Contents

The Simplicity Argument

Discussion with
philosophers Michael Tooley and
Richard Swinburne

Oxford professor Peter Atkins has more than once claimed that theism can never be simpler than naturalism. No matter how unlikely the possibility of the occurrence of a universe that could allow for life, let alone one that would produce life, he says, it is still more likely that it would occur even by chance than that there could exist for eternity the enormously complex, omnipotent entity called God who brought about the material universe. And it is more likely that there are even an infinite number of other universes if that is necessary for the occurrence of even one that would produce life such as ours has produced.

Richard Dawkins, another prominent Oxford professor and scientist, presented the simplicity argument as just about his only explicit argument against God in his book The Blind Watchmaker as well as in The God Delusion. (I don’t remember any other explicit argument against God’s existence in his earlier book though he obviously had much to say about why he didn’t think God was necessary for life.) He says, “A deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world . . . must already have been vastly complex in the first place.”WaWatchmaker (New York: W.W Norton & Co., 1986), 316. If we need a God to explain the extreme complexity of biological life, don’t we need an explanation for this God who must be at least equally complex?

In 1994 philosophers Michael Tooley and William Lane Craig debated the question “Does God Exist.” ebate/. They debated this topic again in 2010. After the first debate Tooley discussed with Encounter the question of whether the theist or the atheist can provide the simpler explanation for the existence of the universe. Both atheists and theists claim that their particular view is the simpler and more intrinsically probable than the other.

Adding to our conversation is another Oxford don, philosophy professor Richard Swinburne. He has done extensive work on the question of intrinsic probability and God’s simplicity. For this reason we are pleased to include comments by Dr. Swinburne in closing our discussion. We will begin the discussion with some comments by Craig and Tooley as they were given during their first debate.
 

Craig: God provides the best explanation of why the universe exists rather than nothing. . . .
 
As Anthony Kenny of Oxford University says, “A proponent of the [Big Bang] theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing.”The 69The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 66. But that’s a pretty hard pill to swallow. Out of nothing, nothing comes. So where did the universe come from? Why does it exist instead of just nothing? There must have been a cause which brought the universe into being. And from the very nature of the case, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe.

Isn’t it incredible that the Big Bang theory thus confirms what the Christian theist has always believed, that in the beginning, God created the universe? Now, I simply put it to you: Which do you think is more probable, that the Christian theist is right, or that the universe just popped into existence uncaused out of nothing? I, at least, don’t have any problem assessing these probabilities. . . .
 
Tooley: The first point to be made about this is that if you bring God into it, the question then is not why the universe exists but why God plus the universe exists. And it’s not clear that one is any better off. . . .

Tooley, Q&A response: In Craig’s view, God created the universe, even though he was changeless and timeless. That seems to me to be an incoherent combination. The idea of a timeless being that is the cause of the universe is open to serious objections--partly because it seems to me the causal theory of time is correct, and it implies that, if two things are causally related, they both have to be in time. . . .
 
Craig: I don’t see any incoherence in saying that God without the universe, existing alone, exists timelessly, on some relational view of time. There are no events, and therefore there would be no time. With the creation of time God enters into time in order to sustain temporal relations with creatures. So I would say that God’s creation of the universe is simultaneous with the origin of the universe in the Big Bang. And I don’t see any incoherence in that particular point of view.
 

Discussion with Dr. Tooley

Encounter: Craig asked why the universe exists and said that God is the best explanation. You responded that this just makes the issue more unexplained because now we need an explanation for God and the universe. But if God is a simpler entity than the universe, then a universe that comes from God would be a simpler explanation of the universe. The universe would not be compared to God plus the universe but only to God.
 
Tooley: Suppose you go back to the big bang as your starting point. Whatever complexity you have in terms of the amount of matter and the arrangement of matter, if you explain that in terms of God, you must have a plan in the mind of God to create this universe with its distribution of matter and energy. And there will have to be certain laws that govern the development of that universe. However complex the universe was at the point when it was created, the plan must have been precisely as complex. The plan, however, was in the mind of God, and so the mind of God must have been at least as complex as the universe that was created. The complexity of the universe gets transferred back to the mind of God. So it is impossible for God to be simpler than the universe he created.

