In this fifth family of arguments (Meaning), Jamie talks about both the form this takes as well as the surplus of evidence around it.
Jamie Dew: Hey everybody. I'm Jamie Dew.
Joe Fontenot: And I'm Joe Fontenot.
Jamie Dew: And welcome back to our podcast, once again, The Towel and Basin.
Joe Fontenot: That's right. So, we've been looking at this series of arguments, or families of arguments, for how can we know God exists? So we've looked at cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, moral arguments, and the very last episode was ontological arguments.
Jamie Dew: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joe Fontenot: But you mentioned something to me off-air about a different kind of argument called an argument from meaning.
Jamie Dew: Okay.
Joe Fontenot: Tell me about that. I feel like that's not something I can Google as easy. Like ontological, I can Google that, there's going to be- [crosstalk 00:00:47].
Jamie Dew: Sure.
Joe Fontenot: What is this argument from meaning? What does that mean?
Jamie Dew: Yeah, you're right. I mean, you're probably not going to be able to find explicit arguments to that nature as easily if you Google it. There aren't many people that make these kinds of arguments. And so, what exactly do we mean by arguments from meaning? It's a good question. When we talk to people we use sentences and in those sentences there's information. And that information means something, we hear it, a meaning is conveyed to us, we respond to it. And so think about the way language conveys information and meaning together in very unique ways and think about the abilities that we derive from those types of things, right? So, someone comes up to me and says, "Jamie, the grass needs to be mowed." And those are simply words. On the one hand, you'd think that words have no abilities whatsoever to move any needles or to do anything at all.
But lo and behold, if you tell me, "Jamie, the grass needs to be mowed." I might just go into the garage and grab the lawn mower and go out and mow the grass. And it all happened because of words, and those words were conveyed in sentences and those words have meaning. And so that's what we mean. So from meaning itself, if there's any information that has the ability to convey meaning to us, it seems to me that one could make arguments from that kind of phenomenon to the existence of God. And so I think we could argue in a lot of different ways, but here's one simple way that we could do this. And now I've mentioned different kinds of logical arguments. We've talked about deduction, induction and abduction. Here's a deductive argument that I think that we could make. It's a simple [crosstalk 00:02:33] modus ponens argument.
Joe Fontenot: Okay.
Jamie Dew: Modus ponens are arguments that sound like this. If P is true, then Q would be true. P is true, therefore Q is true, right? That's called a modus ponens arguments, it's a logical form. And I think I could borrow... I could use that logical form and I could make an argument from meaning to the existence of God. And so it sounds something like this. If there is meaning in the world or in the universe, then there must be a God. There is meaning in the universe, therefore there's a God. And that would be the simple form of the argument that we could make. Now, of course, probably me saying that, nobody's going to be persuaded by that argument until I start to unpack it. And we may still be even struggling a little bit with what do we mean by 'meaning' here? And so unpacking that might help us a little bit just to walk through that.
So again, a simple modus ponens argument I think you can make. If the universe has meaning, then there must be a God. There is meaning, the universe does have meaning, therefore there is a God. So premise one is the premise that if there's meaning there must be a God, we'd need to define that premise. And then we'd have the second, if we succeeded in defending the first premise, we would have to move on then to the second premise and say, well, there is meaning in the universe, and I'm sure skeptics would have all sorts of criticism of that as well. So let's maybe, if it works for you, we'll just take them each premise one by one and see if this might- [crosstalk 00:04:04].
Joe Fontenot: Yeah, that sounds great.
Jamie Dew: All right. So premise one. Again, if there's meaning in the universe then there must be a God. All right. So if there's meaning in sentences, if there's meaning in DNA, if there's information in that DNA, or anything else like that that can convey instructions or directions or directives or anything like that, then it seems to me that we would have to say that there's something, somebody behind that that makes sense. Now a naturalist is probably going to push back on that premise one, if there's meaning, then there must be a God by simply saying, look, we can have other explanations of how meaning can get into various things like DNA or language or anything else like that. Maybe they could give us an evolutionary account of some kind, right? I'm hard pressed to believe that that could happen, because if it's a product of evolution, then you're simply saying that it's a mindless activity that has led up to this, has transpired, leading up to the presence of information, right?
Joe Fontenot: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jamie Dew: So if it's mindless, then it's simply happened by chance in some way. It just so happens that the way the dominoes have fallen, so to speak, that there's meaning has flopped out the other side and this is a result of that. And so, if there's an evolutionary process, then it would be a result of chance, it seems to me, and that would in fact, mean that it's mindless. And I don't mean mindless in a derogatory way here. I'm not saying like, "Ooh, you're an idiot." I [inaudible 00:05:41] that there is a mind. It's just simply the absence of a mind. There's no person behind the presence of this information that's there. That strikes me as incredibly counterintuitive. And I would offer two illustrations to kind of help make sense of why that's counterintuitive.
