Arguments for god from a former atheist

[Yazata]

Feser begins his chapter 6, entitled "The nature of God and of His Relationship to the World" by writing (p. 116)...

"We have now examined five arguments for the existence of God, which can be summarized briefly as follows. The Aristotelian proof begins with the fact that there are potentialities that are actualized and argues that we cannot make sense of this unless we affirm the existence of something which can actualize the potential existence of things without itself being actualized, a purely actual actualizer. The Neo-platonic proof begins with the fact that the things in our experience are composted of parts and argues that such things could not exist unless they have an absolutely simple or noncomposite cause. The Augustinian proof begins with the fact that there are abstract objects like universals, propositions, numbers and possible worlds, and argues that these must exist as ideas in a divine intellect. The Thomistic proof begins with the real distinction, in each of the things of our experience, between its essence and its existence, and argues that the ultimate cause of such things must be something which is subsistent existence itself The rationalist proof begins with the principle of sufficient reason and argues that the ultimate explanation of things can only like in an absolutely necessary being."

None of these arguments moves me very much. (If Syne believes that they should convert me, he needs to argue for Feser's "proofs" himself, instead of setting everyone up to argue with a video and a book.) Feser seem to me to beg more open metaphysical questions than he answers. His arguments probably do look like slam-dunks, assuming that one accepts all the presuppositions that he embraces upon going into them. These assumptions include the metaphysical status of potentialities (there's a big contemporary literature of that with regard to the sciences), how potentials (whatever they are) are actualized, the relationship of parts and wholes which in Western philosophy is called mereology, the nature of abstract objects and the foundations of mathematics, whether essences exist, and whether Leibniz's 'principle of sufficient reason' has any plausibility.

Those are all problems that remain open questions in philosophical metaphysics and remain profoundly mysterious. One can't just lay out one's preferred answers as Feser appears to do and then refer to them as "principles" from which the rest of his arguments unfold.

Feser does seemingly address my concern about equating metaphysical functions with God on page 181 when he's replying to objections. He writes:

"Even if there were a first cause, there is no reason to think that it would be omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and so forth."

Like "What caused God?", this is commonly put forward as a devastating objection to First Cause arguments. And like "What caused God?", it is in fact embarrassingly inept. Grayling refers matter-of-factly to "the usual big jump" from a first cause to "the god of traditional religion".

Then after taking some shots at Dawkins and Krauss (who aren't philosophers of religion), Feser continues:

"In fact, historically, proponents of each version of the cosmological argument have put forward a great many arguments claiming to show that the cause of the world whose existence they've argued for must have the key divine attributes. Aquinas devotes around a hundred double column pages of dense argumentation in part I of the Summa Theologiae alone -  just after presenting the Five Ways -- to showing that to the cause of the world we must attribute simpliity, goodness, infinity, immutability, unity, knowledge, life, will, power and the like. About two hundred pages of argumentation in book I of his Summa Contra Gentiles are devoted to this topic. Much argumentation along these lines can also be found in Aquinas' other works, such as De potentia and De veritate."

So what we get is a subtle bit of misdirection, shifting away from question of whether the problem itself is serious (it is) towards a straw-man of whether natural theologians have ever addressed it (they have), combined with a seeming argument from Aquinas' authority. Of course, if Aquinas himself didn't perceive it as a serious problem, then he wouldn't have devoted so much effort to trying to address it in so many of his works.

[C C]

Gnawing at the back of my mind, felt there was connection upon remembering the segment below. Feser is one of the spearheads of the "Return to Aristotle" movement explored in a book review I posted a link to a few weeks ago: https://www.scivillage.com/thread-5960-p...l#pid22514

Tim Crane: To these factors must be added a fourth factor, which is often not explicitly credited as an influence on the present rebirth of Aristotelianism: the influence of Catholic philosophy and its own resilient metaphysics. It will not be news to readers of this journal that Catholic seminaries and universities continued to teach Thomistic philosophy (itself a form of Aristotelianism), and leading Thomist (or Thomism-inspired) philosophers such as Bernard Lonergan have had a wide influence, albeit one which rarely made contact with mainstream metaphysics in the twentieth century. Yet the revolt against the dominant Humean metaphysics in recent decades has led to more dialogue (and even collaboration) between Catholic and what I am calling mainstream philosophy. The present book is a good example. Many of the contributors are Roman Catholics—some known independently for their work in the philosophy of religion—and some teach at ­Catholic universities in the United States. Their Catholicism plays little direct role in their actual philosophical contributions to this volume, but it provides the intellectual framework within which many of these thinkers work.

