The Improbability of God

by Richard Dawkins



Richard Dawkins is Oxford's Professor of Public Understanding of Science. He is the



author of The Blind Watchmaker (on which this article is partly based) and Climbing



Mount Improbable. He is a Senior Editor of Free Inquiry.      

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Much of what people do is done in the name of God. Irishmen blow each other up in



his name. Arabs blow themselves up in his name. Imams and ayatollahs oppress



women in his name. Celibate popes and priests mess up people's lives in his name.



Jewish shohets cut live animals' throats in his name. The achievements of religion in



past history -- bloody crusades, torturing inquisitions, mass-murdering



conquistadors, culture-destroying missionaries, legally enforced resistance to each



new piece of scientific truth until the last possible moment -- are even more



impressive. And what has it all been in aid of? I believe it is becoming increasingly



clear that the answer is absolutely nothing at all. There is no reason for believing



that any sort of gods exist and quite good reason for believing that they do not exist



and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would



be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.



Why do people believe in God? For most people the answer is still some version of



the ancient Argument from Design. We look about us at the beauty and intricacy of



the world -- at the aerodynamic sweep of a swallow's wing, at the delicacy of flowers



and of the butterflies that fertilize them, through a microscope at the teeming life in



every drop of pond water, through a telescope at the crown of a giant redwood tree.



We reflect on the electronic complexity and optical perfection of our own eyes that



do the looking. If we have any imagination, these things drive us to a sense of awe



and reverence. Moreover, we cannot fail to be struck by the obvious resemblance of



living organs to the carefully planned designs of human engineers. The argument



was most famously expressed in the watchmaker analogy of the eighteenth-century



priest William Paley. Even if you didn't know what a watch was, the obviously



designed character of its cogs and springs and of how they mesh together for a



purpose would force you to conclude "that the watch must have had a maker: that



there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or



artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who



comprehended its construction, and designed its use." If this is true of a



comparatively simple watch, how much the more so is it true of the eye, ear,



kidney, elbow joint, brain? These beautiful, complex, intricate, and obviously



purpose-built structures must have had their own designer, their own watchmaker



-- God.



So ran Paley's argument, and it is an argument that nearly all thoughtful and



sensitive people discover for themselves at some stage in their childhood.



Throughout most of history it must have seemed utterly convincing, self-evidently



true. And yet, as the result of one of the most astonishing intellectual revolutions in



history, we now know that it is wrong, or at least superfluous. We now know that



the order and apparent purposefulness of the living world has come about through



an entirely different process, a process that works without the need for any designer



and one that is a consequence of basically very simple laws of physics. This is the



process of evolution by natural selection, discovered by Charles Darwin and,



independently, by Alfred Russel Wallace.



What do all objects that look as if they must have had a designer have in common?



The answer is statistical improbability. If we find a transparent pebble washed into



the shape of a crude lens by the sea, we do not conclude that it must have been



designed by an optician: the unaided laws of physics are capable of achieving this



result; it is not too improbable to have just "happened." But if we find an elaborate



compound lens, carefully corrected against spherical and chromatic aberration,



coated against glare, and with "Carl Zeiss" engraved on the rim, we know that it



could not have just happened by chance. If you take all the atoms of such a



compound lens and throw them together at random under the jostling influence of



the ordinary laws of physics in nature, it is theoretically possible that, by sheer luck,



the atoms would just happen to fall into the pattern of a Zeiss compound lens, and



even that the atoms round the rim should happen to fall in such a way that the



name Carl Zeiss is etched out. But the number of other ways in which the atoms



could, with equal likelihood, have fallen, is so hugely, vastly, immeasurably greater



that we can completely discount the chance hypothesis. Chance is out of the



question as an explanation.



This is not a circular argument, by the way. It might seem to be circular because, it



could be said, any particular arrangement of atoms is, with hindsight, very



improbable. As has been said before, when a ball lands on a particular blade of grass



on the golf course, it would be foolish to exclaim: "Out of all the billions of blades of



grass that it could have fallen on, the ball actually fell on this one. How amazingly,



miraculously improbable!" The fallacy here, of course, is that the ball had to land



somewhere. We can only stand amazed at the improbability of the actual event if we



specify it a priori: for example, if a blindfolded man spins himself round on the tee,



hits the ball at random, and achieves a hole in one. That would be truly amazing,



because the target destination of the ball is specified in advance.



Of all the trillions of different ways of putting together the atoms of a telescope, only



a minority would actually work in some useful way. Only a tiny minority would have



Carl Zeiss engraved on them, or, indeed, any recognizable words of any human



language. The same goes for the parts of a watch: of all the billions of possible ways



of putting them together, only a tiny minority will tell the time or do anything useful.



