This afternoon, while going through an old e-mail account, I stumbled across something I had long forgotten about: humorous (though not very flattering) photos from 2002, which capture what I consider the "tipping point," right before I made the transition from atheist to theist.
That year, I was still an undergrad, at Baruch college, and had really been trying to grapple with the Kalaam Cosmological Argument, as it appeared in the writings and debates of William Lane Craig. I was reaching a point where the argument was starting to seem insurmountable for me, so I turned to one of the adjunct professors for help (mainly because at my college, it seemed all the adjuncts were focusing on analytic philosophy, while the tenured professors fell on the "continental" side of the divide).
I turned in particular to an adjunct professor named Mark Zelcer, who I considered particularly brilliant, who was teaching the intro to philosophy of religion class, and who said he was familiar with the Craig's version of the cosmological argument. After class, one day, we began to discuss the subject. What stood out for me, in particular, was his preferred attack on the premise that "everything which begins to exist has a cause for its existence".
Professor Zelcer argued that in any event where something comes into existence (especially an event like the universe popping into existence), Okham's razor supports it coming into existence uncaused rather than via a cause. He argued that this was the case because, if we posit that it came into existence uncaused, we are only positing the existence of that which came into existence, while those who propose a cause are proposing the existence of two entities: that which came into existence and its cause. He declared that the latter position was therefore, in his words, "ontologically gluttonous".
I was incredulous, and offered various objections, and we wound up going back and forth, meandering through various related subtopics, while taking turns furiously scribbling things on the white board for the sake of illustration. At the end of our discussion, I was left even more disillusioned, as I felt as though there might be no escape from the argument. I started conceding that, at the very least, "theism is rational rather than irrational," and myself became a theist about a year later.
At the end of that semester, the professor asked students to submit a short piece of writing on how the class effected their philosophical or religious worldview (e.g. did their positions remain the same, did they change their position, if so, how, et cetera...). I submitted a sarcastic piece titled "Professor, You Is Make Me A Theist," with deliberately bad grammar in the title, and throughout the body of the piece, because, you know... theists are supposed to be idiots, buffoons, uneducated cretins from the great unwashed lumpenproletariat. While it was primarily a piece of satire, at its core was a tacit admission of my disappointment.
-Denis
