John Allen Paulos (if that's really you!) was kind enough to make a few comments on my blog. I referred to two reviews of his book Irreligion and stated that, as a result of the nytimes review, it was one book I would not read. I was thinking, I’ve read Dawkins and Harris and Dennett – no need to read Paulos, not after what this review says. Paulos told me I would find Irreligion interesting.
So, I’ve got it in hand, and have finished the chapter “The Argument from First Cause.” Here’s my evaluation.
Paulos states the argument as:
1. Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes.
2. Nothing is its own cause.
3. Causal chains can’t go on forever.
4. So there has to be a first cause.
5. That first cause is God, who therefore exists.
In my philosophy of religion classes I do not teach CA this way. Instead, I find the Kalam Cosmological Argument (William Lane Craig, in Pojman) a stronger argument. KCA goes like this:
6. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
7. The universe began to exist.
8. Therefore, the universe had a cause.
Paulos hints at KCA when he writes: “A slight variation [of CA]… states that whatever has a beginning must have a cause and since the universe is thought to have a beginning, it must have a cause.” (4) It seems that “whatever has a beginning” is the equivalent of “everything that begins to exist.”
Paulos then says, “So have we found God?... The argument doesn’t even come close.” Why?
Paulos’s first reason is a criticism of (1). Which states: Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes. But KCA only claims that: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. So, if there is something that did not begin to exist, it would not necessarily have a cause. Since KCA is the form of cosmological argument I find most persuasive, Paulos’s first criticism does not apply.
Paulos writes: “Either everything has a cause, or there’s something that doesn’t. The first-cause argument collapses into this hole whichever tack we take.” But this is only a “hole” on P1 of CA. It does not create a problem for KCA, which depends on the distinction between things that begin to exist and things that do not begin to exist.
What if there is something that doesn’t have a cause? Then “it may as well be the physical world as God or a tortoise.” But surely that doesn’t follow. KCA claims the physical world (“universe”) began to exist, and whatever begins to exist has a cause. If these claims are true it can’t be the physical world that doesn’t have a cause.
Paulos asks: “Why cannot the physical world itself be taken to be the uncaused first cause?” The answer is: on CA this may apply, but on KCA this is impossible.
Paulos then asks the famous question, “If God caused the universe, then what caused God?” But on KCA this is a nonsense question, since only that which begins to exist has a cause. If God did not begin to exist, then ipso facto God did not have a cause. Paulos’s funny Saint Augustine story doesn’t apply here.
Paulos gives a second objection to the cosmological argument. He states that “the uncaused first cause needn’t have any traditional God-like qualities. It’s simply first… Even if the first cause existed, it might simply be a brute fact – or even worse, an actual brute.” (5) Again, not on KCA. See Craig’s explanation of KCA, and the reasoning that whatever caused the universe to come into being must be, e.g., atemporal, immaterial, very powerful, and personal. Craig’s KCA directly addresses Paulos’s second objection, while traditional historical versions of CA do not. Since KCA is the more powerful version of CA, Paulos needs, in my mind, to address it. Otherwise the most that can be said of this chapter in Irreligion is that Paulos may have defeated a certain traditional version of CA.
Another Paulos-concern is this: “Efforts by some to put God, the putative first cause, completely outside of time and space give up entirely on the notion of cause, which is defined in terms of time.” (5) But this is not the only option. Craig asks: “If time therefore began to exist, how is God's relation to the beginning of time to be construed? [I argue] that God is plausibly timeless sans the universe and temporal with the universe. This paradoxical conclusion is defended against objections.” Craig and others spend much time addressing how such a view of God and his relation to time relates to causality. Paulos needs to address these concerns. At least he ought to let his readers know that there are views of God’s timelessness that precisely do not “give up entirely on the notion of cause.”
Paulos writes: “The notion of cause has still other problems.” Those problems are the ones David Hume raised. Because of Hume “we can’t move as confidently from an event to its cause(s) as we might have believed.” (7) OK. But we can presume that events have causes. More precisely, on KCA, that whatever begins to exist has a cause. Confidence, if any is lacking here, is, on Humean skepticism, surely lacking re. many other things as well.
Paulos mentions, in one sentence, that certain quantum theories that rule a first cause, and some give us a multiverse theory. All that in one sentence! To this I would say, in one sentence, that multiverse theory is controversial. Craig (again!) goes into detail re. quantum-theoretical issues and KCA.
So I do not see that Paulos has defeated the cosmological argument precisely because he has attacked a weak version of it. KCA is stronger. KCA addresses a number of his concerns. So much so that atheist Paul Draper, in his criticism of KCA, still concludes by finding KCA "promising." (In Pojman)
