Remove God, Lose Reason

My introduction to popular science came as a response to questions asked me in a physics tutorial more than twenty years ago. The book concerned¹ was Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. It was there that I first became acquainted with the misguided ambit claim of physics to give answers to philosophical questions, because, it was claimed, philosophy had abdicated the responsibility², and, ominously³,

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the question of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory [a theory from physics] so compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does it need a Creator…..and who created him?

My response to the book was presented in fora within my university under the title Hawking, is he confused or just mischievous? Hawking raised a number of issues leaving them as open questions, but then proceeded as if he had answered them. This was clever for if an answer of his were objected to he could claim that he had left the question open. Others following him just ran with his answers. For example, on the one hand he knew he was stuck with how a mathematical theory can bring anything into existence⁴. “What breathes fire into the equations?” He asked. Again⁵: “A scientific theory is just a mathematical model we make to describe our observations: it exists only in our minds.”

On the other hand if his then recently introduced “no boundary” proposal was correct (no numbers for God to set in the theory and no beginning or end to the proposed universe), then the universe would simply exist and there would be no need for God⁶. The fact that the ‘no boundary’ proposal still only existed in his mind was ignored.

The quote above asking if the mathematical theory can bring about its own existence is ominous in the light of his most recent (2010) pronouncement⁷:

…the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics. Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

In the intervening twentyodd years Hawking made up his mind on what the role of mathematics was in physics. The early quotes from A Brief History of Time show an ambivalence between the descriptive role, where nature comes before mathematics and the prescriptive role, where mathematics comes before nature. The descriptive role is sourced in realism and the prescriptive role in idealism. What breathes fire into the equations indeed! Plato had no problem with that as he had a demiurge to translate the Ideas into eternally existing matter. But 20^thC physics provides no demiurge and no matter at the beginning. Prescriptive mathematics is stuck.

It is stuck because of metaphysics, and metaphysics is the blind side of physics: “Metaphysics is not part of physics.” Usually said dismissively, it is the scourge to keep younger physicists in line. Yet that is a metaphysical statement; neither observation nor measurement of nature has a part in it. Physics is a methodology, from its beginning in the West in the 14C⁸, informed for better or worse by any and every philosophical system. A problem for prescriptive mathematics lies in the flawed metaphysical position that cause is a concept with a single meaning and hence it is enough to identify one candidate for the role. Physicists, despite the quote above, usually espouse David Hume’s metaphysical position of one cause only; it is every phenomenon has an antecedent phenomenon. Even Hume had two goes as to what constituted the one cause⁹. He started with the efficient cause before he settled on accidental cause above. So the mathematical physicists have picked another candidate in prescriptive mathematics: extrinsic formal cause.

Aristotle, summarising the ancients, listed four causes¹⁰: Formal (extrinsic and intrinsic), material, efficient and final. For example, in asking what is the cause of this building, a complete answer involves four parts. First, someone wanted it for whatever reason. This is the goal or what is wanted in the end, hence final cause. As a result plans were drawn up. These contain details of the shape or form of the building. As yet this shape is not in the building so it is extrinsic to it. Hence the plans are the extrinsic formal cause. Next, bricks, tiles, wood, glass, cement etc, are assembled in preparation for the actual building; this is the material cause. A builder builds the building according to the plans; the builder is the efficient cause. As the building takes shape the form in the plans now appears in the building. The shape of the actual building is the intrinsic formal cause. Accidental cause does not appear in the list, as cause and its effect are simultaneous. Thus a builder building (cause) and a building being built (effect) are simultaneous. It is accidental to the builder here and now building that he had an antecedent cause in his parents.

So in the same manner Plato imagines the Ideas (extrinsic formal cause) built into matter (the material cause) by the demiurge or builder (the efficient cause). In the present context the demiurge takes the extrinsic formal cause of the mathematics and fashions matter in the form required by the mathematics (intrinsic formal cause). Final cause is not addressed in this exercise. So Hawking was rightly concerned, twenty odd years ago, as to what breathes fire into the equations. He lacked the material and efficient causes.

