Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

24 J.J.C. Smart
proof of the existence of God, but my reference to it has a different motivation.)
There can be a simple recipe for creating complexity, so long as one
does not want to predict the particular type of complexity. Illuminate a planet
rather like the Earth which is about a hundred million miles from a star
rather like the Sun for so many hundreds of millions of years and (with luck)
complex organisms, perhaps like elephants or mermaids, will eventually evolve.
Still, this is not like the case of designing the universe itself – designing the
fundamental laws and boundary conditions. For this there would have to be
something like a blueprint in the mind of the designer, and it would have to
have a complexity equal to that of a complete specification of laws and boundary
conditions. Or can a regional order arise spontaneously out of a universal
chaos, the chilling thought of a few pages back? But if we accepted this last
idea there would be no need to suppose a designer, or anything else for that
matter.
Thus, even if it were supposed that the designer determines only the laws
of nature (with non-arbitrary constants in them) and a suitable set of initial
conditions, then considerations of simplicity and of Ockham’s razor suggest
that the supposition was an unnecessary one which should be rejected. Any
complexity in the laws and initial conditions would be duplicated in the mind
of the designer. (Otherwise I could get no purchase on the notion of design
that is involved.)
The matter may take on a different complexion if we look at the apparent
arbitrariness of the fundamental constants of nature, as we at present understand
them, and the way in which the relations between them are peculiarly
fitted for the evolution of a universe which contains life, consciousness and
intelligence. There is an appearance of a cosmic purpose which may appeal
to someone who concedes the points made in the previous paragraph. It
is tempting to think that the arbitrary constants must have been chosen by
some purposive agent so as to make the universe conducive to the evolution
of galaxies, stars, planets and eventually conscious and intelligent life.
At any rate this purposive explanation of the happy values of the constants
of nature and of the forms of the fundamental laws could strengthen belief in
a deity whose existence was made probable by some other argument. Of
course the view that God designed the universe because he wanted conscious
beings in it who would be the objects of his love is a not unfamiliar theological
one. I have wondered whether this view could have a touch in it
of psychocentric hubris. (I say ‘psychocentric’ not ‘anthropocentric’ in view of
the possibility that conscious and intelligent life is scattered throughout the
universe.) Certainly the Judaeo-Christian tradition sets a high value on humans
in the scheme of things, and this value should also be ascribed to minds on
other worlds, some of which may indeed be far superior to our human ones.
Perhaps there is a bit of human vanity involved in the idea that the universe