The Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit that Backfires

Richard Dawkins is one of the most famous atheists of our time. The Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit is from his latest book The GOD Delusion.

Dawkins introduces the "Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit" as the "central argument of my book". He quotes Dan Dennett as calling it "an un-rebuttable refutation" of the existence of God, and adds "I have yet to hear a theologian give a convincing answer despite numerous opportunities and invitations".

The Boeing 747 allusion is from Fred Hoyle's famous argument against the probability of life spontaneously assembling itself on the primordial earth. According to Hoyle, the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the probability that a tornado, sweeping through a junkyard, would assemble a working Boeing 747 airliner. However, Dawkins turns the argument around, and concludes that any designer must be even more improbable:

"However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747."

I will begin by showing the error in Dawkins' reasoning, and then go on to produce a positive proof of God myself.

Dawkins does not present the argument formally, but here it is extracted from the few sentences he actually devotes to the argument. Thanks to Rich Deem of http://www.godandscience.org for introductory paragraphs and the basis for Argument #1 and #2 below.

Argument #1:

Premise #1. Every existing entity that shows evidence of design requires a designer superior to itself.
Premise #2. If God exists, then God shows evidence of design in himself.
Conclusion #1. Hence God requires a designer (another God) superior to himself.

Argument #2:

Premise #3. Infinite regressions are not possible.
Premise #4. Conclusion #1 above implies an infinite regression (an infinite number of gods).
Conclusion #2. Hence, Conclusion #1 is not possible, hence Premise #2 is false, so God does not exist.

Although Dawkins does not believe that Premise #1 is true, he accepts it as such (for the purpose of the argument), assuming that this is a premise all theists would accept as true. Dawkins, on the other hand, believes that the design we see in nature and the universe is an illusion. In other words, these things looked designed but were not.

Now, given that theists believe Premise #1, Dawkins has proven that God does not exist. This is Dawkins ultimate proof which puts theists in a loose-loose situation. If they believe that things that look designed are really designed then there is no God, and if the don't believe that things that look designed are really designed (as Dawkins does), then there is no need for God!

However, Dawkins' argument hinges on the fact that theists must accept Premise #1 as stated.

The problem is, we don't!

Theists believe that Premise #1 is only true for contingent entities! In other words, Premise #1, as stated, is false. Instead it should be formulated as follows:

Premise #1. Every existing entity that shows evidence of design requires a designer superior to itself as long as that entity is contingent.

Now all entities are either contingent or necessary. A contingent entity is subject to another entity in a cause/effect relationship. A necessary entity is an affect without a cause.

It is possible to prove that at least one necessary entity must exist, if we accept that infinite regressions are not possible (Premise #3 above). By this argument the universe itself must be necessary because if it is not, then it would have been caused by another entity, which itself must be caused by another entity, leading to an infinite regression.

So since we know that the universe exists (by observation!) there must be at least one one necessary entity.

This means that the qualification, "as long as that entity is contingent", to Premise #1 above is valid. In other words, the distinction between contingent or necessary entities is real!

So we can now simply say that God is a necessary entity, and is therefore the argument falls flat because under these circumstances, Premise #1 as stated by Dawkins in Argument #1 is false, which means Premise #2 is free to remain true. In other words, God may exist, and may continue to appear designed (due to His obvious complexity) without vanishing in a poof of logic (as Douglas Adams would say - whom Dawkins so loves to quote!).

The concludes the rebuttal of Dawkins' "Ulitimate Boeing 747 Gambit". But we can go one step further and show that the gambit actually backfires.

The fact that God is the necessary entity raises the following question:

If there is at least one necessary entity, then why does it have to be God? Why could it not be the universe itself? In affect, we could pick anything, or any number of things to be the necessary entity/entities.

Lets look at some of the theories that have been proposed:

Proposal #1: The universe is the eternal necessary entity. Space and time have always existed. This is also known as the steady state model of the cosmos.

Proposal #2: The universe is ever exploding from a singularity and the crushing back to the singularity in an endless cycle. This is the "oscillating" variation of the steady state model.

Proposal #3: The universe came from a singularity that is eternal and necessary. At some point it exploded to become the universe as we know it.

Proposal #4: There is a God that has always existed and is the necessary entity. God created the universe, and everything in the universe is contingent, including the universe itself.

