DECONSTRUCTED
by Peter S. Williams
www.damaris.org
Richard Dawkins
‘Charles Simonyi
Professor of the
Public Understanding
of Science’
Oxford University
www.damaris.org
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The God Delusion
www.damaris.org
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Dawkins’ Ambition
 ‘If this books works as I intend,
religious readers who open it will be
atheists when they put it down.’
– (p. 5.)
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Dawkins’ Cynicism
 ‘dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to
argument, their resistance built up over years of
childhood indoctrination using methods [such as
issuing] a dire warning to avoid even opening a
book like this, which is surely a work of Satan.’
On the other hand, anyone:
 ‘open-minded [whose] childhood indoctrination
was not too insidious… or whose native
intelligence is strong enough to overcome it [will]
need only a little encouragement to break free of
the vice of religion altogether.’ (p. 5-6.)
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In other words…
 People who disagree with me are
either the victim of brainwashing, or
they are thick
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Jim Walker – nobeliefs.com:
 ‘Dawkins has written, perhaps, the
most powerful set of arguments
against the alleged supernatural
god ever written...’
(my italics)
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P.Z. Myers – Seed Magazine:
 ‘The God Delusion delivers a
thorough overview of the logic of
belief and disbelief. Dawkins
reviews, dismantles, and dismisses
the major arguments for the
existence of the supernatural and
deities.’
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Agnostic H. Allen Orr – New York Review of Books:
 ‘Despite my admiration for much of
Dawkins’ work… The God Delusion
seems to me badly flawed. Though I
once labelled Dawkins a professional
atheist, I’m forced, after reading his new
book, to conclude he’s actually more an
amateur… for all I know, Dawkins’
general conclusion is right. But his book
makes a far from convincing case.’
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The Journey Ahead…
 Dawkins on arguments for God
 Dawkins’ argument against God
 Dawkins and the evidence for
Jesus
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 Dawkins on arguments for God
 Dawkins’ argument against God
 Dawkins and the evidence for
Jesus
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Dawkins on arguments for God
 Dawkins calls Aquinas’ arguments
for God ‘vacuous’
(p. 77.)
‘there is no evidence to favour
the God Hypothesis.’
(p. 59.)
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A warning from atheist Thomas Nagel:
 Castigates Dawkins for ‘amateur
philosophy’
 ‘Dawkins dismisses, with contemptuous
flippancy the traditional… arguments for
the existence of God... I found these
attempts at philosophy, along with those in
a later chapter on religion and ethics,
particularly weak.’
(The New Republic)
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Dawkins’ Methodology…
 There are argument Dawkins does
not consider
 Those he does consider are strawman versions of the arguments
 Dawkins bungles his attack on the
straw-men
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Religious Experience
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Religious Experience
 He never spells out the argument from
religious experience
 He asserts that experiences can be
delusional:
‘the brain’s simulation software… is well
capable of constructing “visions” and
“visitations” of the utmost veridical
power.’
- The God Delusion, p. 90.
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Religious Experience
 That’s all folks!
‘This is really all that needs to be said about
personal “experiences” of gods or other
religious phenomena. If you’ve had such an
experience, you may well find yourself
believing firmly that it was real. But don’t
expect the rest of us to take your word for it,
especially if we have the slightest familiarity
with the brain and its powerful workings.’ (p. 92)
 Dawkins’ rebuttal doesn’t even rise to the level of an
argument. He fails to advance more than one
premise
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Religious Experience
 Observing that the brain can create
illusions provides no reason for the
conclusion that all religious experiences
are illusions
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Cosmological Argument
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Cosmological Argument
 The famous five ‘ways’ of
Thomas Aquinas (which he does
not quote):
‘are easily – though I
hesitate to say so, given
his eminence - exposed as
vacuous.’
 Dawkins should have hesitated
more
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Cosmological Argument
 Dawkins complains that Aquinas
makes:
‘the entirely unwarranted
assumption that God himself
is immune to the regress.’
 A cosmological argument just is an
argument for the necessity of a
being that is ‘immune to the
regress’!
