Dawkins holds that the existence or nonexistence of God is a scientific
hypothesis which is open to rational demonstration. In
The Blind Watchmaker, he provided a sustained and effective critique
of the arguments of the nineteenth-century writer William
Paley for the existence of God on biological grounds. It is Dawkins's
home territory, and he knows what he is talking about.
This book remains the finest criticism of this argument in print.12
The only criticism I would direct against this aspect of The Blind
Watchmaker is that Paley's ideas were typical of his age, not of
Christianity as a whole, and that many Christian writers of the
age were alarmed at his approach, seeing it as a surefire recipe for
the triumph of atheism. There is no doubt in my mind that Paley
saw himself as in some way "proving" the existence of God, and
Dawkins's extended critique of Paley in that book is fair, gracious
and accurate.
In The God Delusion, Dawkins turns his attention to such other
"arguments" based on the philosophy of religion. I am not sure
that this was entirely wise. He is clearly out of his depth, and
achieves little by his brief and superficial engagement with these
great perennial debates, which often simply cannot be resolved
empirically. His attitude seems to be "here's how a scientist
would sort out this philosophical nonsense."
For example, Dawkins takes issue with the approaches developed
by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, traditionally
known as the "Five Ways." The general consensus is that while
such arguments cast interesting light on the questions, they settle
nothing. Although traditionally referred to as "arguments for God's
existence," this is not an accurate description. All they do is show
the inner consistency of belief in God—in much the same way as
the classic arguments for atheism (such as Ludwig Feuerbach's famous
idea of the "projection" of God; see p. 54) demonstrate its
inner consistency, but not its evidential foundations.
The basic line of thought guiding Thomas is that the world mirrors
God, as its Creator. It is an assumption derived from faith,
which Thomas argues to resonate with what we observe in the
world. For example, its signs of ordering can be explained on the
basis of the existence of God as its creator. This approach is still
widely encountered in Christian writings which argue that an existing
faith in God offers a better "empirical fit" with the world
than its alternatives. As Dawkins himself uses this same approach
to commend atheism elsewhere, I cannot really see that he has
much to complain about here.
At no point does Thomas speak of these as being "proofs" for
God's existence; rather they are to be seen as a demonstration of
the inner coherence of belief in God. Thomas is interested in exploring
the rational implications of faith in terms of our experience
of beauty, causality and so forth. Belief in God is actually assumed;
it is then shown that this belief makes sense of what may
be observed within the world. The appearance of design can offer
persuasion, not proof, concerning the role of divine creativity in
the universe. Dawkins misunderstands an a posteriori demonstration
of the coherence of faith and observation to be an a priori
proof of faith—an entirely understandable mistake for those new
to this field, but a serious error nonetheless.
Where Dawkins sees faith as intellectual nonsense, most of us
are aware that we hold many beliefs that we cannot prove to be
true but are nonetheless perfectly reasonable to entertain. To
lapse into jargon for a moment: our beliefs may be shown to be justifiable,
without thereby demonstrating that they are proven. This
is not a particularly difficult or obscure point. Philosophers of science
have long made the point that there are many scientific theories
that are presently believed to be true but may have to be discarded
in the future as additional evidence emerges or new
theoretical interpretations develop. There is no difficulty, for example,
in believing that Darwin's theory of evolution is presently
the best explanation of the available evidence, but that doesn't
mean it is correct
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