The quote “the universe looks exactly as we would expect it to if there is no God” is attributed to the atheist biologist Richard Dawkins. I don’t know if Dawkins actually said this. He did write this in his book River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life: “The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” The two statements are close, but not exactly the same thing. I’m more interested in the first, which I read in a book by an atheist whose name and book I cannot recall. Too bad. I wish I still had the book. I actually never finished it because the arguments for atheism struck me as stale and inadequate.

But this claim intrigues me, and I hope someone who reads or comes across the blog can help me out. It seems to me that there are two problems with this claim:

First: we only know what the universe looks like up to the horizon. After that, we can speculate that the universe beyond the horizon resembles the universe within the horizon, but we can’t really claim to know what the universe beyond the horizon looks like. How, then, can we claim that the universe looks exactly as we would expect if God doesn’t exist when we only know what the universe looks like up to the horizon?

Second: we only have one universe. There aren’t two universes, one made by God and the other not made by God, so that we can compare our universe to these and conclude that ours looks more like the one not made by God. So how can the claim be made that our universe looks exactly as we would expect it to if there is no God?

Finally, a question: Isn’t it just as reasonable to claim that our universe looks exactly as we would expect it to if it were made by God? I understand that the activity of the universe can be explained by natural forces, but what are these natural forces? Could they be the activity of God? My typing on this laptop, after call, can be explained in at least two ways: it is my free will activity accomplished by my choosing what words I want to say and acting on that free choice; or, it is the result of atoms, molecules, neurons, etc. interacting with each other, causing my brain to have particular thoughts and then my fingers to hit certain keys, etc. – well, you get the drift. It isn’t clear to me that the second explaination negates the first.

I’ve honestly never understood the claim that, because we know that the universe functions according to natural laws, then this annhilates the existence of God. And, no, I don’t think Occam’s razor applies here. It may be the simplest explanation to say the universe functions according to natural laws, just as it is simplest to explain my typing on this laptop according to the laws of atoms, molecules, neurons, etc. But that certainly isn’t satisfying as a complete explanation. If that were such, we could have no confidence that any thought or action were accomplished according to my intent – even the thought that all is according to the laws of atoms, molecules, and neurons.

So, help me out, please. What am I missing?

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.