Can God be a Causal Explanation of the Universe?

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The CADRE is please to announce a new article being put up on the CADRE Answering Skeptics page authored by Chad McIntosh, (author of the very fine Doxazo Theos blog) entitled "Can God be a Causal Explanation of the Universe?"

Austin Cline of Atheism.about has briefly suggests God can’t be used as a causal explanation of the universe based on causes and physical laws. Cline quotes two atheists, Robin Le Poidevin and B.C. Johnson, who have offered similar arguments to that effect. In this article, Chad McIntosh contends that Cline is mistaken (as is often the case) and criticizes the arguments to which he alludes. I conclude that far from making their case, they actually provide good reasons to believe God exists. Consider the following quote from the article:

If the universe can't be explained by the necessity of it's own nature (e.g. by the natural laws thereof) then it must have an external explanation. What would such an external explanation look like? Remembering back to our initial support for (1), it must transcend space and time, be metaphysically necessary, and changeless and immaterial. The only things we know of that can exist in that way are either abstract objects (numbers, laws, sets, values, propositions, properties, et cetera), or minds. But abstract entities do not have causal efficacy (e.g. the number two cannot cause anything) and so cannot be the explanation of the universe. So the explanation of the universe is most plausibly taken to be a mind, which is minimally what everybody means by "God".

Excellent article. I highly recommend everyone take the time to read this relatively short (perhaps 4 pages of written text) essay.

Comments

Jason Pratt said…
Pretty dang good, on a first read-through anyway! {beam!}
10/27/2006 05:38:00 AM
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