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title: "Richard Dawkins on The fine-tuning argument"
description: "Dawkins treats fine-tuning as an open scientific question, not evidence for God, and favours multiverse explanations over design."
canonical: https://opendoubt.com/people/richard-dawkins/on/fine-tuning
source: html
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# Richard Dawkins on The fine-tuning argument

> Dawkins treats fine-tuning as an open scientific question, not evidence for God, and favours multiverse explanations over design.

Position

# Richard Dawkins on _The fine-tuning argument_

Argues againstEvolutionary biologist and author

Dawkins treats fine-tuning as an open scientific question, not evidence for God, and favours multiverse explanations over design.

Dawkins acknowledges that the apparent fine-tuning of physical constants is genuinely striking — the universe does appear to be balanced on a knife-edge. But he draws a sharp line between 'this is surprising' and 'therefore God did it.' The design inference, he argues, is a failure of imagination, not a triumph of reason.

His preferred response is the multiverse hypothesis: if there are vastly many universes with different physical constants, it is no surprise that we find ourselves in one compatible with life. This is not special pleading — it is straightforward anthropic reasoning. We could not observe a universe in which we did not exist.

Dawkins also presses the 'who designed the designer?' objection with particular force against fine-tuning. If the universe's constants require an explanation because they are improbable, then a being capable of setting those constants requires an even greater explanation. God, far from terminating the explanatory regress, deepens it.

Key quotes

> “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.”

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Richard Dawkins

Full profile — positions, quotes, and key moments.

](/people/richard-dawkins)[

The fine-tuning argument

The full argument — stated fairly, then answered.

](/arguments/fine-tuning)

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