Cosmological Pseudo-Arguments

One defining feature of much pop atheism today is the way in which atheists spend so much time and energy attacking arguments that theists don't actually defend. The approach goes something like this: (1) State a version of an argument that sounds vaguely like a real theistic argument, but is different in one or more ways crucial to the argument, (2) Quickly demonstrate that this argument is silly, inconsistent or self-contradictory, (3) Imply that this is a trend common to all theistic arguments, (4) Ridicule religious apologists for the superficiality of their arguments. As I have noted in a previous post, there are a number of such pseudo-arguments critiqued by atheists as 'the' cosmological argument. In each case, atheists subtly (or not so subtly) change a key premise in a real version of the argument so that the argument doesn't make sense. This problem of misinterpreting arguments is not limited to cosmological arguments. I have encountered popular misinterpretations of moral arguments, design arguments, and ontological arguments, as well. Indeed, it would not be going too far to say that whenever an argument is commonly discussed by pop atheists, there is a high probability that the argument is a pseudo-argument, rather than a real one. For example, take the version of the moral argument I discussed briefly in a previous post:

1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective morals values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

This is a syllogistic argument, so the truth of the conclusion follows deductively from the truth of the premises. (If the premises are true, the conclusion follows as a matter of logical necessity.) The most common objection to this type of argument among atheists goes like this: "You say that a person cannot be moral without God, but look around - there are plenty of atheists who are just as moral as theists. So you can be moral and not believe in God! So your argument is wrong." Did you spot the fallacy in this response? The atheist interlocutor has shifted the focus of the argument from the ontology (existence) of objective moral values to moral behaviour.  The problem here is that, in order to behave morally, objective moral values must already exist. The atheist, in responding to this argument, already presupposes the reality of moral truths. But the issues that the moral argument above is raising is whether an atheist can account for the existence of moral truths within a naturalistic/atheistic framework. So simply saying, 'Hey, I can be moral, too!' is not an adequate response to the argument. What the atheist has done is changed the moral argument from the form summarised above to this:

1. It is not possible to behave morally without belief in God.
2. Atheists do not believe in God.
3. Therefore, atheists cannot be moral.

But that is obviously not the argument. What the atheist interlocutor is doing is dodging the real issue, responding to an argument that few (if any) theistic philosophers would defend, and then declaring that they have refuted the moral argument. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the atheist interlocutor is deliberately avoiding the real argument.

A similar equivocation is common among atheist 'refutations' of the cosmological argument; or, at least, among pop atheists. (Professional atheist philosophers of religion are far less likely to treat pseudo-arguments as real versions of the cosmological argument, although a few, such as Robin Le Poidevin in his Arguing for Atheism, still do so.) 

 The most popular pseudo-argument goes as follows:

1. Everything that exists requires a cause.
2. The universe exists.
3. Therefore, the universe requires as cause.
4. Nothing can be the cause itself.
5. Therefore, the universe requires a cause that is not a part of itself, i.e., God.

Some atheist writers who have argued against the pseudo-argument include, Bertrand Russell, Daniel Dennett, Julian Baggini, and Simon Blackburn.

Hume writes:

"I shall prove that there is no ground to suppose a plan of the world to be formed in the divine mind…. It is not easy, I own, to see what is gained by this supposition….We are still obliged to mount higher, in order to find the cause of this cause, which you had assigned as satisfactory and conclusive…. How therefore shall we satisfy ourselves concerning the cause of that Being, whom you suppose the Author of Nature, or, according to your system of anthropomorphism, the ideal world into which you trace the material? Have we not the same reason to trace that ideal world into another ideal world, or new intelligent principle? But if we stop and go no farther; why go so far? Why not stop at the material world? How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum? And after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression? Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant. It was never more applicable than to the present subject…. It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world…. When you go one step beyond the mundane system, you only excite an inquisitive humor, which it is impossible ever to satisfy…. The first step, which we make, leads us on forever" (from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion).

