richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

148 TII F COD IitLUSION
properties, that is what really excites his incredulity. For him it
would be simpler, more natural, less demanding of explanation, if
all electrons were different from each other. Worse, no one electron
should naturally retain its properties for more than an instant at a
time; each should change capriciously, haphazardly and fleetingly
from moment to moment. That is Swinburne's view of the simple,
native state of affairs. Anything more uniform (what you or I would
call more simple) requires a special explanation. 'It is only because
electrons and bits of copper and all other material objects have the
same powers in the twentieth century as they did in the nineteenth
century that things are as they are now.'
Enter God. God comes to the rescue by deliberately and continuously
sustaining the properties of all those billions of electrons
and bits of copper, and neutralizing their otherwise ingrained
inclination to wild and erratic fluctuation. That is why when you've
seen one electron you've seen them all; that is why bits of copper all
behave like bits of copper, and that is why each electron and each
bit of copper stays the same as itself from microsecond to microsecond
and from century to century. It is because God constantly
keeps a finger on each and every particle, curbing its reckless
excesses and whipping it into line with its colleagues to keep them
all the same.
But how can Swinburne possibly maintain that this hypothesis
of God simultaneously keeping a gazillion fingers on wayward
electrons is a simple hypothesis? It is, of course, precisely the opposite
of simple. Swinburne pulls off the trick to his own satisfaction
by a breathtaking piece of intellectual chutzpah. He asserts, without
justification, that God is only a single substance. What brilliant
economy of explanatory causes, compared with all those
gigazillions of independent electrons all just happening to be the
i
same!
Theism claims that every other object which exists is
caused to exist and kept in existence by just one substance,
God. And it claims that every property which
every substance has is due to God causing or permitting it
to exist. It is a hallmark of a simple explanation to
postulate few causes. There could in this respect be no