Tag: Cosmological argument

Book Plunge: Atheist Universe Part 1

Is there any reason in the atheist universe? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I get email subscriptions for Kindle books on sale and I saw David Mills’s Atheist Universe for sale. It sells itself as the thinking person’s answer to Christian fundamentalism. Those who can’t do, obviously teach.

I really strive to be open when I read different books and be as fair as I can. I have said a number of Christian apologetics books are no good. If I see good points in an atheist book, I will point that out. Your book is not automatically good because it’s Christian or bad because it’s not. The same holds in this case.

No. This book has thus far found a number of other reasons to be bad.

The first chapter is an interview Mills had with someone who I didn’t see named. Unfortunately, whoever it was gave a lot of softball questions. On the other hand, Mills could have sought them out for that reason. Who knows?

I wasn’t too long into this book before it was so bad I was sharing the quotes on Facebook.

So let’s start with one question asked. Why don’t you believe in God? In that answer, we find this gem:

Indeed I’ve written three full-length books devoted to thrashing out these arguments myself in great detail. But I now believe that it is a perfectly acceptable philosophical position to dismiss the god idea as being self-evidently ridiculous as Darrow quipped. Christians instantly disregard the Greek gods as being figments of an overactive imagination, and so I view the Christian god in the same way that the Christians view the Greek gods.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 28). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

In this, Mills treats all forms of theism as the same. I reject the Greek gods because none of them are ultimate. They are all dependent beings that depend on something else for their existing and are pretty much just superhuman beings. This is not at all like the deity in all three monotheistic faiths. Mills rejects them because they are gods.

But to answer your question directly, I am an atheist because no more evidence supports the Christian god than supports the Greek or Roman gods. There is no evidence that God—as portrayed by any religion—exists.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 28). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Which is frankly a nonsense statement. You can say there is insufficient evidence for the Christian God. You can say you don’t find it convincing. To say there is no evidence means that all the people out there who believe in the Christian God, including brilliant intellectual minds, do so without any reason whatsoever.

It’s fairly easy to demonstrably prove that the Genesis accounts of Adam and Eve, and Noah’s worldwide deluge, are fables. It’s easier to prove these stories false because, unlike the notion of God, the Creation account and Noah’s flood are scientifically testable. Science may explore human origins and the geologic history of Earth. In this regard, science has incontrovertibly proven that the Book of Genesis is utter mythology. So while, on esoteric philosophical grounds, I hesitate to claim absolute proof of a god’s nonexistence, I will claim proof that the Bible is not “The Word of God” because much of it has been shown by science to be false.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (pp. 28-29). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Perhaps if you went with a literalistic YEC interpretation and even then, I know some YECs who I am sure could give Mills a run for his money in a debate.

Remember that the rules of logic dictate that the burden of proof falls upon the affirmative position: that a god does exist.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 29). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Actually, they don’t What is the reality is that whoever makes the claim has the burden to prove it. Suppose I was unable to convince Mills that God exists. It does not follow from that that God does not exist. What follows is I didn’t have good reasons to believe or Mills is not following an argument properly for whatever reason. If I do show up and say “God exists” it is my burden to demonstrate that. If you show up and say “Christianity is false”, it is your burden to show that.

We should recognize that all children are born as atheists. There is no child born with a religious belief.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 29). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Actually, there are studies that have been done that seem to indicate children instinctively find purpose and design in places. Also, children are not born knowing their multiplication tables or the laws of physics. So what?

The interviewer later asks how the universe could have been created without God. The response?

Leaving aside your presumptuous use of the word “created”—that line of reasoning is known as the Aquinas cosmological argument. Thomas Aquinas, who lived during the 13th century, argued that everything needs a cause to account for its existence. Aquinas believed that if we regress backward in time through an unbroken chain of causation, then we would eventually arrive at the cause of the universe itself. Aquinas argued that this “First Cause” could be nothing other than God Himself.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (pp. 29-30). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Well, Aquinas didn’t say anything about backward in time. He actually didn’t think the universe having a beginning could be established by reason alone. He even wrote a small book arguing against that notion. Other than that, what could possibly go wrong here with Mills’s argument?

Many of you probably know where this is going and are waiting for it.