Russell writes:

"Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God.) … The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity…. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, “How about the tortoise?” the Indian said, “Suppose we change the subject.” The argument is really no better than that" (from Why I am Not a Christian, pp. 6-7).

Dennett writes:

"The Cosmological Argument, which in its simplest form states that since everything must have a cause the universe must have a cause—namely, God—doesn't stay simple for long. Some deny the premise, since quantum physics teaches us (doesn't it?) that not everything that happens needs to have a cause. Others prefer to accept the premise and then ask: What caused God? The reply that God is self-caused (somehow) then raises the rebuttal: If something can be self-caused, why can't the universe as a whole be the thing that is self-caused?"(from Breaking the Spell, p. 242).

Baggini writes:

"The cosmological argument in a nutshell is that since everything must have a cause, the universe must have a cause. And the only cause of the universe that could be up to the job is God, or at least that the best hypothesis for the cause of the universe is God. The cosmological argument is there whenever someone turns around and says to the naturalist, 'Ah, well the universe may have begun with the big bang, but what caused the big bang?'

The argument is to my mind utterly awful, a disgrace to the good name of philosophy and the only reason for discussing it is to expose sloppy thinking. One fatal flaw among many is that the argument is based on principles it then flouts. The intuitive principles that lie behind the argument are that nothing exists uncaused and that the cause of something great and complex must itself be even greater and more complex. But it ends by hypothesizing God's existence as simple and uncaused. If it is possible for God to exist without a cause greater than God, why can't the universe exist without a cause greater than itself? Either the principles that inform the argument stand or they don't. If they stand, then God requires a cause and the causal chain goes back ad infinitum. If they don't, then there is no need to hypothesize God" (from Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, pp. 94-5).

Blackburn simply quotes David Hume (WTF!) and then proceeds to dismantle the pseudo-argument (see Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy, the section 'Elephants and Tortoises').

What needs to be understood here is that none of these atheist writers are amateurs in philosophy, actually they are (or were) all highly respected experts. Furthermore, none of these philosophers quotes theistic philosophers defending this argument; rather they quote other atheists and agnostics about what the cosmological argument says and then imitate these atheist/agnostic philosophers in their critiques of the argument. This, it seems to me, only makes their collective error all the more unforgivable. 

The key error of this pseudo-argument is in the first premise. As I noted in the previous post, no theistic philosopher would defend the claim that everything has a cause, in the sense of an efficient cause (which is the sense in which it is used in the above argument). It is worse than this, however, because it is not only that theistic philosophers wouldn't defend this premise, but the premise actually contradicts the conclusion of the cosmological argument. As cosmological arguments are intended to argue for the existence of an uncaused cause of the cosmos (whether it be described as an Unmoved Mover, First Cause, Necessary Being, Pure Act, etc.), to claim that everything has a cause clearly contradicts the conclusion. The contradiction is so obvious that one would expect atheists (at least those with a little familiarity with the history of philosophy) to question whether the pseudo-argument really is a version of the cosmological argument at all. As W. Norris Clarke notes:

"Again it must be abundantly clear to the reader that if such is the cosmological argument it is patently invalid—so patently, in fact, that it should have aroused the suspicions of its attackers. For, despite the amazing amount of ambiguities and non-sequiturs strewn throughout the long history of philosophy, it is rare that philosophers of any sophistication have proposed patently self-contradictory arguments, such as this one surely is" (quoted from his essay 'A Curious Blindspot in the Anglo-American Tradition of Anti-Theistic Argument' in The Creative Retrieval of St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 52).

Remember Baggini's disgust at the 'utterly awful' logic of the cosmological argument (quotes above)? Yet it never occurred to him to question whether the cosmological argument actually says this. There are none so blind...