And of course the same goes, a fortiori, for the parts of a living body. Of all the



trillions of trillions of ways of putting together the parts of a body, only an



infinitesimal minority would live, seek food, eat, and reproduce. True, there are



many different ways of being alive -- at least ten million different ways if we count



the number of distinct species alive today -- but, however many ways there may be



of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead!



We can safely conclude that living bodies are billions of times too complicated -- too



statistically improbable -- to have come into being by sheer chance. How, then, did



they come into being? The answer is that chance enters into the story, but not a



single, monolithic act of chance. Instead, a whole series of tiny chance steps, each



one small enough to be a believable product of its predecessor, occurred one after



the other in sequence. These small steps of chance are caused by genetic



mutations, random changes -- mistakes really -- in the genetic material. They give



rise to changes in the existing bodily structure. Most of these changes are



deleterious and lead to death. A minority of them turn out to be slight



improvements, leading to increased survival and reproduction. By this process of



natural selection, those random changes that turn out to be beneficial eventually



spread through the species and become the norm. The stage is now set for the next



small change in the evolutionary process. After, say, a thousand of these small



changes in series, each change providing the basis for the next, the end result has



become, by a process of accumulation, far too complex to have come about in a



single act of chance.



For instance, it is theoretically possible for an eye to spring into being, in a single



lucky step, from nothing: from bare skin, let's say. It is theoretically possible in the



sense that a recipe could be written out in the form of a large number of mutations.



If all these mutations happened simultaneously, a complete eye could, indeed,



spring from nothing. But although it is theoretically possible, it is in practice



inconceivable. The quantity of luck involved is much too large. The "correct" recipe



involves changes in a huge number of genes simultaneously. The correct recipe is



one particular combination of changes out of trillions of equally probable



combinations of chances. We can certainly rule out such a miraculous coincidence.



But it is perfectly plausible that the modern eye could have sprung from something



almost the same as the modern eye but not quite: a very slightly less elaborate eye.



By the same argument, this slightly less elaborate eye sprang from a slightly less



elaborate eye still, and so on. If you assume a sufficiently large number of



sufficiently small differences between each evolutionary stage and its predecessor,



you are bound to be able to derive a full, complex, working eye from bare skin. How



many intermediate stages are we allowed to postulate? That depends on how much



time we have to play with. Has there been enough time for eyes to evolve by little



steps from nothing?



The fossils tell us that life has been evolving on Earth for more than 3,000 million



years. It is almost impossible for the human mind to grasp such an immensity of



time. We, naturally and mercifully, tend to see our own expected lifetime as a fairly



long time, but we can't expect to live even one century. It is 2,000 years since



Jesus lived, a time span long enough to blur the distinction between history and



myth. Can you imagine a million such periods laid end to end? Suppose we wanted



to write the whole history on a single long scroll. If we crammed all of Common Era



history into one metre of scroll, how long would the pre-Common Era part of the



scroll, back to the start of evolution, be? The answer is that the pre-Common Era



part of the scroll would stretch from Milan to Moscow. Think of the implications of



this for the quantity of evolutionary change that can be accommodated. All the



domestic breeds of dogs -- Pekingeses, poodles, spaniels, Saint Bernards, and



Chihuahuas -- have come from wolves in a time span measured in hundreds or at



the most thousands of years: no more than two meters along the road from Milan to



Moscow. Think of the quantity of change involved in going from a wolf to a



Pekingese; now multiply that quantity of change by a million. When you look at it



like that, it becomes easy to believe that an eye could have evolved from no eye by



small degrees.



It remains necessary to satisfy ourselves that every one of the intermediates on the



evolutionary route, say from bare skin to a modern eye, would have been favored



by natural selection; would have been an improvement over its predecessor in the



sequence or at least would have survived. It is no good proving to ourselves that



there is theoretically a chain of almost perceptibly different intermediates leading to



an eye if many of those intermediates would have died. It is sometimes argued that



the parts of an eye have to be all there together or the eye won't work at all. Half



an eye, the argument runs, is no better than no eye at all. You can't fly with half a



wing; you can't hear with half an ear. Therefore there can't have been a series of



step-by-step intermediates leading up to a modern eye, wing, or ear.



This type of argument is so naive that one can only wonder at the subconscious



motives for wanting to believe it. It is obviously not true that half an eye is useless.



Cataract sufferers who have had their lenses surgically removed cannot see very



well without glasses, but they are still much better off than people with no eyes at



all. Without a lens you can't focus a detailed image, but you can avoid bumping into



obstacles and you could detect the looming shadow of a predator.



As for the argument that you can't fly with only half a wing, it is disproved by large



numbers of very successful gliding animals, including mammals of many different



kinds, lizards, frogs, snakes, and squids. Many different kinds of tree-dwelling



animals have flaps of skin between their joints that really are fractional wings. If you



fall out of a tree, any skin flap or flattening of the body that increases your surface



area can save your life. And, however small or large your flaps may be, there must



always be a critical height such that, if you fall from a tree of that height, your life



would have been saved by just a little bit more surface area. Then, when your



descendants have evolved that extra surface area, their lives would be saved by



just a bit more still if they fell from trees of a slightly greater height. And so on by



insensibly graded steps until, hundreds of generations later, we arrive at full wings.