The earlier Hawking was a realist tempted by idealism. From the early quotes above he clearly knew that mathematical models exist only in our minds and that they describe pre-existing nature: the descriptive role of mathematics. He saw two solutions to the difficulty. Either the mathematics, despite existing only in our minds, compels the existence of informed matter bypassing the need for a demiurge, or God did it. But God needed a creator so he claimed, as did Paul Davies¹¹ and Richard Dawkins after him. This claim will be examined with Dawkins’ ideas, but it is false. Hawking has sown a doubt about the role of God, which is a metaphysical position, not one belonging to physics. Hawking is outside his expertise.

Twenty odd years later God is eliminated, but Hawking doesn’t quite settle for his previous alternative. Prescriptive mathematics has been replaced by the laws of physics: “…the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics”.

It is true that most of the laws of physics like gravity are accompanied by mathematical description, but not all. It is here that he comes to grief. “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

Newton’s Laws are laws of physics and the First Law, which is non-mathematical, tells us that any body in the existing universe cannot change its state of rest or uniform motion by itself. The law of gravity presupposes all of Newton’s Laws so the First Law is more fundamental than gravity. As the universe consists of bodies none of which can move itself, then the universe cannot move itself. A fundamental law of physics forbids the universe to move itself. So the laws of physics deny the possibility of the universe moving itself into existence, quite apart from the repugnant notion that something can be the cause of its own existence.

Hawking’s argument is self-refuting. Yet even with prescriptive mathematics, if located in the mind of God the requirements of more logical philosophical thinking are satisfied: Mathematics is located in a mind where it belongs and to one who has the power to bring matter and form into existence ex nihilo . This one’s very essence, that which makes it what it is, is existence; it is not caused to exist by anything.

Hawking has attributed the power to create ex nihilo to the laws of physics, this is God by another name. The question of the origin of the universe is replaced by the question of the origin of the laws of physics. The universe’s origin has been postponed, not solved. The spectre of an infinite chain of secondary causes looms that Aristotle long ago dismissed¹²: unless there is a first there is no cause at all.

Hawking’s explanation for the origin of the universe is unreasonable in its entirety. It starts with a belief in the existence of the laws of physics separate from that of the universe without apology. [Without reference to arguments against such an assumption¹³]. He ignores the need for the efficient and material as causes separate from the form of the law to achieve his intention. He states that the universe can create itself. This ignores the fact that something must exist before it can act; nothing, not even God, can be the cause of its own existence. From nothing, nothing comes has long been understood. He fails to account for the existence of the universe because he fails to account for the laws by which he claims the universe operates. Finally his argument is self-refuting as a more fundamental law of physics forbids what he claims. He has failed to remove God, because his alternative is unreasonable. 

My acquaintance with Richard Dawkins is very recent. Antony Flew labelled him a secularist bigot (Quadrant, Oct 2008) in not addressing the strongest form of his opponent’s arguments. Paddy Mc Guinness is said to have dismissed him as a disgrace to atheism. That did not deter Robert McLaughlin in giving The God Delusion¹⁴ top billing in his list of atheistic authors opposed to religion in his recent article in Quadrant (Sept 2010). Being against religion is not the same as being for atheism. Throwing rocks at someone else may say something for one’s aim but it doesn’t secure the ground on which one is standing. In fact it is simply a resort to attack as the best form of defence. None of this is an incentive to add him to the “must read” list. That changed when two of my sons, who happen to be doing the same university philosophy course, wrote assignments on the arguments to be found in The God Delusion. This lead to my acquiring a (paperback) copy and discovering what constitutes his reasoned position for denying God.

My first reaction was surprise at an unexpected concession:

But the candidate solutions to the riddle of improbability are not, as is falsely implied, design and chance. They are design and natural selection. Chance is not a solution, given the high levels of improbability we see in living organisms, and no sane biologist ever suggested that it was.¹⁵

Further on in the same paragraph he states his immediate objective:

But for the moment I want to continue demonstrating the problem that any theory of life must solve: the problem of how to escape from chance.

