Swinburne |author-link=Richard Swinburne |title=Response to Richard Dawkins's comments on my writings in his book The God Delusion |url=http://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/pdf_files/Responses%20to%20Controversies/Response%20to%20Dawkins%27%20The%20God%20Delusion%20(revised)_copy(1).pdf}}</ref><!--
 --> Another negative review, by biologist [[H. Allen Orr]], sparked heated debate, prompting, for example, the mathematician [[Norman Levitt]] to ask why theologians are assumed to have the exclusive right to write about who "rules" the universe.<ref>{{cite web |title=What a Friend We Have in Dawkins |author=Norman Levitt |work=eSkeptic |url=http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-01-31.html |date=31 January 2007 |access-date=19 March 2007}}</ref><!--
 --> [[Daniel Dennett]] also took exception to Orr's review, leading to an exchange of open letters between himself and Orr.<ref>Full [http://www.edge.org/discourse/dennett_orr.html#dd exchange of open letters] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070703012249/http://www.edge.org/discourse/dennett_orr.html#dd |date=3 July 2007 }} at edge.org.</ref><!--
 --> The philosopher Sir [[Anthony Kenny]] also considers this argument to be flawed.<ref>[[Anthony Kenny]], 2007 Presidential [[Royal Institute of Philosophy]] Annual Lecture (published in ''Philosophy'' Volume 82 number 321 (July 2007), pp. 381–397.</ref><!--
 --> Cosmologist [[Stephen Barr]]<ref name="Stephen M Barr 2003">Stephen M Barr (2003), ''Modern Physics and Ancient faith'' ({{ISBN|0-268-03471-0}}).</ref> responded as follows: "[[William Paley|Paley]] finds a [[Watchmaker analogy|watch and asks how]] such a thing could have come to be there by chance. Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches, and feels that he has completely answered Paley's point."<ref>Modern Physics and Ancient Faith Paperback – 15 February 2006 by Stephen M Barr</ref>

===Simplicity of God and materialist assumptions===
Both Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne raise the objection that God is not complex. Swinburne gives two reasons why a God that controls every particle can be simple: first, a person, as indicated by phenomena such as [[split-brain]]s, is not the same as their highly complex brain but "is something simpler" that can "control" that brain; and second, simplicity is a [[Quality (philosophy)|quality that is intrinsic]] to a hypothesis, not related to its empirical consequences.<ref name="swinburne"/>

Plantinga writes:

{{Quote
 | So first, according to classical theology, God is simple, not complex. More remarkable, perhaps, is that according to Dawkins's 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'' (as philosophers like to say) 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.
}}

He continues:

{{Quote
 | But second, suppose we concede, at least for purposes of argument, that God is complex. Perhaps we think the more a being knows, the more complex it is; God, being [[omniscient]], would then be highly complex. 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{{spndash}}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.<ref name="plantinga"/>
}}

In other words, Plantinga concludes that this argument, to be valid, would require materialism to be true; but, as materialism is not compatible with traditional theology,{{clarify|date=November 2014}} the argument [[Begging the question|begs the question]] by requiring its [[premise]] to assume God's non-existence.<ref name="plantinga"/>

In an extensive analysis published in ''[[Science and Christian Belief]]'', Patrick Richmond suggests that "Dawkins is right to object to unexplained organised complexity in God" but that God is simply specified and lacks the sort of composition and limitations found in [physical] creatures; hence the theist can explain why nature exists without granting unexplained organised complexity or the extreme improbability of God.<ref>Patrick Richmond, "Richard Dawkins's Darwinian Objection to Unexplained Complexity in God", ''[[Science and Christian Belief]]'' Vol. 19 No. 2 (2007), pp. 99–106.</ref>

Some respondents, such as [[Stephen Law]], have suggested that God is or would indeed be complex if responsible [[Creator deity|for creating]] and [[divine conservation|sustaining the universe]];<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3fGJq04rUc ''The Strengths and Weaknesses of the God Delusion''] (YouTube).</ref> According to Law, God's omniscience would require the retention of and ability to use all knowledge.  [[Richard Carrier]] also argued that God's mind is extremely complex.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2018-04-17|title=The Argument from Specified Complexity against Supernaturalism |url=https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13976|access-date=2020-12-14|website=Richard Carrier|language=en-US}}</ref>

