Is an acausal universe the best response to the Kalam cosmological argument?

Image: NASA

We look at how a top Medium science writer, Dr. Ethan Siegel, responds to the Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God.

With almost as many followers on Medium as President Obama, Ethan Siegel is at the very top of popular writers and may lead the pack in science writing. I have learned a great deal from Dr. Siegel over the years on Medium and have appreciated his ability to go deep into the science and sometimes even make it reasonably understandable to a non-scientist like me. But, sometimes he gets into philosophy, as many physicists and cosmologists are wont to do, and when he does, his dogmatic commitment to atheism and physicalism becomes very clear.

That’s fine. As I have written frequently, I have no objection to scientists philosophizing. When they claim, as Hawking, Krauss, de Grasse Tyson, and others have done, that only they can really do philosophy because of their expertise in science, or they don’t make it clear when they move from speaking about science to philosophizing, I do object.

Ethan Siegel has done that, and does it most blatantly in his recent post on the Kalam cosmological argument. His headline, at least, suggests that science has done away with this powerful and ancient argument for the necessity of a First Cause or God. This…