Julia Sweeney on The cosmological argument

Julia Sweeney's encounter with the cosmological argument followed the trajectory of many deconversion stories: it seemed compelling until she asked the obvious follow-up question. If everything needs a cause, what caused God? And if God does not need a cause, why does the universe? Once she allowed herself to take this question seriously — rather than dismissing it as she had been trained to do — the argument lost its force.

In Letting Go of God, Sweeney describes this realisation with the mixture of humour and pathos that characterises her work. She had accepted the cosmological argument for decades without examining it, treating 'God created the universe' as a satisfying terminus for the chain of causation. The discovery that this was an arbitrary stopping point — no more justified than stopping at the universe itself — was one of the intellectual dominoes that toppled her faith.

Sweeney's contribution to the discussion is not philosophical originality but emotional honesty. She captures what it feels like to have an argument you once found airtight suddenly reveal itself as hollow — and the disorienting experience of realising that you accepted it not because it was convincing but because you were never encouraged to question it.