The Raving Atheist is honored to be the target of the debut post of The Secularist Critique, whose modest ambition is to offer “criticism of atheism, secularism, materialism, and every other ism that is false and inhuman.” Before I address his specific criticism of me, a few words about what I find fascinating, philosophically-speaking, about the concept of an anti-secularist blog.

Atheism, as the term suggests, is largely a negative philosophy — it is anti-theism, anti-God, anti-religion, a denial of whatever positive assertions may be made about a deity. But anti-secularism is a negative-negative philosophy, a denial of a denial; it is anti-atheism, anti-anti-theism. Formal logic notwithstanding, anti-secularism presents a case in which two negatives do not make a positive. The anti-secularist does not merely promote a particular positive theology — Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, Branch Davidianism or Jews for Jesus-ism — but attacks the attacks on all of those religions. It is polytheism at its most extreme, a relativistic, ecumenicalist God Squadism.

Thus, the anti-secularist must defend the Christian assertion of the divinity of Jesus and the Jewish denial of it; the Judeo-Christian-Islamic denial of over 30 million Hindu deities; the Wiccan worship of the God and Goddess. Even when advocating a generic god-of-the-philosophers theism, the anti-secularist must simultaneously defend conflicting definitions of the alleged divine attributes (i.e. Gellman’s, Mavrodes’s, Swinburne’s, Taliafero’s varying concepts of omnipotence). More significantly, this difficulty extends to God-command theology and thus all of morality (morality is the whole point of religion, isn’t it?) — the anti-secularist must defend God’s conflicting edicts on abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia homosexuality, cannibalism and whatever else is advocated or opposed somewhere, anywhere, on religious grounds.

The Raving Atheist is anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, pro-euthanasia, pro-homosexuality and anti-cannibalism. Presumably there is some religious denomination espousing the exact same combination of positions these issues. The anti-secularist will have the daunting task of demonstrating why I am right for the wrong reasons on each issue, and why I am wrong on each issue for the reasons offered by some competing sect. Unless, of course, The Secularist Critique is just another Catholic blog.

In any event, TSC has taken me to task for my false and inhuman account of the first cause argument (in Monday’s God Squad Review):

Apparently, atheists don’t actually read the arguments, they just make up fictitious premises that are easy for them to refute. The amazing thing is that ever since Bertrand Russel[l] goofed up the argument, publishers like [P]rometheus [Books] have been continuing the error. Now that’s professional competency! I challenge anyone to show any historical ‘first cause’ argument that contains the premise ‘everything must have a cause’. Good luck

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And in yesterday’s post, TSC attacks Diana Hsieh as “another philosopher prop[a]gating the straw man premise ‘everything must have a cause.’” He concludes:

Again, it would be good if atheists actually consulted the actual historical sources for these arguments instead of making them up so that they are conveniently contradictory. I’m starting to think though, that it’s not really about truth, but creating a nice little self-affirming bubble to live in, one where they can go on believing that belief in God is analogous to [S]anta [C]lause blah blah blah.

Very well. The contested premise is found in the second of St. Thomas Aquinas’s “five ways“:

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

The underlined language, fairly read, states that nothing causes itself (because it would be, impossibly, prior to itself), i.e., that everything is caused by something else prior to it. It has been interpreted as such by every philosopher, theistic and atheistic, for the past eight hundred years, including, as TSC notes, Bertrand Russell. And even if you refuse to concede that the premise “nothing causes itself” is the same as “everything has a cause,” you’re still saddled with the same contradiction: if nothing causes itself, how can God cause Himself?

So it’s hardly a straw man premise. And, as I was careful to point out, it’s not even a bad premise. But TSC’s entire argument was a straw man; my main objection to the first cause argument did not involve the substance of that premise, or even its conflict with the conclusion:

But the primary difficulty with the first cause argument lies elsewhere. There is nothing self-contradictory about an uncaused first cause, or about an infinite regress of causes. The real problem is attributing the characteristics of the traditional God to the first cause, or to the infinite regress of causes. The Squad doesn’t pretend to explain how it derived existence of a world-protecting, peace-giving and soul-saving creature from its cosmological thesis. Being first or being infinite doesn’t imply being omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent or, for that matter, even conscious. Nor does it resolve the various contradictions between those attributes.

Apparently, theists don’t actually read the arguments, they just make up fictitious premises that are easy for them to refute . . . .