Book Plug: Evidence for the Existence of God

Posted in Books, Thomism on  | 5 minutes | 3 Comments →

If you commented or read at CSA much, you might remember a commenter that went by the name of Martin. Well, Martin recently informed me about his new book titled Evidence for the Existence of God, written under the pen name James Kelly and available in Kindle edition for $1 on Amazon. The book is available for free Sunday March 10th and Monday March 11th. I especially liked how he addresses various objections to each of the arguments he presents, which are essentially just recaps on the classic Thomist arguments. For example, in reference to a common atheist retort against Aristotle’s argument from kinesis:

Objection: What about virtual particles? Virtual particles pop into existence without a cause. Or beta decay, where atoms decay without any cause.

It’s far from clear that there is no cause. There are at least a dozen different interpretations of quantum mechanics, and about half of them theorize that there is a cause and half do not. This objection relies upon a simplistic understanding of causation. If all causation is “billiard ball” causation, like little balls or particles bumping into each other, then perhaps quantum mechanics might provide some evidence against it. But causation is not like that. The sun causes plants to grow, magnets cause metal to move, volitions of agents, water freezing or melting, and so on are all examples of causative relations that are not simplistic billiard balls knocking into other billiard balls. So the observation that there is no particle bumping into an atom causing it to decay is not evidence that there is no cause at all.

I sent Martin a few questions, which turned into a mini-interview of sorts. Enjoy, and download the book!

Read More →