Abstract

Timothy O’Connor published an essay in Philosophia Christi recently that defends the notion of a necessary God as the explanation for a contingent universe. Graham Oppy and others wrote replies to the O’Connor’s paper. In this essay, I defend O’Connor’s position from Oppy’s criticism, and also argue that Oppy’s own naturalistic alternative is seriously flawed. Among other things, I argue that a contingent naturalist beginning to the universe is an inferior explanation than a necessarily existing God, and that naturalism cannot be coherently thought of as providing a necessary beginning to the universe.