I think an atheist would gather their own perspective of the paper too. However, the more general issue, in my opinion, is that if spacetime is an entity in and of itself, then you must ask why is that entity this way versus any other way. The good thing about quantum cosmology is that it answers the question in a consistent way by saying that every possible 'way' has a history in quantum cosmology's spacetime cosmology. If we get away from quantum cosmology, then this question just comes back in a different form.