A Question About My Book on the Beginning of the Universe

Dear Mr. Loftus,

I have just started your very informative book, “Why I am an Atheist.” I am trying to better understand your arguments. You said on page 83 that the big bang theory shows that “our universe began to exist.” Then, on page 85 you state, “Craig’s second premise is that the universe began to exist. It too has difficulties.” This seems to be a contradiction. Could you help me understand what you mean by these statements? Did our universe begin to exist or not? You seem to be saying that science proves the universe did begin to exist when refuting Thomas Aquinas, but that it did not begin to exist when refuting William Craig.

Glad to know people are reading my book and think it's informative and hopefully helpful. Thanks for your thoughtful question. I wrote the book over a decade. Some of the chapters began as handouts in classes which I later revised for the book and so you can see development in it. The chapter on prayer was originally written for a church study group. As my thinking changed I tried to harmonize everything with my later perspective, but was probably unsuccessful. The fact is that we cannot say time began. There was no cosmic singularity so we don't know what took place before. So while our universe began to exist we cannot say that it did not come from out of a previous black hole explosion or through tunneling from another universe. The point about the Kalam argument is that it does not show our universe had a beginning in time. To repeat. Our universe began to exist but we cannot say time began to exist with our universe. My argument against the Kalam is that it doesn't show time began to exist either.

Cheers.