Note: Before you read this Coffee Talk, please understand that the word "simple" in this CT means "undivided" and "undividable." It does not mean simple as in stupid or something of lesser value.
Of God, Anthropomorphisms, and Cakes
In his book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins offers a unique argument for the atheistic perspective in the denial of the existence of God.
Dawkins believes that it is a sort of coup de grâce that will put theists out of their misery.
As far as the methodology of his debate, I would find his “complexity” argument to be a stroke of genius if it were not for his lack of basic theological knowledge. Here is his argument in a nutshell:
If theists believe that the complexity of the world is simply too astounding to have come about without some overarching designer, and if the thing made is less complex than the thing doing the making, then God himself must be so complex that the sheer improbability of his existence is astronomical and, thus, utterly improbable.
He has turned the tables on the theists, or so it seems.
Basic Theology: Anthropomorphisms
However, some time during undergraduate-level training for budding theist theologians, they are taught that God is not a being of material substance. Thus, when their holy books refer to the “eyes” of God as seeing all, or to the “hand” of God being able to hold his devotees in the protection of his power, young theologians are introduced to reality of anthropomorphisms. God is spoken of as having these physical parts for the sake of human comprehension, but in reality, he is spirit.
More Theology and a Cake
Then, likely, at the graduate-level studies in theology, seminary students learn that God is a simple being. This is a bit more sophisticated in thought and harder to comprehend. But, an analogy often suffices to help one begin to grasp this reality of God’s being.
A cake is a simple being (or thing). it is simple because all of it's variant parts are combined to make it one thing. Once it is made, you cannot extract the eggs or sugar from a cake. It is undividable in that way.
And, just as one cannot extract the eggs or sugar from a cake once it is baked, so too the attributes of God are not quantitatively identifiable. Thus, God is a simple being.
God is love and justice and truth and righteous, and so on (pardon the cliché) all rolled into one. And, none of these qualities can be extracted from God because they (and more) all combine perfectly to make Him the perfect, simple being that He is.
Of course, all analogies break down, and one might point out that with the correct scientific tools one may indeed extract the eggs or sugar from a baked cake; but, no such method is applicable to God since, as noted above under Basic Theology, God is not a physical being.
God is Neither Physical nor Complex
So, Dawkins’ argument that God is a complex being is simply theologically absurd. According to theistic belief, while Dawkins’ complexity argument is a swift move to reflect back the theists’ argument that complexity is commensurate with improbability, his move ultimately fails due to the fact that God is neither physical nor complex.