It should be pointed out that all of the major defenders of the cosmological argument (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Avicenna, Averroes, al-Ghazali, al-Kindi, Aquinas, Scotus, Bonaventure, Francisco Suarez, Descartes, Samuel Clarke, Leibniz, Christian Wolff, John Locke, etc.) rank among the greatest philosophers of all time. So the fact that so many atheists repeat the pseudo-argument, apparently assuming that this is the argument defended by all the great philosopher, without once questioning whether this is a real version of the cosmological argument or not, is astounding. And it would be even more astounding if these same atheists were aware that the pseudo-argument is not the argument defended by these great philosophers; and, nevertheless, chose the critique the pseudo-argument rather than those defended by actual theistic philosophers. So, whatever way you look at it, the tendency of so many contemporary atheists to attack pseudo-arguments rather than real arguments is disgraceful - and proves the existence of what Norris Clarke calls: "[A] tradition of antitheistic argument, which keeps perpetuating itself by family inheritance without renewal from outside and...without any effort to ascertain whether the antagonists at whom the salvos are regularly fired are still there any more" (p. 54). Clarke goes even further noting that it is "a tradition in the worst sense of the word, truly in a rut and apparently unaware of it" (p. 59).

Personally, I'm not sure that all atheists and agnostics really are unaware of it. I think that there is a strong possibility that at least some pop atheists are fully aware that the pseudo-argument is not an argument that any theistic philosophers would defend, but can't be bothered to do the serious leg work required to critique real versions of the argument. It seems highly unlikely that no pop atheist has bothered to read the writings of say Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, Samuel Clarke, or contemporary theistic philosophers like Mortimer J. Adler, William Lane Craig, Robert Koons, Alexander Pruss, Bruce R. Reichenbach and others. But, if they are aware of the fact that the pseudo-argument isn't anything like the arguments of these philosophers, very few, if any, pop atheist writers are bothering to point out the fact to other atheists. Maybe that would be too embarrassing. After all, it would mean the most widely-read anti-theistic writings, such as those of Hume and Bertrand Russell, contained patent errors; and that those errors are among the most widely quoted arguments by atheists today.

Indeed, some professional philosophers (generally not experts in the philosophy of religion), when it is pointed out to them that they have been repeating pseudo-arguments rather than the real thing, have responded by defending their use of the pseudo-argument, on the grounds that they only use the argument as the 'basic' cosmological argument. But there is nothing basic about the pseudo-argument, except that the pseudo-argument basically contradicts real versions of the cosmological argument. It can't be a basic version of the cosmological argument if it contradicts the versions of the cosmological argument defended by all the major defenders of the cosmological argument listed above! It is also a mistake, I think, to attempt to present a 'basic' version of the cosmological argument, when the many versions of the argument differ so widely. In terms of basic principles used in the arguments, the metaphysical frameworks behind each of the arguments, and the approaches used in defending the arguments, real versions of the cosmological argument are so different that to attempt to present a 'basic' version of the argument can only result in one of two outcomes: (1) a skeletal argument that has no real force as an argument, (2) a confused argument that actually contradicts what some (or all) versions of the cosmological argument actually say. So, attempting to defend the use of the Humean pseudo-argument on the grounds that is a 'basic' version of the argument only shows that these particular atheist interlocutors don't really understand the cosmological argument at all. Either that or they don't really care enough whether they get the argument right or not.

A second, less popular, distortion of the cosmological argument goes something like this:

1. You can't get something from nothing.
2. Therefore, the universe couldn't have come from nothing. 
3. So, the universe has either always existed, or it was brought into existence by a cause.
4. But if the universe didn't have a beginning, then it wouldn't exist today.
5. So the universe must have a beginning.
6. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

I originally encounter this argument in the form of a comic strip. Although it does occur in more serious settings, it is not taken too seriously by serious atheists. (Pop atheists, however, have an odd tendency to caricature views they don't agree with as silly comics. For example, the very popular 'Jesus and Mo' comic series, endorsed by Salman Rushdie, Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and others.) Apart from the arrangement of the premises, which is garbled (I've cleaned it up a bit), the main problem with this argument is with premise 4. The atheist interlocutor here apparently thinks that the main argument for the universe having a beginning is that if it didn't have a beginning, then it couldn't exist today. Therefore, effectively, nothing can exist without having a beginning. The obvious retort to this argument is that if something cannot exist without having a beginning, then God cannot exist without having a beginning. But if God has a beginning, then God requires a cause; and if God can exist without having a beginning, then the above argument against the universe being eternal fails.