This so-called “First Cause” argument, however, is a textbook illustration of ad hoc reasoning. For if “everything needs a cause to account for its existence,” then we are forced to address the question of who or what created God? If God always existed, and therefore needs no causal explanation, then the original premise of the cosmological argument—that everything needs a cause—has been shown to be erroneous: something can exist without a cause. If everything except God requires a cause, then the “First Cause” argument becomes ad hoc [i.e., inconsistent and prejudicially applied] and is thus logically impermissible. If we can suppose that God always existed—and thus requires no causal explanation—then we can suppose instead that the mass-energy comprising our universe always existed and thus requires no causal explanation. Many people, including some atheists and agnostics, misinterpret Big Bang theory as proposing that mass-energy popped into existence ex nihilo [i.e., out of nothing] before the universe began its current expansion. This something-from-nothing belief is not only false, but flagrantly violates the law of the conservation of mass-energy.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 30). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

There is not a single defender of the cosmological argument that has ever put forward such a thing, and by defender, I mean someone who knows the literature well, not Pastor Steve down at your local Baptist Church. Aquinas would want Mills to explain the actualizing of potential in the universe to which Mills would likely give a blank stare and say the typical atheist quip about word salad.  Then, Mills goes and repeats the other false notion about the argument.

But let me summarize by saying that the “First Cause” argument not only begs the question logically and is scientifically bankrupt, it also fails to address which god is supposedly proven existent by the argument! In other words, Zeus or Allah has just as much claim to being the “First Cause” as does Jehovah or Jesus.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (pp. 30-31). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

And?

The first cause argument is not meant to prove which God does exist. It’s meant to prove that some God does exist. Mills is faulting an argument for not proving what it was never meant to prove in the first place.

How about beauty and order? How is that explained?

There is some degree of beauty and order within Nature. But each year, Nature also cruelly victimizes millions of perfectly innocent men, women and children through natural disasters:

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 31). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

But is there beauty and order? How does that get explained? Christians have a ready explanation for the cruelty we see. We live in a fallen world. You can think that’s a cop-out, but it is fully consistent and an essential part of the Christian claim on reality.

Christians are masters of selective observation—or “counting the hits and ignoring the misses.” Anything Christians perceive as attractive or orderly is counted as evidence for God’s existence. But anything Nature offers that is grotesque or in disarray is never counted against God’s existence. Any theological conclusions based upon such selective observation are therefore meaningless.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 31). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

It appears there’s only one master here of selective observation. Mills has brought up all the cruelty and said “No God”, but the beauty is not explained at all. He needs to explain both. Christians freely admit the problem of evil and have written numerous theodicies explaining it. Has Mills written something on what Chesterton called “The Problem of Pleasure”?

On another question he says:

Atheism is synonymous with freedom and freedom of thought, which, in my opinion, are highly positive and desirable.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 33). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

It’s hard to say how they are synonymous since some atheists say that on atheism, you have no free-will. You’re just matter in motion and doing what the matter in you has to do. On that, I agree with them. As for my Christianity, I do value freedom of thought and freedom in general and think God provides for both of those.

Then he is asked about a sort of Pascal’s Wager question:

That argument is known as Pascal’s Wager, because it was first articulated by Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century French philosopher. There are several fallacies in the argument. But the most obvious is that the same argument can be applied to any religion—not just to Christianity. For example, I could say that, since we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by converting to Islam, we should all become Muslims. Or since we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by being Hindu, we should all adopt Hinduism. Christians never stop to consider that they are in just as much danger of going to the Muslim hell as I, an atheist, am in danger of going to the Christian hell. Pascal’s Wager is also flawed in its premise that a person has everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by converting to a religion. The fact is that, whether we like it or not, our earthly life is the only life we’re ever going to experience. If we sacrifice this one life in doormat subservience to a nonexistent god, then we have lost everything!

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (pp. 33-34). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

It’s a shame this is the one argument Pascal seems to be remembered for the most. Everyone should go and read the whole of Pensees and hear his other thoughts. Not only this, but I don’t understand Mills’s reasoning at the end. How have we lost everything? After all, if atheism is true, you’re not going to be kicking yourself in an afterdeath wishing you had lived differently.

In talking about Christians, he says:

No wonder His followers are so intolerant. They are only following Jesus’ declarations that anyone who disagrees with their religious beliefs deserves eternal incineration.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (pp. 34-35). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Well first off, many Christians like myself don’t believe Hell is a fiery torture chamber. Also, Christian societies are by and large extremely tolerant. Let Mills go to a Muslim country and see how well he does arguing that there is no Allah or arguing in favor of the LGBTQ+ community.

There is more in just this first chapter. When we return to it, we will start looking at the historical Jesus and what Mills has to say.

Brace yourselves.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Plunge: God’s Gravediggers Part 4

What about arguments for God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We get to part 4 and really, I was hoping for something substantial, but no. It never came. The more I read Bradley, the more I just see a fundamentalist going on a rant clutching at anything that justifies his position. It honestly gets tiresome after some time.

At any rate, let’s get into the chapter.

