Part 2 of my review of the debate between William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg: On Rosenberg's objections to the moral argument based on confusions about divine command theories with theistic voluntarism

As far I could see, some of the people in the audience in the debate between Craig and Rosenberg were college students, professors of several disciplines, scholars and other intelligent, educated people. This created a high-level intellectual enviroment there that I enjoyed a lot.

In my right side, I had a young (beautiful and extremely smart) student of biology, who said to me that she was an agnostic with sympathies to Buddhism. In the left side, I had a scholar (a professor in anthropology or something like that) who claimed to be an "open-minded atheist". Other people whom I saw there were students of philosophy, sociology, physics and law, coming from other universities and from Purdue too.

I greatly enjoyed the enviroment and the conversations there.

Sadly, Rosenberg's performance didn't matched the intellectual level of the audience. He was extremely unprepared for the debate, and it is my impression that he disappointed even many atheists in the audience. (In fact, I suspect that Rosenberg himself agrees that he lost the debate). In twitter, during the debate, I read phrases coming from online atheists like "I'm hearing that an atheist is being trashed in a debate about God at Purdue" and so forth. 

As an example of Rosenebeg's bad performance, let's to see Rosenberg's objection to the moral argument for God's existence. 

Craig's moral argument was:

1)Objective moral values and duties exist.

2)If God doesn't exist, objective moral values and duties don't exist.

3)Therefore, God exists.

Besides the cosmological argument, this argument is one of the most often misunderstood by atheists. (In fact, they seem chronically and irrestibly incapable of understanding it).

 

The second premiss asserts an ontological connection between God and moral values and duties. Note that the specific way in which the connection works is not specified in the argument and could have many forms. It doesn't say that moral values and duties exist because God chooses or wills them.

Perhaps God creates human nature with intrinsic features (like consciousness, free will, rationality, potentiality for the afterlife, etc.) which, in turn, give rise to objective value or moral properties. (In this case, moral values are ultimately created and dependent on God's creation, as the ultimate creator of everything besides himself, but not created as a bunch of God's commands, but as supervenient properties emerging from the human nature created by God. This was Thomas Aquinas' position, for example).

But atheists, typically, understand the argument in its most crude and unsophisticated form (the form proper of the simplistic atheistic mindset), namely, as claiming that God, on purely arbitrary grounds, decided such a things like "Don't kill each other", "Don't rape children", "Don't abuse other people" and so forth. In the literature, this position is known as theistic moral voluntarism. As far I know, NO defender of the moral argument in the history of philosophy (with the exception of William of Ockham and his followers) has ever defended this version of the moral argument.

Most defenders of the moral argument are NOT theistic voluntarists: they don't think (and in fact, energically reject, that morality depend on God's arbitrary commands. Rather, they argue that God, as the most perfect personal being, IS  by nature the good. God's perfect and holy nature determines and define the paradigm of the good).

One powerful reason to think that moral values and duties cannot exist in a naturalistic worldview is that morality is a phenomenon related essentially to persons. Therefore, if the universe has an intrinsic moral dimension, it implies that it has intrinsic person-relative properties. But naturalism is a radically impersonalistic worldview: the physical world is purely mechanical, blind, non-personal. On naturalism, "persons" are mere accidents,  by-products of biological evolution. Hence, it is hard to see how such impersonalistic worldview could plausibly ground intrinsic personal properties (like rationality, consciousness, moral values, moral responsability, etc.) as part of the fabric of reality.

Philosophers who have reflected in depth about the implications of naturalism (including Rosenberg, as we will see) understand this. For example, naturalist philosopher Keith Augustine (who wrote his master thesis on the nature of naturalism) comments:

But ethics does not come into play in the history of the universe until very recently--when Homo sapiens appeared. It is possible that moral laws have existed since the Big Bang, but that they could not manifest themselves until sentient beings arose. However, such a view implies that there is some element of purposefulness in the universe--that the universe was created with the evolution of sentient beings "in mind" (in the mind of a Creator?). To accept the existence of objective moral laws that have existed since the beginning of time is to believe that the evolution of sentient beings capable of moral reasoning (such as human beings) has somehow been predetermined or is inevitable, a belief that is contrary to naturalistic explanations of origins (such as evolution by natural selection) which maintain that sentient beings came into existence due to contingent, accidental circumstances. If objective moral laws are part of the natural universe (not part of some supernatural realm), then the universe cannot be unconscious--it must be, in some unknown sense, sentient. Few naturalists would want to accept such a nonscientific pantheistic conclusion... But given that moral subjectivism is just as logically viable as moral objectivism and that moral objectivism is implausible if a scientific naturalism is true, I think that there is a good case for the nonexistence of objective moral values

As Augustine comments, "ethics" is not an intrinsic part of the universe, but something which appeared very recently in history. Moreover, even thought it is logically possible that moral laws existed even in the moment of the Big Bang, such view implies that the evolution of human being was directed in a way which matched such laws (which suggests some kind of cosmic mind which organized and was actively controlling the whole biological process... but such cosmic mind, powerful intelligent designer who guided human evolution to make it match the putative moral laws existing from the Big Bang,  is precisely what GOD is, among other things, supposed to be!).

Naturalism cannot countenance the existence of any "mind" as an intrinsic part of the universe. "Mind" is, given naturalism, an biological phenomenon connected with a PHYSICAL brain. This is why naturalists reject the afterlife or survival of consciousness, and are materialists regarding the mind-body problem.

Contemporary atheistic naturalists fully understand all of this.

But what was Rosenberg's reply to the above argument by Craig?

He argued that Craig's argument was refuted by Plato, who asked: Is the good good because God chooses it, or God chooses it because it is good?

As philosopher Glenn Peoples argues in this podcast,  the objection is one of the worst arguments in the history of thought. And contemporary atheists make it even worst.

For example, note that it is NO part of Craig's argument the claim "moral values and duties depend on God's CHOICES". Craig is NOT arguing for theistic voluntarism. The premise simply state that moral values and duties depend ontologically on God (and it could be the case that moral values depend on God's holy nature, as Craig claims; or God's creation of human nature which determine certain objective values for humans, as Thomas Aquinas claimed; or on God's choices, as William of Ockham and theistic voluntarists claimed).

Note that even we could argue for Craig's premise based on Augustine's argument above. Since Augustine is claiming that a necessary condition for the existence of moral values is the property of being conscious and sentient, and God is an infinite and most perfect sentient and conscious being (who is, in addition, the creator of the whole of reality), then God is the ultimate ground of moral values which are binding to finite conscious and sentient beings like human beings (created by God).

All of these possibilities of the way in which God could ground moral values are bypassed by Roseneberg. He only knows of the most simplistic forms of theistic voluntarism. But other forms of theistic meta-ethics, which are not volutntaristic, are wholly ignored by him.

This fact alone showed that Rosenberg was philosophically unprepared to the debate, and made easy for Craig to refute him.

So, Rosenberg's claim that Craig's argument was refuted by Plato is simply false, since Craig's version of the moral argument is a post-Platonic, non-voluntaristic formulation of the moral argument. Plato only refuted theistic voluntarism of Greek polytheism, not other forms of theistic meta-ethics.

INCONSISTENCY OF ROSENBERG'S POSITION ON MORALITY

In a attempt of scoring a rhetorical point (which was useless, as showed by the official vote results of the debate), Rosenberg asked us to think of any moral norm, for example (the examples are mine):

-Don't kill atheists for fun

-Don't rape nor abuse atheist women (a moral norm whose consistent acceptation or recognition by some atheists is in doubt, as suggested by "skepchick" Rebecca Watson).

Then, Rosenberg asks us to think if God's existence or non-existence is relevant to the correction of the above moral norms. (The purpose of Rosenberg's point seems to be that, even if you don't believe in God, you're likely to agree with the above moral norms. Therefore, God is irrelevant to the moral correction of such norms).

But note that Rosenberg's own position in his book "The atheist's guide to reality" and his other published work is MORAL NIHILISM, that is, he emphatically DENIES that the above moral norms are objectively correct.

In this article by Rosenberg (please, read it carefully several times), he wrote:

There is no room in a world where all the facts are fixed by physical facts for a set of free floating independently existing norms or values (or facts about them) that humans are uniquely equipped to discern and act upon. So, if scientism is to ground the core morality that every one (save some psychopaths and sociopaths) endorses, as the right morality, it’s going to face a serious explanatory problem. The only way all or most normal humans could have come to share a core morality is through selection on alternative moral codes or systems, a process that resulted in just one winning the evolutionary struggle and becoming “fixed” in the population. If our universally shared moral core were both the one selected for and also the right moral core, then the correlation of being right and being selected for couldn’t be a coincidence. Scientism doesn’t tolerate cosmic coincidences. Either our core morality is an adaptation because it is the right core morality or it’s the right core morality because it’s an adaptation, or it’s not right, but only feels right to us.  It’s easy to show that neither of the first two alternatives is right.  Just because there is strong selection for a moral norm is no reason to think it right. Think of the adaptational benefits of racist, xenophobic or patriarchal norms. You can’t justify morality by showing its Darwinian pedigree. That way lies the moral disaster of Social Spencerism (better but wrongly known as Social Darwinism). The other alternative—that our moral core was selected for because it was true, correct or right–is an equally far fetched idea.  And in part for the same reasons. The process of natural selection is not in general good at filtering for true beliefs, only for ones hitherto convenient for our lines of descent. Think of folk physics, folk biology, and most of all folk psychology. Since natural selection has no foresight, we have no idea whether the moral core we now endorse will hold up, be selected for, over the long-term future of our species, if any.

This nihilistic blow is cushioned by the realization that Darwinian processes operating on our forbearers in the main selected for niceness! The core morality of cooperation, reciprocity and even altruism that was selected for in the environment of hunter-gatherers and early agrarians, continues to dominate our lives and social institutions. We may hope the environment of modern humans has not become different enough eventually to select against niceness. But we can’t invest our moral core with more meaning than this: it was a convenience, not for us as individuals, but for our genes. There is no meaning to be found in that conclusion.

Bingo!!!!!

Consider the following phrases by Rosenberg above:

-In a world in which physics fixes all the facts there is NO ROOM for independently existing norms or values

-The strong selection for a moral norm is not reason to think it is right

-We can't invest our moral code with more meaning that this: it was a convenience, not for us as individuals, but for our genes...

Is this the same man who is arguing for moral norms being right independently of God? If such norms are not independent of physicalism (because physicalism implies that norms don't exist objectively nor are right), why are they independent of God (whose existence falsifies physicalism, and being an omnipotent personal being, is the most plausible ground of such normative properties? Why exactly is physicalism more important and powerful than God regarding the validity of person-relative phenomena like morality?