This was new to me that chance is not a solution, but not being a biologist perhaps can be offered as an excuse. I thought that was the whole point of the argument that chance could account for what is there. Evidently natural selection was not based on chance if the intention was to escape from chance. But there is more.

Natural selection is not only a parsimonious, plausible and elegant solution; it is the only workable alternative to chance that has ever been suggested. [My emphasis].

Then comes another surprising statement:

Intelligent design suffers from exactly the same objection as chance. It is simply not a plausible solution to the riddle of statistical improbability. And the higher the improbability the more implausible intelligent design becomes. Seen clearly, intelligent design will turn out to be a redoubling of the problem. Once again, this is because the designer himself (herself/itself) immediately raises the bigger problem of his own origin¹⁶.

Ah, the “who created God?” assertion flagged in Hawking.

Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a Dutchman’s Pipe (or a universe) would have to be more improbable than a Dutchman’s Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance.

This strange definition of God will be examined later. Finally:

Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed design is not a real alternative at all because it raises the even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer? …. Natural selection is a real solution. It is the only workable solution that has ever been suggested¹⁷.

Now comes the rationale for natural selection:

The answer is that natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so¹⁸.

Despite Dawkins’ protestations that chance is not a solution and that no sane biologist ever suggested that it was, here he now introduces chance as the solution. Only this time it is broken up into smaller steps that are each less improbable. This we will see changes nothing. It is still about chance and with Dawkins’ approval we are free to doubt his sanity. More evidence for that follows:

When large numbers of these slightly improbable events are stacked up in series, the end product of the accumulation is very improbable indeed, improbable enough to be far beyond the reach of chance¹⁸. [My emphasis]

A process whose each step is based on chance when accumulated gives the chance for the final result. This is the same answer whether it is achieved in a series of small steps or in one go. But the one go answer he objects to. The problem was to escape from chance he said. So his answer is to declare it not due to chance. What a barefaced bluff!

Let us take a simple example to illustrate what is at stake here. Suppose ten people toss one coin each with the result of ten heads. This would be a bit surprising. The probability of that happening is roughly one in a thousand (1/2¹⁰ or 1/1024 to be exact). But if the result were five heads and five tails we wouldn’t be too surprised as the probability of that happening is roughly one quarter (252/1024 to be exact). The reason that the outcome of five heads and tails is more likely is that there are so many different ways in which it can be achieved. For example five heads followed by five tails the probability for which is exactly the same as for ten heads. But it could be four heads followed by five tails and finally a head, which again has the same probability as ten heads. But it could be head, tail, head, tail, alternating till five of each is had. Again the probability is the same as for ten heads. There are two hundred and fifty two such combinations for five heads and five tails, but only one combination for ten heads. The argument due to chance at stake in evolution is the ten heads outcome. The reason for that is that evolution has been in the direction of increasing order (ten heads), headed away from the disorder (five heads and tails) that is the norm. Order is coming out of disorder.

Now suppose that just one person tosses a coin ten times. There is no time constraint so the tosses could be years apart. Suppose the outcome is again ten heads. The probability of that happening is the exactly the same as for the ten people tossing all together. Now suppose our tosser has got as far as five heads in a row, what is the chance that the next throw is a head? It is still one half. The fact that there have been five heads already does not affect the probability of the next toss. Each toss is independent of what has gone before.

So it makes absolutely no difference to the probability whether the same outcome is accomplished in one step, as with the ten simultaneous tosses, or in little steps each with only a small improbability. Whether the answer is achieved in one step, with the probability 1/2¹⁰, or in ten steps and accumulates the probability from each step as the answer is still 1/2¹⁰.

What Dawkins is trying to do is concentrate on the step probability of 1/2 as being a small improbability and the accumulation of the small improbabilities is what natural selection is all about. The fact that this is exactly the outcome of chance and that his argument is built on chance he waves away as far beyond the reach of chance! He has no argument for his case; it is a hoax. Biologists, if this is a credible example, evidently don’t know how to mount their scientific argument.