There might be an argument that ultimately it all flows from something very simple. It might be like a mathematical system where you begin with some simple axioms and you get derivations and then a complex set of theorems. But even then you are going to go through complexity. But here one would need to sketch why the world is one way rather than another. You need to fill out the story. What is the explanation in terms of the mind of God? It need not be in great detail but it needs to be at least sketched or there would be no grounds to conclude that it is a simpler story that you are left with.

Also, notice that in response to Craig’s claim that God is the best explanation for why the universe exists, I do not, as you indicate, say that “this just makes the issue more unexplained,” (emphasis added). What I said was “if you bring God into it, the question then is not why the universe exists but why God plus the universe exists.”
 
Encounter: Well, I can think of a couple of possible scenarios that might answer your claim. One is to say [, first of all,] that there could exist and could always have existed a pure, changeless person of infinite worth. By a person I mean a consciousness or awareness; perhaps I should say a center of consciousness. There might be more to personhood than this but there cannot be less.

Changelessly, and in this sense timelessly, this person chose to create beings in time, to become more than one in person, and to cause at least one facet of this person’s being to enter time when time (change) began. (Note: Obviously, the second timeless choice above, the choice to become more than one in person, would very likely be omitted in non-Christian theistic variations of this scenario.)

To say that God chooses this timelessly is to say that God has always chosen it. God timelessly chooses to cause a diverse and changing creation to begin. Now that time or change has begun, God changes (or rather, a facet of God’s being changes) from a being who knows only the pure oneness of God and the knowledge of the timeless decision to cause changing creation to originate, to a being who has knowledge of the complicated, changing universe. There is a progression in time from one to the other, but this is a change that occurs by God’s choice.

God’s nature is extremely simple from eternity past. It consists of an eternal but timeless awareness of oneself and an eternal choice to become more than one in person and to cause changing creation (and thus measurable time) to come into being. It also consists of the ability to carry out this choice and the ability to have all of the knowledge of that which it will choose to come into being. The full specific detailed knowledge of how the universe will work and what it will consist of are not present at first. This knowledge comes as it is chosen to be known and thus it occurs in time.

So we begin with a very simple entity and from this the material universe (and possibly other kinds of universes) will originate. I believe that theists usually hold that belief in God is a simpler, more intuitively obvious explanation for the existence of the universe because of some kind of thinking like this. It seems much simpler than the idea of a complex, changing universe having always existed on its own.

Note: I might mention one minor variation of the above scenario. It might also be that the change in God’s nature occurs in a unique time dimension God alone inhabits and has timelessly caused to come into being. Thus, in the Christian view, to someone who would directly perceive God and God’s eternal nature (say in a Beatific Vision) it would appear that God has always been three in nature though in fact there is a temporal priority of the absolute oneness of God. Also, God’s knowledge of the complexity of the universe would appear to have always been present while in fact it hasn’t. This would be the case unless the Beatific Vision could allow one to perceive even into God’s own unique temporal dimension.
 
Tooley: First of all, it is an error to connect “measurable time” with the presence of change. As Newton quite clearly recognized, laws presuppose quantitative time that has an intrinsic metric. (I have put the expression in scare-quotes because it suggests a lurking verificationism. What one should really be speaking of here are quantitative temporal relations.)

Secondly, how can you claim that God could possibly be simpler than any physical universe that he creates: the desire to create a universe of a certain specific sort involves precisely the same complexity as the universe that is to be created?

You seem to be saying that God does not know what he is creating. Does he not know what types of material particles will be present? Does he not know how he is going to arrange them initially? Does he not know what laws of nature the universe will involve? Is it really credible to answer “yes” to any of these questions? But if it is not, then how is his knowledge limited with regard to what he is creating, at the time that he creates it?
 