One I actually borrow here from a philosopher named Richard Taylor, who was not a believer, he was an atheist. And Richard Taylor, considering various arguments for God's existence, gives us this illustration. He says, "Imagine that you're on a train in England and you're pulling into Waterloo station." And he says, "As you pull into Waterloo station, imagine that you see on the hillside, beside the train station, the stones that have been laid out on that hillside and those stones are arranged in such a way that they actually spell out a statement. And that statement says 'Welcome to Waterloo station'." He says, "You would naturally infer, from the presence of those stones laid out in that arrangement, that there was someone behind them that actually is welcoming you to Waterloo station."
He says, "But now imagine that there's some random circumstance, a bomb went off and blew rocks across the city or something like that, and it just so happens that they landed in such a way that they seem positioned via letters and statements and such. And it just so happens that they are arranged in this way, that they say things like 'Welcome to Waterloo station'." He'd say, "If I told you the first story, that there's a person behind them, then you would be right to infer that you're being welcomed to Waterloo station. But if in fact it's the second, then there is no one welcoming you to Waterloo station. And as such, those stones are meaningless, there actually is no information or meaning in them at all. No one is saying anything. The stones mean nothing." So what you see in this illustration, is this sense that no meaning seems to require a mind behind them.
Now, I think we could... Another illustration I sometimes use with my students. I say, "Imagine one day that you get a text from your wife and the text simply says something like, 'Would you go by the grocery store and get a loaf of bread on your way home'. Now, because it's coming up on your phone from your wife and it spells out a logical thought, and even gives you a request or an instruction, it has meaning to it, right? So you would take it that she wants you to get a loaf of bread. Now, imagine in that circumstance, she was actually on the other end of the line, texting that out, hammering it out with her thumbs. Well, in that sense, that text actually does mean something, right?"
Joe Fontenot: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jamie Dew: "Well, imagine that you get a second text and this time it says, 'And don't forget to get a gallon of milk.' And so, you take it that she also wants you to get a gallon of milk. But now imagine the second time she did not actually hammer out with her thumbs, 'And don't forget to get a gallon of milk.' Actually, imagine this time that she picked up her phone and she fumbled it and stumbled it and it bounced around and she desperately tried to catch it, but in the process of trying to catch it, she actually hit it and banged it and smacked it up in the air a couple more times, and three or four times this happened, and bam, bam, bam, bam. And down it goes and hits her knee and hits her shin and hits her toe and all these things. She tries to... She don't want to break her phone. So she tries to break her phones fall with her foot and stuff like that. And that every time she bangs in clangs to try to catch this farm, her finger hits a button just randomly by chance, right? But randomly by chance, the buttons that she actually pushes are actually letters, with spaces between them appropriately [inaudible 00:09:17] the words, that spell out the statement, 'And don't forget to get a gallon of milk as well.' And then the phone hits the floor face down and there's a green pea on the floor and it happens to... The pea hits the part that says 'send', right?"
"Now imagine that is actually the history behind that second text message that comes through to your phone. Question is this, does that actually mean anything? Now of course, on the other end, you're going to receive that, and you're going to certainly take it to mean that she wants you to get a gallon of milk. Such, that when you go get the loaf of bread, you also get the gallon of milk. And when you get the gallon of milk, you walk in the house and she looks at you and she seems delighted to have the loaf of bread, but she looks at you like you're crazy because you're standing there with a gallon of milk. She's like, 'Why did you get that?' You say, 'Because you texted me.' So here's the question for you. Certainly, you're going to take that second text to mean something. But if the process I just described behind that second message is that way, then actually that second text, despite having letters that have randomly been punched and spaces between words have shown up, actually that second text is completely meaningless because there was no thought, there was no person behind it that was actually communicating something to us."
So the upshot, I think of these two illustrations is simply this, that look, the only way there can even be something like meaning... Whether that's in language, whether that's in DNA, or something else like that. It seems to me, the only way that there could actually be meaning at all, and in anything, whether that's in DNA or language or even existentially, is for there to actually be a someone behind every statement, behind every piece of information, behind every bit of instruction. It seems to me that you have to have that. Minds are necessary for meaning. And if there is no mind, then there seems to be no meaning at all. And so, that I think is... At least for me, now that may persuade nobody but me. But I got to tell you, this world strikes me crazy, freaky, weird if there is no mind behind it, because it is a world filled with meaning. So if there's meaning in the world, it seems to me, the only way that's even possible is for there to be a God or at least a being bigger than, and greater than, and behind all of this, that got all this stuff here in the first place. And so premise one, to me, stands out as being a pretty secure premise.
