Kalam Underwritten by Science?
I wrote a, what I obviously think is fantastic, book on the Kalam Cosmological Argument a few years back. The sort of reviews I have enjoyed getting go something like this:
5.0 out of 5 stars William Lane Craig really should read this book before he says anything else . . .
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2019Verified PurchaseThis is one of the most enjoyable serious works I have read in a while. I particularly enjoyed it because after having listened to or read Craig for more than 10 minutes or so, I get lockjaw and my brain freezes up. I sit there wondering how he can say what he says with a straight face . . . and why so many philosophers have let him get away with it . . . It is at this point that I need to offer a mea culpa. I have avoided getting too deeply into the dialectic because in the debates I have watched in which Lane participated, they were less debates than they were exercises in apologetics. Jonathan Pearce's book is the first that I have seen in which a serious and well articulated analysis of Craig's version of the Kalam Cosmological Argument is presented and debunked. My favorite philosophy instructor as an undergraduate was a graduate student of Wilfrid Sellars and one of the most enjoyable of his courses was "The Philosophy of Religion." It could have been more accurately named "The Philosophy of Judeo-Christianity." I took it in 1974, (I attended a large public university in The South), and the first words out of his mouth as he reached the desk in the front of the room were something to the effect of "By midterm, half of you will not be here." He was right. It was a brutal takedown of all the apologists from the 11th century on . . . Since that time, new arguments have come into being. Prof. Pearce finishes them off. It had been a while since I dived into the deep end of this particular pool so some of the discussion was new to me and I had to chase down some references, but all in all, this book "made my heart sing." It is delicious. If one is interested in Craig's version of the Cosmological Argument and its holes, this is "the book." Again, I must say that I haven't enjoyed reading a serious book like this in a long time. I give it 5 stars.
But we know how it goes. Christians will give atheists 1 star for their books, atheists who give 5 stars for an atheist book, and vice versa for Christian books, give or hake I have just got a Christian review that fulfils this thesis. This person goes into no real detail other than to say that the scientific theory of cause and effect proves God caused the universe:
1.0 out of 5 stars Another Epistemological Failure...pass.
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2020While the author may have a moderate grasp of philosophical discourse and the epistemological underpinnings of The Kalam Argument, he sorely lacks scientific knowledge, and so, he is wrong, every effect requires a causitive antecedent. Reality is no exception to this empirical fact of science. A causitive agency (God) behind The Universe is both philosophically sound as well as scientifically empirical to assert. This book reflects the same old haggard approach to bad science as we saw in Hitchens and Dawkins. Yawn...
This annoys me because, well, this is precisely the sort of guff the book deals at length with. It's like they have not read the book, or actually taken in what it was saying.
Sigh.
If any of you lovely people have read the book, please rate and even review it on Amazon - it makes a heck of a difference. That goes for any of my books. If you didn't like them...meh. (Amazon now do ratings so you don't have to write a review if you don't want to - you can just do star ratings.)
If you haven't, well, you can always grab it here: Did God Create the Universe from Nothing?: Countering William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument [UK]
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