ex-apologist

Notes on Morriston’s “Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal Cause?”

Most of the criticisms of Craig's kalam argument critique one of the two main premises of Stage 1 of the argument, i.e., they aim to undercut the premise that the universe had a beginning, or that whatever begins to exist has a(n efficient) cause. However, much less attention is focused on Stage 2 of the argument, i.e., that the cause of the beginning of the universe is a person. But in Morriston's important paper, "Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal Cause?", (Faith & Philosophy 17:2 (2000), pp. 149-169), Morriston masterfully dismantles Stage 2 of the kalam argument. Below is an outline of Part Two of the paper.

1. Setup: Reconstructing Craig’s argument for a personal cause: (i.e., his argument for Stage 2 of the kalam cosmological argument).

1. The universe hasn’t always existed.
2. The cause of the universe must be eternal (otherwise it, too, would have a beginning and would thus require a cause).
3. The cause of the universe must be either a personal agent or a non-personal sufficient condition (“mechanical cause”).
4. If “a causal condition sufficient for the production” of the universe exists from eternity, then the universe has always existed.
5. So the cause of the universe is not a non-personal sufficient condition.
6. The cause of the universe must therefore be a person.

2. First Problem: It’s doubtful that Craig can consistently endorse (3).
2.1When responding to the quantum indeterminacy objection to the causal premise of the kalam argument, Craig glosses it in a way that it only requires one or more necessary conditions for any coming to be.
2.2 But if so, then to be consistent, Craig must allow the possibility of a non- personal cause existing from eternity as a merely necessary condition for the coming to be of the universe.
2.3 And if that’s right, then Craig must allow for more than the two candidates for the cause of the universe listed in (3).

3. Second Problem: Given (4), it’s not clear that positing a personal cause will help Craig avoid concluding that the universe must be as eternal as its cause.
3.1 By (4), that can only be done if there is no eternal state of the divine agent that is sufficient for causing the universe.
3.2 Craig tries to avoid this implication with his eternal sitting man analogy: It’s possible that an eternal man sits in a chair from eternity past, and then decides or wills to freely stand up.
3.3. Problem: The analogy breaks down when applied to God:

3.3.1 He’s supposed to be omniscient, and thus knows from eternity what he will do.

3.3.2 Prima facie, such knowledge includes his intention/will re: what he will do.

3.3.3 But on standard views of an omnipotent will, God’s willing is sufficient to produces its effect

3.3.4 So by (4), the universe should likewise be eternal.
3.4 Craig’s reply: the intending/undertaking distinction: God’s “eternal decision”/intention to create a universe with a beginning is eternal, but his undertaking to bring it about is not.
3.5 Problem: This just pushes the problem back a step

3.5.1 Surely God’s deciding/intending is causally sufficient to create the universe.

3.5.2 So by Craig’s hypothesis that his intention to create is eternal, the universe should likewise be eternal.
3.6 One might think there is an easy way out here:

3.6.1 Craig says, not that God eternally decided to create a universe, but that he eternally decided to create a universe with a beginning.

3.6.2 But no universe with a beginning is eternal.

3.6.3 Problem solved.
3.7 Reply: Craig can't consistently take this route

3.7.1 Such a claim, when combined with other claims Craig is committed to, jointly entail a contradiction:

1. alpha has a beginning.
2. God’s willing-to-create-alpha is eternal.
3. God’s willing-to-create-alpha is causally sufficient for the existence of alpha.
4. If a cause is eternal and sufficient for the existence of something, then that thing is also eternal (from (4) of the argument above).
5. If a thing is eternal then that thing doesn’t have a beginning.
6. Therefore, alpha both does and doesn’t have a beginning.

3.7.2 Something has to give, but the only ones which it is plausible to give up are the ones Craig needs for stages 1 and 2 of his kalam argument, viz., (1) and (4).
3.7.2.1 Craig needs (1) for stage 1 of the kalam argument
3.7.2.2 (2) seems to follow from God’s eternality and omniscience.
3.7.2.3 No one with standard views about God’s omnipotence will want to deny (3)
3.7.2.4 (4) might be resisted by saying that while God’s eternally willing alpha makes the statement, “There is a world with a beginning” eternally true, it doesn’t make the world eternal. But this isn’t a move that would help Craig here.

3.7.2.4.1 For there seems no principled basis for denying this distinction for a non-personal eternal sufficient condition for the beginning of the universe.

3.7.2.4.2 And if that’s right, then such a reply would undercut stage 2 of his kalam argument.
3.7.2.3 (5) is analytic (N.B. Is it? What about a 4d block universe?).