One of Feser's previous books was Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction.

Andrew Fulford: . . . Nevertheless the age of Aristotle being widely accepted in the minds of all people, as consciously or unconsciously suffused through philosophy departments, pulpits, and public houses, is surely now past. Yet, sometimes ideas long buried have a way of returning. And in fact in reflecting upon metaphysics, science, and ethics, a growing number of contemporaries are returning to the views of the ancient Greek. But one philosopher in particular has become known, at least in the blogosphere and in the Christian world, for his part in this trend. The philosopher in question is Dr. Edward Feser. Many of his recent books [...] have tackled related subjects, but his most recent publication, *Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction*, is perhaps the one closest to a pure philosophy textbook in format. Unlike *The Last Superstition*, it is not written at the popular level nor directed primarily at atheists as its target, and unlike Aquinas, it is more narrowly focused on one subdiscipline of philosophy. It has advanced students for its intended audience, and the apex of natural knowledge for its topic. https://calvinistinternational.com/2014/...roduction/

~

[Syne]

He lays out the connection (not a hidden premise) quite clearly.

No, no, he doesn't. It's still all classical theism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument

In the OP interview, Feser does lay out why First Cause has the attributes of a theistic god. You must have missed it, or misunderstood.
And who said any of his arguments were wholly new?
As Feser even said in that interview: "...and it is important to emphasize, as I do in the book, none of these arguments I put forward in the book are new; they're not original with me."

Then explain it.

I'm not here to spoon feed you. If you don't have the time, so be it.

And there it is, his usual modus operandi.  No, of course you're not here to spoon feed us. You're here because you want us to spoon feed you. Read the book.

He's written several books.  He's referenced in the wiki article on the five ways, and yes, it's not only in his last book, but included in this one as well. The quote was from him.

So, you think you've told me anything I don't already know? Pfft!
Of course Feser is mentioned in a wiki on Aquinas; he wrote a book about Aquinas.
We're not talking about that book here. We're talking about one that includes more than Aquinas' Five Ways. How many times do I need to tell you that? O_o

---

Feser begins his chapter 6, entitled "The nature of God and of His Relationship to the World" by writing (p. 116)...

"We have now examined five arguments for the existence of God, which can be summarized briefly as follows. The Aristotelian proof begins with the fact that there are potentialities that are actualized and argues that we cannot make sense of this unless we affirm the existence of something which can actualize the potential existence of things without itself being actualized, a purely actual actualizer. The Neo-platonic proof begins with the fact that the things in our experience are composted of parts and argues that such things could not exist unless they have an absolutely simple or noncomposite cause. The Augustinian proof begins with the fact that there are abstract objects like universals, propositions, numbers and possible worlds, and argues that these must exist as ideas in a divine intellect. The Thomistic proof begins with the real distinction, in each of the things of our experience, between its essence and its existence, and argues that the ultimate cause of such things must be something which is subsistent existence itself The rationalist proof begins with the principle of sufficient reason and argues that the ultimate explanation of things can only like in an absolutely necessary being."

None of these arguments moves me very much. (If Syne believes that they should convert me, he needs to argue for Feser's "proofs" himself, instead of setting everyone up to argue with a video and a book.) Feser seem to me to beg more open metaphysical questions than he answers. His arguments probably do look like slam-dunks, assuming that one accepts all the presuppositions that he embraces upon going into them. These assumptions include the metaphysical status of potentialities (there's a big contemporary literature of that with regard to the sciences), how potentials (whatever they are) are actualized, the relationship of parts and wholes which in Western philosophy is called mereology, the nature of abstract objects and the foundations of mathematics, whether essences exist, and whether Leibniz's 'principle of sufficient reason' has any plausibility.

No one said anything about conversion. That would seem to be your own presumption of anything religious in nature.
Just saying that they don't move you is, at best, an emotional response, not a refute in need of defense.
Which questions does he beg?
Which presuppositions do you reject?
If science knows how all potentials are actualized, do enlighten us.
How does mereology deny a need for "simples" in composites?
Looks like a bunch of arm waving, where you neither raise any specific objections nor offer any alternatives, at all.

