Reflections on the Theism-Atheism Debate
Theism, or the belief in the existence of a creator God, is usually held on two main grounds. These are known respectively as the causal argument and the argument from design. Briefly stated, what the causal argument rides on is a principle of reason that commonsense has come to take for granted. It is not possible for something to come from nothing. From this, it further follows that since the universe is a kind of thing (albeit a very big one and perhaps bigger than we will ever know), ‘something’ other than the universe itself must have already existed to bring it about. And this ‘something’ is to be understood as a supernatural being called God. As to the argument from design or design argument as it is also called, the reasoning is that if it were not to be assumed that the universe is an designer and engineer in and unto itself, it should follow that all the clock-like operations of nature at large, and the wondrous workings of material nature (living and conscious ones in particular), must have been the work of some supernatural designer cum engineer. And this supernatural being is again to be referred to as God.
(1) Controversy over the causal argument
Well, says the atheist, if theism must ground itself on the presupposition that something must come from something, or that it is not possibly for anything to have come from nothing, from what did God come from? What created the creator and what created the creator of the creator and so on? If you feel that this is already quite a mouthful, you should also begin to appreciate the pain. It is that when pushed, all causal explanation would tend toward an indefinite regress, which, in the