Dawkins'S Best Argument Against God'S Existence 1
DAWKINS'S BEST ARGUMENT
AGAINST GOD'S EXISTENCE1
Gregory E. Ganssle
As is evident from the essays in this book, the New Atheists put forward many arguments against the existence of God. In this essay I will look at what I think is the strongest argument against the existence of God that any of these authors has put forward. This argument is one offered by Dawkins.
Dawkins's best argument is built on the claim that a universe made by God would be different than one that is a product only of natural processes. That is, God's existence ought to make some difference to the world that is detectable. He claims: “A universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without.”2 If God's existence made no difference at all to what we observe about the universe, we would wonder why belief in God mattered.
Given that a theistic universe should be different from an atheistic one,3 which is reflected in our universe? Dawkins claims that our universe fits well with an atheistic worldview. It is different, he insists, from what fits with the view that God exists. Our observations about the world show us that it has the marks of an atheistic universe rather than the marks of a theistic one. We can sketch Dawkins's argument as follows: