Does Paulos have the cosmological argument right? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
So I started reading another atheist book. This one is by a mathematician named John Allen Paulos. A mathematician? They’re usually smart guys. Surely this one will be better than a lot of atheist material.
Hope swings eternal.
And then comes crashing right back down again.
Let’s start at the beginning, with the cosmological argument.
As I saw he was starting with the first cause, I was uttering that silent hope of “Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it.”
He said it.
1. Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes.
2. Nothing is its own cause.
3. Causal chains can’t go on forever.
4. So there has to be a first cause.
5. That first cause is God, who therefore exists.
Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 3-4). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
At this point, and we’re only on page 4, I know this is someone who I can’t take seriously. It will get even worse in this book, but I will save that for when we get there. When we get there, you will know I have no respect for Paulos whatsoever.
For now, let’s note that no intellectual has ever made the ridiculous argument that Paulos put forward. Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Plotinus, Augustine, Leibniz, Aquinas, Descartes, Plantinga, Craig, etc. I don’t care who you are talking about. This is not the argument. I don’t care what an ignorant pastor said from the pulpit one time. I care about what the actual argument is.
This is covered in great detail by Edward Feser here.
The figure with the dunce cap in the article is fitting for Paulos. Feser, after pointing out how no one makes this argument and even professional philosophers arguing against the cosmological argument get it wrong says:
And that, I submit, is the reason why the stupid “Everything has a cause” argument – a complete fabrication, an urban legend, something no philosopher has ever defended – perpetually haunts the debate over the cosmological argument. It gives atheists an easy target, and a way rhetorically to make even their most sophisticated opponents seem silly and not worth bothering with. It‘s a slimy debating trick, nothing more – a shameless exercise in what I have elsewhere called “meta-sophistry.” (I make no judgment about whether Le Poidevin’s or Dennett’s sleaziness was deliberate. But that they should know better is beyond question.)
Getting back to the dunce, I mean Paulos, he says:
A slight variation of this is the so-called cosmological argument, which dates back to Aristotle and depends on the Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe (or some primitive precursor to it). It states that whatever has a beginning must have a cause and since the universe is thought to have a beginning, it must have a cause.
Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 4). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
Except Aristotle doesn’t think this. Aristotle thought the universe was eternal. Even the Christian Aquinas said that reason alone cannot establish that the universe had a beginning. He believed it did, but that was because he saw that in Scripture. Consider Aristotle first in book 8 of his Physics:
(Further, how can there be any ‘before’ and ‘after’ without the existence of time? Or how can there be any time without the existence of motion? If, then, time is the number of motion or itself a kind of motion, it follows that, if there is always time, motion must also be eternal. But so far as time is concerned we see that all with one exception are in agreement in saying that it is uncreated: in fact, it is just this that enables Democritus to show that all things cannot have had a becoming: for time, he says, is uncreated. Plato alone asserts the creation of time, saying that it had a becoming together with the universe, the universe according to him having had a becoming. Now since time cannot exist and is unthinkable apart from the moment, and the moment a kind of middle-point, uniting as it does in itself both a beginning and an end, a beginning of future time and an end of past time, it follows that there must always be time: for the extremity of the last period of time that we take must be found in some moment, since time contains no point of contact for us except the moment. Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end, there must always be time on both sides of it. But if this is true of time, it is evident that it must also be true of motion, time being a kind of affection of motion.)
While he did hold to an unmoved mover, he did believe that there was something that was always in motion. That would be the universe. There’s a reason Paulos never quotes anyone who makes the ridiculous argument he claims is the first cause argument.
As for Aquinas:
n the contrary, The articles of faith cannot be proved demonstratively, because faith is of things “that appear not” (Hebrews 11:1). But that God is the Creator of the world: hence that the world began, is an article of faith; for we say, “I believe in one God,” etc. And again, Gregory says (Hom. i in Ezech.), that Moses prophesied of the past, saying, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”: in which words the newness of the world is stated. Therefore the newness of the world is known only by revelation; and therefore it cannot be proved demonstratively.
That the world had a beginning cannot be proved demonstratively.
Hint Paulos. If you want to argue against a position, it helps to learn what that position is.
Of course, Paulos says “Why can’t the universe be the first cause?” ignoring that Aristotle and Aquinas would both reply because it is in motion and its motion needs to be dependent on something outside of itself that is not in motion. Asking “What caused God?” is the usual question which of course, Paulos never consulted these philosophers on to see what they said. It’s more like “Gotcha! Bet you never thought of that one, huh?!”
No. They did. I have something on this here.
He also goes on to go after Augustine for his answer to this question was “He was creating Hell for people who ask questions like that.” Never mind that that was Carthaginian humor Augustine engaged in. Never mind also that Augustine was the one who said it was a nonsense question because God created time. Also, never mind that Paulos gives no sources. Paulos also says that placing God outside of space and time would preclude divine intervention in worldly affairs. Why? Because I suppose. Paulos doesn’t tell us.
He also quotes Hume saying that A causes B means that whenever we have seen A, we have seen it followed by the effect of B. It seems odd Paulos would say this. If this is the case, we have no basis to trust science. Today, water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe tomorrow it will be 130 degrees. Maybe tomorrow at that temperature it will turn into pink lemonade. Who knows?
As for natural laws, Paulos says either we need to know why God chose the laws the way that He did or if He did choose them, then God Himself is subject to those laws. Why? Again, we don’t know. Paulos sits on his atheist throne and speaks ex cathedra and hopes all his little atheist minions will bow down and say “Brilliant insight!” Those of us who enjoy thinking ask “Why?”
He then quotes Leibniz as saying:
The sufficient reason for the universe, he stated, “is a necessary Being bearing the reason for its existence within itself.” The necessary being is God, the first cause, who caused or brought about not only the physical world but also somehow Himself.
Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 8). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
No. Leibniz does not believe God brought about Himself.
But whatever helps you sleep at night.
Based on this, it’s pretty clear why Paulos is an atheist. He does not understand the arguments and he does not read books that disagree with him. Sad, really.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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