===Necessity of external explanations===
There are many variations on how to express this objection. [[William F. Vallicella]] holds that organized complexity as such does not need explanation, because when in search of an ultimate explanation, one must in the end accept an entity whose complexity has no external explanation.<ref name="vallicella">[http://maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com/posts/1167878240.shtml Vallicella's discussion with] [[Erik Wielenberg]].</ref> Dawkins has stated that we should search for simple beginnings for explanations, like in evolution which moves from simple to complex, and so what we ultimately accept with no external explanation must be simple for it to be a good explanation.<ref name="Dawkins-Lennox">[http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php/video/35-full-length/164-the-dawkins-lennox-debate The God Delusion Debate: Richard Dawkins vs John Lennox] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110625134059/http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php/video/35-full-length/164-the-dawkins-lennox-debate |date=25 June 2011 }}</ref> And Plantinga writes that when ''not'' in search for an ultimate explanation of organized complexity, it is perfectly fine to explain one kind of complexity, that of terrestrial life, in terms of another kind of complexity, namely divine activity.<ref name="plantinga"/> Dawkins addresses this point in his debate with John Lennox over ''The God Delusion'', saying that it would be perfectly reasonable to infer from artifacts on earth or another planet that an intelligence existed, but that you would still need to explain that intelligence, which evolution does, while for God's existence there is no such explanation.<ref name="Dawkins-Lennox"/>

Alister McGrath suggests that the leap from the recognition of complexity to the assertion of improbability is problematic, as a [[theory of everything]] would be more complex than the theories it would replace, yet one would not conclude that it is less probable. Dawkins has responded to this point in his debate with Lennox and at other times, saying that while physics is hard to understand, fundamentally, unlike biology, it is simple.<ref name="Dawkins-Lennox"/> McGrath then argues that probability is not relevant to the question of existence: life on earth is highly improbable and yet we exist. The important question in his view is not whether God is ''probable'', but whether God is ''actual''.<ref>''The Dawkins Delusion?'', pp. 24–25</ref> In interviewing McGrath for ''The Root of All Evil'', Dawkins responds that the existence of life on Earth is indeed highly improbable, but this is exactly why a theory such as evolution is required to explain that improbability.<ref>[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6474278760369344626# Root of All Evil? The Uncut Interviews] (Google Video).</ref> In the case of God, Dawkins says, there is no such satisfactory explanation.

On the point of probability, Alvin Plantinga claims that if God is a [[Argument from contingency|necessary being]], as argued by [[classical theism]], God is, by definition, maximally probable; thus an argument that there is no necessary being with the qualities attributed to God is required to demonstrate God's improbability.<ref name="plantinga"/> Eric MacDonald has pointed out that theists assume the coherence of their position when they make arguments for God when, by Plantinga's standards, they would have to present an argument that the concept of God is not logically incoherent before discussing other arguments.<ref>[http://choiceindying.com/2011/05/18/duking-it-out-over-the-god-delusion/ ''Duking it Out Over the God Delusion'']</ref> Plantinga's objection would seem to apply to all atheist arguments that contend that God is improbable, such as evidential arguments about the [[problem of evil]] and the [[argument from nonbelief]]. But the reason why theists and atheists do not usually address this prior to making their arguments is because they want to go beyond merely discussing whether God is maximally probable or impossible.

===Dawkins's response to criticism in ''The God Delusion''===
Dawkins writes about his attendance at a conference in Cambridge sponsored by the [[John Templeton Foundation|Templeton Foundation]],<ref name="tgd151"/> where he challenged the theologians present to respond to the argument that a creator of a complex universe would have to be complex and improbable.<ref>''The God Delusion'', p. 153.</ref> He reports the strongest response as the claim he was imposing a scientific [[epistemology]] on a question that lies beyond the realm of science. When theologians hold God to be simple, who is a scientist like Dawkins "to dictate to theologians that their God had to be complex?"<ref name="tgd154">''The God Delusion'', p. 154.</ref> Dawkins writes that he did not feel that those employing this "evasive" defence were being "wilfully dishonest", but that they were "defining themselves into an epistemological safe-zone where rational argument could not reach them because they had ''declared by fiat'' that it could not."<ref name="tgd154"/>

Theologians, Dawkins writes, demand that there be a [[Cosmological argument|first cause]] named "God". Dawkins responds that it must have been a simple cause and contends that unless "God" is divested of its normal associations, it is not an appropriate name. Postulating a [[Unmoved mover|prime mover]] that is capable of indulging in intelligent design is, in Dawkins's opinion, "a total abdication of the responsibility to find an explanation"; instead, he seeks a "self-bootstrapping crane" ([[#Dawkins's statement|see above]]) that can "lift" the universe into more complex states. This, he states, does not necessitate a scientific explanation, but does require a "crane" rather than a "skyhook" (''[[#Dawkins's statement|ibid.]]'') if it is to account for the complexity of the natural world.<ref name="tgd155">''The God Delusion'', p. 155.</ref>

== Notes ==
{{reflist|group="n"}}

== References ==
=== Footnotes ===
{{reflist}}

=== Bibliography ===
* [[Richard Dawkins]], "The Ultimate Boeing 747" in ''[[The God Delusion]]'', Black Swan, 2007 ({{ISBN|978-0-552-77429-1}}).

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