4. What went wrong in Craig’s reasoning? Morriston’s diagnosis:
4.1 Craig is switching back and forth between two conceptions of eternity: (i) beginningless and endless duration, and (ii) timelessness/atemporality.
4.2 He needs conception (ii) to make sense of God’s existence and willing being causally, but not temporally prior to the existence of the universe.
4.3 But he also needs conception (i):

4.3.1 He needs it to make plausible the idea that God could eternally will a universe with a beginning.
4.3.2 He also needs it to explain why a non-personal cause couldn’t have produced a universe with a beginning, as the effect would be as eternal as the cause.
4.4 But when you pin him down to either conception of eternity, the epistemic advantage of personal causes over non-personal causes disappears:
4.4.1 Re: (i) If large temporal gaps between the (eternal) will of a personal cause and its effect is possible, why can’t the same be true of a non-personal cause? It’s not at all clear that action at a temporal distance is any more mysterious than action at a spatial distance. (Cf. his earlier discussion of quantum indeterminacy and eternal necessary (but not sufficient) causal conditions comes in.)
4.4.2 Re: (ii) There can be no temporal gap between the timeless cause and the effect with a personal cause, any more than there can with a non-personal cause.

4.4.2.1 Craig’s freezing temperature/frozen water analogy breaks down at just this point.

4.4.2.2 For an atemporal non-personal cause has no temporal duration at all, and thus would not be freezing “for all eternity” (having no duration at all).

4.5 Craig therefore has no argument against the possibility of a timeless non-personal cause.
4.6 Craig might reply that non-personal causes can’t be atemporal, but:

4.6.1 No argument has been given for that.

4.6.2 In any case, the same sorts of grounds arise for the hypothesis of an atemporal personal cause
4.6.2.1 both are hard to make intelligible.
4.6.2.2 both are contrary to all experience.

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Important Forthcoming Book on the Problem of Evil

Trakakis, Nick. The Problem of Evil: Eight Views in Dialogue (OUP, forthcoming). One paper in the volume especially worthy of note is Yujin Nagasawa's "The Problem of Evil for Atheists". The penultimate draft can be found at his website (here).

Important Recent Paper by Thornhill-Miller and Millican

Thornhill-Miller, Branden, and Peter Millican. “The Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma: Revisions of Humean thought, New Empirical Research, and the Limits of Rational Religious Belief.” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7, no. 1 (2015): 1–49. (Accessible version here.)

Here is the abstract:

This paper is the product of an interdisciplinary, interreligious dialogue aiming to outline some of the possibilities and rational limits of supernatural religious belief, in the light of a critique of David Hume’s familiar sceptical arguments – including a rejection of his famous Maxim on miracles – combined with a range of striking recent empirical research. The Humean nexus leads us to the formulation of a new ‘Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma’ (CCDD), which suggests that the contradictions between different religious belief systems, in conjunction with new understandings of the cognitive forces that shape their common features, persuasively challenge the rationality of most kinds of supernatural belief. In support of this conclusion, we survey empirical research concerning intercessory prayer, religious experience, near-death experience, and various cognitive biases (e.g. agency detection, theory of mind, egocentric and confirmation bias). But we then go on to consider evidence that supernaturalism – even when rationally unwarranted – has significant beneficial individual and social effects, despite others (such as tribalism) that are far less desirable. This prompts the formulation of a ‘Normal/Objective Dilemma’ (NOD), identifying important trade-offs to be found in the choice between our humanly evolved ‘normal’ outlook on the world, and one that is more rational and ‘objective’. Can we retain the pragmatic benefits of supernatural belief while avoiding irrationality and intergroup conflict? It may well seem that rationality is incompatible with any wilful sacrifice of objectivity (and we appreciate the force of this austere view). But in a situation of uncertainty, an attractive compromise may be available by moving from the competing factions and mutual contradictions of ‘first-order’ supernaturalism to a more abstract and tolerant ‘second-order’ view, which itself can be given some distinctive (albeit controversial) intellectual support through the increasingly popular Fine Tuning Argument. We end by proposing a ‘Maxim of the Moon’ to express the undogmatic spirit of this second-order religiosity, providing a cautionary metaphor to counter the pervasive bias endemic to the human condition, and offering a more cooperation- and humility-enhancing understanding of religious diversity in a tense and precarious globalised age.

The paper has already garnered a good deal of attention. To track down the articles containing the main criticisms of the paper and follow the current discussion, see the authors' reply piece (accessible version here).

Required reading.

It is now the majority view amongst philosophers and theologians that any world could have been better. This places the choice of which world to create into an especially challenging class of decision problems: those that are discontinuous in the limit. I argue that combining some weak, plausible norms governing this type of problem with a creator who has the attributes of the god of classical theism results in a paradox: no world is possible. After exploring some ways out of the paradox, I conclude that the classical theist should accept Marilyn Adams’s view that no norms (of morality or of rationality) apply to gods.

The penultimate version can be found here.