Self doubt is not the cause of suffering: it is suffering. Self doubt is to the soul what a toothache is to a tooth. Doubt is a cavity craving to be filled, in other words, and we either try to fill it with approval from others which we mistake for love, which is like trying kick a sugar addiction by eating more sugar, or we learn what love is and let it fill us up, turning that hole in the ground into a swimming pool that allows us to float up out of it, and into a whole new life.

1. Rebutting the Argument from Change

Peter Kreeft is a professor of Philosophy at Boston College and The Kings College. He has written several books on Christian philosophy, theology and apologetics. In his lectures on Faith and Reason, he posited 20 arguments for Theism, which I now intend to dispose of. His first argument is below.

ARGUMENT 1. The first argument is the argument from change. The most universal feature of all our experience is time. Even our mind is in time, though not in space, like our body. It takes time to think. Everything - both matter and mind - changes.

Either there is or is not some real being that does not change. That would be a divine attribute enough to disprove atheism and prove some sort of God.

This unchanging being would be the cause of all change, the explanation for all change, and nothing else could. If there is no first mover, then there could not be any second movers or any movement at all. But there is movement. Therefore, there must be a first mover. No one denies the second premise, so it is the first that the atheist must deny. How does the theist try to prove it?

By the fact that change works by cause and effect. Each change requires a changer, a cause. If no cause, no effect. And if the second event is the effect of the first event, there can be no second without the first, and no third or fourth or anything else. In other words, no change anywhere without an absolutely first changer.

But an absolutely first mover must be outside the universe, so to speak. Of course, it can't be literally in some place outside the universe, because the universe is the sum total of all space and time. So this being would have to be more than the universe, not in space and time at all.

If the first event had no cause at all, if the Big Bang had no Big Banger, then we would have something utterly unscientific as well as irrational: the whole universe popping into existence out of nothing for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Nothing could be more unscientific than that.

- IN SHORT: this argument rests on the idea that there must be a first mover that moves everything else, a first "cause" that was itself uncaused, but is the cause of everything else.

-Analysis:
 - This argument assumes at least 4 things:

1 - that there was 'something' that preceded the universe "popping into existence"

2 - that whatever that thing or stuff was that existed prior to existence was necessarily "changeless"

3 -  that whatever this changeless thing or stuff was that preceded "the whole universe popping into existence" constituted a "being" 

4 - and that "being" consciously choose to create everything in existence "out of nothing."

QUESTIONS Raised by this argument:

Aside from the above problems raised by this question, the argi,emt itself raises still other questions. Such as...

- if there was, in fact, a "being" that pre-existed the creation of all time and space in existence, where did that "being" come from?

- if that "being" was always there, from forever, why can't the stuff that constitutes what you refer to as a "being" simply have always been there without it actually constituting a "being"?

- how, in other words, can we distinguish between when everything in pre-existence constitutes a "being" and when it does not?

- and if the stuff in pre-existence does constitute a "being" per se, how do we know it was "a" being and not 'beings'?
- How, in other words, do we go from assuming  that someting must exist outside of time and space (which itself is problematic) to assuming that whatever does exist outside of time and space must be a "being" and that "being" must be a God?

FIRST PROBLEM -

- The FIRST problem with this argument is that we as human beings lack the mental capacity to imagine, and therefore adequately discuss, what kind of stuff, or "thing" (if anything), exists entirely outside of all time and space.  Thus, this argument suffers, on its face, from the same limitations as discussions about what places like Heaven and Hell are supposedly like. Indeed, all three places - Heaven, Hell, and pre-existence -  may all share the same quality of being equally fictitious.  As a result of our limitations, we tend to, however unintentionally, describe a space less/timeless existence using terms that apply to our space/time existence. This is because we have no other option. Thus, the terms "nothing" and "changeless" are simply the opposites of "something" and "change," both of which are terms denoting properties of space and time. As such, we would need a whole new vocabulary, and a whole new frame of reference, to be able to begin to discuss the properties of a spaceless/timeless pre-existence existence. Without a new vocabulary and frame of reference, such discussions become little more than speculations ranging from pure abstraction to the completely unintelligible.

  

TO ILLUSTRATE THIS PROBLEM:

- The term "nothing" only brings to mind an empty space. For example, it could be the answer one might give to the question, "what's in your pocket?" or "what's in the box?" Thus, to use the term "nothing" to describe pre-existence is to attribute a space property to an existence that has no properties of space. Ergo, to say the whole universe popped into existence out of "nothing" has no meaning, because it simply attributes to pre-existence a property that was not formed until existence existed.   