You're taking a recap and treating it like the meat of the arguments. That's an intellectually dishonest and lazy straw man, at best.

Those are all problems that remain open questions in philosophical metaphysics and remain profoundly mysterious. One can't just lay out one's preferred answers as Feser appears to do and then refer to them as "principles" from which the rest of his arguments unfold.

"...whatever cliches were trotted out in their introduction to philosophy class when they were a freshman or a sophomore and they heard some of the canned objections that were aimed at caricatures of Aquinas or Aristotle and Leibniz and then they never looked back and then they repeated it to their own students..."
- OP interview

If people refute straw men, it's no wonder they think vast areas of knowledge are still completely up in air.
Do you ever intend to refute a steel man, or just more arm waving?

Feser does seemingly address my concern about equating metaphysical functions with God on page 181 when he's replying to objections. He writes:

"Even if there were a first cause, there is no reason to think that it would be omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and so forth."

Like "What caused God?", this is commonly put forward as a devastating objection to First Cause arguments. And like "What caused God?", it is in fact embarrassingly inept. Grayling refers matter-of-factly to "the usual big jump" from a first cause to "the god of traditional religion".

Then after taking some shots at Dawkins and Krauss (who aren't philosophers of religion),

Who do nonetheless wade into philosophy and religion and are taken seriously on those subjects by a fair number of people, making their assertions worth addressing.

Feser continues:

"In fact, historically, proponents of each version of the cosmological argument have put forward a great many arguments claiming to show that the cause of the world whose existence they've argued for must have the key divine attributes. Aquinas devotes around a hundred double column pages of dense argumentation in part I of the Summa Theologiae alone -  just after presenting the Five Ways -- to showing that to the cause of the world we must attribute simpliity, goodness, infinity, immutability, unity, knowledge, life, will, power and the like. About two hundred pages of argumentation in book I of his Summa Contra Gentiles are devoted to this topic. Much argumentation along these lines can also be found in Aquinas' other works, such as De potentia and De veritate."

So what we get is a subtle bit of misdirection, shifting away from question of whether the problem itself is serious (it is) towards a straw-man of whether natural theologians have ever addressed it (they have), combined with a seeming argument from Aquinas' authority. Of course, if Aquinas himself didn't perceive it as a serious problem, then he wouldn't have devoted so much effort to trying to address it in so many of his works.

LOL!
Maybe if you had read more...since this quote from later is just a recap of a lot of previous arguments (an author expects you to have already read).  

Another stock objection raised against arguments like the one just presented goes like this: If everything has a cause, then what caused God? If we say that God does not have a cause, then maybe other things don’t have a cause either. The argument, so the critic claims, commits the fallacy of special pleading, making an arbitrary exception in God’s case to the rule it applies to everything else. But in fact this objection is no good, and the argument I have been developing does not commit any fallacy of special pleading. First of all, the argument does not rest in the first place on the premise that “ everything has a cause.” What it says is that any change requires a cause; more precisely, it says that whatever goes from potential to actual has a cause. That is very different from saying that everything whatsoever has a cause. Secondly, the argument is by no means arbitrary in claiming that God does not have a cause of his own. For the reason other things require a cause is precisely because they have potentialities that need to be actualized. By contrast, what is purely actual has no potentialities, and so there is nothing in it that needs to be, or indeed could be, actualized. Nat­ urally, then, it is the one thing that need not have, and indeed could not have, a cause of its own.  

The importance of these points cannot be overemphasized. Some critics of first cause arguments are so invested in the “ If everything has a cause, then what caused God?” objection that they are reluctant to give it up even when it is exposed as being directed at a straw man.
...
They might also suggest that the argument refrains from saying that everything has a cause merely as an ad hoc way of avoiding the “What caused God?” objection. But there are three problems with this suggestion. First, even if the suggestion were true, that wouldn’t show that the claim that whatever goes from potential to actual has a cause is false or that the Aristotelian argument for God’s existence is unsound. To assume that a person’s motivations for making a claim or giving an argument by themselves cast doubt on the claim or the argument is to commit an ad hominem fallacy.
- p. 39-40

And he takes this objection apart in many places throughout the book.

[Secular Sanity]

If the actual actualizer isn’t actually actualizing until there’s actual potential to actualize, and if there’s actual potential for potentiality then that leaves only the potential to actually actualize, but if there’s the potential to actually actualize potentiality then that would mean that the potentiality could be actualized at some point in time. But if it’s timelessness that we’re dealing with then there would be no time to actually actualize the potentiality for the actualizer, which, of course, would mean that there’s actually no actual actualizer that has the potential to actually actualize potentiality. 

However, if the purely actual actualizer were to take the time to make time then there would be time to actually actualize the potential for potentiality then that would change everything because change is real Δ.

Edit: Nope-nope. That doesn’t work either because if an unchangeable thing changed anything then that would change the unchanging thing because he changed something. And if a timeless thing took the time to create time then that would mean he had the time to take and therefore wasn’t timeless. OMG! I don't have time for this shit.

Insanity of insanities; all is insanity. 

*wink* Insanity...it’s my second favorite sin. Hah-hah!

See you guys when I get back.  

[Ostronomos]

God isn’t logically necessary, sweetie, and as soon as anyone resorts to metaphysics (rabbit of a hat), once they make that leap, you can’t touch it. Why? Because it's magic, silly boy. Game over, like I said. What do you want me to say?  How 'bout *BAM! You're healed?   

Science is comfortable with uncertainty. It doesn’t deal in absolutes. It isn’t dogmatic. The process is based upon criticism, open-mindedness, gathering new data, and further experimentation and explanations.

I'm not interested in debating God as a necessary cause.

Turtle loo

God is only unnecessary with regard to certain things in lower order reality. Namely, the physical. IOW God is unrelated to the physical. But He is absolutely necessary for consciousness and self-perception to exist, which are effects of God's self-perceptual and sentient mind. That is why God is disconnected. He exists in higher order reality. The complexity and intricacy of higher order reality is a requisite of intelligence. The physical world conceals the processes of this intelligence. Good and evil exist and without God as a standard we could not measure them.

---

If the actual actualizer isn’t actually actualizing until there’s actual potential to actualize, and if there’s actual potential for potentiality then that leaves only the potential to actually actualize, but if there’s the potential to actually actualize potentiality then that would mean that the potentiality could be actualized at some point in time. But if it’s timelessness that we’re dealing with then there would be no time to actually actualize the potentiality for the actualizer, which, of course, would mean that there’s actually no actual actualizer that has the potential to actually actualize potentiality. 

However, if the purely actual actualizer were to take the time to make time then there would be time to actually actualize the potential for potentiality then that would change everything because change is real Δ.

Edit: Nope-nope. That doesn’t work either because if an unchangeable thing changed anything then that would change the unchanging thing because he changed something. And if a timeless thing took the time to create time then that would mean he had the time to take and therefore wasn’t timeless. OMG! I don't have time for this shit.

Insanity of insanities; all is insanity. 

*wink* Insanity...it’s my second favorite sin. Hah-hah!

See you guys when I get back.  

Unchanging things are non-existent, since all things in existence change. This includes God. What is being referred to by the word "unchanging" with reference to God is His nature, not his actions and potentials to act. Time itself is a subset of God along with reality and so God is transcendent to time and reality. In your quick haste to show pride in your explanation you ignored the fact that there must be a means by which potential for God's existence may be actualized. Now, the book grants that God is the actual actualizer of this potential, suggesting His self-creative capacity (His ability to actualize Himself). As syne pointed out above God does not need a cause. In creating Himself, reality becomes real as a result. Since God is reality, and reality is God. The interchangeable identification of the two necessitates a relationship. Your failure at deconstructing this logic is telling. It shows that you are willing to strictly adhere to atheistic ignorance rather than seeing the logic behind an ultimate substrate/ ground of being.

[Syne]

Nope-nope. That doesn’t work either because if an unchangeable thing changed anything then that would change the unchanging thing because he changed something. And if a timeless thing took the time to create time then that would mean he had the time to take and therefore wasn’t timeless. OMG! I don't have time for this shit.

So you supposedly read a whole book and still don't have a clue. That's a sad sad waste of time.
What a pathetic life, where you have ample time to devote to things you have no other motive than to ridicule, which naturally bars any possible understanding.

[Yazata]

Gnawing at the back of my mind, felt there was connection upon remembering the segment below. Feser is one of the spearheads of the "Return to Aristotle" movement explored in a book review I posted a link to a few weeks ago: https://www.scivillage.com/thread-5960-p...l#pid22514

Hi CC.

I have no objection to Aristotle, in fact he's probably my favorite philosopher of all time.

What I like about him is that he gave shape to the whole landscape of philosophy, defining and first writing about many of its component subjects from metaphysics to formal logic. He was also the father of biological science and more or less originated the academic prose style of scientific and philosophical writing that we still see today. (Except from a few French post-modernists, influenced by the surrealists, I guess.)

Aristotle did good work in every subject he touched upon, from aesthetics and ethics to the reproductive biology of invertebrates. In my opinion, it's really amazing coming from one man.

But... I don't think that Aristotle has given us definitive and final answers to any of the questions he touched upon. His value lies more in defining issues and creating vocabulary that we still (sometimes) use today. While his theories are still discussed and oftentimes still influential, they aren't final answers to philosophical problems.

Nor, for that matter, is Aquinas' 13th century Aristotle-Christianity synthesis. (Despite Aquinas and Thomism later becoming the official philosophy of the Catholic church.)  

Aristotle focused research problems for later thinkers to wrestle with, more than he succeeded in solving them. But given his context in the 4th century BCE, it's hard to ask for anything more.

Concerning the idea of 'Back to Aristotle', I do think that modern philosophy got off on the wrong foot in some ways, and has been chasing its tail in circles regarding some misconceived issues. So returning to earlier philosophical ideas might arguably be helpful.

[Ostronomos]

Sanctity (poetry by Nicholas Hosein)

The wonder of the immaculate perfection

Demands the rising of applause

For in his attempt at exhibiting something truly original

Maelbrock the Magnificent received the attention of Gods from the multi-verse

It was a relationship never to be rebuked

For in his perfection, God introduced Himself

And the reverberating similarity was equally met by Maelbrock

The eternal feedback of God's consciousness and Maelbrock's transcendent genius was nigh

For it necessitates an eternal friendship between the two.

[Syne]

But... I don't think that Aristotle has given us definitive and final answers to any of the questions he touched upon. His value lies more in defining issues and creating vocabulary that we still (sometimes) use today. While his theories are still discussed and oftentimes still influential, they aren't final answers to philosophical problems.

Who has claimed Aristotle gave us definitive answers? Who makes the arguments of Aristotle without any more modern support?
Again, these objections look like they only apply to straw men. Lots of unfounded assumptions and caricatures.

[Syne]

As expected, after all the protests of not spoon feeding SS and Yaz, both completely ignore when I appease their disingenuous demands:

Feser begins his chapter 6, entitled "The nature of God and of His Relationship to the World" by writing (p. 116)...

"We have now examined five arguments for the existence of God, which can be summarized briefly as follows. The Aristotelian proof begins with the fact that there are potentialities that are actualized and argues that we cannot make sense of this unless we affirm the existence of something which can actualize the potential existence of things without itself being actualized, a purely actual actualizer. The Neo-platonic proof begins with the fact that the things in our experience are composted of parts and argues that such things could not exist unless they have an absolutely simple or noncomposite cause. The Augustinian proof begins with the fact that there are abstract objects like universals, propositions, numbers and possible worlds, and argues that these must exist as ideas in a divine intellect. The Thomistic proof begins with the real distinction, in each of the things of our experience, between its essence and its existence, and argues that the ultimate cause of such things must be something which is subsistent existence itself The rationalist proof begins with the principle of sufficient reason and argues that the ultimate explanation of things can only like in an absolutely necessary being."

None of these arguments moves me very much. (If Syne believes that they should convert me, he needs to argue for Feser's "proofs" himself, instead of setting everyone up to argue with a video and a book.) Feser seem to me to beg more open metaphysical questions than he answers. His arguments probably do look like slam-dunks, assuming that one accepts all the presuppositions that he embraces upon going into them. These assumptions include the metaphysical status of potentialities (there's a big contemporary literature of that with regard to the sciences), how potentials (whatever they are) are actualized, the relationship of parts and wholes which in Western philosophy is called mereology, the nature of abstract objects and the foundations of mathematics, whether essences exist, and whether Leibniz's 'principle of sufficient reason' has any plausibility.

No one said anything about conversion. That would seem to be your own presumption of anything religious in nature.
Just saying that they don't move you is, at best, an emotional response, not a refute in need of defense.
Which questions does he beg?
Which presuppositions do you reject?
If science knows how all potentials are actualized, do enlighten us.
How does mereology deny a need for "simples" in composites?
Looks like a bunch of arm waving, where you neither raise any specific objections nor offer any alternatives, at all.

