The Cetera Ain't Paribus

Quentin Smith, in his paper "Time Was Created by [née 'Began With'] a Timeless Point," gives the following strange argument:

There are two familiar, contemporary responses to [the question of why spacetime came to exist]. The theist says that the question has an answer and that this answer is that God caused spacetime to begin to exist. The standard response of the atheist is to say that there is no answer to this question; spacetime’s beginning to exist is a brute fact or has no explanation. This standard atheist response seems to give theism a prima facie theoretical superiority to atheism; theists offer a detailed explanatory hypothesis about why spacetime begins to exists, and standard atheists are content to leave spacetime’s beginning to exist unexplained.

I reject standard or traditional atheism and side with theism on this issue. A theory that includes an explanatory hypothesis about some observational evidence e, such as spacetime’s beginning to exist, is ceteris paribus epistemically preferable to any theory of the observational evidence e that does not include such an explanatory hypothesis. No atheist has ever provided a proof that the existence of spacetime is a brute fact and, consequently, standard atheism remains, in this respect, an unjustified hypothesis.

Well, let's see. I have an invisible dwarf living in my stomach who created the universe ex nihilo. My invisible, stomach-dwelling dwarf is therefore, ceteris paribus, epistemically preferable to any theory of the observational evidence to hand that does not include a causal account of the origin of spacetime.

What could possibly be wrong with this argument? Hmmm...

Comments

[Dom]

"The standard response of the atheist is to say that there is no answer to this question; spacetime's beginning to exist is a brute fact or has no explanation."

Strawman. The standard response of the atheist is actually that of reserved judgement. The null hypothesis might be that the existence of the universe is brute fact, but that's just a null hypothesis; there's no reason the atheist won't change their view as soon as evidence for another is presented.

It's also a bit of a politician's fallacy: there must be some reason spacetime exists, theism is some reason, therefore theism is why spacetime exists (or, theism is epistemically preferable to other theories).

[Q the Enchanter]

Yeah, well maybe it's worth pointing out that Smith not only has the argument wrong, but exactly backward: If contemporary cosmologists had claimed that as a matter of scientific fact spacetime had no cause, then the theist's claim that spacetime did have a (supernatural) cause would in fact be an independent reason to reject theism, not to prefer it (science having historically been proven the better epistemic bet).