Encounter: Possibly God planned the intricate order and makeup of the universe when he entered his own unique time dimension. Possibly it began when God entered our created time dimension (which could have been before singularity--the source of the big bang--was created). In either model, God’s goal has always been known. The plan to achieve that goal was only chosen and known once God entered some type of temporal dimension before he created. So it is, indeed, credible to answer yes to your question. God’s knowledge is not limited at the time he creates but it was limited to the pure simplicity of his being, before he entered his temporal dimension. And still, we can say that before there was anything other than God that God knew all that there was.

I think this model answers the non-theist’s objection that questions the intrinsic probability of God over the universe. It is much more intrinsically plausible for us to believe that there could be a God like this than that our enormously complex universe could exist on its own. And I think this view is adequate theologically. But I don’t know that I am completely satisfied with this explanation. I wonder if some, like the Thomists who also see the need for God’s pure simplicity, might not be able to give a better explanation.
 
Tooley: For the reason I had mentioned earlier, whatever complexity is present in the universe that God initially creates must be matched by complexity that is at least as great in the relevant divine intention. And so the mind of God must be at least as complex as the physical universe that is created.
 
Encounter: No, God’s mind can have a very simple content at one time, and then, by God’s choice, be developed in extremely great complexity. Only when God creates does his mind have to be so complex.
 
Tooley: This is certainly a possibility. But unless you can show--as you have not--that the simpler, earlier state of God causally gives rise to the later state whose complexity is as great as that of the universe that God then creates, you have not shown that the simpler state explains the latter, more complex state of God, and thus the physical universe that God creates. So you have done nothing to show that the hypothesis that God created the physical universe provides a simpler explanation.

Moreover, it is not merely that there is something that you haven’t done here. For what has not been done is to show how the latter complexity in the mind of God could be explained as arising from the earlier, postulated, greater simplicity. But how could that be explained? If this world had the look of the best of all possible worlds, perhaps one could, following Leibniz, say that initially God wanted to create the best of all possible worlds, and he then came to the belief that he should create a world just like ours, since it is the best of all possible worlds. But, especially given the problem of evil, the prospects for that explanation do not look at all bright, and it is not easy to see what other alternative one might attempt to advance.

In short, you have not shown how the later complex state of the mind of God, at the time of creation, is to be explained in terms of an earlier simpler state, nor is there any reason for thinking that this is something that one could do. Consequently, you have not given any reason for thinking that the hypothesis that God created the physical universe provides one with a simpler explanation of what exists.
 
Encounter: You say that I need to show “that the simpler . . . state . . . causally gives rise to the later” complex state in order to show that it explains it.

Now I cannot show that my scenario actually occurs by any empirical or inferential evidence any more than you can in the same way show that your naturalistic scenario occurs. If you claim that your view has probability support, then I would claim that mine has no less and that it also has the probability advantage of being a far simpler explanation. You certainly cannot show a naturalistic progression in the universe from the simple to the complex. If you could suggest a possible scenario allowing such a progression, again you would have no more of an “explanation,” as you use the term, than I do.

The second and third paragraph (in your last response) suggest that what you really mean to ask is not that but how the simple can give rise to the complex in the mind of God. Only thus, you appear to say, can the simple explain the complex in this situation. At last I think we are getting to your real contention. And I admit that I cannot show how this occurs. But I don’t think I should need to.

If you think that theism fails to offer a simpler explanation of the universe because we cannot say how God can change his simple and changeless thought to complex, changing thought, then I should assume you also find the claim that God can create also fails. No one can say how God created. Perhaps we can claim it to be ex nihilo or ex deo, or whatever, but we cannot say anything more than that. Is it thus an inadequate explanation for the existence of the universe? And if naturalism fails to give a sufficiently detailed explanation of how the universe came into being, is it inadequate to the same degree?

