So I was having an argument with a friend the other day about Dawkins’ book “The God Delusion”. My friend brought up the idea Dawkins put forth in his book that if God created the universe He would have to be even more complex than the universe itself. I think this is one of Dawkins’ biggest misunderstandings about the nature of God. We understand God to be perfectly simple, but for someone like Dawkins, and my friend, who don’t believe in metaphysical claims, that line of thinking is just nonsense. How can I explain the Catholic position on the simplicity of God to a person like that? Even if I can’t convince him, I’d like to be able to explain it better.
First of all, I don’t agree with your friend that God
must be complex if he created the universe. However, I must also disagree with you that the Christian God is simple. Allow me to explain…
When we say that “God is complex,” that’s just shorthand for “the God hypothesis is complex.” In other words, God might be simple in one sense or another, while claims about God remain quite involved. For example, some theologians have posited a doctrine called
divine simplicity to characterize God, denying that he has “parts.” However, we are not concerned with the metaphysical makeup of God, but rather the parsimonious elegance (or lack thereof) of the claim that some particular God exists, and that he is active in the world. So, developing doctrines like divine simplicity actually adds to the complexity of the God hypothesis itself.
That said, it’s not clear that the principle of parsimony—AKA Occam’s razor—ought to be applied to God’s alleged existence, since it is so alien from ordinary empirical claims. So, that’s a possible defense against Dawkins’ argument. As long as you hold to the general package of orthodox Christian doctrine, however, with its doctrines of original sin, Trinitarian personhood, bodily Resurrection, etc., there’s no denying that your claim is exceedingly complex.
