Julia Sweeney on The Kalam cosmological argument
Sweeney found the Kalam argument's conclusion — that the universe's cause must be God — an unjustified leap from its premises.
Julia Sweeney encountered the Kalam cosmological argument during the period of intensive reading that accompanied her deconversion. While she found the first two premises — that everything that begins to exist has a cause, and that the universe began to exist — initially reasonable, the leap to God as the cause struck her as unwarranted. Even if the universe has a cause, she reasoned, nothing in the argument establishes that the cause is a personal being, let alone the God of Christianity.
Sweeney's treatment of the Kalam reflects her broader intellectual approach: she is not a philosopher and does not pretend to offer a technical refutation. Instead, she describes the experience of thinking through the argument carefully and finding that each step, while individually plausible-sounding, does not compel the conclusion. The premises might be true, and the conclusion might still not follow — because the word 'cause' is being used in a way that stretches it beyond its everyday meaning.
Her account is valuable as a portrait of how ordinary, intelligent people engage with philosophical arguments for God. The Kalam sounds powerful in a debate setting, but Sweeney found that its persuasive force depended on not thinking about it too carefully — on accepting the conclusion before examining the reasoning.