On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision

by William Lane Craig

Dawkins’ argument is jarring because the atheistic conclusion, “Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist,” doesn’t follow from the six previous statements even if we concede that each of them is true. There are no rules of logic that would permit such an inference. Dawkins’ argument is plainly invalid. At most, all that follows from Dawkins’ argument is that we should not infer God’s existence on the basis of the appearance of design in the universe. But that conclusion is quite compatible with God’s existence and even with our justifiably believing in God’s existence. Maybe we should believe in God on the basis of the cosmological argument or the moral argument. Maybe our belief in God isn’t based on arguments at all but is grounded in religious experience or in divine revelation. The point is that rejecting design arguments for God’s existence does nothing to prove that atheism is true or that belief in God is unjustified. Dawkins’ lack of philosophical depth is plainly on display here.