---
title: "Richard Dawkins on The cosmological argument"
description: "Dawkins dismisses the cosmological argument as a logical regress that explains nothing, since God would also need a cause."
canonical: https://opendoubt.com/people/richard-dawkins/on/cosmological-argument
source: html
---

# Richard Dawkins on The cosmological argument

> Dawkins dismisses the cosmological argument as a logical regress that explains nothing, since God would also need a cause.

Position

# Richard Dawkins on _The cosmological argument_

Argues againstEvolutionary biologist and author

Dawkins dismisses the cosmological argument as a logical regress that explains nothing, since God would also need a cause.

Dawkins's treatment of the cosmological argument focuses on what he sees as its fatal flaw: the arbitrary exemption of God from the very causal principle the argument invokes. If everything that exists must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If God can exist without a cause, then so can the universe. Either way, the argument fails to establish what it claims.

He is less interested in the philosophical subtleties of the argument — distinctions between contingent and necessary beings, or the difference between temporal and ontological causation — than in the rhetorical move he sees at its heart: a demand for explanation that conveniently stops at God. Dawkins views this as intellectual dishonesty dressed up as philosophy.

In debates, Dawkins typically concedes that the origin of the universe is a genuine mystery — but insists that 'I don't know' is a more honest answer than 'God did it,' and that science has a better track record of eventually answering hard questions than theology does.

Key quotes

> “To say that God is the answer to the question of the origin of the universe is to commit the most elementary logical fallacy: it explains nothing, because the explanation itself needs explaining.”

Continue exploring

[

Richard Dawkins

Full profile — positions, quotes, and key moments.

](/people/richard-dawkins)[

The cosmological argument

The full argument — stated fairly, then answered.

](/arguments/cosmological-argument)

---
_Canonical HTML version: https://opendoubt.com/people/richard-dawkins/on/cosmological-argument_