You're taking a recap and treating it like the meat of the arguments. That's an intellectually dishonest and lazy straw man, at best.

Those are all problems that remain open questions in philosophical metaphysics and remain profoundly mysterious. One can't just lay out one's preferred answers as Feser appears to do and then refer to them as "principles" from which the rest of his arguments unfold.

"...whatever cliches were trotted out in their introduction to philosophy class when they were a freshman or a sophomore and they heard some of the canned objections that were aimed at caricatures of Aquinas or Aristotle and Leibniz and then they never looked back and then they repeated it to their own students..."
- OP interview

If people refute straw men, it's no wonder they think vast areas of knowledge are still completely up in air.
Do you ever intend to refute a steel man, or just more arm waving?

Feser does seemingly address my concern about equating metaphysical functions with God on page 181 when he's replying to objections. He writes:

"Even if there were a first cause, there is no reason to think that it would be omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and so forth."

Like "What caused God?", this is commonly put forward as a devastating objection to First Cause arguments. And like "What caused God?", it is in fact embarrassingly inept. Grayling refers matter-of-factly to "the usual big jump" from a first cause to "the god of traditional religion".

Then after taking some shots at Dawkins and Krauss (who aren't philosophers of religion),

Who do nonetheless wade into philosophy and religion and are taken seriously on those subjects by a fair number of people, making their assertions worth addressing.

Feser continues:

"In fact, historically, proponents of each version of the cosmological argument have put forward a great many arguments claiming to show that the cause of the world whose existence they've argued for must have the key divine attributes. Aquinas devotes around a hundred double column pages of dense argumentation in part I of the Summa Theologiae alone - just after presenting the Five Ways -- to showing that to the cause of the world we must attribute simpliity, goodness, infinity, immutability, unity, knowledge, life, will, power and the like. About two hundred pages of argumentation in book I of his Summa Contra Gentiles are devoted to this topic. Much argumentation along these lines can also be found in Aquinas' other works, such as De potentia and De veritate."

So what we get is a subtle bit of misdirection, shifting away from question of whether the problem itself is serious (it is) towards a straw-man of whether natural theologians have ever addressed it (they have), combined with a seeming argument from Aquinas' authority. Of course, if Aquinas himself didn't perceive it as a serious problem, then he wouldn't have devoted so much effort to trying to address it in so many of his works.

LOL!
Maybe if you had read more...since this quote from later is just a recap of a lot of previous arguments (an author expects you to have already read).

Another stock objection raised against arguments like the one just presented goes like this: If everything has a cause, then what caused God? If we say that God does not have a cause, then maybe other things don’t have a cause either. The argument, so the critic claims, commits the fallacy of special pleading, making an arbitrary exception in God’s case to the rule it applies to everything else. But in fact this objection is no good, and the argument I have been developing does not commit any fallacy of special pleading. First of all, the argument does not rest in the first place on the premise that “ everything has a cause.” What it says is that any change requires a cause; more precisely, it says that whatever goes from potential to actual has a cause. That is very different from saying that everything whatsoever has a cause. Secondly, the argument is by no means arbitrary in claiming that God does not have a cause of his own. For the reason other things require a cause is precisely because they have potentialities that need to be actualized. By contrast, what is purely actual has no potentialities, and so there is nothing in it that needs to be, or indeed could be, actualized. Nat­ urally, then, it is the one thing that need not have, and indeed could not have, a cause of its own.

The importance of these points cannot be overemphasized. Some critics of first cause arguments are so invested in the “ If everything has a cause, then what caused God?” objection that they are reluctant to give it up even when it is exposed as being directed at a straw man.
...
They might also suggest that the argument refrains from saying that everything has a cause merely as an ad hoc way of avoiding the “What caused God?” objection. But there are three problems with this suggestion. First, even if the suggestion were true, that wouldn’t show that the claim that whatever goes from potential to actual has a cause is false or that the Aristotelian argument for God’s existence is unsound. To assume that a person’s motivations for making a claim or giving an argument by themselves cast doubt on the claim or the argument is to commit an ad hominem fallacy.
- p. 39-40

And he takes this objection apart in many places throughout the book.