Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit
Fleeting- External reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Boeing_747_gambit
central thesis of the argument is that compared to supernatural abiogenesis, evolution by natural selection requires the supposition of fewer hypothetical processes; according to Occam’s razor, therefore, it is a better explanation. Dawkins cites a paragraph where Richard Swinburne agrees that a simpler explanation is better but reasons that theism is simpler because it only invokes a single substance (God) as a cause and maintainer of every other object. This cause is seen as omnipotent, omniscient and totally “free”. Dawkins argues that an entity that monitors and controls every particle in the universe and listens to all thoughts and prayers cannot be simple. Its existence would require a “mammoth explanation” of its own. The theory of natural selection is much simpler – and thus preferable – than a theory of the existence of such a complex being.[5]
Cosmologist Stephen Barr[13] responded as follows: “Paley finds a watch and asks how such a thing could have come to be there by chance. Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches, and feels that he has completely answered Paley’s point."[14]
Plantinga concludes that this argument, to be valid, would require materialism to be true; but, as materialism is not compatible with traditional theology,[clarification needed] the argument begs the question by requiring its premise to assume God’s non-existence.[8]