The Cosmological argument.

The cosmological argument is among the weakest in the Christian arsenal. It is rife with logical fallacies, mistaken assumptions and contradictions that I could easily spend chapters on. Instead, I'll deal with it quickly and to the point.

The Cosmo argument claims:

• 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
• 2) The universe began to exist.
• 3) Therefore the universe has a cause.
• 4) God is the most likely cause of the universe.

Let's address these one at a time.

1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
What about Jehovah? Jehovah never had a cause but according to Christians; it exists! I find it amusing that the core ingredient of the cosmo apologetic instantly refutes the existence of the Christian God! Let's continue... What kind of wild, ridiculous, unsupportable statement are we dealing with? How is it possible to prove that EVERYTHING had a cause? This is like Masai tribesmen trying to explain an earthquake. "Well all other earth-shakings come from large, walking animals so a big shaking must come from a big animal." This is exactly the same thing; it is absolutely absurd to look out through our pathetic, tiny, little window of experience and then use it to make authoritative pronouncements about unique, quantum events that we know next to nothing about!

2) The Universe began to exist.
In most models the universe begins to exist, but the model usually assumes that something was around previous to the universe. Perhaps Big Bang is a looping model, exploding and imploding over infinity. Maybe Big Bang (as superstring theorists believe) was the result of a brane collision. Few models say there was nothing before the universe yet even a model as simple as: "Nothing than Universe" is certainly no less logical than the Christian alternative.

3) Therefore the Universe has a Cause.
I pretty much covered this under my first argument. It is the epitome of arrogance to make authoritative pronouncements of things we can neither observe nor duplicate. Infinitely unique events like the creation of a universe or the genesis of life cannot be analogized with paper airplanes and wristwatches.

4) God is the most likely cause of the universe.

This is an insane leap of logic. Let's discuss it...

• a) The most obvious mistake is the ad hoc leap that if something cannot be explained than we can only assume that the ancient, heathen-killing god of the Hebrews MUST'VE done it. This is akin to stating that since we don't know what culture built the Sphinx - Leprechauns must've done it.

• b) Which brings me to "Which god?" Here we see a mistake which continues to confuse the hell out of Christians: Christians have named their god, "God" which leads to serious confusion and side-stepping. Christians are constantly slipping between arguments involving Jehovah, the tribal mountain-god of the ancient Hebrew and a kind of nameless All-God of unknown properties.

  • i) Jehovah. Christians fail to realize that proving design does not prove the existence of Jehovah anymore than it proves the existence of Ra, Odin, Zeus, Marduk or the Jade Emperor. None of these gods is a good alternative to current scientific theory. The Jehovah model would have the Earth made after the universe about 5,000 year ago, placed on a foundation that does not move with a dome to keep the water above the earth from the water below the earth. Jehovah's Bible is filled with contradictions, scientific inaccuracies, historical mistakes, godly savagery, mistaken prophecies, bad laws, mythologies and absurdities so it is clearly excused as a possible model for the beginning of the universe.

  • ii) All-God of Unknown Properties. No one cares if this creature exists. Honestly - a creature that creates the universe and moves on is seriously no different from a natural event. A Christian would spend his whole life worshiping some ancient Hebrew god and wind up in exactly the same shape as any atheist. This creature is actually NOT a god as it is not being worshiped, neither is it accepting prayers or sacrifices. A nameless non-god, creator would simply be a Big Bang with a brain and our lives are not impacted by whether it exists or not. It is seriously disingenous for Christians to try to prove the existence of an "All-god" when we all know that he is actually trying to prove the existence of Jehovah.

• c) Why would ANY invisible, magical person be a better alternative to a natural cause? Just because we don't know or cannot prove a primary mover NEVER means that "magic did it" is a better alternative. For thousands of years we didn't understand fire, electricity, the human body or climate. During these dark times the "magic did it" argument was the first and most common explanation. As we grew in knowledge and science we have learned that all of these mysteries have a natural explanation. We currently don't know what the prime mover is but statistically we are more likely to find a natural explanation than a supernatural explanation.

Summary:
The Cosmo argument is just more bad logic; making baseless pronouncements and ad hoc leaps. Imagine a medieval clergyman saying "Well we all must agree that blood MUST come from somewhere. Even though the body bleeds - it still has enough blood. We don't know why this is so we must believe in God."

Remember this... The "Nuh, uh... Magic did it!" argument is almost always a bad bet.