Proposal #5: God as we know him today is a necessary entity, but arose from a "God-singularity" long ago. The God-singularity was necessary though.

Proposal #6: Everything is necessary. For example, everything leapt into existence 10 minutes ago, fully formed, with memories and history perfectly in place. Contingent entities have only appeared in the last 10 minutes.

Proposal #7: There are multiple necessary God entities. One or more of them created the universe.

We observe that:

Proposal #1 has been ruled out by the Big Bang theory. With regard to Proposal #2, recent research shows that the universe is expanding faster which indicates that the universe only began once (this point is conceded by Dawkins).

Proposal #3 seams to be what Richard Dawkins believes.

Proposal #4 is the Christian theocratic point of view.

Proposals #5, #6 and #7 have been included for completeness. If we simple state that there must be at least one necessary entity, then they cannot be ruled out.

Now consider the following arguments:

Argument #3:

Fact #1. Time and space are indivisible. The General Theory of Relativity introduced the idea of the space-time continuum, which basically shows that it is not possible to have the one without the other.
Fact #2. The universe has a single beginning. The Big Bang Theory proves that our universe had a definite beginning as a singularity.
Conclusion #3. Space and time had a definite beginning, which coincides with the beginning of the universe.

Argument #4:

Fact #3. All contingency requires time except the beginning of time itself. This is due to the fact that cause and effect must be ordered, a cause must always proceed an effect.
Fact #4. Time began with the beginning of the universe (from Conclusion #3 above)
Conclusion #4. Contingency (except the beginning of time itself) began with the beginning of the universe.

This last conclusion allows us to eliminate Proposal #5, because it would require contingency before time began.

With regard to Proposal #6 consider the following:

A necessary entity can either be eternal or it came from nothing. If we accept that something can come from nothing then we must accept that, for all intents and purposes, it is indistinguishable from something that has been around forever. In other words, a necessary entity that came from nothing will look exactly like something that is eternal. At the same time, if we insist that such an entity came out of nothing then one might as well end the discussion immediately. There is no way that this can be contradicted or disproved. The best solution is to consider this an unreasonable point of view, and assume rather that the entity is eternal. Which it just as well could be, because we cannot tell the difference!

On this basis, Proposal #6, which suggests that the universe as we know it came from nothing, can be considered unreasonable.

A device called Occam's razor shaves away the additional Gods in Proposal #7: since one God is sufficient to create the universe, why hypothesize more than one?

This leaves Proposals #3 and #4. The difference between these proposal hinges on the one exception specified in Conclusion #3 above. Namely, that contingency began with the beginning of the universe, except for the beginning of time itself.

This means quite simply: time, may be contingent, but it may also be necessary.

Proposals #3 asserts that time is necessary (not contingent). In other words, time, as part of the singularity always existed. Note that this must also mean that the singularity occupied a bit of space (of course this is true, otherwise the singularity would, in fact, be nothing and we would have an unreasonable proposal on our hands, with the consequences as discussed above).

Proposals #4 means that time itself is contingent. But how can time be contingent when time itself is required for contingency? This is possible because any entity that has a beginning must come "after" an entity that has no beginning. So entities with a beginning can be caused by entities that are eternal. Which means it is quite possible that time is contingent to an eternal God as asserted by this proposal.

So Proposals #3 and #4 seem to face off in a draw. Both are possible. Or are they? Actually, Proposals #3 fails, but the concept is a bit tricky. Let me explain:

Proposals #3 actually states that time is eternal, and the singularity, of which time was part, was unchanged for an infinitely long time. But, at some point, the singularity changed. It suddenly exploded to become the universe.

So what is the problem with that? Well, the problem is, if something remains unchanged for an infinitely long time, then it will never change at all! This is because any part of infinity is still infinity. So if the part of time before the change was infinite, it still would not have happened today.

This is one of the reasons why the Bible says that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Because God is eternal, he cannot change. Its a package deal.

But, you say, how was it then possible for God, to create the universe at all? He has been around for eternity, so there must have been an eternity before he created the universe. So the universe should not ever have been created.

This is an attempt to apply the failure of Proposals #3 to Proposal #4! This argument, however, is invalid.