According to Rosenberg's explicit position, there is NOT reason to think that strong natural selection of a moral norm (like "Don't kill atheists for fun") are right. They can FEEL right to us, but this subjective fact about human emotions doesn't make them objectively right.

Can you see Rosenberg's straightforward inconsistency? On one side, he says that in a world in which physics fixes all the facts (i.e. in a purely physicalist, and hence atheistic,world) there is not place for a "right" morality. They're pure inventions of humans, which are useful to us and were shaped by evolution.

On the other hand (and denying his own position) he claims in the debate that moral norms are right, regardless of God.

I ask truth-seekers out there:  how could a physicalist (atheistic) worldview to have nihilistic implications for morality, but a worldview based on a wholly perfect, holy and rational God (which is incompatible with physicalism) to be irrelevant to morality? Roseberg is giving to physicalism a power which is lacking in an omnipotent God (which is absurd).

Rosenberg, who is a moral nihilist, was forced to argue AGAINST moral nihilism just in order to contradict Craig. But Rosenberg himself is not believing in his own position in the debate.

When I saw such misleading sophism, I told the girl in the right "Read this" (I gave her the above online citation by Rosenberg on which he denies the validity of morality), and she replied "I can't believe that he's arguing for a view that is incompatible with his scientism, he's damaging his own case". I told her: "I've read, studied and heard carefully all of Craig's published debates, and some of Rosenberg's published works, and believe me, Craig's going to destroy Rosenberg tonight".

As an experienced debater, Craig correctly exposed such inconsistency quoting Rosenberg's own published work in which he defends moral nihilism and denies the objective existence and validity of moral norms. 

As consequence, the public clearly realized that Rosenberg was affecting a position that himself regards as false (i.e. as fully incompatible with scientism and the view that physics fixes all the facts), and castigated him in the voting.

I attended the debate with a tablet in which I had full citations of his own book and online articles, and I took notes of Rosenberg's bad arguments. My intention was to wait until the Q/A part of the debate, and confront his arguments in the debate with his own arguments published in his book. 

But his performance was so bad and inept, that I decided not to put more pressure on him. There is not point in making people to look bad, specially in front of high-level scholars and college professors.

Rosenberg's own performance sufficed to destroy his own philosophical credibility (at least, regarding matters of philosophy of religion), as the vote results proved.

Full video of the debate between American philosophers and scholars William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg on the topic Is Faith in God Reasonable? at Purdue University

This debate was widely expected by the scholarly circles in the United States, because both philosophers are very influential in the field of analytic philosophy.

Rosenberg is a widely read and well-known philosopher of science, social sciences and biology. Craig is a world's leading philosopher of religion and theologian, who has worked a lot on philosophy of science too (specially in philosophy of physics and cosmology).

I attended personally and enjoyed that debate, but I was strongly disappointed by Rosenberg's performance, which was very bad as you can watch for yourself and as the post-debate vote results showed.

This debate will be published in a scholarly book called Is Faith in God Reasonable?, which will include contributions by world' leading atheist and theist philosophers, with responses by Craig and Rosenberg.

I look forward to read that book!.

Read the first part of my review of this debate here.

Enjoy.
 

Review of the debate between Alex Rosenberg and William Lane Craig (Part 1): The pseudoscience and bad philosophy of Alex Rosenberg: atheistic misrepresentations of philosophy and quantum mechanics on behalf of atheism

In his debate with William Lane Craig (which you can download in audio here and the Q/A here), atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg was badly beaten according to the official vote results (votes coming from the audience, judges and online viewers). I didn't expect a different result, but since Rosenberg is a philosopher of science, I expected a more sustantive, challenging and fruitful discussion of the scientific matters related to some of Craig's typical arguments for God's existence (specially about the kalam argument, which is based heavily on scientific cosmology and physics).

In his opening speach, sadly Rosenberg exposed himself as someone philosophically and scientifically unprepared to this kind of high-level discussion. 

As I will prove in this post, Rosenberg crudely MISREPRESENTED both philosophy and science.

On Philosophy:

Like most village and popular atheists, Rosenberg misrepresented the causal principle of the cosmological argument as positing (in Rosenberg's literal words) that "everything that exists must have a cause" (and falsely attributed such principle to the arguments of Aquinas and Aristotle). You can hear that misrepresentation in the minute 38:20 of the debate. (By the way, and just for philosophers, Rosenberg conflates the principle of sufficient reason with the principle of causality. The latter can be considered a species of the former, but they are not identical. I was astonished by Rosenberg's confusion about this).

Rosenberg is clearly ignorant of the fact that neither Aquinas nor Aristotle (nor any other sophisticated defender of the cosmological argument, for that matter) has EVER argued that "everything that exists must have a cause". 

As philosopher Edward Feser comments: 

In fact, not one of the best-known defenders of the Cosmological Argument in the history of philosophy ever gave this stupid “everything has a cause” argument—not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Thomas Aquinas, not John Duns Scotus, not G.W. 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. Perhaps... you think that when trying to refute some of history’s greatest minds, a good strategy would be to attack an argument none of them ever defended" (emphasis in blue added)

William Lane Craig (who wrote his PhD dissertation in philosophy about the history of the cosmological argument) comments:

No version of the cosmological argument has ever contended that everything has a cause. According to the kalam version we are considering, everything that begins to exist has a cause. Since God is eternal, He requires no cause, whereas the universe, which began to exist, does... These objections are so flimsy that one cannot help but wonder who it is that they are meant to refute... What philosopher of religion or natural theologian in the history of thought is supposed to be susceptible to these objections?

Rosenberg, like internet atheists and sophomoric undergraduates, is wholly ignorant of this. This is absolutely unacceptable in a trained philosopher, specially one who writes about God and debate in an university in front of a bunch of people about the reasonabelness of faith in God.

I attended to the dabate at Purdue University and in the moment in which I heard these misrepresentations by Rosenberg, all the respect that I felt for him (because his book on atheism is an honest, straightforward explanation of naturalistic "scientism and its implications") was gone instantaneously. I don't have intellectual respect for Rosenberg anymore (even if I still would recommend his book on atheism).

Rosenberg seems to be a nice guy (even though he was sometimes rude in the debate), but as a philosopher, I don't have respect for him anymore, and I doubt I'll read anything written by him again.

On Science:

But in addition to misrepresenting philosophy; Rosenberg also misrepresented science, specially physics and quantum mechanics.

Even though in the debate Craig didn't presented the Kalam Cosmological Argument in its standard formulation (but a similar argument), Rosenberg attacked precisely the standard formulation of the kalam argument that Craig has used in other debates (so, Rosenberg actually attacked a straw man).

But even  Rosenberg's objections to the standard formulation of the kalam were inept.

In order to refute the causal principle (= whatever begins to exist has a cause), Rosenberg mentions (in minute 38:48) examples of spontaneous quantum events (e.g. the emission of certain quantum particles), for example two uranium atoms, wholly identical, in which one of them produces an alpha particle and the other doesn't. From this evidence, Rosenberg deduces (falsely and with astonishing lack of sophistication and insight) that science has refuted the causal principle.

Now, to philosophers and truth-seekers out there: How exactly such quantum events refute Craig's causal principle Whatever BEGINS to exist has a cause? Is not the alpha particle (in Rosenberg's example) caused to exist precisely by the alpha decay of the atom in question? Is not the alpha decay of atoms which produce or cause the emission of the alpha particle in question?

Let's see the evidence:

According to this scientific website:

The reason alpha decay occurs is because the nucleus has too many protons which cause excessive repulsion. In an attempt to reduce the repulsion, a Helium nucleus is emitted. The way it works is that the Helium nuclei are in constant collision with the walls of the nucleus and because of its energy and mass, there exists a nonzero probability of transmission

Is not the presence of too many protons the CAUSE of the excessive repulsion and, as consequence, the emission of the particle?

In another website:

What causes some radionuclides to emit alpha particles?  Alpha-decay occurs mainly in the radioactive decay of the heavier elements, particularly in those members of the natural decay series heavier than lead (atomic number 82), such as uranium and thorium. Alpha-particles are emitted with one of a few discrete energies characteristic of the radionuclide from which they were emitted. These energies can be used to identify the radionuclide involved.  Alpha-decay occurs when the ratio of neutrons to protons in the nucleus is low. For example: Polonium-210 has 126 neutrons and 84 protons, a ratio of 1.50 to 1. Following radioactive decay by the emission of an alpha particle, the ratio becomes 124 neutrons to 82 protons, or 1.51 to 1.

According to the relevant article in wikipedia:

In contrast to beta decay, the fundamental interactions responsible for alpha decay are a balance between the electromagnetic force and nuclear force. Alpha decay results from the Coulomb repulsion[2] between the alpha particle and the rest of the nucleus, which both have a positive electric charge, but which is kept in check by the nuclear force

Is not the alpha decay consequence and effect of the fundamental  causal interactions between the electromagnetic force and the nuclear force?. Does not such alpha decay result from a cause known as the Coulomb repulsion between the alpha particle and the rest of the nucleus? 

If so, then how does the hell the alpha decay and the emission of alpha particles is evidence against the principle what whatever BEGINS to exist has a cause?

Rosenberg fundamentally misunderstand physics and science, on behalf of atheism (in this case, on behalf of refusing to accept the causal principle).

Despite this, in minute 1:27: 53, Rosenberg confidently claims "I made the point that the principle of sufficient reason (Jime's correction: the principle of causality) is false, not just that it is not known to be true. It is plain out flat false and it is disconfirmed all over the galaxy... We know that alpha particles come to existence for not reason at all every moment in this room. Why should be assume that the universe is any different?"

As seen above, Rosenberg's view is scientifically false: Alpha particles don't come into existence from nothing. On the contrary, they come to existence from complex physical interactions in the tiny quantum scale. Without such quantum context and enviroment, no alpha particle (nor anything else, including the whole universe) could come into existence.

Out of nothing, nothing comes... and the quantum vacuum is NOT nothing.

In her contribution to the book "Laser Physics At The Limits", atheist physicist Astrid Lambrecht comments:

The quantum vacuum is the arena where fundamental physical processes take place, and is by no means a simple empty space where nothing never happens or a pure quantum abstract concept of quantum field theory... The state corresponds to the fundamental state of the electromagnetic field and is characterized by quantum fluctuations corresponding to mean energy of 1/2  hw per field mode. (p.197)

Atheist and world's leading cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin explains the same about the quantum vacuum:

William Lane Craig explains the same:

Can you see why Rosenberg was badly defeated by Craig in their debate? 