His unreasonableness does not stop there. He won’t countenance God as the only alternative. The problem he asserts is who designed the designer or who created God as Hawking puts it. Dawkins’ God is:

However little we know about God, the one thing we can be sure of is that he would have to be very complex and presumably irreducibly so!¹⁹

He repeats this quite a number of times with returns to a “very improbable” and “unexplained existence of God”. The idea behind God being complex is that what exists is complex and he would have to be even more complex to have designed it. This is a material God reduced to fit science and not the God of philosophy. It justifies Antony Flew’s accusation of a secularist bigotry.

Dawkins finds fault with the five ways of Thomas Aquinas that demonstrate God’s existence. The common fault with the first three he gives is:

All three of these arguments rely on the idea of a regress and invoke God to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress.²⁰

Dawkins doesn’t understand what he is talking about. He has made no effort to understand what the regress is about. Once what the regress means is understood, the statement that God is not immune to the regress is seen to be contradictory. It is precisely because there must be a limit to what is regressed that God is its terminator; he is not invoked (more below). The rest of the section is an irrelevant attack on the properties of God. Properties have nothing to do with the fact that God is.

It was Aristotle long ago who showed that there couldn’t be an infinite series of subordinated causes¹² (does not apply to accidental cause like Hume’s). For example, suppose a queue of people wants to gain entrance to a stadium for a big sporting event but none of them has money to pay. Each one refers to the one behind him as the one who is paying. Unless there is someone by the end of the queue who has money, nobody pays. It is still true that nobody pays even if the queue could be infinite. Unless someone possesses money, nothing can be passed on. From nothing, nothing comes. So it is observed that things come in and out of existence; they are contingent on something that is already in existence bringing them into existence and maintaining them in existence by the efficient cause. But there cannot be an infinite regress of efficient causes each one depending on the one before it, otherwise there is no cause at all since none in the series has it of itself so nothing can be. Something has to have existence of its very essence, one that is existence and from which all other existences are derived. That Being who is, is God.

Dawkins’ case for his own position rests on two falsehoods: His understanding of natural selection is exactly the case for chance, which he condemns, but he pretends that that it is not. His assertion that God is not immune to regress is false.

Now that Dawkins has not succeeded in dethroning God and failed to establish natural selection as differing from chance, does that mean that Intelligent Design wins by default? On Dawkins’ handling of the argument the answer must be yes, but the feeling persists that natural selection has been badly defended. Clearly the defence through chance is lost. Now the meaning of the word “selection”, suggesting choice, to pick something out from a variety of options, cannot be supported by the meaning of the word “chance”, an event happening at random. “Natural selection through chance” is empty of meaning and of course neither Dawkins nor anyone else can make it true. How then does nature make a choice? The answer offered here is based in physics.

Suppose one has a container of nitrogen one cubic metre in volume. The gas is at atmospheric pressure and at room temperature. What is the probability of finding all the gas molecules in the bottom corner of the container occupying a volume of one cubic centimetre? Or roughly speaking what is the chance that all the molecules will be found in the corner? This is quite a domestic, not astronomical, scale problem. The answer near enough is one in . One in one million raised to the power ten to the power twenty five or one in one million raised to the power of ten million, million, million, million. There is no way that this can happen by chance in the lifetime of the universe.²¹

But with a little help, nature can do this as often as we choose. Cool the walls of the container till the gas liquefies. Tilt the container until it runs into the corner (it will occupy more than a cubic centimetre, but that is not important to the story). Nature has completely bypassed the probability calculation. What has happened?

By cooling the walls of the container the temperature of the gas is lowered. Temperature is a measure of the mean kinetic energy of the molecules. When that energy is low enough the long-range attractive forces between the molecules draw the molecules closer together till they liquefy. They are held together by goal-directed forces between the molecules. Each molecule is drawn to every other molecule by a force that depends on how far away the molecules are. The forces are electrical in origin. The basic electrical force is governed by the Coulomb Law, where two bodies of opposite sign charges are attracted to each other along the line joining their centres. Each molecule acts as a target or goal or end for the other molecule to aim at. This is called final cause, which physicists ignore, confusing it with purpose²². The electrical force directs the motion and governs its change in matter; the motions and changes are not random. The imposed direction and change select from all the possible directions and changes.