This one is about arguments for God’s existence. He starts with a quote from Peter Van Inwagen who says that he doesn’t find the arguments really convincing and needs the help of the Holy Spirit to believe them. Bradley thinks this is telling. Yes. It’s telling that Bradley thinks one philosopher out there, assuming he is being quoted accurately, speaks for all of us.

The first argument Bradley looks at is the ontological argument. This is one I do not use and do not think works, but even still, Bradley gets it wrong. Bradley does say that the argument doesn’t get us to any of the revealed faiths. No one ever thought it did. Bradley faults these arguments for not doing what they were never meant to do.

We get to the Cosmological argument and Bradley says the simplest of all forms of the argument starts with “Everything that exists has a cause.”

I can mentally see many of my apologist friends out there groaning. No great defender of the argument has ever used something like this before. I know some ignorant people might use such a weak argument, but Bradley needs to deal with the professionals here and not the laymen. He remembers his mother using this and asking the obvious question back of “What caused God?” It’s a shame Bradley still seems stuck on that part.

One argument Bradley brings here is that if everything has a cause, then God is the cause of evil. However, this does not work as God is not the direct cause of evil. God is the cause of free will so God does create the potential for evil to happen, but not the actualization of it. We and fallen angels are the ones who do that. More will be said on this in a chapter on evil.

There is a lot of material on scientific arguments. This is Craig’s version of the argument and not mine. A classical Thomistic argument does not rely on science, but on metaphysics. You won’t find Bradley interacting with that. Bradley will ask about why the final cause has to be God? Why not just some really powerful superbeing in another universe? Why not any other number of beings? Aquinas’s argument answers this. If it has any capacity for motion, any potential whatsoever, then it is not the final cause. I really don’t think I can explain matters better than Feser, who can be read here. Anyone who wants to defend or critique the cosmological argument should read this anyway.

He then goes on to the design argument, which I do not use the modern form of that one. However, he does say evolution is anathema to this. I do not see why this would be the case. Could it not be that evolution could be the way God brings about His intelligent design of His creatures?

When talking about abiogenesis, he compares this to conception and talks about the large number of chemicals and such that must come together to form a life. Therefore, conception is all about chance. Right? Surely no creationist would accept this. To say all conception is purely chance is just as ridiculous then to say that abiogenesis is chance.

Yes. No creationist would accept this because it is highly inaccurate. There just happens to be a system built up that is meant to produce just this result. Not only that, Christians and Jews could easily say the Psalms say that we are formed in our mother’s womb. Having a method that is used to bring this about does not change that.

This gets me to another problem that many skeptics produce. They will often ask “How did God do XYZ?” Then when a scientific way is shown that XYZ could come about, it automatically becomes, “See? God didn’t do it!” Either God does it fiat, which would not likely leave evidence behind, or God just didn’t do it. If you are someone who doesn’t believe God can use instrumental causes, that’s your problem, but how you interpret Psalm 139 is up to you then.

To get back to the argument though, Bradley says abiogenesis is not by chance, but ultimately if there is no guiding hand, I don’t see how you can avoid this. Now a evolutionary creationist an,d every other creationist for that matter, would agree that chance alone cannot bring about life. For the atheist, it has to be the case.

He then goes on to the fine-tuning argument. Now again, I do not use this argument because I do not use scientific arguments. I am not a scientist. However, Bradley asks how it can be fine-tuning if God brings about numerous events in the origin of the universe and the planet to bring about life.

Well, it is called fine-tuning for a reason. I don’t see how this is a problem.

He also asks about the idea that if we have these ways this could come about, God is not needed. Unfortunately for him, as a Thomist, I say right at the start based on that system that if there is no God, there is no existing and really, I think you need something to exist in order for life to come about that way. That might be just me, but that’s my position.

Finally, I would also need to speak on who designed the designer? Again, I do not hold to ID arguments, but this is just a bad argument. It was bad when Dawkins used it and it’s still a bad one now. You can find my argument against it here.

So again, I find these arguments extremely lacking.

Next time, we’ll look at another chapter.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

How Bad Can Atheist Arguments Get?

What are we to make of the “Brights” today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

There are some atheists that give Christianity a fair hearing and can give a take. Some of them can look and say “I can understand how from a rational perspective that you can see this as evidence for the resurrection of Jesus or the existence of God.” Some of them can admit arguments from the other side need to be wrestled with.

Unfortunately, from what I meet online, these are the exception.

I could sadly say the same for Christians reversed, but the problem is many atheists claim that by being atheists, they are champions of reason and evidence. For them, I often modify the saying of Jesus. These people honor reason with their lips, but their heads are far from it.

Saturday night I had posted in a debate group in a thread about someone saying something about how Jesus probably wasn’t white. I agree with this. Jesus looked like the average Jew of His day and was most likely more olive-skinned than anything else. Still, for humor, I always post this meme.