Atheists are forced to misrepresent science in order to defend atheism.

A final comment:

One of the virtues of the Kalam Cosmological Argument is that it shows that atheism is, as a rule, a commitment of the will, not a position based on evidence, let alone in science. When confronted with the kalam argument, even sophisticated atheist philosophers like Quentin Smith are ready to say that the universe came from "nothingness". Once they have conceded this point, it is obvious that they will accept any explanation (including "Nothingness", which is the most telling possible example of a NON-explanation) as an alternative to God. (By the way, this exposes the hypocresy of atheists who complain that their disbelief is based on that there is no evidence for God. What evidence would they accept, if "nothingness" is better than God?).

Atheism is, for many leading defenders o it, a commitment of the will.

Attend or view online the debate on the topic Is Faith in God Reasonable? between two American leading philosophers William Lane Craig vs Alex Rosenberg

The much awaited debate about the existence of God (or rather, the reasonableness of belief in God) between two leading American philosophers, theist William Lane Craig and hard-core atheist Alex Rosenberg, will can be watched online. 

VIEW DEBATE ONLINE:
February 1, 2013
Friday, 7 9:30 pm EST LIVE or 7-9:30 pm PST DELAYED
Sign up online at www.biola.edu/debate

ATTEND DEBATE LIVE:
February 1, 2013
Friday, 7 9:30 pm EST
Purdue University
Eliott Hall of Music
West Lafayette, IN
Cost: FREE
More info: www.apologeticsevents.com

I'll attend that debate, so stay tuned for my comments or review of it. 

For a devastating critique of Rosenberg's book "An Atheist's Guide to Reality", read these series of posts by philosopher Edward Feser.

William Lane Craig on Bertrand Russell's teapot analogy: Another bad atheist objection which is based upon the confusion of absence of evidence with the existence of contrary evidence

 

Many atheists, wholly incapable of formulating solid arguments against the existence of God, are forced to argue for a wholly implausible position, namely that the absence of evidence for God suffices to think that God doesn't exist. They illustrate this point with examples, like "we believe that Flying Pink Elephants don't exist because there is not evidence for these things".

But obviously we don't deny the existence of these things because we lack evidence for them. On the contrary, we deny the existence of such things because our CURRENT knowledge (e.g. about zoology and the biology  and genetics of elephants) implies that it is likely that such animals (e.g. flying  pink elephants) don't exist.

The atheist analogy has this form: "We lack evidence for X, therefore we must believe that X doesn't exist", when actually the examples mentioned by the atheist have this form "Our current knowledge implies that X is unlikely, and given that we don't have positive evidence for X which could counterbalance that, we have to conclude that X's existence is unlikely".

The atheist conflates the cases in which, given our knowledge, it is unlikely that certain entities do exist; with the (wholly different) cases in which there is absolutely not evidence whatsoever for the existence or non-existence of some entity. In the latter case (in contrast with the former), the proper position is agnosticism, because we have no reason at all to believe or disbelieve the thing in question.

Just an example: In this blog, I've never written a post about how to repair PCs or to buy in Amazon. Readers of this blog have absolutely no evidence for the claim that Jime Sayaka knows how to repair PC or buy things in Amazon. Now, are you readers justified in concluding that I don't know how to do these things? Obviously not, your proper position about this question is agnosticism: You don't know if I have such knowledge or not.

Now, suppose that you claim that on your bed  is Pamela Anderson right now. You go to your bed and you don't see her. In this case, the fact that you don't see her is CONTRARY evidence for the claim that she's there. Why? Because if she were there, on your bed, you WOULD see her. And You don't. 

In logic, this is known as modus tollendo tollens (If A, then B, Not-B, then Not-A).

Note that the example of Pamela is, from a logical point of view, wholly different from the example of Jime not posting anything about repairing PCs (my knowledge about how to repair PCs doesn't imply that I'm going to post about it... specially since it is not a blog about PCs).

Summarizing: The atheist objection conflates cases of absolute absence of evidence for X, with cases in which we have, based upon our current knowledge (and the expectations based on this knowledge), CONTRARY evidence for the existence of X.

Atheist "geniuses" and "brights" cannot understand this, and it is a waste of time to try to explain this to them.

That atheists like Richard Dawkins and Lewis Wolpert have used such objection is understable, since they're not sophisticated philosophers nor thinkers. We cannot ask them (nor we can reasonably expect) that they can understand hard philosophical issues or fine and subtle logical matters. But when  trained philosophers like Bertrand Russell or John Shook engage themselves in such sophomoric modes of argumentation, we can only feel a deep dissapoiment and lack of intellectual respect for them, and tell to ourselves: SHAME on them.

Sheer atheistic pseudo-intelectualism, bad philosophy, stupidity and mediocrity on behalf of atheistic wishful thinking.
 

Adolf Grünbaum, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, the Big Bang Cosmology and the "Everything has a cause" atheistic fallacy. Bad philosophy as psychological therapy for atheists' cognitive dissonance

Adolf Grünbaum is a prominent philosopher of science (specially, a philosopher of time and space). 

However, like many other atheist philosophers (like Michael Martin, Sam Harris, etc). he seems incapable of understanding that NO prominent defender of the cosmological argument has ever defended such argument on the grounds that "everything has a cause". 

