There is design in the world.
This chair is designed and we design things and I
it feels like it's that sort of human urge
of creating God in your own image that we presume
that if we can design things and make things that anything
else that appears to work well must be therefore
designed by somebody else but
then yet something that sort of outside of the universe is very old then you
then get into a curious thing of a wouldn't that thing be part of the
universe and then of course if he designed that then who designed him and so on
I suppose people think what those things can't just happened by accident
and they sort of I guess that's just a simple misreading of evolution those
things have been designed if you want to use that word by a natural process
that's taken all this time to make something that works as well as possible
so it's not surprising that these things work very well because they're
brilliantly evolved that's not to use the word designed it's just I think a
projection of what we do that we find difficult to think outside of our own
little box of our own little experience we project that onto what we create God to be.
I have to do it a trick nice to go around the tables when I did magic in restaurants
with a playing card was always the Queen of Hearts and I would
hold it with the card facing me and I'd go to a lady at the table and I'd say
it's interesting people name cards that always say something about them what
what's your favorite card and there's a slight psychological push related to say
Queen of Hearts there and if she said Queen of Hearts I'd turn it round
certainly much better than one in 52 chance probably about one in four one
and five I turn it round
and she had a miracle and if she didn't say it I
hadn't flagged up his car was important so I put it away I'd bring out a deck of
cards and do a treat with an epic card she said but what was interesting about
it was that when it did hit
when it was right it was such a miracle for that person that
short of them seeing the bigger picture that actually I've gone
done this at every table that maybe was the only one time it worked that night
it becomes a miracle because they want to they want to believe that I've done something that I've
put some intention into that to make that happen but in
fact I'm just relying purely on chance I mean I've always thought of that as a
nice metaphor for people coming away from a psychic and saying well she told
me that my grandmother used to work in a florist
and then you go what I had you
but how do you explain that you think well you can't explain it but maybe if
you step back maybe she says that to any number of people maybe you know short of knowing..
getting the bigger picture your own your
own personal experience can be so misleading
and I think in a similar way
there is a tendency an urge for magicians to sort of take credit
for the coincidences and randomness sometimes or chance events.
I'm really interested in this pattern of reasoning where people want to attribute design to
objects in the natural world like fruit or...
Funny mention fruit, A because I have
a banana here and B because there's a there's a video on YouTube and to me it
brilliantly encapsulated what's sort of wrong about the design argument
the
your a couple of guys claiming that the banana proves that God
exists because it's so perfectly designed
for us to hold so
we have these
founders here of our fingers that fit perfectly around the facets of the banana
there you go now that can't happen by accident
it's got a rubbery grip so we know we're not going to drop it it won't slip from our hands
and there's a lovely.... I can't know exactly how it says it but it's something like
and in the same way that soda cans have a ring pull
in the same way God has given us this on the top and it doesn't spurt everywhere it
doesn't spurt in your face yeah that's really interesting because David Hume
the 18th century philosopher has a brilliant analysis of that style of
reasoning that moves from apparent design in the universe to the conclusion
there must have been a designer and Hume goes through all these other moves
showing I think in as a conclusion that if you proportioned the belief to the
available evidence the most you could possibly say is and he was writing in
the 18th century prior to Darwin yeah the most that you could possibly say is
there is some designer the attributes of the designer are really an open question.
Yes if you're making huge claims about anything you know if I say that
I believe father Christmas exists
it's not up to you to prove that he doesn't it's
up to me to come up with really good evidence to back up such an
extraordinary claim and I think that's
it's such a simple thing and the fact
that was you know written around that enlightenment time and it seems so real
nowadays and people call you can't prove god doesn't exist whether it's that
flipside because one day you can't prove absolutely that doesn't exist but surely
there's enough evidence on which to make deliver life so it's highly unlikely
unlikely yes and just as it's highly unlikely that this room is about to
spontaneously combust certainly quite noisy