Dawkins' response: If complex things require intentionality or causation, then what about God? Isn't God more complex than the universe, given that God is capable of creating the universe? The basic response to this argument has so far been to claim that, no, in fact God is simple...just as William Lane Craig responds to Dawkins':
So Dawkins' argument for atheism is a failure even if we concede, for the sake of argument, all its steps. But, in fact, several of these steps are plausibly false. Take just step (3), for example. Dawkins' claim here is that one is not justified in inferring design as the best explanation of the complex order of the universe because then a new problem arises: who designed the designer?On Craig's first point, the problem is that Intelligent Design Creationism is a joke, as it doesn't "detect" anything. Furthermore, although there are parallels in detecting intelligence from archeology, because we know what humans do and what to look for, the sort of intelligent designer implied by IDC is supernatural. Given that IDC also claims that our place in the cosmos is "privileged" -- the anthropic principle -- this would require the "designer" to have tuned the very physical constants that any naturalistic designer would be controlled by. Unlike in archeology, where we find artifacts that we can reliably infer intelligence or design in, as we have a basis for comparison (ourselves) with which we are intimately familiar, the "designer" in IDC would be so alien and preternatural as to remove our capability to even recognize its handiwork.
This rejoinder is flawed on at least two counts. First, in order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science. If archaeologists digging in the earth were to discover things looking like arrowheads and hatchet heads and pottery shards, they would be justified in inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and metamorphosis, but products of some unknown group of people, even though they had no explanation of who these people were or where they came from. Similarly, if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that it was the product of intelligent, extra-terrestrial agents, even if they had no idea whatsoever who these extra-terrestrial agents were or how they got there. In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't be able to explain the explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. So in the case at hand, in order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe, one needn't be able to explain the designer.
Secondly, Dawkins thinks that in the case of a divine designer of the universe, the designer is just as complex as the thing to be explained, so that no explanatory advance is made. This objection raises all sorts of questions about the role played by simplicity in assessing competing explanations; for example, how simplicity is to be weighted in comparison with other criteria like explanatory power, explanatory scope, and so forth. But leave those questions aside. Dawkins' fundamental mistake lies in his assumption that a divine designer is an entity comparable in complexity to the universe. As an unembodied mind, God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity. Dawkins has evidently confused a mind's ideas, which may, indeed, be complex, with a mind itself, which is an incredibly simple entity. Therefore, postulating a divine mind behind the universe most definitely does represent an advance in simplicity, for whatever that is worth.
On Craig's second point, I think that it is Craig who is confused. Craig claims that a divine mind would be "an advance in simplicity" -- but this refers to philosophical economy: Ockham's razor, if you will. However, in addressing Dawkins' argument, Craig claims that an "unembodied mind" is somehow a simple entity. The problem with this argument is that even if I were to grant that an unembodied mind could exist, which is problematic, God is able to create a physical universe, and thus cause it to exist, in addition to thinking it. Furthermore, Craig's God not only creates the universe ex nihilo, He interacts with it and even becomes physical within it. If these things don't make God more complex than the product of His creation, then what could?
If something or someone X can create something or someone Y, then alter its properties post creation, then selectively become part of Y in a controlled manner, and none of these things can occur from Y -> X, but only from X -> Y, is X not more complex and less simple than Y?
I think Craig's premise is not only unsupported, but is almost self-evidently false: X is more complex than Y, and Craig's God is more complex than the universe it creates, alters, becomes one with...&c.
Therefore, Dawkins' argument stands: appealing to the argument from design in saying that complexity demands simplicity does not get us anywhere when the designer is purported to be more complex than that which is designed!
