Read Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism for Free Online

aspects of evolution: it can explain the variations and the adaptations with species that produce fine-tuning of varieties to different habitats. The large-scale differences of form between types of organism that are the foundation of biological classification systems seem to require another principle than natural selection operating on smallvariation, some process that gives rise to distinctly different forms of organism. This is the problem of emergent order in evolution, the origins of novel structures in organisms, which has always been one of the primary foci of attention in biology. 29
     
    Others, like Dawkins, think there is such a series.
    On this point there is likely to be a difference between theists and nontheists. For the nontheist, undirected evolution is the only game in town, and natural selection seems to be the most plausible mechanism to drive that process. Here is this stunningly intricate world with its enormous diversity and apparent design; from the perspective of naturalism or nontheism, the only way it could have happened is by way of unguided Darwinian evolution; hence it
must
have happened that way; hence there
must
be such a Darwinian series for each current life form. The theist, on the other hand, has a little more freedom here: maybe there is such a series and maybe there isn’t; God has created the living world and could have done it in any number of different ways; there doesn’t
have
to be any such series. In this way the theist is freer to follow the evidence where it leads.
    But the main point here lies in another direction. Dawkins claims that the living world came to be by way of unguided evolution: “the Evidence of Evolution,” he says, “Reveals a Universe Without Design.” What he actually argues, however, is that there is a Darwinian series for contemporary life forms. As we have seen, this argument is inconclusive; but even if it were air-tight it wouldn’t show, of course, that the living world, let alone the entire universe, is without design. At best it would show, given a couple of assumptions, that it is not astronomically improbable that the living world was produced by unguided evolution and hence without design.
But the argument form
     
p is not astronomically improbable
     
    therefore
p
     
    is a bit unprepossessing. I announce to my wife, “I’m getting a $50,000 raise for next year!” Naturally she asks me why I think so. “Because the arguments against its being astronomically improbable fail! For all we know, it’s not astronomically improbable!” (Well, maybe it
is
pretty improbable, but you get the idea.) If he’s successful, what Dawkins really shows is that the arguments against there being a Darwinian series are not conclusive. What he shows, if he’s successful, is that
for all we know
there is such a series, so that for all we know it’s possible that the living world came to be in this fashion. We could put it like this: what he shows, at best, is that it’s epistemically possible that it’s biologically possible that life came to be without design. But that’s a little short of what he claims to show.
    It is perhaps worth noting and stressing the difference between claim and performance here. Dawkins claims that he will show that the entire living world came to be without design; what he actually argues is only that this is possible and we don’t know that it is astronomically improbable; for all we know it’s not astronomically improbable. But mere possibility claims are not impressive. To put to better use an example proposed by Bertrand Russell and mentioned by Dawkins in his book
The God Delusion
, it’s possible that there is a china teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars, out of reach of our telescopes; this ought not to dispose us favorably to the thought that indeed there is a china teapot orbiting the sun between Earthand Mars. 30 But the same goes for the claim that a certain state of affairs is not astronomically