It is astonishing to realize how atheists keep repeating again and again the same fallacy about the cosmological argument. Currently, I'm thinking about the possibility that atheist philosophers misrepresent the argument intentionally, in order to provide psychological comforting to the cognitive dissonance felt by their atheistic readers, because they know that atheists tend to read only or mostly the atheistic literature. (More on this below).

In one of his earliest critiques of the Kalam Argument, Grümbaum says:

The relevant creation argument proceeds from the premise that there is a question as to where everything came from, or of "how" the world came into being, or as to who or what caused everything. Thus the question more or less tacitly assumes some sort of temporal beginning for the physical universe, preceded temporally by a supposed state of nothingness. And the aim of the argument is to show that we cannot understand the supposed beginning or origin of the world without the assumption that there was a creation out of nothing by a creator. More specifically, the argument claims to establish the necessity for postulating creation by starting out with the premise that things have "causes" in the senses granted by common sense or ordinary science, or even by the sceptical common sense of a hard-headed engineer. Thus, the starting point is the following premise:

"Everything has a cause" to the extent to which causes are acknowledged in explanations of ordinary experience or of scientifically explained phenomena.

From the premise that everything has a cause, the following conclusions are then claimed to follow:

The physical universe as a whole had a beginning a finite time ago as a result of an act of creation out of nothing by a single, conscious external CAUSE or agent. And that external cause or creator is then claimed to be the personal God of the biblical theistic tradition.

The confusions of Grümbaum's arguments are astonishing, coming from a philosopher of his stature (this supports the view that atheists don't have good objections against the best theistic arguments. They are forced again and again to misrepresent the argument in order to give some plausibility to the atheistic objection to the cosmological argument).

 

Let's comment on Grümbaum's argument on more detail:

As William Lane Craig pointed out in his reply to Grümbaum's paper:

This, however, is a gross caricature of the traditional argument. The causal premiss operative in the argument is not that everything has a cause, but that "Whatever begins to exist has a cause." This fact has been repeatedly pointed out by theists, but stereotypes seem to die hard. Furthermore, proponents of this argument did not simply assume that the universe began to exist, but presented elaborate philosophical defenses of this premiss, employing arguments against infinite temporal regression such as came to be embodied in the thesis of Kant's first antinomy concerning time. Finally, the identification of the external cause of the universe's inception was not gratuitously assumed to be a personal Creator; rather the proof's proponents argued for this conclusion on the basis of the fact that a temporal effect could not arise from an eternal cause unless that cause were a personal agent... No version of the cosmological argument has ever contended that everything has a cause. According to the kalam version we are considering, everything that begins to exist has a cause. Since God is eternal, He requires no cause, whereas the universe, which began to exist, does... These objections are so flimsy that one cannot help but wonder who it is that they are meant to refute. Who are these unnamed theists whose contentions Grünbaum attacks? What philosopher of religion or natural theologian in the history of thought is supposed to be susceptible to these objections? I suspect that Grünbaum is really attacking nothing more than popular misconceptions of the cosmological argument"

 As philosopher of religion Edward Feser comments:

In fact, not one of the best-known defenders of the Cosmological Argument in the history of philosophy ever gave this stupid “everything has a cause” argument—not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Thomas Aquinas, not John Duns Scotus, not G.W. 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. Perhaps... you think that when trying to refute some of history’s greatest minds, a good strategy would be to attack an argument none of them ever defended.

One of the defenders of the traditional cosmological argument was Thomas Aquinas. In his book on Aquinas, Feser comments:

"Let us note first (and yet again) that Aquinas does not say, here or elsewhere, that "everything has a cause"; rather, he begins the argument by saying that there are efficient causes and that nothing can cause itself. The implication is that if something is caused, then it is something outside the thing being caused that is doing the causing... Aquinas is committed in particular to the principle of causality, according to which that which comes into being, or more generally, that which is contingent, must have a cause. Needless to say, this is not the same thing as to claim that everything without exception has a cause" (Aquinas, pp 81-82. Emphasis in blue added)
 
So, Grümbaum's claim that the "traditional" cosmological argument is based on the premise that "everything has a cause" is demostrably false. Grümbaum's egregious misrepresentation of the argument is unworthy of a sophisticated philosopher of his stature (a philosopher who becomes, to his professional embarassment, a sophomore and amateur when arguing about theism).

On the other hand, note that Grümbaum says that the argument "tacitly assumes" a temporal beginning of the physical universe. But as Craig says, the argument doesn't simpy "assume" such a thing, but that such view is explicitly ARGUED for.

Moreover, the current scientific evidence from cosmology supports the view that the universe has a temporal beginning, a fact widely accepted by cosmologists. World's leading cosmologist and atheist Alan Guth even says that only "crackpots" deny the temporal beginning of the universe:

So, far from "assuming" the temporal beginning of the physical universe, the proponent of the cosmological argument ARGUES for such temporal beginning, based on philosophical arguments (e.g. the impossibility of transversing an actual infinite) and scientific evidence (e.g. the evidence for the Big Bang). Grümbaum falsely claims that the cosmological argument claims that a temporal beginning of the universe is "preceded temporally by a state of nothingness". 

This is simply and demostrably false. NO defender of the cosmological argument has defended or implied such a thing. "Nothingness" is not an state, but the absence of being. Since "time" is part of being, it is impossible that "non-being" could be "temporally precede" being.

