First Rebuttal - Mitch Hodge



In a debate that took place between Bertrand Russell and Fredrick Copelston on BBC in 1957 (copies are the transcript are published in various works including, The Existence of God, John Hick, ed. [McMillian Publishing: 1964]) Copleston started out the Cosmological debate with a position very similar to yours. Russell was quick to point out the fallacy in such thinking by retorting with a parody which displayed the reification present in Copleston's assertion. He said,

"Every man has a mother, and it seems to me that your argument is that therefore the Human race must have a mother, but obviously the Human race hasn't a mother-- that's a different logical sphere."

The problem here is that you are assuming (in the traditional philosophical way) that the Universe has a cause. You are making this assumption based on the belief that because the parts of the Universe are contingent, then the universe itself must be contingent. Yet, as two different theist demonstrated (Boethius and Proculus), such a assertion is a confusion of kind. Both of these philosophers agreed that the Universe was eternal regardless of the fact that the parts were contingent.

There is another problem with this argument as well. According to the tradition which you are trying to defend, God is immutable. If God is immutable, then he cannot change. If God created the universe, then God changed when the universe was created insomuch as He was not the creator of the Universe, but then He was. If this be the case, then God cannot be immutable.

I think that you also weaken your argument severely by the appeal to the authority of Stephen Hawking, and then to truth by consensus. It should be noted that when Hawking or any other cosmologist is referring to the beginning of the universe, it is not actually the beginning of the UNIVERSE that they are speaking of. They are talking about how the universe can to be as we know it today. There is still much to be explained, and it is not as if the Steady State Theory and the Bang/crunch theories have been proven false by any stretch of the imagination. The Big Bang is speculative, in fact it is more speculative and has less evidence than what can be provided as rational evidence for the existence of God. Therefore, when you appeal to the Big Bang Theory to support the belief in God, then you are actually using the weaker assertion (in actuality, but stronger psychologically because of undue blind acceptance of scientific theory by the masses) to support the stronger claim. Actually, I think it makes more sense to start the argument arguing for the existence of God and using that to support the weaker claim that there was a Big Bang (if you think that the two are linked).

Though it may be the case that the Big Bang is widely accepted, I think this is little evidence of its truth. Appeals to the consent theory of truth can often backfire (of which I am sure that you are aware).