Eyes and wings cannot spring into existence in a single step. That would be like



having the almost infinite luck to hit upon the combination number that opens a



large bank vault. But if you spun the dials of the lock at random, and every time you



got a little bit closer to the lucky number the vault door creaked open another chink,



you would soon have the door open! Essentially, that is the secret of how evolution



by natural selection achieves what once seemed impossible. Things that cannot



plausibly be derived from very different predecessors can plausibly be derived from



only slightly different predecessors. Provided only that there is a sufficiently long



series of such slightly different predecessors, you can derive anything from anything



else.



Evolution, then, is theoretically capable of doing the job that, once upon a time,



seemed to be the prerogative of God. But is there any evidence that evolution



actually has happened? The answer is yes; the evidence is overwhelming. Millions of



fossils are found in exactly the places and at exactly the depths that we should



expect if evolution had happened. Not a single fossil has ever been found in any



place where the evolution theory would not have expected it, although this could



very easily have happened: a fossil mammal in rocks so old that fishes have not yet



arrived, for instance, would be enough to disprove the evolution theory.



The patterns of distribution of living animals and plants on the continents and



islands of the world is exactly what would be expected if they had evolved from



common ancestors by slow, gradual degrees. The patterns of resemblance among



animals and plants is exactly what we should expect if some were close cousins, and



others more distant cousins to each other. The fact that the genetic code is the



same in all living creatures overwhelmingly suggests that all are descended from



one single ancestor. The evidence for evolution is so compelling that the only way to



save the creation theory is to assume that God deliberately planted enormous



quantities of evidence to make it look as if evolution had happened. In other words,



the fossils, the geographical distribution of animals, and so on, are all one gigantic



confidence trick. Does anybody want to worship a God capable of such trickery? It is



surely far more reverent, as well as more scientifically sensible, to take the evidence



at face value. All living creatures are cousins of one another, descended from one



remote ancestor that lived more than 3,000 million years ago.



The Argument from Design, then, has been destroyed as a reason for believing in a



God. Are there any other arguments? Some people believe in God because of what



appears to them to be an inner revelation. Such revelations are not always edifying



but they undoubtedly feel real to the individual concerned. Many inhabitants of



lunatic asylums have an unshakable inner faith that they are Napoleon or, indeed,



God himself. There is no doubting the power of such convictions for those that have



them, but this is no reason for the rest of us to believe them. Indeed, since such



beliefs are mutually contradictory, we can't believe them all.



There is a little more that needs to be said. Evolution by natural selection explains a



lot, but it couldn't start from nothing. It couldn't have started until there was some



kind of rudimentary reproduction and heredity. Modern heredity is based on the DNA



code, which is itself too complicated to have sprung spontaneously into being by a



single act of chance. This seems to mean that there must have been some earlier



hereditary system, now disappeared, which was simple enough to have arisen by



chance and the laws of chemistry and which provided the medium in which a



primitive form of cumulative natural selection could get started. DNA was a later



product of this earlier cumulative selection. Before this original kind of natural



selection, there was a period when complex chemical compounds were built up from



simpler ones and before that a period when the chemical elements were built up



from simpler elements, following the well-understood laws of physics. Before that,



everything was ultimately built up from pure hydrogen in the immediate aftermath



of the big bang, which initiated the universe.



There is a temptation to argue that, although God may not be needed to explain the



evolution of complex order once the universe, with its fundamental laws of physics,



had begun, we do need a God to explain the origin of all things. This idea doesn't



leave God with very much to do: just set off the big bang, then sit back and wait for



everything to happen. The physical chemist Peter Atkins, in his beautifully written



book The Creation, postulates a lazy God who strove to do as little as possible in



order to initiate everything. Atkins explains how each step in the history of the



universe followed, by simple physical law, from its predecessor. He thus pares down



the amount of work that the lazy creator would need to do and eventually concludes



that he would in fact have needed to do nothing at all!



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My Hearty Thanks to the author, of this article, Mr. Richard Dawkins, for such a beautifully written



scientific article. As a student of Science, my aim was to bring forth the facts of



science and the enormous power it has, since i have seen many of you being carried



here and there, by the wrong notion of God. Therefore, i had to cut a para out of it



and give it here. COMMENTS AWAITED............AND YES BOINKS WON'T MATTER



EVEN IF I GET ANY FOR THIS (AS I AM EXPECTING IT FROM SOME ORTHODOXES



HERE ON GOIIT).......... AND YES BEFORE U EVEN RATE IT PLEEEZ ITS A REQUEST



THAT U READ IT "PROPERLY."