I admit that I cannot say how God’s choice to cause plurality and change came into being. But isn’t it an equally great mystery, one that might be in principle inexplicable, to understand how any human choice can be made that can bring about a physical result. How does my conscious choice to raise my hand result in that act? I hope the reader is aware that I’m not talking about the interaction of brain, nerves, muscle, etc., but of the prior contact between mind and brain, of consciousness affecting the physical world. We cannot explain such mind/body events in any greater detail and yet we can say that such events are to this degree “explained.” So likewise, God’s choice of diversity and change can be called their explanation. Can you show that in either case this is an inadequate explanation or that it should not be called an explanation? I don’t think you can.

That is just the first facet of the issue. The second is the creation of change and diversity from that choice. You say you find difficulty seeing how a changeless choice can be made that will result in change in time. I do not and, more importantly, I don’t think you can show any incoherence in the concept. Change began as it was chosen. The first change and the choice for continued changes to occur has always been chosen and thus it occurred.

Before closing let me touch on another problem that might keep some from seeing the absolute oneness of God. How can Theism begin with an absolute monism if God has at least being, knowledge, goodness, and power? How can something be absolutely one and yet have these different attributes?

We can conceive that something could be intrinsically valuable. It is difficult to imagine a non-conscious entity as having value. If it is conscious, it could be aware of itself and its value. Complete self-knowledge by this pure and simple being is also not hard to imagine. It values itself as completely as it deserves. Nothing else exists and so nothing else can be valued. It possesses complete value and thus, in theological terms, infinite value. When entities that possess value come into being from God and exist distinctly from God, then they would possess their value only from their relationship with God.

Power is the ability to act, to cause something to be or to be changed. How this self-knowing being is able to do anything, we do not know. But then we do not know how any mind can cause effects in the world. But if this being has the power to do something, it is not difficult to imagine that it can do anything that can be done, anything not limited by logic. It has, in the beginning at least, only the simple “substance” of itself to work with.

So we begin with a purely simple consciousness--something conscious of itself--that has value and the power to bring about change within itself to any degree not limited by logic and a being which values itself to the degree it deserves. But we also begin with a changeless choice within this being, the choice for diversity to begin. This being has always changelessly existed. There has thus eternally been this seed of change or diversity within the absolute one. “Seed” might not be a good word because it suggests potentiality. If there is no time, no change, then the choice has always been made. It is time that came into being. The created universe came from God; God values that to which God gave value and has power over just as God has power over the original substance of God’s self.

With this enumeration of abilities and attributes it might seem difficult to imagine that this is the one who is truly, absolutely one. But notice that if being and consciousness might be seen as one and the same, or if pure consciousness possess in itself the ability to act, might not the other attributes also be diverse only because of our inability to see their oneness? Many scientists believe the four forces of nature are truly one. Because the unity of two or three have been demonstrated, they feel sure that the others are also one even though we do not yet see how.

With all of the previous considerations there might still be some difficulties at least imagining a changeless, eternal, conscious, powerful being who is absolutely one and who is the source of the diverse existence we experience. But even if I cannot demonstrate unquestionably the absolute monism of the primordial God, how much more unlikely is the uncaused existence of a vastly complex, ever changing universe? Surely theism is a much simpler and more intrinsically likely explanation of the universe. In the notion of God’s primordial changelessness particularly we see the intuitive advantage of theism over naturalism. Changelessness is certainly more intrinsically likely than change.

In summary, I have claimed that God’s purely monistic mind has always and changelessly existed and that God has thus always chosen change and diversity to come into being. The choice to create occurred as part of that changeless choice or it occurred as diversity came into being in the mind of God. I have claimed that this is a simpler explanation than the naturalistic claim that our complex, constantly changing universe has always existed. I have not argued that this theistic model is actually true (other than by showing it to be the simpler explanation) but rather that as a true possibility it is better than any naturalistic model. And I have claimed that it is not necessary to have any further explanation concerning how God chose change and diversity to come into being. In response, you have claimed that it is necessary to have some further explanation as to how God could have caused such change and diversity if we are to call this an explanation.