Joe Fontenot: So let me ask you this question.
Jamie Dew: Sure.
Joe Fontenot: Somebody could say, "Well, it's the fumbling text message version is really what see here." Is this sort of retort to that? Something along the lines of, well, yeah, maybe once that could happen in a million years or something, but we see it constantly, every day. Is that kind of the idea? There's so much appearance of meaning that it's just kind of hard not to include that.
Jamie Dew: Right. Yeah, so maybe they could. And I would say that actually strengthens our case. You can say, yeah, notice how far fetched it seems that that could even happen one time, but we're talking about billions and billions and billions of times that this has happened, which to me, even more significantly decrease the probabilities that it could be anything other than this. Now, another way of sort of stating what you've asked takes us now into premise two. Remember, premise one is, if there's meaning in the universe, there must be a God. Premise two, there is meaning in the universe. So, one way to maybe restate the retort that you just gave me is to even challenge premise two. That there is, in fact, meaning in the universe and simply say, it looks like meaning, it seems like meaning, but it's not. It's really just an illusion. And I get that.
I tend, however, to think that that is a long, long stretch. I mean, consider the massive amounts of information that we have... Not just in the human realm with our language. Consider the massive amounts of information we have in things like DNA, cells structure, molecular structure, the amount of information and the amount of seeming instruction necessary and present within atomic structures and things of that nature. We live in a universe that is just dripping with information and data constantly there. And it clearly directs... It clearly seems to mean something, right?
Joe Fontenot: Right.
Jamie Dew: So, I find that kind of response to be very counterproductive and counterintuitive. So I don't find those types of responses to this type of argument really helpful. And so, at the end of the day, I'm still very much inclined to say something like, man, if there is meaning in the world, then there has to be somebody behind it. There really is information and meaning in the world. And if that's true then I take it that there's somebody out there.
Joe Fontenot: What I hear, is you're saying this is... Some people in the church... I've heard, and I've talked to people who are bothered by science, and I get that, because there's a lot of atheistic thoughts in science or people say you don't have to think that God did it. We can find an explanation, right?
Jamie Dew: Right.
Joe Fontenot: That you hear this sort of thing all the time. And so, I think a lot of people get insecure or nervous, people in the church, around science because of this. But it's almost as if this argument is saying, no, welcome all of that because all of that is just mounting this massive case for the opposite, for God.
Jamie Dew: That's right. I mean, you are finding now in all corners of the physical universe data and information that all seem, from my seat, require some kind of mind behind them to do something. And interestingly, we've done a lecture on the... Or not a lecture. We've done a podcast on natural theology and a bit of it's [crosstalk 00:15:31] there. But part of the reason natural theology seemed to fall by the wayside in the enlightenment during the modern period was because it seemed like... Well, the way it was done up to that point was natural theology and God was used. It was a God of the gaps. We can't explain something, so we're going to throw God at it, and that's our explanation.
Joe Fontenot: Right.
Jamie Dew: As science began to make progress in its abilities to explain the world, essentially what was found is, it seemed to many that we don't need God to explain things anymore because now we have data, and the data by itself can explain it. What's happened now, though, and this is part of why natural theology has come back around though, is that it's precisely because of the data that we have and the evidence that we have, that's caused people to come back to these theological theses. And say, oh, in light of what we see in the data, and in light of the information that we have and the meaning that we find in it, this draws us back to the conclusion that there is a mind behind it. Because the data is so rich with that information and meaning that it's compelling back towards theism. So, yes, precisely. Now, we may still quibble with particular theories in the sciences. Please don't hear what we're saying today as to say, oh, we just therefore accept everything that the sciences are saying to us. No, not at all.
Joe Fontenot: Right.
Jamie Dew: But to your point, the very presence of the data and the information, the data richness of the sciences is a very strong piece of data that we can use to argue for the existence of a God behind it.
Joe Fontenot: Well, that's fascinating. That's very interesting.
Jamie Dew: You man.
Joe Fontenot: Well, thanks for walking us through this, this was really great.
Jamie Dew: You bet.
Joe Fontenot: Hey everybody, this is Jamie and Joe again. If you like this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps other people find it. And if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them. Just go to jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way and we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.