TLS on God's Existence

Would the world change if someone came up with an utterly convincing proof for the existence of God? In A Corner of the Veil, a novel by Laurence Cosse, this happens. A conclusive demonstration is formulated by a holy man who hands
it to his religious superiors. They read it, are convinced, but panic, fearing anarchy if it should fall into the hands of the faithful. When the government gets wind of the proof, ministers, too, want to conceal it, fearing that
capitalism's ethos would be undermined in an outbreak of compassion.
In his new book, Keith Ward, the former Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, seeks to refute the arguments against the existence of God propounded in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God" is the title of Dawkins's fourth chapter. Consider one element of Ward's counter-case. Dawkins claims that the existence of God is even less likely than the apparently improbable emergence of conscious beings, on the grounds that if God designed such complex entities he would have to be even more complex, making him even more improbable. But, counters Ward, God is simple, and, anyway, simple entities routinely give rise to more complex phenomena, a good case in point being the laws of nature themselves. Moreover, to talk of God being more or less probable is to misunderstand the concept of God: whether or not God actually exists, the idea of God is of a necessary, not a contingent, being. Ward pursues his quarry along many other such twists and turns; part of the pleasure consists in keeping up with him through the metaphysical maze. Whether or not Dawkins will bother to keep up seems unlikely, Ward believes. For one thing, he has heard the rebuttals before, not least in Oxford debates against Ward himself. Yet "[Dawkins] goes on saying that theologians have never answered his arguments". This refusal to engage with the best of the opposition perhaps explains why The God Delusion comes across as a rhetorically powerful book.
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But how close does Ward come to achieving the higher goal of demonstrating the existence of God? The attempt comes in three parts. First, he proposes that while belief in a creator God is not a scientific explanation, it is the best final explanation for the universe as we know it. Second, Ward reinvents the argument from design, reformulating it so that it follows from contemporary science, particularly cosmology. Third, Ward examines personal experience and how that can point towards the transcendent. One element in his case gives us an idea of the broader picture. The apparent fine-tuning of the universe, which makes it suitable for life, is something that nearly all physicists today feel needs explaining. The theory of the multiverse is one that atheists might favour. In one formulation, this says that every possible universe exists somewhere, and so you would only expect that we would live in one that is capable of sustaining life. Ward shows why this is unsatisfactory. Roughly put, if you propose that every possible universe exists somewhere, then in terms of its explanatory power this is not science at all. He then assesses the other versions of the theory, and continues with what he claims to be a far neater solution, namely that every possible universe exists but only as an idea in the mind of God. God then allows actually to exist only those universes, or perhaps that universe, which are, or is, morally most valuable.
Moral value is closely linked to the existence of conscious beings capable of doing good, an undeniable feature of life on earth. Noting that leads to, arguably, the greatest challenge to scientism, namely how to account for what Ward, following the philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne, calls "personal explanation". The claim here is that a personal explanation is required to account for many things that happen in the world, because they involve belief, intention, desire and enjoyment. That means they are not amenable to scientific explanation, which must be more or less strictly based on laws of inanimate cause and effect. Personal explanation therefore differs from scientific explanation and, according to Ward, forms a first step towards belief in an eternal mind, called God.
Reductionists can counter that it will eventually be possible to explain the personal scientifically. And even if that today seems unlikely, they can insist that it remains a theoretical possibility. Alternatively, sceptics might object to explaining "a particular effect by a particular cause which [is] no more to be accounted for than the effect itself', as Hume argued. Ward's response to that charge would be that if you are an Idealist, as he is, then personal explanations can be intellectually satisfying. This view puts him in very distinguished philosophical company.
What, however, about the prevalence of evil, a common reason for doubting the existence of God? Ward is not too troubled by this, arguing that some suffering is necessary in a life-producing universe. Perhaps theodicy is a side issue in this book because Dawkins does not make much of evil in The God Delusion, pointing out that it only weighs against the existence of a benign deity. So Dawkins is thoroughly doubted, again. Though written from a contrasting standpoint, Ward's critique is as witty, compelling and unsettling as Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. But to return to my earlier question, is Ward's bid to demonstrate the probability of God's existence successful? Unlike their counterparts in Cosse's novel, actual religious and secular leaders need not lose any sleep. As Ward himself concludes, the most anyone can hope for when it comes to the question of God is a limited rational defence of what can only be convincingly discovered subjectively, in a lived life.