This pseudo-argument distorts the cosmological argument by implying that the main argument against an eternal universe it that something cannot exist without having a beginning. Actually, this is not what cosmological arguments argue. In fact, the question of whether the universe is eternal or not is irrelevant to most versions of the cosmological argument, e.g. the contingency (both medieval and rationalist), the Neo-Platonist, and the Aristotelian-Thomistic versions. Only the kalam argument is concerned with whether the universe had a beginning, and the kalam argument does not argue against the impossibility of anything eternal existing. Rather the kalam argument argues specifically against the possibility of infinite temporal regresses. Furthermore the conclusion that God must be eternal, in the sense of 'timeless' or 'outside of time', is actually a conclusion of the argument, not (as the cartoon implies) an ad hoc attempt to make God immune to the same objections the theist raises against an infinitely old universe. (See my outline of Craig's version of the kalam argument from a previous post.) 

The atheist apparently is confused here by the two different meanings of 'eternal'. 'Eternal' can mean both 'infinitely old' and 'timeless'. The kalam argument does argue against the possibility of something infinitely old existing, that's what 'infinite temporal regress' means. However, the kalam argument does not argue against the possibility of something existing 'outside' time. Admittedly, existing inside time as we do, it is very difficult - if not impossible - for us to imagine a timeless reality. However, our ability to imagine such a reality is irrelevant to the logical and metaphysical possibility of such as reality. (Unless one makes the mistake of the early modern philosophers in assuming that intellect is the same as imagination.) There is nothing logically incoherent about a timeless reality, nor (so far as I am aware) are there any strong arguments against the possibility of such a reality existing.

Interestingly, if you changed the above argument, it would be a more serious, and intellectually serious, argument:

1. You can't get something from nothing.
2. Therefore, the universe (i.e., material reality) couldn't have come into existence uncaused.
3. Something cannot be the cause of its own existence.
4. However, the only other possible options are that: (1) the universe has always existed, or (2) it was brought into existence by a cause 'external' to itself.
4. If the universe is infinitely old, it would be an infinite temporal regress.
5. But an infinite temporal regress cannot exist.
6. So the universe must have a beginning.
7. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence that is (1) not part of itself, i.e., is immaterial; and (2) is not an infinite temporal regress, i.e., exists timelessly.

Further elaboration would be required to demonstrate that this cause is God, but the argument is quite powerful. The key premise is that an infinite temporal regress cannot exist. The notion of self-causation is self-contradictory - in order for something to be the cause of itself it would either need to exist prior to its own existence, in either an ontological or a chronological sense, which is absurd. Furthermore, although some atheists think it is rationally possible to defend the idea of something coming into existence uncaused, such a claim is clearly far less plausible than the claim that 'you can't get something from nothing'. Therefore, the burden of proof is on the atheist to show that it is actually possible to get something from nothing - not a task I envy. So, in the end, premise 5 is the key premise. See here and here for detailed defenses of the claim that an infinite temporal regress is impossible.

So, both pseudo-arguments discussed above are not only false versions of the cosmological argument, but they actually contradict the cosmological argument: The first one by insisting that everything must have a cause, and the second by insisting that the main argument against an infinitely old universe it that nothing can exist without having a beginning. If you have studied the history of the cosmological argument at all, it is patently obvious that both of these arguments are serious distortions of real cosmological arguments.