This doesn’t preclude chance being involved say for example mixing or shuffling of molecules with a variety of compounds resulting, or seed being borne by the wind, a few to achieve their end but many not. The fact that there is room for chance does not negate end. Unlike the coin tossing where what has gone before does not affect the outcome of the next toss, the molecules so far assembled may well narrow the range of what can be added through the particular form of the goal-directed forces of the new assembly. In coin tossing terms, when it happens, the next one may only be a tail. That is selection and it nullifies the probability calculations.

The scientific case for God seems to involve a situation where evolution by natural selection breaks down as with the concept of irreducible complexity. Whatever the validity of the concept, the demonstration of God’s existence does not depend on it. His case is made philosophically, as in the three ways Dawkins failed to overturn above, and would be true whether or not evolution by natural selection breaks down.

Dawkins’ final serious attempt to discredit God comes with the fifth way. Ends or goals lie at the heart of Thomas Aquinas’ fifth way²³:

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

The intelligence directing nature is through the laws of nature. It is not necessary to suppose that this intelligence, God, intervenes directly in nature. It is obvious that God, in keeping the universe in existence, since it is created from nothing, keeps the laws by which it is governed in existence. The interpretation of natural selection based on nature and ends proposed in this article is consistent with the fifth way.

Dawkins’ attack on the fifth way starts with a paraphrase:

Things in the world, especially living things, look as though they have been designed. Nothing that we know looks designed unless it is designed. Therefore there must have been a designer, and we call him God. Aquinas himself used the analogy of an arrow moving towards a target, but a modern heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile would have suited his purpose better²⁴.

The paraphrase adds both an emphasis on living things absent in the original and a proposition, that by avoiding any mention of nature and ends, reduces Aquinas’ argument based on reality and final cause to an idea, which Dawkins thinks he can refute. The last part of the paraphrase concerning arrow and missile is irrelevant.

Dawkins’ supposed ace is that the world looks designed but is not because of natural selection; for natural selection read chance.

There has probably never been a more devastating rout of popular belief by clever reasoning than Charles Darwin’s destruction of the argument from design. It was so unexpected. Thanks to Darwin, it is no longer true to say that nothing that we know looks designed unless it is designed. Evolution by natural selection produces an excellent simulacrum of design, mounting prodigious heights of complexity and excellence²⁴. [My emphasis].

The idea that the world looks designed but is not, seems to be common currency in biology. Common or not it is out of step with the rest of nature where even the random distributions of events are subject to law and determined parameters. It is designed because the laws governing the behaviour of nature can be discovered; it doesn’t just look designed. Dawkins and those who share this view deny the rationale of their scientific enterprise. The very fact that the universe is rational is enough to point to intelligence behind it. Dawkins’ attempt to remove God is unreasonable.  

FOOTNOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, (Bantam, Sydney, 1989).
2. Ibid. p 185.
3. ibid. p 184.
4. ibid. p 184.
5. ibid. p 147.
6. ibid. p 149.
7. Laura Roberts quoting extract from Stephen Hawking’s Grand Design, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7976594/Stephen Hawking-God-was-not-needed-to-create-the-Universe.html#disqus_thread 02 Sep 2010.
8. It is important to realise that physics itself is not a philosophical system but a methodology right from its foundation in the 14C. It has been argued that the ban placed on the teaching of Aristotle at Paris by the bishop Etienne Tempier on 7th March 1277 (and at Oxford on 18th March by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Kilwardby,) paved the way for the birth of science through the rise of nominalism. The road to science passes through the nominalism of Nicholas of Autrecourt and the earlier works of Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon. However its arrival is evident in the works of John Buridan, Albert of Saxony and Nicole Oresme at Paris and the Merton School at Oxford.

