The Richard Dawson Delusion

Well it's about time I wrote something about Richard Dawson's book - The God Delusion. If his purpose for writing it was to make lots of money and attract a lot of attention he has certainly been very successful. I can't really see any other reason for writing this book. I love his central argument that it is very unlikely that god exists because if god was the creator of everything god would have to be extremely complex. Following the logic of simplicity - the more complex a hypothesis the more unlikely it is.

Although Dawson's book cannot be regarded as scientific he argues in favour of science and rationality. Given our current scientific models and understanding of the world it would seem that a creator would have to be extremely complex. Interestingly in the brief history of documented science no scientific model or theory has remained unchanged but has either been replaced by a more suitable theory or has been shown as a special case of a more comprehensive theory.

So in the same way that god is unlikely because of complexity it is as unlikely that current scientific theories and models describe the world accurately. In fact it is even more unlikely that science has all the answers since the very idea of science is based on coming up with hypotheses which are valid at a certain point in time with the expectation that they will be replaced over time.

If Dawson believes current scientific models do account for everything (or will in time be able to explain observations they can't explain at the moment) he displays the same delusion that he ascribes to people believing in god. Ironically I fully expect future generations to regard Dawson in the same category as the medieval priests who preached for centuries that our planet was the centre of the universe.

The greatest tragedy of all awaits Dawson when he dies though - if he's right and there is no god, he'll never know he was right. If he's wrong and god does exist - he'll have to live the entire afterlife annoyed with the extremely unlikely complexity of god.

-Stef