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Cosmological Argument

Consider the following arguments:
1) Something is caused
2) It is impossible for everything to be caused
3) Therefore there must exist an uncaused thing
1)
2)
3)
Something is contingent
It is impossible for everything to be contingent
Therefore something is necessary
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The Anthropic Argument
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The Anthropic Argument
 ‘The anthropic principle… is an alternative
to the design hypothesis. It provides a
rational, design-free explanation for the
fact that we find ourselves in a situation
propitious to our existence… What the
religious mind… fails to grasp is that two
candidate solutions are offered to the
problem. God is one. The anthropic
principle is the other. They are
alternatives.’
- The God Delusion, p. 136.
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Dawkins is demonstrably wrong about this
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The Anthropic Argument
 The ‘anthropic principle’ is a synonym for ‘fine-tuning.’ One cannot
appeal to the ‘anthropic principle’ to explain ‘fine tuning’
 That would be like trying to use the concept of ‘bachelors’ to explain
the existence of unmarried men!
 This is what Dawkins attempts, deploying the anthropic principle as
an explanation for this observation: ‘It follows from the fact of our
existence that the laws of physics must be friendly enough to
allow life to arise.’ (p. 141.)
 Yes, but it does not follow that the laws of physics are necessarily
compatible with the existence of life. Dawkins’ equivocates over the
meaning of the term ‘must’ (!) - treating the data to be explained as
an explanation of the data to be explained
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The Anthropic Argument
 The problem that
needs to be
solved is not ‘the
fact that we live
in a life friendly
place’
as
Dawkins says (we
couldn’t exist in a
life unfriendly
place); but the
unlikely fact that a
life friendly place
exists
(p. 136)
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The Anthropic Argument
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 Given our
existence it is
of course likely
(necessary)
that we live in a
life friendly
place; but this
doesn’t mean it
is likely that a
life friendly
place exists –
in fact, it is
unlikely!
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The Anthropic Argument
 Dawkins contradicts his claim
that the anthropic principle is an
‘explanation’ of fine tuning
 John Leslie’s analogy of the
man sentenced to death by
firing squad who survives
 ‘Well, obviously they all
missed, or I wouldn’t be here
thinking about it.’ (p. 144-145)
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 ‘he could still,
forgivably, wonder why
they’d all missed, and
toy with the hypothesis
that they were bribed…’
(p. 145)
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The Anthropic Argument
 Noting that the sentenced man wouldn’t
exist now if the firing squad hadn’t
missed doesn’t explain why they missed
 Noting that life wouldn’t exist now if the
universe hadn’t exhibited certain laws
doesn’t explain why it has those laws
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The Anthropic Argument
 Dawkins admits that the existence of
a finely tuned universe is
surprising…
 ‘This objection can be answered
by the suggestion… that there are
many universes…’
(p. 145.)
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Chimps or Shakespeare?
 If X number of chimps existed
then they could type
Shakespeare’s works by
chance
 Anyone faced with the ‘many
chimps hypothesis’ as an
actual explanation for a copy
of Shakespeare’s works is
going to ask whether there is
any independent reason to
think that X number of chimps
actually exist
 If not, they will quite
reasonably ignore the monkey
(chimp) hypothesis and favour
the design hypothesis
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 Dawkins on arguments for God
 Dawkins’ argument against God
 Dawkins and the evidence for
Jesus
www.damaris.org
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 Dawkins on arguments for God
 Dawkins’ argument against God
 Dawkins and the evidence for
Jesus
www.damaris.org
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‘the central argument of my book’
 Dawkins’ “Unrebuttable Objection”
to God
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‘the central argument of my book’
 ‘the designer hypothesis immediately
raises the larger problem of who
designed the designer. The whole
problem we started out with was the
problem of explaining statistical
improbability. It is obviously no
solution to postulate something even
more improbable.’
(p. 157-158.)
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‘the central argument of my book’
 Two overlapping objections:
1) The ‘who designed the designer?’
objection
2) The ‘explaining something with
something more complex’ objection
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1) ‘who designed the designer?’
William Lane Craig:
‘in order for an explanation to be the best explanation, one
needn’t have an explanation of the explanation… such a
requirement would generate an infinite regress, so that
everything becomes inexplicable...
believing that the design hypothesis is the best
explanation... doesn’t depend upon our ability to explain the
designer.’
- ‘Why I Believe in God’, in Norman L. Geisler & Paul K. Hoffman (ed.’s), Why I Am A Christian, (Baker, 2001), p. 73.
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1) ‘who designed the designer?’
