#758 Eastwooding Richard Dawkins

Dr. craig’s response

Hey, Vince, thanks for referencing my talk “Eastwooding Richard Dawkins”, which is one of my favorite talks and a great deal of fun! Your questions help to underline the importance of being precise in our philosophical argumentation, lest we be misled.

Notice first what is said to be surely absurd: “for the universe to literally come into being without [a] cause.” You ask, “Why is that not the case when you posit that of God?” The answer is that I don’t posit that of God. Neither I nor any other theist posits that God came into being without a cause. That would, as you suggest, be equally absurd.

Theists don’t posit that God came into being without a cause because they don’t posit that God came into being at all. Rather God exists permanently without a beginning. You ask, “If God can BE without a beginning (without cause), Why is it absurd to say that the universe has no beginning?” The answer to that question is given by the two philosophical arguments I defend against an infinite regress of past events (and confirmed by two lines of scientific evidence).

Your final question, “if God has no creator, why is it absurd to say the same of the universe... that it has no beginning?” might seem simply to repeat the previous question, in which case the answer is the same. But perhaps we can finesse the question a bit so as to make some advance in the conversation. Perhaps what you’re really asking is, “Why don’t the same philosophical arguments that demonstrate that the universe began to exist also demonstrate that God began to exist?” The best answer to that question is that if we are to avoid the absurdity of something’s coming into being uncaused from nothing, we have to posit a first uncaused cause which transcends time (and space) and so is timeless without the universe. If time begins at the moment of creation, then there is no regress of past events in the life of the first uncaused cause. So the arguments against an infinite regress of past events do not apply to it. God simply exists timelessly without the universe and brings time into existence at the moment of creation.

Does that make sense to you?