Conclusion
In conclusion, then, I think that the refutations proffered by Mackie of thekalām cosmological argument were all too quick and easy. Nor do I think Oppy has succeeded in rehabilitating those refutations.
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References
Graham Oppy, “Craig, Mackie, and theKalam Cosmological Argument”,Religious Studies 27 (1991): 189–97; in response to William Lane Craig, “Prof. Mackie and theKalam Cosmological Argument”,Religious Studies 20 (1984): 367–75; itself a response to J.L. Mackie,The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 93–95; a refutation of the argument in William Lane Craig,The Kalām Cosmological Argument, Library of Philosophy and Religion (London: Macmillan, 1979).
Oppy, “Kalam Cosmological Argument”: pp. 194, 195.
Ibid.: pp. 194, 195.
Alvin Plantinga, “Is Theism Really a Miracle?”Faith and Philosophy: 3 (1986): 117.
See discussion in Michael J. Loux, “Introduction: Modality and Metaphysics”, inThe Possible and the Actual, ed. Michael J. Loux (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 48–49.
Ludwig Wittgenstein,Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. Cora Diamond (Sussex, England: Harvester Press, 1976), p. 103.
Oppy, “Kalam Cosmological Argument”: pp. 195.
Ibid.: pp. 194.
Ibid.: pp. 195.
Ibid. Graham Oppy, “Craig, Mackie, and theKalam Cosmological Argument”,Religious Studies 27 (1991)
Saul A. Kripke,Naming and Necessity, rev. ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), pp. 140–42.
Oppy, “Kalam Cosmological Argument”: pp. 196.
13.Ibid.: pp. 196.
I refer again to my account in “God, Time, and Eternity”,Religious Studies 14 (1978): 497–503 and add my “Julian Wolfe and Infinite Time”,International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11 (1980): 133–35. I hope to provide a fuller and more satisfactory account in a forthcoming book on divine eternity.
Oppy, “Kalam Cosmological Argument”: pp. 196.
Oppy, “Kalam Cosmological Argument”: pp. 196–97.
Craig, KalāmCosmological Argument. pp. 99–102; idem William Lane Craig, “TheKalam Cosmological Argument and the Hypothesis of a Quiescent Universe”,Faith and Philosophy 8 (1991): 104–08.
William Lane Craig, “God and the Initial Cosmological Singularity,”Faith and Philosophy (forthcoming); idem William Lane Craig, “Theism and Big Bang Cosmology”,Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (1991): 496–99.
See the concurrence of my atheist interlocutor Quentin Smith, “The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe”,Philosophy of Science 55 (1988): 39–57. Our bone of contention is whether the originex nihilo of the universe requires a cause; see William Lane Craig, “The Caused Beginning of the Universe”,British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (forthcoming).
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Craig, W.L. Graham Oppy on the kalām cosmological argument. SOPH 32, 1–11 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02773076
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02773076