Coming To Be Without a Cause

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Abstract
Quentin Smith contends that modern science provides enough evidence ‘to justify the belief that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so.’ There was a time when such a claim would have been dismissed because it conflicts with a principle absolutely fundamental to all human thought, including science itself. As Thomas Reid expressed the matter: That neither existence, nor any mode of existence, can begin without an efficient cause is a principle that appears very early in the mind of man; and it is so universal, and so firmly rooted in human nature, that the most determined scepticism cannot eradicate it.

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