Far from appealing to "nothingness", what the cosmological argument proponent claims is that God precedes ontologically (not temporally) the universe. This notion of ontological, but not temporal, causal priority is perfectly coherent, despite of Grümbaum's unability to understand it (because such understanding would destroy his whole objection).

As atheist Graham Oppy correctly notes "Under the causal relation, causes are prior to their effects.  Note that this has nothing to do with temporal priority: if there are non-temporal causes and effects, the causal relation still imposes a priority / posteriority relation on them". 

In reply to a commenter's question, Oppy adds: "My comments were neutral on any questions about the connection between time and cause. *In the causal order*, causes precede effects. *In the temporal order*, perhaps -- as far as the argument at issue is concerned -- causes can be preceded by effects, or can be simultaneous with effects. (These are controversial philosophical questions; it is perhaps just as well that they are irrelevant to the present discussion!!"

A sophisticated philosopher like Oppy (contrary, apparently, to Grümbaum) clearly discerns the conceptual and ontological difference between causal priority and temporal priority. This distinction is beyond Grümbaum's insights. 

Another atheist philosopher (and critic of the Kalam argument), Quentin Smith, even appeals himself to simultaneous causation in order to make his case, when he said: 

"Bill believes the Big Bang was caused by God and I believe it both caused itself to exist and caused the later states of the universe to exist. At the Big Bang there is a line of simultaneous causes and effects. This is implied both by a Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics and by the EPR correlations - for those of you in the audience who are science majors - which imply - you don't need to understand either of the sciences to understand my talk - and these theories imply that there are instantaneous causal relations between simultaneous events"

  CONTEMPORARY ATHEISTIC PHILOSOPHY AS PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPY FOR ATHEISTS' COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

It is my honest, rational assessment of the debate between atheists and theists that atheists have been defeated by contemporary philosophy plus scientific evidence. I think any rational, unbiased and fully informed observer would agree with this assessment. (Note that it has nothing to do with a particular religion; I'm speaking of where the overall scientific and philosophical evidence points out). 

The persistent, constant misrepresentation of the cosmological argument by atheists suggest that they're either intellectually incapable of rational understanding, or intellectually dishonest (or both). Since Jime's Iron Law implies that many hard-core atheists are positively stupid, irrational, intrinsically impaired for rational thinking (specially about spiritual matters), one could think that Jime's Iron Law fully explains the continuous misrepresentation of the cosmological argument. 

But now I'm strongly doubting that otherwise brilliant and intelligent professional philosophers become sophomores and obviously stupid when arguing about theism. I'm inclined to think that such people are being intentionally misleading, consciously misrepresenting the theistic arguments. I simply cannot believe that a philosopher of the stature of Grümbaum cannot understand that the cosmological argument is not based upon the premiss "everything has a cause".  

Therefore, I'm going to suggest another hypothesis (which is complementary of Jime's Iron Law): I think some atheist philosophers suspect, perhaps intuitively, that the case for theism is very strong, but (for psychological or ideological reasons) they cannot allow that the best formulation of these theistic arguments become widely read and known among atheists. Hence, they intentionally misrepresent the arguments in order to convey the impression that the theistic arguments are very bad and weak.   

This strategy could be useful because atheists tend to read mainly books or articles by atheists. They believe what others atheists say, but not what theists say. Hence, if a "prominent" philosopher like Grümbaum says that the cosmological argument begins with the premiss "everything has a cause" the common atheist reader will tend to believe him. If such fallacy is repeated by other atheists, like Sam Harris or Michael Martin, then the atheist reader is confirmed in his belief that the "everything has a cause" is the true, actual premiss of the cosmological argument. 

Also, when serious, birlliant, sophisticated philosophers like Graham Oppy or J.J.Smart argue that "it is not clear" that the parting of the Red Sea or stars arranged in a way which spelt out the Apostle's Creed, or other miracles are sound evidence for theism,  one suspects that such implausible and unfalsifiable naturalistic position is a kind of "last card" for atheists to avoid believing in theism. 

Whatever the evidence for theism, the atheist will say that "it is not clear" that God produced it, and hence theism remains unwarranted. Since Oppy has proposed a criterion for sucessful argumentation, one could ask if Oppy's argument that "it is not clear" that the parting the Red Sea is sound evidence for the supernatural or classical theism passes his own criterion of succesful argumentation. Is such position the one that OUGHT to convince all the rational persons, including rational theists and open-minded agnostics? I doubt it.   

In conclusion, my opinion is that some atheists are attempting to keep atheism alive, either intentionally misrepresenting the theistic arguments (Martin, Grümbaum, Harris),  or providing a kind of ultimate way out or "last card" for atheists, making absolutely unfalsifiable the naturalsitic position, so that no matter what evidence for theism that could ever be presented (Oppy, Smart).

They're preaching to the chorus, creating psychological comfort for atheists who actually feel or could feel strong cognitive dissonance by the best philosophical and scientific evidence for theism (which could cause, eventually, the conversion of some atheists to theism, like happened with Antony Flew). 

The way to destroy and expose this astute atheistic strategy of massive self-deception is to make it explicit, provide solid evidence for theism and cogent refutations of the atheistic objections based on the atheist's own premises (used in other contexts), and castigate their abuses of science and their misleading "perhaps" or "it could be" speculations when trying to block conclusions favourable to theism (speculations that they reject if posed against their own cherished beliefs, like materialism or the theory of evolution. For example, no atheist would accept the argument that "perhaps consciousness is ontologically independent of the brain", or "perhaps natural selection is false", posed as serious objections to or living alternatives to naturalism, without proper evidence for such claims). 

