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I would say Dawkins receives far too much credit for his unremarkable style of thinking which appears to be marked by regular examples of carelessness.

In the paragraph which begins “Yet the highly improbable…” Dawkins starts out by saying the improbability argument doesn’t work for anti-evolutionists because improbability exists in the real world. Then, in blatant self-contradiction, he criticizes intelligent design by his own use of the improbability argument.

In the very next sentence Dawkins’ language is a bit disorganized. (Why does he make use of a premise by Hoyle immediately after describing that premise as a mistake?) He uses the improbability argument to discredit the notion of God’s existence, but then he somehow gets himself into the position of suggesting that God’s existence is unnecessary because natural selection can “do his work for him.”

So Dawkins maintains that God’s existence is highly improbable but if true is unnecessary anyway.

This ugly little pothole in Dawkins’ thinking reveals a pattern of logic observable during the interrogation of a suspect by law enforcement when the suspect is attempting to malinger an explanation of his innocence. For example, the suspect will state that he could not have shot the murder victim because at the time of the shooting he was in another city hundreds of miles away. Then the suspect will provide a second reason, saying that even if he were in town at the time of the shooting he couldn’t have been the shooter because it took place inside the victim’s house, and he had no access to a key.

Either alibi alone would be significant as evidence, but somehow when used together each serves to discredit the other. This technique, using multiple separate and independent excuses, is identified by expert witnesses as a strong indication that the person is lying.

The anti-Christian movement needs to find a better hit man.