God and Ultimate Origins: A Novel Cosmological Argument

God and Ultimate Origins lucidly compacts a gigantic breadth and depth of philosophical and scientific research on the concept and fact of causality and its importance for the cosmological argument. Causality is crucial to our epistemic foundations. Even Kant could not escape it. The fact that Kant needed causality to account for understanding causal relations seems to beg the question. While to some it may seem that Kant dealt a death blow to the cosmological argument, the objective necessity of and inescapability from causality makes the cosmological argument as realistic as any research in empirical science. Andrew Loke capitalizes on that. He first makes a sweeping survey of the most important issues related to the cosmological argument, particularly the Kalam Cosmological Argument, and observes how each objection has been or could be rebutted. Then, noticing that the KCA as well as the Thomistic argument do continue to invite more objections from theories of time and issues of actual infinities, he tries to combine the both by offering a novel argument which he illustrates with a simple analogy of a series of train cars drawn by an engine. Of course, he observes that there could be disanalogies between the illustration and the idea of causal series. However, he does his best to answer each and tries to explain why his argument has a greater advantage over the others. He also musters a number of scientific research findings to reinforce the a posteriori part of it and displays patient and arduous labor in freezing a wide ocean of research into this 200 page book. A must buy for all interested in the question of ultimate origins.

This was an unconventional book, in that it had information that was in debt, but plain enough to read for those without a doctorate.