So an atheist messages me yesterday morning asking if I had abandoned my faith thinking I had because I had posted this. Like I said, these guys are not experts in reason and evidence. He invited me to check out his website. Now I’m not going to comment on posts about science as science because I know that is not my area. However, I did see a guest post worth mentioning. We’ll go through it piece by piece as a fine example of how NOT to do atheist apologetics. It’s by someone named Jim Dorans, although I wonder why anyone would want to put their name to this.

“Every single attempted logical argument for the existence of the Abrahamic God, without exception, fails on at least one count.”

Well this is first off a very bold claim. Every single one of them fails. Hopefully, we’ll see that evidence. Also, keep in mind arguments from philosophy are not for the Abrahamic God normally, but for a god who is consistent with the Abrahamic God. It could be that God exists and all the Abrahamic faiths are wrong.

“Saint Anselm of Canterbury made the logical error of assuming the need for a perfect being, and worked from that point on. By that reasoning, and working from an unproven assumption, it was very easy to “prove” the existence of God.”

What would be nice to see is some quote from Anselm showing this. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist. Heck, this guy doesn’t even state what Anselm’s argument is or what it is even called. I do not accept the argument, known as the ontological argument, but this is in no way a refutation of Anselm.

“However, that very same reasoning could be applied by an opponent to prove the existence of Zeus, so that’s another reason why it’s a very weak argument.”

And here we are wrong again. Zeus is a being in a polytheistic system. He is never described as a perfect being. If anything, Zeus is a really big human figure with some special powers. You could compare him to Superman. Zeus is a part of a system that needs to be explained. He is not like the god of the Abrahamic faiths.

“Thomas Aquinas too, committed a similar error by assuming the need for a necessary being, and so, based on that unproven assumption, still managed to make a good argument for the existence of God.

It was very much begging the question, and from that fallacious standpoint, he was able to effectively define God into existence.”

As a Thomist, I just find this laughingly hysterical. Again, there is no quote of Aquinas. There is not even a listing of his arguments. There is nothing to show that the author has even read Aquinas. Aquinas’s arguments are also deductive arguments where if one accepts the premises and can show no fault in the form, the conclusion follows.

Normally, if you are responding to an argument, you lay out what the argument is and then show how the proponent thinks the conclusion follows. You try to be as charitable as possible with it. Then you show why you think the proponent of the argument is wrong.

“Again, using the same flawed reasoning, an opponent could just as easily define Zeus into existence.”

See above.

“The well-worn cosmological argument fails too, but for different reasons. Hugely complex, monstrous, recycled arguments tell us the 9,742 ways that a naturalistic explanation is logically impossible, but those 9,742 ways are then “falsified” by inserting God, because God is exempt from, and unbounded by, the laws of logic.Usually, the main claim revolves around the Bereanistic “it is impossible to cross an infinity”, which is just another way of saying that it is impossible to get to the start of an infinity in the past.”

It depends on what kind of infinity is being crossed. Some Aquinas was open to. He said, for example, in q. 46. article 2 of the Prima Pars of the Summa that you cannot demonstrate by reason alone that the universe had a beginning. It must be believed on the basis of Scripture. Today, scientists can debate that one back and forth, but Aquinas is not making an argument like that.

Aquinas says an infinity is impossible though if there is dependence on the ongoing activity of what comes prior. Picture my illustration of an eternal statue standing eternally in front of an eternal mirror. How long has the mirror been reflecting the statue? Eternally. Is the image in the mirror still dependent? Yes.

Aquinas uses the example of a stick pushing a rock and a hand moving the stick. Remove the hand or the stick and the rock doesn’t move. That is the kind of infinity Aquinas says is impossible to have. You cannot have a chain of secondary causes without one primary cause.

Note also that Dorans doesn’t say why or why not this is the case. Is it possible to transcend an infinite? Is it possible for the universe to be infinitely old? He doesn’t tell us.

“The claim then implodes on itself by stating that there must have been a First Cause (which therefore must have crossed that infinity in the past).”

Brace yourself for the demonstration.

“This First Cause is claimed to be God, which of course contradicts the principle of cause and effect, by stating that God does not require a cause, because he is er…God. So, we have now invoked the fallacy of special pleading.”

And everyone who has read anything on the cosmological argument howls with laughter at this point. I can do no better than Ed Feser does. Let’s look at what he says about it here.

“1. The argument does NOT rest on the premise that “Everything has a cause.”
Lots of people – probably most people who have an opinion on the matter – think that the cosmological argument goes like this: Everything has a cause; so the universe has a cause; so God exists.  They then have no trouble at all poking holes in it.  If everything has a cause, then what caused God?  Why assume in the first place that everything has to have a cause?  Why assume the cause is God?  Etc.


Here’s the funny thing, though.  People who attack this argument never tell you where they got it from.  They never quote anyone defending it.  There’s a reason for that.  The reason is that none of the best-known proponents of the cosmological argument in the history of philosophy and theology ever gave this stupid argument.  Not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Aquinas, not Duns Scotus, not Leibniz, not Samuel Clarke, not Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, not Mortimer Adler, not William Lane Craig, not Richard Swinburne.  And not anyone else either, as far as I know.  (Your Pastor Bob doesn’t count.  I mean no one among prominent philosophers.)  And yet it is constantly presented, not only by popular writers but even by some professional philosophers, as if it were “the” “basic” version of the cosmological argument, and as if every other version were essentially just a variation on it.


Don’t take my word for it.  The atheist Robin Le Poidevin, in his book Arguing for Atheism (which my critic Jason Rosenhouse thinks is pretty hot stuff) begins his critique of the cosmological argument by attacking a variation of the silly argument given above – though he admits that “no-one has defended a cosmological argument of precisely this form”!  So what’s the point of attacking it?  Why not start instead with what some prominent defender of the cosmological argument has actually said?”

Feser is stating what many of us already know. No one is using this argument that Dorans is dealing with. No one. Again, this is not saying anything about Pastor Bob using it. I am referring to anyone academically inclined. Feser goes on.

“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.)


What defenders of the cosmological argument do say is that what comes into existence has a cause, or that what is contingent has a cause.  These claims are as different from “Everything has a cause” as “Whatever has color is extended” is different from “Everything is extended.”  Defenders of the cosmological argument also provide arguments for these claims about causation.  You may disagree with the claims – though if you think they are falsified by modern physics, you are sorely mistaken – but you cannot justly accuse the defender of the cosmological argument either of saying something manifestly silly or of contradicting himself when he goes on to say that God is uncaused.


This gives us what I regard as “the basic” test for determining whether an atheist is informed and intellectually honest.  If he thinks that the cosmological argument rests on the claim that “everything has a cause,” then he is simply ignorant of the basic facts.  If he persists in asserting that it rests on this claim after being informed otherwise, then he is intellectually dishonest.  And if he is an academic philosopher like Le Poidevin or Dennett who is professionally obligated to know these things and to eschew cheap debating tricks, then… well, you do the math.”

And I fully agree with Feser again. Either Dorans is intellectually dishonest, which I do not want to say due to the principle of charity, or he is just ignorant of basic facts. Still not the height of charity, but ignorance is easier to take care of than outright dishonesty.

“What is even more amusing is that more special pleading is then used to justify the original special pleading, because God is, well, God …

But why God? Why not Zeus?”

And again, this is still not understood. God does not have a beginning and in Thomism at least, His very nature is to exist. He is what it means to be. You might as well ask “What caused existence to come into existence?” It is either something that already existed, which is a problem since its existence needs to be explained if existence had beginning, or it is something that didn’t exist, which means something can come from nothing, which is nonsense.

So here we have a claim that all the arguments fail and yet none of them are even spelled out at all, no writings are cited, and this is from only two philosophers. There are plenty of others. Some arguments I will think work. Some I will not, but the claim from Dorans is that they all fail and yet we haven’t seen them all put to use and what we have seen, it is the response that fails and fails miserably.

Again, if you want to be an atheist, be one. You can do that. However, please do not be one like Dorans and actually do your intellectual homework and read the other side and take them seriously. Christians need to do the same. Don’t present yourself as a champion of reason and evidence though when your very words will betray you.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

36 Arguments For The Existence of God — A Work of Fiction: Appendix

How do the arguments stand? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Okay. I kind of cheated. I saw that all the arguments are in the appendix and that’s why I ordered the book from the library so I decided to skip the novel since I have many other books waiting to be read and get to the meat of the issue. How does Rebecca Goldstein handle the arguments?

Goldstein lists 36 arguments. I have been in apologetics for nearly 20 years and some of these arguments I have never before seen used. Many are left out, such as the arguments of Thomas Aquinas and the argument from the resurrection of Jesus.

Let’s start with the first argument she deals with, the Cosmological Argument. The first premise she has listed in the argument is “Everything that exists must have a cause.” When seeing that, it’s hard to not think about Edward Feser’s epic takedown of this kind of nonsense. Note Feser also includes “What caused God?” as a dumb objection.

Feser rightly points out that no prominent defender of the Cosmological argument in history has ever said the argument is that everything has a cause. Maybe your local pastor who doesn’t know the argument well might say that, but it is not said by serious philosophers. How did Goldstein make such a basic mistake?

If this is the first objection also, we have to wonder how seriously one should take Goldstein on the others since this is a basic mistake. It leaves one considering that Goldstein has never read any serious work on the cosmological argument. If she has, that could be even worse because she badly misunderstood whatever it is she read.

Many arguments from this point on are scientific and I have no wish to look at those as I am not a scientist, or they are arguments that I would never use and have not seen anyone else use. The next one I want to look at is the argument from miracles. However, to really look at that, I have to leapfrog ahead to another argument. That’s the argument from holy books.

Of course, it is a fallacious argument to assume that the book can only be the Word of God if God exists. but I am interested instead in dealing with the flaw in her look at flaws in the argument. The second one has her saying that all the books contradict, which they do. Goldstein says that one has to have arrogant provincialism to believe that the documents held sacred by the clan one was born in are true and the others false.

Apparently, it never occurs to her that one could, I don’t know, look for evidence that one of the books is true and make a decision based on evidence. If one is convinced the book is true, it is not arrogance to accept it. It would be arrogance rather to not accept it.

So when we return to miracles, Goldstein sees a similar problem. Miracles are used for any number of religions. How do we know any of them are true?

Technically, Christianity is the one that is founded on a miracle, the resurrection of Jesus. Muhammad does no miracles in the Koran. Miracles would not fit in Hinduism or Buddhism. Miracles could be added in later traditions, but they are not foundational.

Goldstein also says a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. She does not tell where this comes from. Certainly, some people describe it this way, but not all.

Finally, she of course appeals to Hume. Hume’s argument has been critiqued several times over. One of the best critiques is by the agnostic Earman in his book Hume’s Abject Failure. For my own purposes, Hume was arguing in a circle. How does he know that a miracle has never occurred? Hume mainly relied on his own elite companions who like him did not believe in miracles, but he has no basis to demonstrate that no miracle has ever occurred.

The next argument is the argument from morality. Once again, as if on schedule, Goldstein trots out Euthyphro. Does God have a good reason for what He does? If He does, then we can use that same reasoning for ourselves. If He doesn’t, then His choices are arbitrary. It never occurs to Goldstein to define goodness itself. After all, if she doesn’t, she will have to live with the dilemma herself. Is something good because it benefits society, or does it benefit society because it is good? I have dealt with this elsewhere.

Naturally, there’s also criticism of the God of the Old Testament. As expected, there is no interaction with the scholarly work in this field or looking at life in an ANE culture. No doubt, Goldstein would not want creationists who never study evolution critiquing that, but I guess she gets a free pass.

These are the only ones I really want to look at. Most of the others are outside of my area of expertise or are just weak. It’s a shame to see so many atheists praising a work like this. On the other hand, it also shows us that the atheists are not becoming informed on these matters and likely just believing something because it argues what they want to believe.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: 36 Arguments For The Existence of God — A Work of Fiction –Part 1

What do I think of Rebecca Goldstein’s book published by Pantheon Books? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I read through Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, he referred to this book as a book to deal with the arguments for God. I decided I’d order it to see what it was like. I have started it and really I don’t see how this book deals with the arguments for God thus far.

The book deals with an atheist celebrity of sorts who studies the psychology of religion named Cass Seltzer. The problem I have though is that I really can’t find anything likable about this character. I don’t see any real personality and he seems rather bland. I don’t think the book thus far has dealt with the existence of God at all, but even as a novel I find it boring.

This isn’t because of ideological differences. As a story, I could actually enjoy The Da Vinci Code. The history in it is awful, but the story isn’t that bad. (Don’t go see the movie. The movie was terrible!) I think the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is some wonderful science fiction. I enjoyed reading Huxley’s Brave New World as well as Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. I have strong ideological differences with all those authors, but the stories weren’t bad.

I can’t say the same about Goldstein. What is disappointing though is that this book is meant to deal with arguments for God, but it really doesn’t seem to do that at all. The first chapter is about something called the argument from the improbable self. It’s along the lines apparently of asking how I came to be me where I am. Seltzer starts thinking in the piece about existence and yet doesn’t appear to do anything. It’s as if he’s on the verge of something and then stops. (To be fair, the appendix I see does deal with more of the arguments so that will be interesting to see. I don’t expect much though since she says for the cosmological argument that the first premise is “Everything that exists must have a cause.” No great thinker in academia ever has ever defended such a notion for this argument.)

As the story goes on, various arguments seem to be dealt with, but it’s really hard to see how they are. If all that really deals with the arguments is the appendix, this book could have been much shorter. All we see is Seltzer attending scientific meetings and interacting with some women in his life. None of this really shows an atheist taking seriously the arguments.