It assumes that God is subject to time. Only if God is subject to time, can there be an infinite amount of time before he creates the universe. But time was created along with the universe. God is eternal, but not in the sense of a "heck of a long time"! He is eternal and distinct from both time and space which he created.

Without the restriction of time, God is free to bring the universe into being (in fact, there is a sense in which the universe has always existed in God's mind!). Only in the moment that God created the singularity that exploded into the universe as we know it, did time actual take on meaning. But even, then God was/is still not subject to the time in this universe. He remains outside of time and space, able to intervene anywhere at anytime in the history of the universe (that is one reason why God can tell the future).

Finally, in conclusion:

I have disproved all alternatives to Proposal #4: There is a God that has always existed and is the necessary entity. God created the universe, and everything in the universe is contingent, including the universe itself.

This constitutes a proof for God and shows how Dawkins' original argument provided a basis for this proof.

~~~*~*~*~*~~~

P.S. There is only one way the atheist can counter this argument. He will have to say that the singularity that become the universe came from nothing! I have already argued that such a thing is unreasonable and indistinguishable from a singularity that has been around for eternity. The atheist will argue from a quantum physics point of view. In quantum it is actually possible for a particle to appear out of nowhere. The argument is that in a singularity, quantum principles may apply, although this is speculation.

The problem with this argument is that the particle is not really appearing out of nowhere. First of all, there is a loss of energy elsewhere that make the appearance of the particle possible (this is required by the laws of conservation of energy). Secondly, the particle is appearing in a pre-existing existing universe. This is really not the same as appearing from nothing!

MySQL Online Backup

My summary of the MySQL Online Backup algorithm.

There are basically 2 backup methods:

• "At end" - Point Behind method
• "At begin" - Point Forward method, this is also know as a snapshot backup.
  

1. INITIAL PHASE
   
   • "At end" - Scan and write all data, and at the same time,
   • start writing all changes to a log.
2. READY TO CREATE A VALIDITY POINT
   The engine is ready to create a validity point instantly.
   
   • "At end" - All data has been scanned, continue to write changes to a log.
3. WAITING PHASE
   The engine is waiting for all other engines to reach the waiting phase.
   
   • "At end" - Continue to write changes to log.
4. CREATE VALIDITY POINT
   The engine creates the validity point quickly.
   Changes after this point do NOT belong in the backup.
   
   • "At end" - Stop logging changes.
   • "At begin" - Create snapshot now!
5. FINAL PHASE
   
   • "At end" - Write all changes recorded in the log.
   • "At begin" - Write all data in the snapshot.
6. BACKUP END
   All engines have finished the final stage.

Atomic flushing without locking

Index pages have the following attributes:

• dirty - this page has been changed and is not on the disk at all. This page must first be written to the flush log.
• in_db - this page is has not been changed, and is in the database. It can be removed from the cache at any time.
• flush_index - the location of the page in the flush log (zero if not in the flush log)

!dirty && !in_db - this page has been written to the flush log

dirty && in_db - not possible

All dirty pages are linked together.

To change an index:

1. Lock the index
2. Remember the flush phase
3. Do all changes to index pages
4. Unlock the index

When a page is changed:

1. If the page is dirty:
2. - update the page in the cache
3. If the page is not dirty:
4. - if the page is in the flush log (flush_index != 0) and flush phase 1 (see below) is in progress:
5. * update the cache, and update the flush log
6. - else
7. * update the cache, set dirty=true, in_database=false.
8. * add the page to the dirty list

In order to flush the index:

= flush phase 1
- For each page in the dirty list:
* Write the page to flush log
* Set flush_index to the location of the page in the flush log.
* Remove the page from the dirty list
- set phase to 2
- lock the index.
- For each page in the dirty list:
* Write the page to flush log
* Set flush_index to the location of the page in the flush log.
* Remove the page from the dirty list
- unlock the index
- We now have a snapshot of the index in the flush log.

= flush phase 2
- for each page in the flush log:
* write the page to the database.
* if the page in the index is not dirty, set in_database=true
- truncate the flush log
- flush index is complete

Index recovery (on startup)
- For each flush log
* write the index pages to the database

Complete recovery of the database involves first doing index recovery.
Then we do record recovery. Recovery of the record involves creating and deleting index entries as necessary.