SECOND PROBLEM -anthropomorphizing:  In addition to attributing time/space properties to ideas about spaceless and timeless existence, we also have the problem of attributing human characteristics to non human substances, things, stuff, or ideas. We do this all the time. Examples are found in phrases such as "father time" or  "old man winter" or "the angry sea." Even referring to God as "he" or "him" is to attribute a human gender to a deity that theists admit is neither human nor gender specific. To conclude that whatever preceded time and space must have, or may have, created time or space is simply to characterize that pre-existence stuff to look or operate like ourselves. In other words, it simply shapes whatever that stuff was to operate as we would operate if we were that stuff. In this way, we simply create the idea of "God" in our own image because we have no better image to create him out of or shape him into. After all, we wouldn't shape the most powerful force we can imagine to look like an ardvark. And this is because we tend to think of humans as the smartest "beings" we know (depsite the fact that some research has shown that other animals may, in fact, be smarter than we are.)

THIRD PROBLEM - Change.  How do we know what does, or does not, "change" in a spaceless/timeless existence, when the only sense of "change" any of us has is in space and time? If God does not exist in space and time, does that mean he can make no changes? Does this mean God can not even change his mind? How can we understand stories of Lucifer being cast out of Heaven and thrown into Hell, if these things did not happen in some chronological existence that allows for before and after?

FOURTH PROBLEM - Being. If we accept that nothing that existed before time and space existed can change, why must we necessarily accept that whatever changeless stuff/thing existed had to be a "being?"

 There are at least 7 POSSIBLE APPROACHES (this list is not exhaustive):

1. maybe all that existed prior to existence was changeless (maybe even god-like) stuff, but no God.

2. maybe the changeless stuff that existed prior to existence was indeed God, as the theist argues, but that still tells us nothing about what or who or why he, she, or it is, or what he/she/it wants from us.

3. or maybe the changeless stuff that existed prior to existence was not "a" God, but some panoply of Keebler elf -Gods, who could be equal or unequal to each other. And perhaps the one elf-God who created our existence was the worst of the bunch. Perhaps our universe was built by a God-flunky. 

4. or maybe there were many Gods and they all, equally or unequally, contributed to creating our existence, and the one responsible for creating humans failed his assignment.

5 or maybe there really was "nothing" at all before existence existed, however unscientific that idea may be.
6. or maybe everything in our current existence "existed" prior to this existence, but just in a different form that we have yet to, or perhaps we will never fully, understand.

7. or maybe there is no such thing as "pre-existence" that has any meaning we can relate to or discuss. In other words, is suggesting that a pre-existence existed simply the same thing as suggesting that God exists? Are we not just simply shifting the focus from the inhabitant to the abode? Are we being asked to assume the existence of latter only so we can infer the existence of former?

 3 Answers:

 ONE - since no one knows what, if anything, existed before the whole universe popped into existence, any and all ideas are simply speculation. And all speculations regarding an existence no one has any experience or understanding of would therefore be equally valid, no matter how absurd. Why, for example, must we assume whatever unchangeable stuff existed before existence was God? Maybe what existed before existence existed was just stuff. And it's as easy and logical to infer that that  unchanging "stuff" was just "stuff" and not a God, as it is to assume that that unchanging stuff was a God.

TWO - If we assume that the unchanged changer that exists outside of time and space is God, why do we assume it is simply "a" God, and not two gods, or three thousand Gods, or an infinite number of Gods? All of whom are unchanging and exist eternally, but may be, by our calculations, equal or unequal to each other. And perhaps it was the worst of them all that created us and our current universe and existence.

THREE - The real problem with this argument is it demonstrates how we lack the ability, language, and tools to know or imagine, let alone adequately discuss, what, if anything, preceded existence. This argument demonstrates only how limited the theist is in imagining what could have preceded existence, other than God. In this sense, the "choice" to believe in God is not exactly "free" so much as it's the only visible option the theist can see. But this says more about the mind of the theist than it proves the existence of a God. And a faith that has run out of other options to choose from, does not prove the logical certainty of what it clings to. Such a faith clings to the drift wood of an idea floating in an ocean of uncertainties because it is blinded to the life boats around it by the glare of its own reflection in the water.