One final comment. You mention that God might think of creating the best of all possible worlds and then might create our world by determining that the detailed nature of this world is the best of all possible worlds. You then suggest that the problem of evil shows that the world we have now cannot be the best of all possible worlds. But if God creates free creatures in this world then the present world is not exactly the world God creates. Human choice makes the actual world differ from exactly what God might want to create. Still, giving us freedom, whether we make the world better or worse, is better than not; it is better no matter how much evil we commit. So one cannot merely look at the amount of evil in the actual world and thereby determine whether this is the best of all possible worlds. A more thorough discussion of the problem of evil is found in Human Suffering and the Evil of Religion, part 1 (Eugene, Or: Resource, 2018.
 

Swinburne: Tooley seems to assume that if some entity causes a complex state of affairs, then in virtue of so doing that entity must itself be complex (since it would have to have built into it all the complexity of the resulting state of affairs). This assumption must be mistaken, since it would rule out all science. For example, scientists at the beginning of the nineteenth century were aware of very many different chemical substances which interacted in very many different ways with other substances to produce third substances. This was thought to be explained in due course by supposing that there were only a hundred or so different elements, with different valences, whose combination and recombination led to all the observable interactions of substances which had previously been known. But if the very fact that the data were complicated entailed that any cause of them would have just as much complexity, this hypothesis would not have been accepted. The grounds for accepting it was that it was (compared to the data) relatively simple and the complexity of the data followed from the simplicity of the hypothesis. The simplicity of the hypothesis cannot therefore be a matter of whether it has complicated consequences. It must be something intrinsic to it. You will find my latest account of this matter on pages 86 and following of my . . . book Epistemic Justification; Richard Swinburne, Epistemic Justification (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001). But fewness of entities, and those entities having simple degrees of properties are clearly facets involved in the simplicity of the hypothesis. God is just one entity, and he is supposed to have zero limits to his power, knowledge, and freedom, from which follow all his other properties (including perfect goodness)—I have argued elsewhere. God is supposed to be a personal being, and in virtue of his perfect freedom, can bring about any of very many good states. There is no cause of his choosing this good state rather than that good state—he just chooses; we have experience of such choice in our own human case (where, it seems to us, we are choosing between alternative goods by a “mental toss-up”). God’s choice is of course limited to good states, and it therefore does need to be shown that the world as a whole is such a good state (anything bad in it being logically necessary for a greater good).

So God does not have to have built into him the whole divine plan to start with (as you say); all that is necessary is that he has the divine properties, and various alternative choices may result from that nature (nothing, I emphasize, determining him to make this choice rather than that one).
Note: In Encounter’s last statement, the last paragraph and the italicized portions in the second, fourth, and twelfth paragraphs were added 25mr18. Dr. Tooley did not originally respond to any of this portion of this discussion so the additions have no affect on the arguments he has given. The additions are provided primarily to allow greater clarification. In the fourth paragraph of Encounter’s second response some words were added as well (in italics) for clarification.

Dennis Jensen is speaking for Encounter in this discussion. He advocates a view of the trinity which is different from the traditional orthodox view in that it claims the trinity originated as God’s first choice for the origin of time and plurality. This view is certainly no less biblical than any other view of the trinity but it also has the logical advantage of making the primordial and timeless God (sans creation) more intuitively an absolutely monistic entity.

Note: In Encounter’s last statement and the last paragraph, as well as the italicized portions in the second, fourth, and twelfth paragraphs, portions were added 25mr2018 and 21oc2019. Dr. Tooley did not originally respond to any of this portion of this discussion so the additions have no affect on the arguments he has given. The additions are provided primarily to allow greater clarification.

Dennis Jensen is speaking for Encounter in this discussion. He advocates a view of the trinity which is different from the traditional orthodox view in that it claims the trinity originated as God’s first choice for the origin of time and plurality. This view is certainly no less biblical than any other view of the trinity but it also has the logical advantage of making the primordial and timeless God (sans creation) more intuitively an absolutely monistic entity.

Peter Atkins is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is a former Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lincoln College.
Richard Dawkins is biologist and emeritus fellow at Oxford University.
William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University.
Michael Tooley is a distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado.
Richard Swinburne is a Fellow of the British Academy. From 1985 until 2002 he was Nolloch Professor of Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford.