“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” While the world definitely had a beginning, there’s a question of whether we can prove this by reason alone (i.e., by philosophical arguments).

Defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument often use an argument like this one, which is found in William Lane Craig’s book Reasonable Faith:

1) An actually infinite number of things cannot exist.

2) A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things.

3) Therefore, a beginningless series of events in time cannot exist.

I have a problem with the first premise, but that’s a topic for another time. Here I’d like to look at Craig’s second premise.

Is it true that a beginningless series of events entails an actually infinite number of things?

At first glance, the answer would seem to be yes, but the reality is more complex.

The Nature of Time

The answer depends on your view of time. Here we need to consider two major theories of time, which are known as eternalism and presentism.

Eternalism holds that all of time exists. The past, the present, and the future are all real from the ultimate perspective—that is, from the eternal perspective outside of time. We may only experience history one bit at a time, but from the “eternal now” that God dwells in, all moments of time are equally real.

Presentism (as we will be using the term) holds that, from the ultimate perspective, the only time that exists is right now—the present. The past used to be real, but it is no longer. And the future will exist, but it does not yet. Since neither the past nor the future are real, they do not exist in any sense of the word. If you asked God—from his ultimate perspective—“What is real in the created order?” he would answer, “Only the present.”

The Eternalist Option

Supposing that eternalism is true, Craig’s second premise would be true. From the eternal perspective outside of time, God would see an infinite series of past events laid out before him.

Or, if you wish to avoid the question of how God’s knowledge works then, as the Creator, God would be causing that infinite series of past events to exist.

They would all be equally real—equally actual—from his perspective, and—since they have no beginning—they would be infinite. Being both actual and infinite, the events of a beginningless history would represent an actual infinity. Thus, the second premise would be true.

But for a classical Christian theist, there would be a problem, because Christianity teaches that God will give people endless life. While human beings may come into existence at the moment of their conception, they will never pass out of existence.

Therefore, humans have an endless future. And that future also will be equally real to God.

From his eternal perspective outside of time, God sees and creates all the moments of our endless future. They are both real—actual—from his perspective, and they are infinite in number. Being both actual and infinite, the moments of our future also would be an actual infinity.

From the viewpoint of a classical Christian theist, eternalism implies the existence of an actual infinity of future moments, giving such theists reason to challenge Craig’s first premise (that an actual infinity can’t exist).

However, this post is only examining his second premise, so let’s consider the other option we need to look at.

The Presentist Option

If only the present exists, is it true that a beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things?

No. At least not an actual infinity of real things.

The reason is that, on the presentist view, only one moment of time exists. No past moments exist, and no future moments exist.

It doesn’t matter how many events took place in the past, because those events are no longer real. As soon as a new moment arrived, all the events taking place in the previous moment evaporated and are no longer actual.

Therefore, it doesn’t matter how many past events there have been—it could be a finite number or an infinite number—because they have all ceased to be actual. The only actual events are those occurring in the present.

So, if presentism is true, the second premise of Craig’s argument is false if applied to concrete, real things like events. A beginningless series of events in time does not entail an actually infinite number of such things because those things are no longer actual.

For a collection of things to be actually infinite, they all have to be actual from some perspective. On eternalism, that can happen, because all the moments of time are actual from the eternal perspective outside of time.

But it can’t happen on presentism, because this view holds that, from the ultimate perspective, only one moment is real, and one is a finite number. This view entails that no actual infinity of moments in time exists, because only one moment of time is actual.

This is why Aristotle could believe that the world did have an infinite history. Even though he thought an actually infinite number of things couldn’t exist at the same time, history didn’t present that problem, because one moment passed out of existence when another came into it, so the total number of moments was always finite.

The Counting Argument

In the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, Craig and coauthor James Sinclair respond to this issue with two lines of thought.

The first is based on counting, and their reasoning (omitting examples for brevity) goes like this:

[W]e may take it as a datum that the presentist can accurately count things that have existed but no longer exist. . . .

The nonexistence of such things or events is no hindrance to their being enumerated. . . .

So in a beginningless series of past events of equal duration, the number of past events must be infinite, for it is larger than any natural number. . . .

[I]f we consider all the events in an infinite temporal regress of events, they constitute an actual infinite.

It’s true that a presentist can count things that have existed but no longer exist (e.g., the number of days that have elapsed so far this year)—and their nonexistence doesn’t prevent this counting (just look at a calendar!).

The problem comes in the third statement, because it can be understood in more than one way.

In terms of what is real on the presentist view, the number of past events is not infinite, because no past events exist. That’s a key point of presentism.

If you want to talk about an infinite number of past events, you have to shift from speaking of events that do exist to those that have existed, and those aren’t the same thing.

Yes, on presentism, we could speak of an infinite collection of events that were real but aren’t anymore. And that’s the point: They aren’t real.

This points to a second way of reading the statement when Craig and Sinclair speak of “the number of past events.”

If we are talking about the number of events, then we’re no longer talking about the events themselves. Instead, we’re talking about a number, which raises a question.

What Are Numbers?

Mathematicians and philosophers have a variety of views about what numbers are. Some classify them as “abstract objects” that exist independent of the mind. Others think of them as mental constructs of some kind. There are many variations on these views.

Whatever the case may be, Craig doesn’t see infinite numbers themselves being a problem.

In his talks and writings, he has frequently said that he doesn’t have a problem with the mathematics of infinity—that modern mathematical concepts dealing with the infinite are fine and useful as concepts. Thus, the infinite set of natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3 . . . ) is a useful concept.

Craig doesn’t reject the idea that the set of natural numbers is actually infinite. It’s just not the kind of actual infinity that causes a problem for him because numbers aren’t concrete objects in the real world.

So, actual infinities of the numerical order are fine, in which case it’s fine if the number of past events is actually infinite. It’s an actual infinity of events themselves that he says can’t be part of the real world.

And on presentism, they’re not. Past events would have to be understood in some other way. They might be abstract objects, like many mathematicians hold numbers to be. Or they might be purely mental concepts at this point, as others regard numbers.

Whatever is the case, on presentism they do not exist in the real world. And so, whatever kind of infinity a beginningless universe would involve, it doesn’t violate the principle that—while actual infinities may exist in an abstract way, as in mathematics—they don’t exist in the real world.

Back to the Future

There is another way of illustrating the problem with the argument from counting, and it involves considering the number of future events.

If the universe can’t have a beginningless past because an infinite set of non-real past events can’t exist, then we also can’t have an endless future, because that entails an infinite set of non-real future events.

The argument simply involves shifting from events that used to be real to those that will be real.

If God gives people endless life, then the number of days that we will experience in the future is infinite. As the hymn says about heaven,

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise,

Than when we first begun.

As Craig and Sinclair acknowledge:

It might rightly be pointed out that on presentism there are no future events and so no series of future events. Therefore, the number of future events is simply zero. . . . [O]n presentism, the past is as unreal as the future and, therefore, the number of past events could, with equal justification, be said to be zero. It might be said that at least there have been past events, and so they can be numbered. But by the same token there will be future events, so why can they not be numbered? Accordingly, one might be tempted to say that in an endless future there will be an actually infinite number of events, just as in a beginningless past there have been an actually infinite number of events.

So, why should an infinite number of future events be considered more permissible for a presentist than an infinite number of past ones?

Possible vs. Actual Infinity

Craig and Sinclair’s response involves the difference between an actual infinity (where an unlimited number of elements exist simultaneously) and a potential infinity (where an unlimited number of elements don’t exist simultaneously). They write:

[T]here never will be an actually infinite number of [future] events since it is impossible to count to infinity. The only sense in which there will be an infinite number of events is that the series of events will go toward infinity as a limit. But that is the concept of a potential infinite, not an actual infinite. Here the objectivity of temporal becoming makes itself felt. For as a result of the arrow of time, the series of events later than any arbitrarily selected past event is properly to be regarded as potentially infinite, that is to say, finite but indefinitely increasing toward infinity as a limit.

This reasoning is mistaken. It is false to say that “the series of events later than any arbitrarily selected past event is . . . finite but indefinitely increasing toward infinity as a limit.”

No. If you arbitrarily select any event in time and consider the sequence of later events, they do not “indefinitely increase toward infinity.” They are always infinite.

Consider January 1, 1900. On the Christian view, how many days of endless life will there be after that? An infinite number.

Consider January 1, 2000. How many days are to come? Again, an infinite number.

Consider January 1, 2100. How many days follow? Still an infinite number.

As the hymn says, “We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun!”

What Craig and Sinclair are thinking of is the fact that, if you pick a date and go any arbitrary distance into the future, your destination will still be a finite number of days from your starting point.

Thus, the number of days that has elapsed between the start and finish of your journey grows toward infinity but never gets there, making this span of days a potential rather than actual infinity.

But it does not follow—and is simply wrong—that the complete set of future days is only potentially infinite. To show this, just give each day a number: Today is 0, tomorrow is 1, the next day is 2, and so on. We can thus map the set of future days onto the set of natural numbers, which is actually rather than potentially infinite.

Take any day you like, and on the Christian view the quantity of days that will be after it is identical to the quantity of natural numbers.

The quantity of days that will be—like the quantity of natural numbers—does not grow. This quantity just is.

Unless you say—contrary to the teaching of the Christian faith—that the number of future days is finite and God won’t give us endless life, then there is an actual infinity of future days.

And if a presentist wants to affirm an actual infinity of currently-not-real days that will be, he must allow the possibility of an actual infinity of currently-not-real days that have been.

Conclusion

In summary, Craig’s second premise was:

2) A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things.

Whether this is true will depend on one’s view of time and the status of non-real things.

On eternalism, a beginningless series of events in time would involve an actually infinite number of things, for all these moments exist from God’s perspective outside of time. But so would the actually infinite number of future days that God promises us, giving the eternalist reason to reject the idea that an actual infinity cannot exist in the real world.

On presentism, a beginningless series of events in time would not involve an actual infinity of events existing in the real world, because presentism holds that the past does not exist.

Such a series of events might result in an actual infinity of (past) non-existent days, but so would the actual infinity of (future) non-existent days. And if a Christian allows one set of non-existent days, the other must be allowed as well.

The fact that the past days are countable is irrelevant, because so are the future days.

And it is simply false to say that the days that will be are only potentially infinite. They’re not. Right now, the number of days that will be is actually infinite, the same way the set of natural numbers is actually infinite.

Based on what we’ve seen here, presentism does not exclude an infinite past any more than it does an infinite future.

In recent years, one of the most popular arguments for the existence of God has been the Kalaam cosmological argument.

Ultimately, I think this argument is successful, but many of the ways it has been employed are unsuccessful.

It is an argument that needs to be used carefully—with the proper qualifiers.

Stating the Argument

We can state the Kalaam argument like this:

1) Everything that has a beginning has a cause.

2) The universe has a beginning.

3) Therefore, the universe has a cause (which would be God).

Is this argument valid? Is it sound?

Valid arguments are ones that use a correct logical form—regardless of whether their premises are true. The Kalaam argument falls into this category, which is not disputed by its critics.

If a valid argument has true premises, then its conclusion also will be true. Valid arguments that have true premises are called sound arguments, and I agree that the argument’s premises are true:

1) It is true that whatever has a beginning has a cause.

2) And it is true that the universe has a beginning (approximately 13.8 billion years ago, according to Big Bang cosmology).

Since the Kalaam argument is valid and has true premises, it is a sound argument.

Using the Argument Apologetically

The Kalaam argument is sound from the perspective of logic, but how useful is it from the perspective of apologetics? There are many arguments that are sound, but sometimes they are not very useful in practice.

For example, in their famous book Principia Mathematica, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead spend the first 360 pages of the book covering basic principles that build up to them rigorously proving that 1 + 1 = 2.

While their book is of interest to mathematicians, and their proof extremely well thought-out, it is so complex that it is not of practical use for a popular audience. For ordinary people, there are much simpler ways to prove that 1 + 1 = 2. (If needed, just put one apple on a table, put another one next to it, and count the apples both individually and together.)

Complexity is not the only thing that can limit an argument’s usefulness. Another is the willingness of people to grant the truth of its premises. Here is where some of the limitations of the Kalaam argument appear. While it is very simple to state and understand, defending the premises is more involved.

The First Premise

The first premise—that everything that has a beginning has a cause—is intuitive and is accepted by most people.

Some object to this premise on philosophical grounds or on scientific ones, such as by pointing to the randomness of quantum physics.

Both the philosophical and the scientific arguments can get technical quickly, but a skilled apologist—at least one who is actually familiar with quantum mechanics (!)—would still be able to navigate such objections without getting too far over the heads of a popular audience.

This—plus the fact that a popular audience’s sympathies will be with the first premise—mean that the argument retains its usefulness with a general audience.

The Second Premise

The second premise—that the universe had a beginning—is also widely accepted today, due in large part to Big Bang cosmology. A popular audience will thus be generally sympathetic to the second premise.

That’s apologetically useful, but we need to look more closely at how the second premise can be supported when challenged.

Since “The Bible says the universe has a beginning” will not be convincing to those who are not already believers, there are two approaches to doing this—the scientific and the philosophical.

The Scientific Approach

For an apologist, the approach here is straight forward: For a popular level audience, simply present a popular-level account of the evidence that has led cosmologists to conclude that the Big Bang occurred.

On this front, the principal danger for the apologist is overselling the evidence in one of several ways.

First, many apologists do not keep up with developments in cosmology, and they may be relying on an outdated account of the Big Bang.

For example, about 40 years ago, it was common to hear cosmologists speak of the Big Bang as an event that involved a singularity—where all matter was compressed into a point of infinite density and when space and time suddenly sprang into existence.

That view is no longer standard in cosmology, and today no apologist should be speaking as if this is what the science shows. Apologists need to be familiar with the current state of cosmological thought (as well as common misunderstandings of the Big Bang) and avoid misrepresenting current cosmological views.

Thus, they should not say that the Big Bang is proof that the universe had an absolute beginning. While the Big Bang is consistent with an absolute beginning, cosmologists have not been able to rule out options like there being a prior universe.

One way apologists have dealt with this concern is to point to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem, which seeks to show that—on certain assumptions—even if there were one or more prior universes, there can’t be an unlimited number of them.

It’s fair to point to this theorem, but it would be a mistake for an apologist to present it as final proof, because the theorem depends on certain assumptions (e.g., that the universe has—on average—been expanding throughout its history) that cannot be taken for granted.

Further, apologists should be aware that authors of the theorem—Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin—do not agree that it shows the universe had to have a beginning. Guth apparently believes that the universe does not have a beginning, and Vilenkin states that all the theorem shows is that the expansion of the universe had to have a beginning, not the universe itself.

It thus would misrepresent the BGV theorem as showing that the scientific community has concluded that the universe had to have a beginning, even if it were before the Big Bang. (It also would be apologetically dangerous and foolish to do so, as the facts I’ve just mentioned could be thrown in the apologist’s face, discrediting him before his audience.)

Most fundamentally, the findings of science are always provisional, and the history of science contains innumerable cases where scientific opinion as reversed as new evidence has been found.

Consequently, apologists should never sell Big Bang cosmology—or any other aspect of science—as final “proof.”

This does not mean that apologists can’t appeal to scientific evidence. When the findings of science point in the direction aspects of the Faith, it is entirely fair to point that out. They just must not be oversold.

The Philosophical Approach

Prior to the mid-20^th century, Big Bang cosmology had not been developed, and the scientific approach to defending the Kalaam argument’s second premise was not available.

Consequently, earlier discussions relied on philosophical arguments to try to show that the universe must have a beginning.

Such arguments remain a major part of the discussion today, and new philosophical ways of defending the second premise have been proposed.

Authors have different opinions about how well these work, but in studying them, I find myself agreeing with St. Thomas Aquinas that they do not. Thus far, I have not discovered any philosophical argument—ancient or modern—that I thought proved its case.

This is not to say that they don’t have superficial appeal. They do; otherwise, people wouldn’t propose them.

But when one thinks them through carefully, they all contain hidden flaws that keep them from succeeding—some of which are being discussed in this series.

I thus do not rely on philosophical arguments in my own presentation of the Kalaam argument.

Conclusion

The Kalaam cosmological argument is a valid and sound argument. It does prove that the universe has a cause, which can meaningfully be called God.

As a result, it can be used by apologists, and its simplicity makes it particularly attractive.

I use it myself, such as in my short, popular-level book The Words of Eternal Life.

However, the argument needs to be presented carefully. The scientific evidence we currently have is consistent with and suggestive of the world having a beginning in the finite past, though this evidence must not be oversold.

The philosophical arguments for the universe having a beginning are much more problematic. I do not believe that the ones developed to date work, and so I do not use them.

I thus advise other apologists to think carefully before doing so and to rigorously test these arguments: Seek out counterarguments, carefully consider them, and see if you can show why the arguments don’t work.

It is not enough that we find an argument convenient or initially plausible. We owe it to the truth, and honesty in doing apologetics compels us not to use arguments just because we want them to be true.

God created the universe a finite time ago, but there’s a question of whether we can prove this by reason alone.

Defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument often claim that the universe cannot have an infinite history because “traversing an infinite” is impossible.

In his book Reasonable Faith (pp. 120-124), William Lane Craig puts the argument this way

1. The series of events in time is a collection formed by adding one member after another

2. A collection formed by adding one member after another cannot be actually infinite

3. Therefore, the series of events in time cannot be actually infinite.

The second premise of this argument is the one that deals with “traversing an infinite.” Craig writes:

Sometimes this problem is described as the impossibility of traversing the infinite.

Still a third way of describing it is saying that you can’t form infinity “by successive addition.”

Whatever expression you prefer, each of these expressions refer to the intuition people commonly have about infinity—that “you can’t get there from here.”

Where Is “Here”?

If you can’t get to infinity from here, where is “here”?

However you want to phrase the problem—getting there from here, traversing an infinite, or successive addition, this is a question that needs to be answered.

Let’s take another look at the second premise:

2. A collection formed by adding one member after another cannot be actually infinite

What does it mean to “form” a collection by adding one member after another?

Perhaps the most natural way to take this would be to form such a collection from nothing. That is, you start with zero elements in the collection (or maybe one element) and then successively add one new member after another.

And it’s quite true that, if you form a collection this way, you will never arrive at an infinite number of members. No matter how many elements you add to the collection, one at a time, the collection will always have a finite number of elements.

This can be seen through a simple counting exercise. If you start with 0 and then keep adding +1, you’ll get the standard number line:

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 . . .

But no matter how many times you add +1, the resulting number will always be finite—just one unit larger than the previous finite number.

However, there is a problem . . .

The First-and-Last Fallacy

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, any string of natural numbers that has both a first and a last element is—by definition—finite.

Any time you specify a first natural number and a last natural number, the space between them is limited.

It thus would be fallacious reasoning to envision an infinite timeline with both first and last elements.

Yet it is very easy to let the idea of an infinite past having a beginning somewhere “infinitely far back” unintentionally sneak back into discussions of the Kalaam argument.

It can easily happen without people being aware of it, and often our language is to blame:

• The natural sense of the word “traverse” suggests going from one point to another, suggesting both a beginning point and an end point.
• So does the idea of “forming” an infinite collection. If we imagine forming a collection, we naturally envision starting with nothing (a collection with no members) and then adding things to it.
• And if we think of getting to infinity “from here,” we naturally think of a starting point in the finite realm (“here”) and an end point (“infinity”).

Without at all meaning to, it’s thus very easy to fall into the trap of subconsciously supposing both a starting point and an ending point in a supposedly infinite history.

This happens often enough that I’ve called it the First-and-Last Fallacy.

Taking No Beginning Seriously

In Reasonable Faith, Craig denies that this is how his argument should be understood. He writes:

Mackie and Sobel object that this sort of argument illicitly presupposes an infinitely distant starting point in the past and then pronounces it impossible to travel from that point to today. But if the past is infinite, they say, then there would be no starting point whatever, not even an infinitely distant one. Nevertheless, from any given point in the past, there is only a finite distance to the present, which is easily “traversed.” But in fact no proponent of the kalam argument of whom I am aware has assumed that there was an infinitely distant starting point in the past. The fact that there is no beginning at all, not even an infinitely distant one, seems only to make the problem worse, not better (boldface added).

Craig thus wishes us to understand his argument not as forming an infinite collection of past historical moments from an infinitely distant starting point—i.e., from a beginning.

It’s good that he is clear on this, because otherwise his second premise would commit the First-and-Last Fallacy.

But does this really make things worse rather than better?

It would seem not.

Formed from What?

If we are not to envision a collection being “formed” from nothing by successive addition, then it must obviously be formed from something. Namely, it must be formed from another, already existing collection.

For example, suppose I have a complete run of my favorite comic book, The Legion of Super-Heroes. Let’s say that, as of the current month, it consists of issue #1 to issue #236.

Then, next month, issue #237 comes out, so I purchase it and add it to my collection. I now have a new, larger collection that was “formed” by adding one new member to my previous collection.

Now let’s apply that to the situation of an infinite history. Suppose that the current moment—“now”—is the last element of an infinite collection of previous moments (with no beginning moment).

How was this collection formed?

Obviously, it was formed from a previous collection that included all of the past moments except the current one.

Let’s give these things some names:

• Let P be the collection of all the past moments
• Let 1 represent the current moment
• And let E represent the collection of all the moments that have ever existed

With those terms in place, it’s clear that:

P + 1 = E

We thus can form one collection (E) from another collection (P) by adding a member to it.

But Can It Be Infinite?

Now we come to Craig’s second premise, which said that you can’t form an actually infinite collection by adding one member after another.

If you imagine forming the collection from nothing—and thus commit the First-and-Last Fallacy—then this is true.

But it’s not true if you avoid the fallacy and imagine forming an actually infinite collection from a previous collection by adding to it.

The previous collection just needs to be actually infinite as well. If P is an actually infinite collection and you add 1 to it, E will be actually infinite as well.

And this is what we find in the case of an infinite past. Let us envision an infinite past as the set of all negative numbers, ending in the present, “0” moment:

. . . -7, -6, -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0.

The set of all the numbers below 0 is infinite, but so is the set of all numbers below -1, all the numbers below -2, and so on. Each of these collections is actually infinite, and so we can form a new, actually infinite set by taking one of them and adding a new member to it.

Understood this way, Craig’s second premise is simply false. You can form an actually infinite collection by adding new members to an actually infinite collection—which is what we would have in the case of a universe with an infinite past, one that really does not have a starting point.

Conclusion

What we make of Craig’s argument will depend on how we take its second premise.

Taken in what may be the most natural way (forming an infinite collection from nothing—or from any finite amount—by successive addition), will result in the argument committing the First-and-Last Fallacy.

But if we take it in the less obvious way (forming an infinite collection by adding to an already infinite collection), then the second premise is simply false.

There may be other grounds—other arguments—by which one might try to show that the universe cannot have an infinite past.

But the argument from “successive addition,” “traversing an infinite,” or “getting there from here” does not work.

Depending on how you interpret it, the argument either commits a fallacy or uses a false premise.

Sometimes defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument defend its second premise (i.e., that the world couldn’t have an infinite past) by proposing a paradox involving counting.

The line of reasoning goes something like this:

A. Suppose that the universe has an infinite history (the kind of history you’d need to do an infinite countdown).

B. Suppose that a person has been counting down the infinite set of negative numbers (. . . -3, -2, -1) for all eternity, and they finish today, so today’s number is 0. It took them an infinite amount of time to reach 0 in the present.

C. Now suppose that we go back in time to yesterday. How much time was there before yesterday? Also an infinite amount of time! Given that, they could have counted down the infinite set of negative numbers so that they reached 0 yesterday instead of today!

D. So, we have a paradox: If the person had been counting down the negative numbers for all eternity, they could have finished today—or yesterday—or on any other day in the past, since there was always an infinite number of days before that.

E. There needs to be a sufficient reason why they stop on the day they did.

The Kalaam defender then challenges the Kalaam skeptic to name the sufficient reason, and if he’s not convinced by the answer, he rejects Step A of the argument—the idea that the universe has an infinite history—since there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with Steps B, C, D, or E.

What’s problematic about this line of reasoning?

Arbitrary Labels

To see what the answer is, we need to think about the arbitrariness of the labels involved in the countdown.

In Part B, the Kalaam defender chose to use the set of negative numbers, but he could have chosen something else.

For example, he could have chosen the digits of the irrational number pi (3.14159 . . . ) in reverse order (. . . 9, 5, 1, 4, 1, 3), in which case today’s number would be 3.

Or he could have used the Golden Ratio and chosen the digits of the irrational number phi (1.61803 . . . ) and reversed them, in which case today’s number would be 1.

Or he could have picked anything else, such as an infinitely long string of random numbers—or random words—or random symbols.

Any string will do for an infinite count of the past—as long as it’s an infinitely long string.

The point we learn from this is that the labels we apply to particular days are arbitrary. It depends entirely on what labels we choose. We can pick any labels we want and use them for any set of days we want.

Forward Counts

To underscore this point, let’s consider counts that go forward in time rather than backwards.

For example, we could choose the set of natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3 . . . ), assigning 0 to today, 1 to tomorrow, 2 to the day after that, and so on.

Or we could use the digits of pi, in which case today would be 3, tomorrow 1, the day after that 4, etc.

Or the digits of phi, so today would be 1, tomorrow 6, the day after that 1, etc.

Or we could use something else—such as an infinite string of random numbers, words, or symbols.

We can pick whatever labels for a set of days, beginning with today, that we want!

A Count-Up Paradox

Now consider the following line of reasoning:

A*. Suppose that the universe has an infinite future (the kind of future you’d need to do an infinite count going forwards).

B*. Suppose that a person starts counting the infinite set of natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3 . . . ) today, so that today’s number is 0, tomorrow’s is 1, the next day is 2, etc.

C*. Now suppose that we go forward in time to tomorrow. How much time is there left in the future of the universe? Also an infinite amount of time! Given that, the person could start their count of the infinite set of whole numbers so that they begin with 0 tomorrow instead of today!

D*. So, we have a paradox: If the person counts the set of whole numbers for all eternity, they could have started today—or tomorrow—or on any other day in the future, since there will always be an infinite number of days after that.

E*. There needs to be a sufficient reason why they start on the day they do.

If we’re challenged to name the sufficient reason why the person starts counting on the day they do, what will our answer be?

Mine would be, “Because that’s how you set up the thought experiment! You made this determination in Step B*. You could have chosen to start the count on any day you wanted (today, tomorrow, yesterday—or any other day), and you chose the set of numbers that would be used to label these days. Your choices are the sufficient reason for why the count starts and why it labels the days the way it does.”

Turn About Is Fair Play

And this is the answer to the original line of reasoning we presented. The same logic is present in A-E that is present in A*-E*, so the answer is the same.

The reason that the original countdown stopped today, which was labelled 0, is because those were the choices made in Step B. The person setting up the thought experiment chose that the countdown stop today, and he chose that it would stop with 0.

Once again, it is the choices that the person made that determine when the count stops and what it stops on.

There is only a “paradox” here if you lose sight of the fact that these choices were made and demand a sufficient reason over and above them.

To say—in the first case—“I know I made these choices in Step B, but I want a reason over and above that to explain why the countdown doesn’t stop on another day” is the same as saying—in the second case—“I know I made these choices in Step B*, but I want a reason over and above that to explain why the count doesn’t start on another day.”

No such reasons are needed. The choices made in Step B are sufficient to explain why the countdown works the way it does, just as the choices made in Step B* are sufficient to explain why the count-up works the way it does.

So, like a lot of paradoxes, the “countdown paradox” has a perfectly obvious solution once you think about it.

God as the Decider

Now let’s apply this to the question of whether God could have created the universe with an infinite past. In this case, we’re doing a thought experiment where God is the one making the choices.

A**. Suppose that God creates a universe with an infinite past (the kind you need for an infinite countdown).

B**. Suppose that–within this timeline–God creates a person (or angel, or computer, or whatever) that counts down the negative numbers so that he finishes today, and today’s number is 0.

Why didn’t the person stop counting on some other day or with some other number? Because that’s not what God chose. He chose to have it happen this way, with the person counting the number -2 two days ago, the number -1 one day ago, and the number 0 today.

Could he have have done it differently? Absolutely! God could have made different choices!

In fact–to go beyond what we’ve stated thus far–God may have created other people doing just that.

C**. Suppose that God also created a second person who has been counting for all eternity such that he ended yesterday with the number 0.

D**. Suppose that God further created a third person who has been counting for all eternity such that he ended two days ago with the number 0.

These are also possible, and we can modify our thought experiment such that God creates any number of people we like, finishing an infinite count on any day we like, with any number (or word or symbol) we like.

In each case, it is God’s choice that is the sufficient reason why the person finished when he did and with what he did.

The situation is parallel to the following:

A***. Suppose that God creates a universe with an infinite future (the kind you need to do an infinite count going forward).

B***. Suppose that–within this timeline–God creates a person who starts an infinite count today, beginning with the number 0.

As before, we can include any number of counters we want:

C***. Suppose that God also creates a second person who begins counting tomorrow, starting with the number 0.

D***. Suppose that God further creates a third person who begins counting the day after tomorrow, starting with the number 0.

As before, we can modify our thought experiment to include any number of counters we want, they can start on any day we want, and they can start with whatever number (or word or symbol) that we want.

Yet in these scenarios, it is God’s choices that determine who is created, when they start counting, and how the count works. These choices are the only reasons we need to explain what is happening.

If there is no unsolvable paradox preventing the scenarios described in A***-D***, then there is no unsolvable paradox preventing the scenarios described in A**-D**–or in any of the previous scenarios we’ve covered.

There just is no problem with the idea of a person doing an infinite countdown ending today–any more than there is with the idea of a person beginning an infinite countdown today.

I spend a lot of time criticizing contemporary Christian apologetics. Since I am myself a Christian apologist, that might seem a bit strange. But it is, in fact, simply a practical outworking of my commitment to what I call the 50/50 Rule:

50/50 rule: devote as much time to (a) defending the beliefs of your opponents and critiquing your own beliefs as you devote to (b) critiquing the beliefs of your opponents and defending your own beliefs. (Read more here)

In short, the 50/50 rule is an attempt to embody the Golden Rule in civil discourse by debating and dialoguing with others the way you’d have them debate and dialogue with you.

With that in mind, this article is focused on a type of self-critique, though in this case not specifically critique of my beliefs, per se, but rather of some weaknesses in current Christian apologetics more generally. And so, without further ado, I will now count down the top five problems with contemporary Christian apologetics.

5. Lack of imagination

I’ve touched on this problem before in the article “Apologetics and the Problem of the William Lane Craig Clones.” The basic problem is that there is an inordinate focus on a limited set of arguments and topics. For example, while I think the Kalam cosmological argument and the argument from intelligent design are both interesting and well worth debating, they both receive excessive attention at the expense of many other worthwhile arguments.

This is not a new problem: in the above-linked article on the “Craig Clones”, I make reference to a famous paper by Alvin Plantinga from more than thirty years ago in which he challenged Christian philosophers to explore more arguments and lines of evidence for theistic and Christian belief. And I’ve certainly tried to do that in my own works as in my defense of an argument from answered prayer (in God or Godless) and an argument from the mathematical structure of reality (in An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar).

One of the points I’ve often strived to emphasize is that the strength of arguments is always contextualized. I summarize the point in 59 seconds here. In that brief, 59-second treatment, I point out that good arguments must be accessible and persuasive. But both accessibility and persuasiveness are relative to individuals and that means we should be seeking to explore and develop more diverse arguments for our views. Most skeptics are already familiar with the Kalam and intelligent design arguments. So perhaps it is time to explore some other arguments that might find a more welcoming reception.

4. Excessive Focus on Debate

These days, so much of apologetics is focused on debates. When I first got into apologetics in the early-mid 1990s, it was primarily by way of watching VHS cassettes of William Lane Craig debates from our university library. Everybody loves a good dust-up, right?

Perhaps, but on the downside, the entire debate format tends to reinforce tribalism (more on that anon), competition, and spin-doctoring/motivated reasoning to the end of winning the debate. Set against that backdrop, is it any surprise that both sides often think they “won”? For further discussion of this problem, see my article “The Problem with Debates.”

3. Lack of Focus on Emotional Intelligence

I find that many amateur apologists focus a lot of effort studying arguments and evidence, memorizing various formal and informal logical fallacies. But they spend little time pursuing the emotional intelligence required to read a room, to identify the intended audience of an exchange, and to present oneself in a savvy and winsome manner so as to appear persuasive to that audience.

In my opinion, every apologist should put some readings on emotional intelligence and persuasion psychology on their reading list. What good is it if you win every argument but lose your audience?

2. Tribalism

Tribalism refers to heightened in-group loyalty to the point of discouraging critiques of in-group members and their arguments. Thus, time and again I encounter atheists and skeptics who are surprised that I devote significant time to critiquing various aspects of Christian apologetics. Consider, for example, my extensive and unsparing critiques of William Lane Craig’s defense of the Canaanite genocide or my critique of Andy Bannister’s claim that a recognition of human dignity requires belief in God.

While people are often puzzled that I would critique Christian apologists like Craig and Bannister, the fact is that Christian apologetics is not served by remaining silent when you disagree with the arguments of your fellow Christians. And when we challenge those on “our side” who offer dubious arguments, we undermine tribalism and raise our own credibility as honest and fair-minded people who really care about getting at the truth rather than merely reinforcing tribal boundaries.

1. Fundamentalism

This is the biggest problem, in my view. And it is exemplified in Josh and Sean McDowell’s recently published new edition of Evidence that Demands a Verdict. (I review the book here.) In that review, I define fundamentalism as follows:

“When I use the term, I intend to signal a position that evinces a particular set of characteristics commonly associated with the Protestant fundamentalism that arose a century ago and which has remaind [sic] a significant force among North American Protestants for the last several decades. These characteristics include biblicism, biblical literalism, rationalism, triumphalism, and binary oppositionalism.”

In my experience, most (Protestant) apologists either lack any formal theological study or their only exposure to Christian theology is through fundamentalist theologians (e.g. Wayne Grudem) and conservative institutions (e.g. Biola University).

As a result, many of these individuals end up with a narrow understanding of the Christian tradition which is manifested in a tendentious understanding of “biblical inerrancy”, a skepticism of evolution and contemporary science, a simplistic soteriological exclusivism, a single theory of atonement (penal substitution) and posthumous judgment (eternal conscious torment), and so on.

And the next step is that these apologists often confuse and conflate their own Protestant fundamentalist tradition with the broader Christian tradition. (For a particularly telling example, see my review of the book An Introduction to Christian Worldview.) But the Christian tradition is far broader and more nuanced than many Christian apologists realize. In short, they have yet to understand, let alone defend, that which C.S. Lewis called mere Christianity.

I have to admit, when I first opened Sean Carroll's new book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, 2016) I immediately flipped to chapter 25, titled "Why Does the Universe Exist?" For many thinkers, ancient and modern, this is the philosophical question: why is there something rather than nothing? Your answer to this question drives your answers to most other big questions, including those about God, meaning, morality, and more. So I was interested in Carroll's response, especially in light of his "poetic naturalism."

(For an introduction to poetic naturalism, see past posts in this series.)

Does the Universe Need Outside Help?

Carroll begins the chapter with a glib anecdote from Sidney Morgenbesser, a philosophy professor at Columbia. Morgenbesser was once asked, “Why is there something, rather than nothing?” and purportedly answered, “If there were nothing, you'd still be complaining” (195). This, of course, is non-sense. If there were nothing, there would be nobody to complain. But thankfully, Carroll doesn't stop with the witticism (though one wonders why he quoted it at all—it certainly doesn't help his case.)

Carroll breaks the main question down into two sub-questions. First, he asks whether the universe could "simply exist". Could it just be a "brute fact" with no outside explanation, or does it require one? Second, he wonders, if the universe does in fact require an explanation, what is the best explanation (196)?

Let's start with his answer to the first sub-question. He writes, "The progress of modern physics and cosmology has sent a fairly unequivocal message: there's nothing wrong with the universe existing without any external help" (196). A few pages later he writes, "To the question of whether the universe could possibly exist all by itself, without any external help, science offers an unequivocal answer: sure it could" (201).

Note the double use of the word "unequivocal", which means "admitting of no doubt or misunderstanding; having only one meaning or interpretation and leading to only one conclusion."

It's worth pausing here to note that in a previous chapter titled "Accepting Uncertainty", Carroll writes (emphasis mine):

"It is this kind of [religious] stance—that there is a kind of knowledge that is certain, which we should receive with docility, to which we would submit—that I'm arguing against. There are no such kinds of knowledge. We can always be mistaken, and one of the most important features of a successful strategy for understanding the world is that it will constantly be testing its presuppositions, admitting the possibility of error, and trying to do better." (128)

But apparently, this open-minded prescription only applies to religious believers, and not poetic naturalists like Carroll, since as noted above, he twice admits to being "unequivocally" certain (i.e., without any doubt) that the universe could exist all by itself.

Carroll's confidence here should cause the discerning reader to naturally wonder, "How and where has modern science determined the universe could exist all by itself? Which experiments or calculations have proved that?" Unfortunately, Carroll never explains in this book. He just asserts that modern science has settled the issue and hopes readers trust his confidence.

One problem with this is that science simply can't say anything about why or how the universe exists since, by it's own limitations, the sciences are constrained to questions about the natural world (i.e., that which exists within the universe). It can't ask, or answer, or even weigh in on metaphysical "why" questions like "Why does the universe exist?" or "Why is the universe this way, and not that way?"

The Kalam Argument for God

So we're not off to a good start in the chapter. To his credit, Carroll doesn't stop here, though. He next considers the Kalam argument for God, made popular by Evangelical philosopher William Lane Craig. The argument's first premise says that whatever begins to exist has a cause for its existence (implying "out of nothing, nothing comes"). The second premise holds that the universe came into existence (i.e., it has not existed eternally in the past.) From those two premises we can conclude that the universe has a cause, and from there we can deduce different qualities of that cause.

If the Kalam argument is sound, then it shows the universe has a cause outside of itself, and therefore Carroll would be wrong in his "unequivocal" assertions. But is the argument sound? Assuming the terms are clearly defined and the logic valid, the only way to show that the argument is unsound is to refute one of its premises.

Carroll agrees. Surprisingly, he seems to accept the second premise, that the universe began to exist: "There seems to be no obstacle in principle to a universe like ours simply beginning to exist" (201). But it's the first premise he disagrees with. Specifically, Carroll thinks the ancient principle ex nihilo, nihil fit (out of nothing, nothing comes), which is implied in the premise, is indefensible. Even though, as he admits, the principle is "purportedly more foundational even than the laws of physics" (201) and that most philosophers throughout history have believed it, even ancient skeptics like Lucretius, Carroll says it is "perhaps the most egregious example of begging the question in the history of the universe" (202). Why? He writes:

"We are asking whether the universe could come into existence without anything causing it. The response is, 'No, because nothing comes into existence without being caused.' How do we know that? It can't be because we have never seen it happen; the universe is different from the various things inside the universe that we have actually experienced in our lives. And it can't be because we can't imagine it happening, or because it's impossible to construct sensible models in which is happens, since both the imagining and the construction of models have manifestly happened." (202)

There is a lot of confusion here, and it would take several articles to unpack all of it. But in essence, Carroll thinks the principle ex nihilo, nihil fit is false for three reasons: first because since the universe as a whole is "different" than things within the universe, the universe doesn't necessarily follow the same metaphysical principles as things within it; second because we can imagine something coming into being from nothing; and third because it's possible to construct "sensible models" in which something comes from nothing. Let's consider each proposal.

First, Carroll thinks the universe may have come into being without cause, even if nothing else in the universe has, because the universe is simply "different." But how does this follow? Metaphysical principles, such as the one under consideration, are independent of scale. Mice and men are "different", yet they both follow the same principle. So why think everything in the universe follows the principle but not the universe itself, which is nothing more than the collection of everything within the universe? (And lest you think this falls into the fallacy of composition, read Dr. Edward Feser's reply to that suggestion.)

Second, Carroll thinks it's possible to imagine something coming from nothing, which therefore refutes the principle. This argument goes back at least to David Hume but has famously been discredited, even by many Hume supporters. Why? Because it's impossible to conceive of the act of moving from non-being to being. Sure, we can imagine "nothing" at one moment—though I'm skeptical we can even do that—and then another moment picture something suddenly there, but this is not to imagine something coming from nothing. It is simply imagining two successive states of being, one first and then the other. It doesn't demonstrate that it is ontologically intelligible (or possible) for something to come into existence from nothing.

Third, Carroll points to "sensible models" in which something comes from nothing. What are these models? He never says, so it's hard to explore them. This is the last remaining reason to plausibly deny the principle, yet sadly Carroll provides no specifics.

Note again that Carroll doesn't engage with any counterarguments to his position, such as those supporting the principle. For starters, if something can come into being from nothing, then why don't we see this happening all the time? Why would it only happen once in time, with a single universe, rather than with many other universes or multiple things within our own universe? Why don't things just pop into existence all the time? Carroll never responds.

(Karlo Broussard wrote an excellent article covering five reasons the universe can't just exist by itself.)

Well, Why Not?

Carroll finishes this section by offering one more dismissive anecdote:

"In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an online resource written and edited by professional philosophers, the entry on 'Nothingness' starts by asking, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' and immediately answering, 'Well, why not?' That's a good answer. There is no reason why the universe couldn't have had a first moment in time, nor is there any reason it couldn't have lasted forever, even without the benefit of any external causal or sustaining influence."

Here again we see a lot of confusion. So let's break it down into parts.

First, as far as I can tell, Carroll never engages in this chapter the second question about whether the universe needs a sustaining cause. This is disappointing because for many thinkers, including Aristotle and Aquinas, this is the main reason they believe in a First Cause of the universe. The universe may or may not have needed a cause to get it going, but it certainly needs one to keep it in existence, here and now. Carroll never weighs in on the question.

Second, he concludes all his previous remarks in regards to the first question—does the universe require an initial cause?— with an answer (a "good answer"), which is essentially an appeal to authority. He references an encyclopedia edited by "professional philosophers" at Stanford, presumably to suggest they should know what they're talking about. But the answer he cites isn't really an answer—it's a dismissal of the question. Worse, it fails to engage or even acknowledge any of the arguments against the view that something can come from nothing.

This is really disheartening, especially for someone as bright as Carroll. I can't imagine he would be comfortable with that answer to any other serious question. For example, I'm guessing he would be frustrated if he asked me, "Why are there so many different species of life on earth?" or "Why is space itself expanding?" and I responded, "Well, why not?" That's not a good answer; that's avoiding the question. Carroll would be frustrated by such dismissals, and for the same reason, his readers should be frustrated by his answers to the much more interesting and foundational questions about the universe.

If the Universe Has an Explanation, What Is It?

In the final few pages of the chapter, Carroll switches gears. He assumes, for the sake of argument, that the universe does require an explanation for its existence. But in that case, what is the explanation?

According to Carrol, "The answer is certainly 'We don't know'" (202). Notice again his striking assurance. He's certain we don't know the answer—not confident or convinced, but certain. How did he arrive at such certainty, especially when earlier in the book he cautions against being certain about anything? He doesn't say. And how can we be certain that "we" (whatever that means) don't know something? Isn't there a chance that someone, somewhere knows the answer even if some, most, or all the rest of us are confused? I would think so.

But certainty aside, why exactly does Carroll think we don't know what would explain the universe (if it had an explanation)? Mostly because he finds none of the current proposals satisfying. Modern theories of gravity may be a popular choice, but as Carroll observes, "that can't be the entire answer" since the theories don't explain themselves, and still demand an outside explanation (203). They only kick the question up a level. The same is true about other theories relying on the laws of physics as an ultimate explanation.

The only other possible candidate would be God. But Carroll thinks that explanation fails since it fails to answer the question, "Why does God exist?" It kicks the question up just as other proposals do. Of course, Carroll admits, theists reason that God is by definition necessary since his nature is to exist (unlike our own human nature, which doesn't necessitate existence.) But Carroll doesn't buy that. God, if he exists, can't be a necessary being. Why? Because, Carroll says, "there are no such things as necessary beings" (203). Talk about an egregious example of question begging!

With not a little irony, Carroll counsels just a couple sentences later, near the end of the chapter, "We can't short-circuit the difficult task of figuring out what kind of universe we live in by relying on a priori principles" (203). Would that he take his own advice!

In the next post in this series, we'll examine Sean Carroll's thoughts on whether free will is real or imaginary. Stay tuned!

NOTE: Dr. Feser's contributions at Strange Notions were originally posted on his own blog, and therefore lose some of their context when reprinted here. Dr. Feser explains why that matters.
 

Most people who comment on the cosmological argument demonstrably do not know what they are talking about.  This includes all the prominent New Atheist writers.  It very definitely includes most of the people who hang out in Jerry Coyne’s comboxes.  It also includes most scientists.  And it even includes many theologians and philosophers, or at least those who have not devoted much study to the issue.  This may sound arrogant, but it is not.  You might think I am saying “I, Edward Feser, have special knowledge about this subject that has somehow eluded everyone else.”  But that is NOT what I am saying.  The point has nothing to do with me.  What I am saying is pretty much common knowledge among professional philosophers of religion (including atheist philosophers of religion), who – naturally, given the subject matter of their particular philosophical sub-discipline – are the people who know more about the cosmological argument than anyone else does.

In particular, I think that the vast majority of philosophers who have studied the argument in any depth – and again, that includes atheists as well as theists, though it does not include most philosophers outside the sub-discipline of philosophy of religion – would agree with the points I am about to make, or with most of them anyway.  Of course, I do not mean that they would all agree with me that the argument is at the end of the day a convincing argument.  I just mean that they would agree that most non-specialists who comment on it do not understand it, and that the reasons why people reject it are usually superficial and based on caricatures of the argument.  Nor do I say that every single self-described philosopher of religion would agree with the points I am about to make.  Like every other academic field, philosophy of religion has its share of hacks and mediocrities.  But I am saying that the vast majority of philosophers of religion would agree, and again, that this includes the atheists among them as well as the theists.

I’m not going to present and defend any version of the cosmological argument here.  I’ve done that at length in my books Aquinas and The Last Superstition, and it needs to be done at length rather than in the context of a blog post.  The reason is that, while the basic structure of the main versions of the argument is fairly simple, the background metaphysics necessary to a proper understanding of the key terms and inferences is not.  It needs some spelling out, which is why Aquinas and The Last Superstition each devote a long chapter to general metaphysics before addressing the question of God’s existence.  The serious objections to the argument can in my view all be answered, but that too can properly be done only after the background ideas have been set out.  And that too is a task carried out in the books.

I will deal here with some of the non-serious objections, though.  In particular, what follows is intended to clear away some of the intellectual rubbish that prevents many people from giving the argument a fair hearing.  To get to the point(s), then:

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 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 great) 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?

Suppose some creationist began his attack on Darwinism by assuring his readers that “the basic” claim of the Darwinian account of human origins is that at some point in the distant past a monkey gave birth to a human baby.  Suppose he provided no source for this claim – which, of course, he couldn’t have, because no Darwinian has ever said such a thing – and suppose also that he admitted that no one has ever said it.  But suppose further that he claimed that “more sophisticated versions” of Darwinism were really just “modifications” of this claim. Intellectually speaking, this would be utterly contemptible and sleazy.  It would give readers the false impression that anything Darwinians have to say about human origins, however superficially sophisticated, is really just a desperate exercise in patching up a manifestly absurd position.  Precisely for that reason, though, such a procedure would, rhetorically speaking, be very effective indeed.

Compare that to Le Poidevin’s procedure.  Though by his own admission no one has ever actually defended the feeble argument in question, Le Poidevin still calls it “the basic” version of the cosmological argument and characterizes the “more sophisticated versions” he considers later on as “modifications” of it.  Daniel Dennett does something similar in his book Breaking the Spell.  He assures us that the lame argument in question is “the simplest form” of the cosmological argument and falsely insinuates that other versions – that is to say, the ones that philosophers have actually defended, and which Dennett does not bother to discuss – are merely desperate attempts to repair the obvious problems with the “Everything has a cause” “version.”  As with our imaginary creationist, this procedure is intellectually dishonest and sleazy, but it is rhetorically very effective.  It gives the unwary reader the false impression that “the basic” claim made by Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, et al. is manifestly absurd, that everything else they have to say is merely an attempt to patch up this absurd position, and (therefore) that such writers need not be bothered with further.

And that, I submit, is the reason why the “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.

2. “What caused God?” is not a serious objection to the argument.

 
Part of the reason this is not a serious objection is that it usually rests on the assumption that the cosmological argument is committed to the premise that “Everything has a cause,” and as I’ve just said, this is simply not the case.  But there is another and perhaps deeper reason.

The cosmological argument in its historically most influential versions is not concerned to show that there is a cause of things which just happens not to have a cause.  It is not interested in “brute facts” – if it were, then yes, positing the world as the ultimate brute fact might arguably be as defensible as taking God to be.  On the contrary, the cosmological argument – again, at least as its most prominent defenders (Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, et al.) present it – is concerned with trying to show that not everything can be a “brute fact.”  What it seeks to show is that if there is to be an ultimate explanation of things, then there must be a cause of everything else which not only happens to exist, but which could not even in principle have failed to exist.  And that is why it is said to be uncaused – not because it is an arbitrary exception to a general rule, not because it merely happens to be uncaused, but rather because it is not the sort of thing that can even in principle be said to have had a cause, precisely because it could not even in principle have failed to exist in the first place.  And the argument doesn't merely assume or stipulate that the first cause is like this; on the contrary, the whole point of the argument is to try to show that there must be something like this.

Different versions of the cosmological argument approach this task in different ways.  Aristotelian versions argue that change – the actualization of the potentials inherent in things – cannot in principle occur unless there is a cause that is “pure actuality,” and thus can actualize other things without itself having to be actualized.  Neo-Platonic versions argue that composite things cannot in principle exist unless there is a cause of things that is absolutely unified or non-composite.  Thomists not only defend the Aristotelian versions, but also argue that whatever has an essence or nature distinct from its existence – so that it must derive existence from something outside it – must ultimately be caused by something whose essence just is existence, and which qua existence or being itself need not derive its existence from another.  Leibnizian versions argue that whatever does not have the sufficient reason for its existence in itself must ultimately derive its existence from something which does have within itself a sufficient reason for its existence, and which is in that sense necessary rather than contingent.  And so forth.  (Note that I am not defending or even stating the arguments here, but merely giving single sentence summaries of the general approach several versions of the arguments take.)

So, to ask “What caused God?” really amounts to asking “What caused the thing that cannot in principle have had a cause?”, or “What actualized the potentials in that thing which is pure actuality and thus never had any potentials of any sort needing to be actualized in the first place?”, or “What imparted a sufficient reason for existence to that thing which has its sufficient reason for existence within itself and did not derive it from something else?”  And none of these questions makes any sense.  Of course, the atheist might say that he isn’t convinced that the cosmological argument succeeds in showing that there really is something that could not in principle have had a cause, or that is purely actual, or that has a sufficient reason for its existence within itself.  He might even try to argue that there is some sort of hidden incoherence in these notions.  But merely to ask “What caused God?” – as if the defender of the cosmological argument had overlooked the most obvious of objections – simply misses the whole point.  A serious critic has to grapple with the details of the arguments.  He cannot short-circuit them with a single, simplistic question.  (Also, if some anonymous commenter in a combox can think up such an objection, then you can be certain that Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, et al. already thought of it too.)

3. “Why assume that the universe had a beginning?” is not a serious objection to the argument.

 
The reason this is not a serious objection is that no version of the cosmological argument assumes this at all.  Of course, the kalām cosmological argument does claim that the universe had a beginning, but it doesn’t merely assume it.  Rather, the whole point of that version of the cosmological argument is to establish through detailed argument that the universe must have had a beginning.  You can try to rebut those arguments, but to pretend that one can dismiss the argument merely by raising the possibility of an infinite series of universes (say) is to miss the whole point.

The main reason this is a bad objection, though, is that most versions of the cosmological argument do not even claim that the universe had a beginning.  Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Thomistic, and Leibnizian cosmological arguments are all concerned to show that there must be an uncaused cause even if the universe has always existed.  Of course, Aquinas did believe that the world had a beginning, but (as all Aquinas scholars know) that is not a claim that plays any role in his versions of the cosmological argument.  When he argues there that there must be a First Cause, he doesn’t mean “first” in the order of events extending backwards into the past.  What he means is that there must be a most fundamental cause of things which keeps them in existence at every moment, whether or not the series of moments extends backwards into the past without a beginning.

In fact, Aquinas rather famously rejected what is now known as the kalām argument.  He did not think that the claim that the universe had a beginning could be established through philosophical arguments.  He thought it could be known only via divine revelation, and thus was not suitable for use in trying to establish God’s existence.  (Here, by the way, is another basic test of competence to speak on this subject.  Any critic of the Five Ways who claims that Aquinas was trying to show that the universe had a beginning and that God caused that beginning – as Richard Dawkins does in his comments on the Third Way in The God Delusion – infallibly demonstrates thereby that he simply doesn’t know what he is talking about.)

4. “No one has given any reason to think that the First Cause is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, etc.” is not a serious objection to the argument.

 
People who make this claim – like, again, Dawkins in The God Delusion – show thereby that they haven’t actually read the writers they are criticizing.  They are typically relying on what other uninformed people have said about the argument, or at most relying on excerpts ripped from context and stuck into some anthology (as Aquinas’s Five Ways so often are).  Aquinas in fact devotes hundreds of pages across various works to showing that a First Cause of things would have to be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, and so on and so forth.  Other Scholastic writers and modern writers like Leibniz and Samuel Clarke also devote detailed argumentation to establishing that the First Cause would have to have the various divine attributes.

Of course, an atheist might try to rebut these various arguments.  But to pretend that they don’t exist – that is to say, to pretend, as so many do, that defenders of the cosmological argument typically make an undefended leap from “There is a First Cause” to “There is a cause of the world that is all-powerful, all-knowing, etc.” – is, once again, simply to show that one doesn’t know what one is talking about.

5. “The argument doesn’t prove that Christianity is true” is not a serious objection to the argument.

 
No one claims that the cosmological argument by itself suffices to show that Christianity is true, that Jesus of Nazareth was God Incarnate, etc.  That’s not what it is intended to do.  It is intended to establish only what Christians, Jews, Muslims, philosophical theists, and other monotheists hold in common, viz. the view that there is a divine cause of the universe.  Establishing the truth of specifically Christian claims about this divine cause requires separate arguments, and no one has ever pretended otherwise.

It would also obviously be rather silly for an atheist to pretend that unless the argument gets you all the way to proving the truth of Christianity, specifically, then there is no point in considering it.  For if the argument works, that would suffice all by itself to refute atheism.  It would show that the real debate is not between atheism and theism, but between the various brands of theism.

6. “Science has shown such-and-such” is not a serious objection to (most versions of) the argument.

 
There are versions of the cosmological argument that appeal to scientific considerations – most notably, the version of the kalām argument defended by William Lane Craig.  But even Craig’s argument also appeals to separate, purely philosophical considerations that do not stand or fall with the current state of things in cosmology or physics.  And most versions of the cosmological argument do not in any way depend on particular scientific claims.  Rather, they start with extremely general considerations that any possible scientific theorizing must itself take for granted – for example, that there is any empirical world at all, or any world of any sort at all.

It is sometimes claimed (for example, by Anthony Kenny and J. L. Mackie) that some of Aquinas’s arguments for God’s existence depend on outdated theses in Aristotelian physics.  But Thomists have had little difficulty in showing that this is false.  In fact the arguments depend only on claims of Aristotelian metaphysics which can be disentangled from any outdated scientific assumptions and shown to be defensible whatever the scientific details turn out to be, precisely because (so the Thomist argues) they concern what any possible scientific theory has to presuppose.  (Naturally, I address this issue in Aquinas.)

Of course, many atheists are committed to scientism, and maintain that there are no rational forms of inquiry other than science.  But unless they provide an argument for this claim, they are merely begging the question against the defender of the cosmological argument, whose position is precisely that there are rational arguments that are distinct from, and indeed more fundamental than, empirical scientific arguments.  Moreover, defending scientism is no easy task – in fact the view is simply incoherent, or so I would argue (as I have in several previous posts).  Be that as it may, merely shouting “Science!” doesn’t prove anything.

7. The argument is not a “God of the gaps” argument.

 
Since the point of the argument is precisely to explain (part of) what science itself must take for granted, it is not the sort of thing that could even in principle be overturned by scientific findings.  For the same reason, it is not an attempt to plug some current “gap” in scientific knowledge.  Nor is it, in its historically most influential versions anyway, a kind of “hypothesis” put forward as the “best explanation” of the “evidence.”  It is rather an attempt at strict metaphysical demonstration.  To be sure, like empirical science it begins with empirical claims, but they are empirical claims that are so extremely general that (as I have said) science itself cannot deny them without denying its own evidential and metaphysical presuppositions.  And it proceeds from these premises, not by probabilistic theorizing, but via strict deductive reasoning.  In this respect, to suggest (as Richard Dawkins does) that the cosmological argument fails to consider more “parsimonious” explanations than an uncaused cause is like saying that the Pythagorean theorem is merely a “theorem of the gaps” and that more “parsimonious” explanations of the “geometrical evidence” might be forthcoming.  It simply misunderstands the nature of the reasoning involved.

Of course, an atheist might reject the very possibility of such metaphysical demonstration.  He might claim that there cannot be a kind of argument which, like mathematics, leads to necessary truths and yet which, like science, starts from empirical premises.  But if so, he has to provide a separate argument for this assertion.  Merely to insist that there cannot be such an argument simply begs the question against the cosmological argument.

None of this entails that the cosmological argument is not open to potential criticism.  The point is that the kind of criticism one might try to raise against it is simply not the kind that one might raise in the context of empirical science.  It requires instead knowledge of metaphysics and philosophy more generally.  But that naturally brings us to the next point:

8. Hume and Kant did not have the last word on the argument.  Neither has anyone else.

 
It is often claimed that Hume, or maybe Kant, essentially had the last word on the subject of the cosmological argument and that nothing significant has been or could be said in its defense since their time.  I think that no philosopher who has made a special study of the argument would agree with this judgment, and again, that includes atheistic philosophers who ultimately reject the argument.  For example, I don’t think anyone who has studied the issue would deny that Elizabeth Anscombe presented a serious objection to Hume’s claim that something could conceivably come into existence without a cause.  Nor is Anscombe by any means the only philosopher to have criticized Hume on this issue.  I’m not claiming that everyone would agree that the objections leveled by Anscombe and others are at the end of the day correct (though I think they are), only that they would agree that it is wrong to pretend that Hume somehow ended all serious debate on the issue.  (Naturally, I discuss this issue in Aquinas.)

To take another example, Hume’s objection that the cosmological argument commits a fallacy of composition is, as I have noted in an earlier post, also greatly overrated.  For one thing, it assumes that the cosmological argument is concerned with explaining why the universe as a whole exists, and that is simply not true of all versions of the argument.  Thomists often emphasize that the argument of Aquinas’s On Being and Essence requires only the premise that something or other exists – a stone, a tree, a book, your left shoe, whatever.  The claim is that none of these things could exist even for an instant unless maintained in being by God.  You don’t need to start the argument with any fancy premise about the universe as a whole; all you need is a premise to the effect that a stone exists, or a shoe, or what have you.  (Again, see Aquinas for the full story.)  Even versions of the argument that do begin with a premise about the universe as a whole are (in my view and that of many others) not really damaged by Hume’s objection, for reasons I explain in the post just linked to.  In any event, I think that anyone who has studied the cosmological argument in any depth would agree that it is certainly seriously debatable whether Hume draws any blood here.

In general, critics of the cosmological argument tend arbitrarily to hold it to a standard to which they do not hold other arguments.  In other areas of philosophy, even the most problematic views are treated as worthy of continuing debate.  The fact that there are all sorts of serious objections to materialist theories of the mind, or consequentialist views in ethics, or Rawlsian liberal views in political philosophy, does not lead anyone to suggest that these views shouldn’t be taken seriously.  But the fact that someone somewhere raised such-and-such an objection to the cosmological argument is routinely treated as if this sufficed to establish that the argument has been decisively “refuted” and needn’t be paid any further attention.

Jason Rosenhouse plays this game in his response to my recent blog post on Jerry Coyne.  Writes Rosenhouse:
 

"Feser seems rather taken with [the cosmological argument], but there are many strong refutations to be found in the literature.  Off the top of my head, I found Mackie's discussion in The Miracle of Theism and Robin Le Poidevin's discussion in Arguing for Atheism to be both cogent and accessible."

 
Does Rosenhouse really think that we defenders of the cosmological argument aren’t familiar with Mackie and Le Poidevin?  Presumably not.  But then, what’s his point?  That is to say, what point is he trying to make that doesn’t manifestly beg the question?  After all, what would Rosenhouse think of the following “objection”:
 

"Rosenhouse seems rather taken with the materialist view of the mind, but there are many strong refutations to be found in the literature.  Off the top of my head, I found Foster’s The Immaterial Self and the essays in Koons’ and Bealer’s The Waning of Materialism to be both cogent and accessible."

 
Or, while we’re on the subject of what prominent mainstream atheist philosophers have said, what would he think of:
 

"Rosenhouse seems rather taken with Darwinism, but there are many strong refutations to be found in the literature.  Off the top of my head, I found Fodor’s and Piatelli-Palmarini’s discussion in What Darwin Got Wrong and David Stove’s discussion in Darwinian Fairytales to be both cogent and accessible."

 
Rosenhouse’s answer to both “objections” would, I imagine, be: “Since when did Foster, Koons, Bealer, Fodor, Piatelli-Palmarini, and Stove get the last word on these subjects?”  And that would be a good answer.  But no less good is the following answer to Rosenhouse: Since when did Mackie and Le Poidevin have the last word on the cosmological argument?

“But that’s different!” I imagine Rosenhouse would say.  But how is it different?  This brings us to one last point:

9. What “most philosophers” think about the argument is irrelevant.

 
Presumably, the difference is in Rosenhouse’s view summed up in another remark he makes in his post, viz. “There's a reason most philosophers are atheists” (he cites this survey as evidence).  By contrast, most philosophers are not dualists or critics of Darwinism (though in fact the number of prominent dualists is not negligible, but let that pass).  Now if what Rosenhouse means to imply is that philosophers who have made a special study of the cosmological argument now tend to agree that it is no longer worthy of serious consideration, then for reasons already stated, he is quite wrong about that.  But what he probably means to imply is rather that since most contemporary academic philosophers in general are atheists, we should conclude that the cosmological argument isn’t worth serious consideration.

But what does this little statistic really mean?  Nothing at all.  Because Rosenhouse’s little crack really amounts to little more than a fallacious appeal to authority-cum-majority.  What “most philosophers” think could be relevant to the subject at hand only if we could be confident that academic philosophers in general, and not just philosophers of religion, were both competent to speak on the cosmological argument and reasonably objective about it.  And in fact there is good reason to think that neither condition holds.

Consider first that, as I have documented in several previous posts (here, here, and here) prominent philosophers who are not specialists in the philosophy of religion often say things about the cosmological argument that are demonstrably incompetent.  Consider further that those who do specialize in areas of philosophy concerned with arguments like the cosmological argument do not tend to be atheists, as I noted here.  If expertise counts for anything – and many atheist scientists are always insisting that it does – then surely we cannot dismiss the obvious implication that those who actually bother to study arguments like the cosmological argument in depth are more likely to regard them as serious arguments, and even as convincing arguments.

Now the New Atheist will maintain that the direction of causality goes the other way.  It isn’t that studying the cosmological argument in detail tends to lead one to take religious belief seriously, they will say.  It’s rather that people who already take religious belief seriously tend to be more likely to study the cosmological argument.  Of course, it would be nice to hear a non-question-begging reason for thinking that this is all that is going on.  And there is reason for doubting that this can be all that is going on.  After all, there are lots of other arguments and ideas supportive of religion that academic philosophers of religion do not devote much attention to – young earth creationism, spiritualism, and the like.  Evidently, the reason they devote more attention to the cosmological argument is that they sincerely believe, on the basis of their knowledge of it, that the argument is worthy of serious study in a way these other ideas are not, and not merely because they are predisposed to accept its conclusion.

The objection in question is also one that cuts both ways.  For why suppose that the atheist philosophers are more objective than the theist ones?  In particular, why should we be so confident that most philosophers (outside philosophy of religion) are atheists because they’ve seriously studied arguments like the cosmological argument and found them wanting?  Why not conclude instead that, precisely because they tend for other reasons to be atheists, they haven’t bothered to study arguments like the cosmological argument very seriously?  The cringe-inducingremarks some of them make about the argument certainly provides support for this suspicion.  (Again, I give examples here, here, and here.)

And there is other reason for suspicion.  After all, as philosophers with no theological ax to grind sometimes complain – see here and here for a few examples – their colleagues can too often be smugly insular and ill-informed about sub-disciplines outside their own and about the history of their own field.  And like other academics, they can be unreflective, dogmatic, and uninformed in their secularism.  Here too you don’t have to take my word for it.  Many prominent secular philosophers themselves have noted the same thing.

Hence Thomas Nagel opines that a “fear of religion” seems often to underlie the work of his fellow secularist intellectuals, and that it has had “large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.”  He continues:
 

"I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.  It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief.  It's that I hope there is no God!  I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.  My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.  One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life, including everything about the human mind… This is a somewhat ridiculous situation… [I]t is just as irrational to be influenced in one’s beliefs by the hope that God does not exist as by the hope that God does exist. (The Last Word, pp. 130-131)"

 
Jeremy Waldron tells us that:
 

"Secular theorists often assume they know what a religious argument is like: they present it as a crude prescription from God, backed up with threat of hellfire, derived from general or particular revelation, and they contrast it with the elegant complexity of a philosophical argument by Rawls (say) or Dworkin.  With this image in mind, they think it obvious that religious argument should be excluded from public life... But those who have bothered to make themselves familiar with existing religious-based arguments in modern political theory know that this is mostly a travesty... (God, Locke, and Equality, p. 20)"

 
Tyler Burge opines that “materialism is not established, or even clearly supported, by science” and that its hold over his peers is analogous to that of a “political or religious ideology” (“Mind-Body Causation and Explanatory Practice,” in John Heil and Alfred Mele, eds., Mental Causation, p. 117)

John Searle tells us that “materialism is the religion of our time,” that “like more traditional religions, it is accepted without question and… provides the framework within which other questions can be posed, addressed, and answered,” and that “materialists are convinced, with a quasi-religious faith, that their view must be right” (Mind: A Brief Introduction, p. 48)

William Lycan admits, in what he himself calls “an uncharacteristic exercise in intellectual honesty,” that the arguments for materialism are no better than the arguments against it, that his “own faith in materialism is based on science-worship,” and that “we also always hold our opponents to higher standards of argumentation than we obey ourselves.” (“Giving Dualism its Due,” a paper presented at the 2007 Australasian Association of Philosophy conference at the University of New England)

The atheist philosopher of religion Quentin Smith maintains that “the great majority of naturalist philosophers have an unjustified belief that naturalism is true and an unjustified belief that theism (or supernaturalism) is false.”  For their naturalism typically rests on nothing more than an ill-informed “hand waving dismissal of theism” which ignores “the erudite brilliance of theistic philosophizing today.”  Smith continues:
 

"If each naturalist who does not specialize in the philosophy of religion (i.e., over ninety-nine percent of naturalists) were locked in a room with theists who do specialize in the philosophy of religion, and if the ensuing debates were refereed by a naturalist who had a specialization in the philosophy of religion, the naturalist referee could at most hope the outcome would be that “no definite conclusion can be drawn regarding the rationality of faith,” although I expect the most probable outcome is that the naturalist, wanting to be a fair and objective referee, would have to conclude that the theists definitely had the upper hand in every single argument or debate.
 
Due to the typical attitude of the contemporary naturalist...the vast majority of naturalist philosophers have come to hold (since the late 1960s) an unjustified belief in naturalism. Their justifications have been defeated by arguments developed by theistic philosophers, and now naturalist philosophers, for the most part, live in darkness about the justification for naturalism. They may have a true belief in naturalism, but they have no knowledge that naturalism is true since they do not have an undefeated justification for their belief.  If naturalism is true, then their belief in naturalism is accidentally true. [“The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism,” Philo: A Journal of Philosophy(Fall-Winter 2001)]"

 
Again, Nagel, Waldron, Burge, Searle, Lycan, and Smith are not apologists for religion.  Apart from Smith, they aren’t even philosophers of religion.  All of them are prominent, and all of them are “mainstream.”  They have no motive for saying the things they do other than that that is the way things honestly strike them based on their knowledge of the field.

But scientists shouldn’t get smug over lapses in objectivity among philosophers.  For at least where philosophical matters are concerned, many scientists are hardly more competent or objective, as I showed in an earlier post, and as the embarrassing philosophical efforts of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking illustrate.  And if you think even their “purely scientific” pronouncements are always free of anything but good old tough-minded “just the facts, ma’am” objectivity… well, as Dawkins will tell you, you shouldn’t believe fairy tales.  Biologist Richard Lewontin let the cat out of the bag some time ago:
 

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural.  We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.  [From a review of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World in the New York Review of Books (January 9, 1997)]"

 
But here’s the bottom line.  The “What do respectable people say?” stuff that Rosenhouse, Coyne, and other New Atheists are always engaging in is juvenile, and futile too, since they are never able to tell us what counts as “respectable” in a way that doesn’t beg all the questions at issue.  It is amazing how much time and energy New Atheist types put into trying to come up with ever more elaborate excuses for not engaging their critics’ actual arguments.  If that alone doesn’t make you suspicious, then I submit that you are not thinking critically.

 
 
Originally posted at Dr. Edward Feser's blog. Used with author's permission.
(Image Credit: Birst)