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Presentism and Infinite History

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” While the world definitely had a beginning, there’s a question of whether we can prove this by reason alone (i.e., by philosophical arguments). Defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument often use an argument like this one, which is found in William Lane Craig’s book Reasonable Faith: 1) An actually infinite number of things cannot exist.2) A beginningless series of events in time entails an... Read More

Using the Kalaam Argument Correctly

In recent years, one of the most popular arguments for the existence of God has been the Kalaam cosmological argument. Ultimately, I think this argument is successful, but many of the ways it has been employed are unsuccessful. It is an argument that needs to be used carefully—with the proper qualifiers. Stating the Argument We can state the Kalaam argument like this: 1) Everything that has a beginning has a cause.2) The universe has a beginning.3) Therefore,... Read More

Traversing an Infinite?

God created the universe a finite time ago, but there’s a question of whether we can prove this by reason alone. Defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument often claim that the universe cannot have an infinite history because “traversing an infinite” is impossible. In his book Reasonable Faith (pp. 120-124), William Lane Craig puts the argument this way 1. The series of events in time is a collection formed by adding one member after another2.... Read More

What’s Wrong with the Countdown Paradox?

Sometimes defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument defend its second premise (i.e., that the world couldn’t have an infinite past) by proposing a paradox involving counting. The line of reasoning goes something like this: A. Suppose that the universe has an infinite history (the kind of history you’d need to do an infinite countdown).B. Suppose that a person has been counting down the infinite set of negative numbers (. . . -3, -2, -1) for all eternity,... Read More

Are Fine-Tuning Arguments for God (or the Multiverse) Circular?

In a recent video, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder argues that design arguments for God’s existence commit the fallacy of begging the question—also known as circular reasoning. Do they? Before we began, I want to lay my cards on the table and say that I’m a fan of Sabine Hossenfelder. She’s smart, well qualified, and a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. I appreciate her commitment to explaining physics in comprehensible... Read More

St. Anselm’s God

St. Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence often gets a bad rap, not just from atheists but even from many Catholics. For one thing, it can be a difficult argument to understand. Though its premises are rather simple, something about it makes us think we are being tricked. For another thing, we know that eminent authorities like St. Thomas Aquinas have expressed their discontent with the argument. Nonetheless, I think it is wrong to discard the argument without a... Read More

How God Still Causes Things to Be

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Atheists often claim that it’s contradictory for believers to assert that God is at the same time both the universal cause of all being and immutable. In other words, God can’t be changeless and at the same time changing, in the sense that he causes things to come into and go out of existence. Consider, for example, that my act of typing this article right now is a reality ultimately because God causes it to be. His causal activity is not in opposition to my free action, but... Read More

A ‘God Problem’ at the New York Times

When I saw that the New York Times had published an argument against the existence of God with a URL that contained the phrase “philosophy-God-omniscience,” it brought out my inner Catholic-apologist-geek. I became excited at the prospect of teasing out a philosophical puzzle. But the only puzzle I came away with was this: how could a philosopher at a large public university publish a paper on the existence of God—in the nation’s most prestigious newspaper—that... Read More

The Santa Claus “Proof” for God’s Existence

In my title, the word, “proof,” is in quotation marks, because this article is not intended as a strict proof for God’s existence. Many may well not be impressed by the argument at all. Still, it may have some merit, since it might at least give skeptics, agnostics, and atheists some pause for thought. Most children are taught in their early years to believe in the fictional character who lives at the North Pole. Indeed, like St. Thomas Aquinas’s own Five Ways to prove God’s... Read More

How Aquinas’s First Mover is Also Universal Governor

This post aims at better understanding how God interacts with creatures, not primarily at proving his existence. Central objections to God’s existence are that (1) his nature is self-contradictory and/or (2) his relation to creatures is somehow impossible, as in, for example, the problem of evil that I have addressed here previously. In other posts, I have argued that God is the source of all “new existence” that appears in the world every moment it progresses through time.... Read More

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