If big bang cosmology is true, then the universe began to exist about 15 billion years ago with a 'big bang', an explosion of matter, energy and space from a singular point. This singularity is spatially and temporally pointlike; that is, it has zero spatial dimensions and exists for an instant (at t=0) before exploding with a 'big bang'. The big bang singularity is also lawless; Stephen Hawking writes: A singularity is a place where the classical concepts of space and (...) time break down as do all the known laws of physics because they are all formulated on a classical space time background. ... [T]his breakdown is not merely a result of our ignorance of the correct theory but represents a fundamental limitation to our ability to predict the future [of the singularity], a limitation that is analogous but additional to the limitation imposed by the normal quantum mechanical uncertainty principle. [1] The lawlessness of the singularity entails that it 'would thus emit all [possible] configurations of particles with equal probability' [2]. Paul Davies describes this vividly: 'Anything can come out of a naked singularity -in the case of the big bang the universe came out.' [3]. (shrink)

Lane Craig, for example, asserts, that it is "intuitively obvious." 1 This approach is not promising since this principle is not self evident. A principle p is self evident if and only if everybody who understands p believes p, but many philosophers and cosmologists not only believe it possible.

Evan Fales has recently argued that, although I provide the most promising approach for those concerned to defend belief in divine intervention, I nevertheless fail to show that such belief can be rational. I argue that Fales’ objections are unsuccessful.

I spell out a problem with the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo: that, contra the doctrine, it is not possible to efficiently cause something from nothing. This is because an efficient cause requires a material cause in order to have an effect. The material cause supplies the potency that the efficient cause actualises. Because nothingness has no potencies, there is nothing for an efficient cause to actualise. I show that this objection presupposes that the theory of noneism (the proposition that (...) some things do not exist) is false. I postulate that the universe (i.e. the created order) is a non-existent item and so there is no problem with the claim that it was efficiently caused to come from nothing – the universe has no being anyway. After rehearsing the rather strong reasons in favour of the truth of noneism, I deal with two objections that are peculiar to my claim that the universe lacks reality: that creation possesses characteristics that are sufficient to render it existent and that a non-existent object has its properties independent of divine fiat. I show that there are sensible replies to both objections. With regard to the first I show that the possession of such characteristics at most shows that the universe has an ontological status that is equivalent to some reference point. With regard to the second I argue that the Characterisation Principle (i.e. in some world – not necessarily the actual world – an object has the properties that it is characterised as having) entails that non-existent objects possess their properties in virtue of some existent entity and that the only plausible candidate for such an entity is a divine mind of some sort. (shrink)

It is well known that, according to some, philosophical reflection on zombies (i.e., bodies without minds) poses a problem for physicalism. But what about ghosts, i.e., minds without bodies? Does philosophical reflection on them pose a problem for physicalism? Descartes, of course, thought so, and lately rumours have been surfacing that has was right after all, that ghosts pose a problem for both a priori and a posteriori physicalism, and for any kind of physicalism in between. This paper argues that (...) physicalists have nothing to fear from ghosts, since the central consideration employed to motivate ghostly arguments against physicalism--viz., that ghosts are conceivable--is false: ghosts aren't conceivable. (shrink)

The modern belief that mindless forces can be ultimate efficient causes of natural events is a conceptual impossibility. The logically ultimate cause of any change, the something that is ultimately making it occur in the present moment, is either a mind or not. More specifically, the cause either chooses to act or it does not. By choice here, I mean an act of free will in the libertarian sense. Where there is choosing in this sense there must be a mind. (...) And when we say that an agent acts thus freely, we mean that it acts without being causally determined to act by anything beyond itself. However, this is conceptually indistinguishable from the idea of an ultimate efficient cause. To say that an agent is the ultimate cause in a causal chain is, by definition, to say that it acts without being caused to act by anything beyond itself. It is the head of the causal chain. It is, therefore, a matter of conceptual necessity that ultimate causes be minds, a fact that we have been blind to since the Scientific Revolution on the bad analogy of machines. Thus, every force ultimately governing the universe must be a mind corresponding either to the polytheist’s or the monotheist’s generic definition of divinity, and monotheism’s eternal mind will always be the most complete and justifiable explanation for the existence of the universe as a whole, even for the existence of the gods themselves. (shrink)

I first provide an interpretation of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo based on the Fourth Lateran Council, according to which God creates from nothing if and only if God creates everything except God Himself. I then show that this doctrine entails the modal problem that it is both possible and not possible that there is nothing at all except God, or alternatively, that it is both necessary and not necessary that there is something else besides God. I proceed to (...) examine several proposals to solve the problem, and find them all inadequate. Therefore, I conclude that creatio ex nihilo violates modal logic and is necessarily false. (shrink)

This essay explores a simple argument for a Ground of Being, objections to it, and limitations on it. It is nonsensical to refer to Nothing in the sense of utter absence, hence nothing can be claimed to come from Nothing. If, as it seems, the universe, or any physical ensemble containing it, is past-finite, it must be caused by an uncaused Ground. Speculative many-worlds, pocket universes and multiverses do not affect this argument, but the quantum cosmologies of Alex Vilenkin, and (...) J. B. Hartle and Stephen Hawking, which claim that the universe came from literally nothing, would. I argue that their novel project cannot work for reasons both physical (their "nothing" is actually a vacuum state governed by eternal physical laws) and methodological (physical theory cannot explain the emergence of the physical per se). Thus my argument stands. However, as David Hume showed, a posteriori arguments like mine infer a creation, and Creator, of a certain character, namely, a stochastic concept of creation and a panentheistic, partly physical Creator lacking omniscience and omnipotence. Rather than undermining the cosmological argument, as Hume intended, these limitations liberate the concept of the Ground from unnecessary problems, as Hartshorne suggested. (shrink)

In Darwin's Black Box: The BiochemicalChallenge to Evolution I argued thatpurposeful intelligent design, rather thanDarwinian natural selection, better explainssome aspects of the complexity that modernscience has discovered at the molecularfoundation of life. In the five years since itspublication the book has been widely discussedand has received considerable criticism. Here Irespond to what I deem to be the mostfundamental objections. In the first part ofthe article I address empirical criticismsbased on experimental studies alleging eitherthat biochemical systems I discussed are notirreducibly complex (...) or that similar systemshave been demonstrated to be able to evolve byDarwinian processes. In the remainder of thearticle I address methodological concerns,including whether a claim of intelligent designis falsifiable and whether intelligent designis a permissible scientific conclusion. (shrink)