In order to do that, you have to be extremely familiar (even more than atheists themselves) with the best atheistic literature.

What caused God? What/Who made God? What created God?: The most common atheistic objection to the Cosmological Argument for God's existence is one of the worst objections in the history of thought. Dramatic evidence for Jime's Iron Law about the atheist's irrationality

 

Typical atheist genius asking the "What caused God?" question

Just watch these 2 shorts videos (specially the first one):

As shown in the first video, some atheists really think that the "What caused God?" is a good objection to the cosmological argument. But how and why exactly asking for something's cause constitutes a valid refutation of an argument for that something's existence? Just think carefully about it.

Suppose that you argue that "The HIV virus causes AIDS" and try to defend that view appealing to the medical evidence (virus isolation, antibody tests, molecular cloning, statistical correlation between AIDS and HIV, PCR and viral load tests, etc.) for example. Then, an atheist genius comes and says "Well, I have a knockdown objection to the argument that HIV exists and is the cause of AIDS: What caused the HIV?"

Do you think the the above question, by itself, refute your argument for the existence of HIV, or that it causes AIDS? Obviously not, since the existence of HIV causing AIDS doesn't depend on HIV itself having or not having a cause, let alone on you being able to explain or identify the cause of it. Perhaps other viruses cause it. Perhaps it was created in a laboratory by mad scientists. Perhaps it is an endogenous retrovirus. Perhaps it comes from another planet or whatever. Perhaps and per impossibile (a Quentin Smith's fan would suggest) it comes from "Nothingness" or Non-Being. The point is that asking for something's cause does NOTHING to refute an argument for the existence of such something.

Note that the same example could be provided regarding the universe. Suppose that you are arguing for the existence of the physical universe. In that case, is the question "What caused the universe?" a valid objection for your argument that a physical universe exists? Obviously not, since your argument for the existence of the universe doesn't depend on you being able to specify the cause of such universe. The question does nothing to refute or undermine your argument for the existence of the universe.

As an objection against the existence of God, the question "What caused God?" does nothing to refute it. At most, it prompts us to inquiry further about whether God is caused or uncaused, and if caused, what would have caused Him, but God's existence is not in question.

But the atheist question is based on the assumption that the cosmological argument is based on the premise "Everything has a cause". Note that on that premise, the question "What caused God?" is fully justified, because if everything that exists has a cause, and God exists, then God has a cause. But note that even in this case, God's existence is not refuted. At most, what is in question is God's cause, not God's existence. The conclusion of the cosmological argument, namely, that God exists, is not affected by the question.

But the real problem with the atheist question is that it is just IGNORANT. No sophisticated defender of the cosmological argument in the history of philosophy has ever defended such argument on the grounds that "Everyhting has a cause", because they fully know that such ridiculous premise is false and lead to an infinite regress. 

Philosopher of religion Edward Feser explains:

In fact, not one of the best-known defenders of the Cosmological Argument in the history of philosophy ever gave this stupid “everything has a cause” argument—not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Thomas Aquinas, not John Duns Scotus, not G.W. 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. Perhaps... you think that when trying to refute some of history’s greatest minds, a good strategy would be to attack an argument none of them ever defended

Let's take just one of Feser's examples: Philosopher William Lane Craig.  People familiar with philosophy of religion, or simply with my blog, is familiar with Craig's kalam cosmological argument:

The first premiss of the argument is "Whatever begins to exist has a cause", which is a theologically neutral statement of the principle of causality. Note that this principle is fully compatible with something existing eternally and hence uncaused. The principle doesn't say that everything has a cause, but that everything which BEGINS TO EXIST (or comes into being) has cause, which is fully compatible with the existence of some things which never began to exist (e.g. numbers or propositions, like thought by some Platonistic philosophers; or God which is thought to be a necessary being, and hence an eternal one).

Amazingly, as you can see in the first video, an atheist clearly affected by Jime's Iron Law keeps pressing the question "What caused God?" after Craig's lectures on the kalam. Clearly, this atheist didn't pay attention to the logical formulation of the argument. He seems, in an autistic-like fashion, to be fixed with the "What caused God?" question without realizing that it is based on a inept misunderstanding of the argument.

I'm absolutely sure that such atheist really think his question is a knock-down argument against theism. Jime' Iron Law implies that some atheists, like that guy, are intellectually incapable, intrinisically impaired to understand rationally the difference between:

-Everything has a cause (=everything that exists has a cause)

-Everything which BEGINS TO EXIST has cause.

For atheist geniuses like the guy in the video, the above two propositions are identical, and hence that "What caused God?" objection is valid in both cases.

There is something in the mind of atheists which prevent them to differenciate between the above two propositions. They simply cannot grasp it.

Perhaps you think that the above confusion only exists in sophomoric or ignorant young atheists in college campuses. WRONG.

You can see examples, analyzed by me, of professional atheist writers (including professional philosophers) commiting exactly the same fallacy:

-Michael Martin

-Theodore Schick Jr.

-Sam Harris

It is deeply dissapointing to read professional philosophers, who should know more, to engage in sophomoric modes of argumentation. I have not respect at all for atheists like that.

But it tells us a lot about the intellectual limitations and mindset of some atheists.