I am thinking then at this point that I might not be able to write much anything more about this until we do get to the appendix, which is a shame. The story as it is is just rather boring and I don’t have any connection to the characters whatsoever. If things change, I will let you know out there, but if they don’t, then we will just deal with the theistic arguments in the appendix when I get there.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Atheists: Please Get The Argument Right

What happens when you misrepresent an argument? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I had an atheist get in touch with a ministry I work for and the conversation was cordial enough. Anyway, he recommended I come to his blog and subscribe and give my thoughts since they wanted to see intelligent theists. I subscribed and yesterday responded to something about blind faith including the Richard Dawkins idea that faith is believing something without evidence.

In the comments section, somehow it came to the cosmological argument, which I had not advanced, and the pointing out of how silly it was. After all, it’s silly to say that everything that exists has a cause. Why is it that God is the exception? The blog owner and another atheist said this and a third showed up to celebrate what a great response it was.

Yes. Absolutely wonderful.

Except, you know, that’s not what the argument is.

I know of no serious defender of the cosmological argument who is a scholar of the field and/or teaches at an institution of higher learning who advances this argument. None of them say “Everything has a cause.” The argument traditionally given is “Everything that begins to exist has a cause.”

To say something like this would be like me going to a group I was giving an apologetics lecture to and saying, “Do you want to know how stupid evolution is? Let me give you an example. Evolutionists believe that a fish crawled out of the sea and turned into a puppy dog and that puppy dog gave birth to a lion who gave birth to a human being. Isn’t that stupid?”

It definitely is. The problem is that evolutionists do not present arguments like this. This is not the way evolution is formulated. Keep in mind that this does not mean evolution is true nor does it mean that evolution is false. The atheists misrepresented the Kalam, but that does not mean that the Kalam is an airtight argument that works. The Kalam must still stand on its own two feet.

What it does mean is when dealing with any argument, one must deal with the argument as it is and not as one would like to have it. Do the latter and you can dispatch with any argument. Just turn it into something completely ridiculous and refute that and your work is done.

It’s also quite ironic to have atheists talking about blind faith and yet believing simply whatever is read in a book or on a web site by an atheist without looking to see if the argument is right. Were any theistic philosophers consulted to see if they used this argument? You know the answer to that as well as I do.

This has been going after atheists, but keep in mind this is entirely unacceptable for Christians. We are people who do want to take down our opponents’ arguments and we should, but let’s make sure we are taking down their arguments. There is no victory in making a fake argument and it’s dishonest and an insult to the cause of Christ.

And to atheist readers of this, if you have done this, stop it. Deal with the real argument. When I see the fake argument put forward, I just conclude that you’re an atheist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Evidence Considered Chapter 1

Does the cosmological argument stand up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’ve had sitting on the backburner for awhile another book besides Seeing Through Christianity to go through and that’s Evidence Considered by Glenton Jelbert. Jelbert has decided to go after Mike Licona and Bill Dembski’s book Evidence For God. Jelbert is a former Christian and it is interesting to go through what he has.

The first chapter is on the cosmological argument which was written by David Beck. It’s noteworthy that there is no distinction between what kind of cosmological argument is used. Craig uses one kind that is called the horizontal argument. This one goes with the beginning of the universe and largely relies on Big Bang Cosmology. The vertical kind does not require any science at all and is more philosophical and asks what is the basis for the existing of the universe.

Imagine you wake up tomorrow and you hear some weird music playing. You ask “What is causing this sound?” It doesn’t seem to make sense to ask “What caused this sound?” since the sound is going on in the present. The music is continually playing so you ask what is causing it.

Now another day, you wake up and you go outside to do a morning walk and you find when you open the front door a giant crystal orb is blocking your path. You ask “What caused this?” because it’s being put there is an event that happened in the past. It is often missed that you could just as much ask “What is causing this?”

Why could you ask that? Because too often, the existence of these things is treated like a given. It’s as if things can exist by their own power. One could say that we could commit suicide by our own power, but none of us can by our own power say “I don’t want to exist!” and just poof out.

Jelbert begins his response by saying we could grant the argument and it doesn’t really get us close to theism. He says that all religions are able to use this shows this, but can they all use it? For instance, Mormonism would not use this argument since matter is really eternal in Mormonism with gods begetting gods that create their own planets where the denizens can become gods.

The Abrahamic religions can use this because the vertical form definitely depends on one uncaused cause. Using natural theology and Aristotelian metaphysics, Aquinas can tell us plenty about the god that can be found. There is a false notion that to say that since natural theology alone can’t tell us what god there is, then there can’t be a god. In the Middle Ages, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian philosophers could all agree on the arguments of natural theology. They’d determine which form of theism is true by looking at special revelation.