 The ‘who designed the designer?’ objection applies
to all design inferences (archaeology, SETI)
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1) Alvin Plantinga:
‘suppose we land on an alien planet… and
discover machine-like objects that look and
work just like tractors; our leader says
“there must be intelligent beings on this
planet who built those tractors.” A first year
philosophy student on our expedition
objects: “Hey, hold on a minute! You have
explained nothing at all! Any intelligent life
that designed those tractors would have to
be at least as complex as they are.” No
doubt we’d tell him that a little learning is a
dangerous thing and advise him to take the
next rocket ship home and enrol in another
philosophy course or two.’
- ‘Review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion’
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2) ‘explaining with something more complex’
 ‘God… would have to be highly
improbable in the very same
statistical sense as the entities he
is supposed to explain.’
This is incorrect
(p. 147.)
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2) ‘explaining with something more complex’
 ‘God is a necessary being [cf. the
cosmological argument]… Far from its being
improbable that he exists, his existence is
maximally probable. So if Dawkins proposes
that God’s existence is improbable, he owes
us an argument for the conclusion that there
is no necessary being with the attributes of
God... Neither he nor anyone else has
provided even a decent argument along
these lines; Dawkins doesn’t even seem to be
aware that he needs an argument of that
sort.’
- Plantinga, ‘Review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion’
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Atheist Thomas Nagel:
‘God, whatever he
may be, is not a
complex physical
inhabitant of the
natural world.’
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 Dawkins on arguments for God
 Dawkins’ argument against God
 Dawkins and the evidence for
Jesus
www.damaris.org
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 Dawkins on arguments for God
 Dawkins’ argument against God
 Dawkins and the evidence for
Jesus
www.damaris.org
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Richard Dawkins:
 'Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly
theologians have made an overwhelming case
that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what
happened... All were written long after the death of
Jesus... then copied and recopied, through many
different ‘Chinese Whispers generations’…
Nobody knows who the four evangelists were, but
they almost certainly never met Jesus... Much of
what they wrote was in no sense an honest
attempt at history… Although Jesus probably
existed, reputable bible scholars do not in general
regard the New Testament (and obviously not the
Old Testament) as a reliable record of what
actually happened in history…’ - (p. 37-97.)
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Francis Collins:
 'the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were put
down just a few decades after Christ's death. Their style
and content suggests strongly that they are intended to
be the record of eyewitnesses (Matthew and John were
among the twelve apostles). Concerns about errors
creeping in by successive copying or bad translations
have been mostly laid to rest by discovery of very
ancient manuscripts. Thus, the evidence for authenticity
of the four gospels turns out to be quite strong.
Furthermore, non-Christian historians of the first century
such as Josephus bear witness to a Jewish prophet who
was crucified by Pontius Pilate around 33 A.D.‘
- Francis Collins, The Language of God, p. 223.
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 Dawkins’ critique is full
of false and misleading
claims
 Dawkins depends upon
scholars like Bart
Ehrman, who follows
David Hume’s argument
that miracle claims
cannot in principle be
supported by evidence
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William Lane Craig:
 ‘those who are familiar with
contemporary philosophy… know that
Hume’s arguments are today widely
rejected as fallacious. If we are at least
open to [God], then miraculous events
cannot be ruled out in advance. We
have to be open to looking honestly at
the evidence…’
(‘Christ and Miracles’, To Everyone an Answer)
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 Dawkins’ critique is grounded in a
prior philosophical commitment to
metaphysical naturalism, not upon
an objective assessment of the
evidence
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R.T. France:
 ‘At the level of their literary and historical character
we have good reason to treat the gospels
seriously... ancient historians would count
themselves fortunate to have four such
responsible accounts written within a generation or
two of the events and preserved in such a wealth
of manuscript evidence... Beyond that point, the
decision as to how far a scholar is willing to accept
the record they offer is likely to be influenced more
by his openness to a “supernaturalist” worldview
than by strictly historical considerations.’
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In Conclusion
 The God Delusion is not ‘a work of
Satan’!
 It is the work of a zoologist with a
justified disliking for religious
authoritarianism and an unjustified
confidence in his ability as a
philosopher
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If you want to close
down the debate
about God and
Jesus, you’ll have to
do better than
The God Delusion
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Three Questions to Ponder…
1) Does God Exist?
2) Is Jesus God’s selfcommunication with
us in history?
3) Can I relate to God
through Jesus?
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