The 14C was spoken of as ‘the age of Buridan’. The Buridan authority, Earnest A. Moody, continues:

‘First, he [Buridan] vindicated natural philosophy as a respectable study in its own right. Second, he defined the objectives and methodology of scientific enterprise in a manner that warranted its autonomy with respect to dogmatic theology and metaphysics; this achievement was intimately connected with the 14C movement known as nominalism ….. Primarily, however he could ward off criticism for the fundamental reason that he employed the logical and epistemological doctrines of nominalism in a methodological (italics mine), rather than a metaphysical, way in formulating the character and evidential foundations of natural philosophy.’

‘To make science compatible with Christian dogma, Buridan had to break its traditional ties with metaphysics and define its principles methodologically, in terms of their value in ”saving the phenomena”…… but after the time of Buridan, natural philosophy had its own legitimacy and ceased to be either only a handmaiden of theology or a mere exposition of the doctrines of Aristotle.’.

‘The mechanistic conception of nature, construed as a metaphysical thesis (italics mine), emerged in the 14C as a natural development from Buridan’s philosophy of science.’.

It should be noted that Buridan did not break with metaphysics, but its traditional ties. See Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Sheed and Ward, London, 1955). Part 9, ‘The Condemnation of 1277’, pp 387-427; Ernest A. Moody, ‘Buridan, Jean,’ Dict. Sci. Biog., Vol. 2, (Scribner’s, New York, 1972), p. 607; R.A. Uritam, ‘Medieval science, the Copernican revolution, and physics teaching’ Am. J. Phys. 42 809-819 (1974).

9. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 7 Part II and Section 8 Part I second footnote, Great Books of the Western World (Enc. Brit. Chicago 1952), 35, p477 and p484; Treatise of Human Nature, (1739-40) 1, 3, 14. Quoted by Fredrick Copleston S. J., A History of Philosophy, (Burns and Oates, London, 1968), 5, p 285.
10. Aristotle, Metaphysics V, 1013^a 24, Great Books of the Western World (Enc. Brit. Chicago 1952), 8, p 533.
11. Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma, (Allen Lane, London, 2006), p 228.
12. Aristotle, Metaphysics II, 994^a 1-994^b 15, Great Books of the Western World (Enc. Brit. Chicago 1952), 8, pp 512-513.
13. Criticism of the separate Ideas is pursued in many of the books of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. A succinct example may be summarised as: If the Ideas are separate then they are a substance and indicate a “this”. As such they cannot be universals, which indicate “such”. Aristotle, Metaphysics III, 1003^a 7-17, Great Books of the Western World (Enc. Brit. Chicago 1952), 8, p 521. It is worse for mathematics as the summaries of the content of chapters (2) and (3) of Book XIII and chapter (6) of Book XIV of the Metaphysics conclude: “Mathematical objects cannot exist as distinct substances either in or apart from sensible things”, “they can be separated only in thought”. Aristotle, Metaphysics XIII, 1076^a 38-1077^b 17, Great Books of the Western World (Enc. Brit. Chicago 1952), 8, pp 607-608; and “the causal agency ascribed to numbers is purely fanciful”. Aristotle, Metaphysics XIV 1092^b 26, Great Books of the Western World (Enc. Brit. Chicago 1952), 8, pp 625-626.
14. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, (Black Swan, London, 2007).
15. Ibid. p 145.
16. Ibid. p 146.
17. Ibid. p 147.
18. Ibid. p 147.
19. Ibid. p 151.
20. Ibid. p 101.
21. A rough calculation is all that is called for. The number of seconds in a year is about 30 million. The age of the universe is 15 billion years (a little generous to make the maths easy). Then the age of the universe in seconds is  or 0.45 billion billion seconds. Further suppose these molecules could change place every nanosecond or a billion times a second. Then the number of rearrangements attempted in the age of the universe is 0.45 billion billion billion or rounding up to make it more generous a billion billion billion. This is 10²⁷ or 10 to the power 27. To have the molecules in the corner once at all with some kind of chance, this power must be not 27 but 10²⁵ or 100 million billion billion.
22. A kangaroo may be the target or goal for the hunter, but that does not imply that the purpose of the kangaroo is to be a target.
23. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1 q. 2 a.3. (Benziger, N.Y. 2^nd Ed. Rev. 1920).
24. Richard Dawkins, ibid. p 103.