From there, Jelbert goes on to talk about how Jeopardy recently defined atheism as “The active, principled denial of the existence of God.” Jelbert refers to this an absurd definition. Jelbert says “A definition of atheist as someone who does not believe there is a god, is the equivalent of saying that since the case has not been made, the burden of proof lies with the theist/deist.”

First off, this sentence is incredibly unclear. Thinking it was just me, I showed it to one of my friends who’s much more familiar with English and grammar only to get a similar response. My rule with the burden of proof argument is that anyone who makes a claim has a burden. If you come up and say “I am an atheist,” and I ask why, you need to back that. It doesn’t work to say “Unless you can demonstrate your case, atheism is true.” It could be that I am a theist who has terrible reasons for believing in God and yet God still exists. If I come to you and say I’m a theist, it’s not up to you to disprove theism. It’s up to me to demonstrate theism.

As for the idea about it being absurd, perhaps Jelbert would like to speak to these others.

“Atheism is the position that affirms the non-existence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief.”

William Rowe The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy p.62

“Atheism, as presented in this book, is a definite doctrine, and defending it requires one to engage with religious ideas. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a personal, transcendent creator of the universe, rather than one who simply lives life without reference to such a being.”

Robin Le Poidevin Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion p.xvii

Jelbert goes on to say that the argument proves nothing about Jesus, virgin births (Which I do affirm), the resurrection, or any creed. Indeed it doesn’t. It is hardly a fault of an argument that it does not prove what it was never meant to prove. The argument could be entirely valid and Islam is true. Either way, atheism is false.

Jelbert goes on to argue that maybe the cause is itself physical. The problem with this is that in the horizontal form, the being is beyond space, time, and matter, which means it is not limited by any of those and thus it is not spatial, it is eternal, and it is immaterial. In the vertical form, it is a being that is not capable of change from another agent. Anything material is capable of such change. This is because in Thomistic and Aristotelian metaphysics, these kinds of things have what is called potential, which is capacity for change. Matter essentially has this. Thus, physical beings are ruled out.

Jelbert also argues that an infinite chain could possibly exist. This would be a problem for a horizontal version perhaps, but not a vertical one. There are two kinds of chains. In one chain, consider my wife and I. Suppose in a tragedy our parents all died through car accidents or some other means today. That would not mean that we suddenly go out of existence. In fact, we could have our own children still without our parents. (Obviously, we don’t want anything to happen to our parents of course.)

If this kind of chain is what the universe is, then an infinite chain could be possible. I leave that to the mathematicians. Yet what if our universe is not like this? Aquinas gives the example of a stick pushing a rock and the rock pushing a leaf while the stick is pushed by a hand. This is a short chain, but in this chain, if you remove any part, all activity ceases. All present activity is continuously dependent on past activity. If that is the case for our universe, then an infinite chain is not possible.

A Thomistic argument gives a chain where existence depends on something else existing. If all existing depends on another existence, then you have such a chain going on as with the rock being moved, then there’s no reason to think any existing would be going on right now. This is not chronological either. If it was, it would be the former chain. Too many atheistic arguments treat existing as if it was a given. It’s quite odd to think that so many atheists who want to talk about how God doesn’t exist don’t really say much about what it means to exist.

Jelbert then says that the third point is that there must be a single uncaused or infinite being. Jelbert sees a switch between cause and being, but it’s a wonder what we’re supposed to see. If anything is causing any change, it must be something that exists in some way, that is, it is. It’s a being.

Jelbert also says that Beck says that “We cannot make sense of the universe, the reality in which we live, apart from there being a real God.” Jelbert says that this is an admission that the feeling of not knowing is something Beck doesn’t like and he heals it with the idea of God. It’s a wonder how this is read. Beck just gave a statement of fact. Nothing is said about personal feelings in the matter.

Jelbert then goes on to say that this is what has been done for millennia, but this is indeed too much of a leap. The first leap is to assume an emotional case for Beck. The second is to assume that everyone thinks in modern individualistic psychological terminology.

If we want to play this game, then we could say that many people find a God distasteful who will judge them for their sins, require repentance, or disagree with their political views. This causes psychological discomfort. The way to quiet this is to argue that this God doesn’t exist to give emotional solace.

Does this apply to some people? Sure. Are some people also Christians for emotional reasons? Sadly so. Does this tell us about the truth? Not at all. Instead, Jelbert has given a reason that cannot be known. Saying that you have an explanation that explains something is not necessarily addressing something emotional. It could provide emotional solace as a plus, but that does not mean that it is false.

We will later on look at another chapter.

In Christ,
Nick Peters