Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up

From a customer review of Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up:

Plenty of the arguments for God's existence here are well known; in fact, they are classics, and have been the subject of discussion and refutation for centuries. They may fortify the faith of those who already believe (although Paulos shows that they are untrustworthy fortifications), but again, already believing is the key. Right off the bat is the First Cause argument, presented in Paulos's summary:

1. Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes.
2. Nothing is its own cause.
3. Causal chains can't go on forever.
4. So there has to be a first cause.
5. That first cause is God, who therefore exists.

It all seems convincing at first sight, and believers who wish to use this sort of thinking as evidence for their beliefs would be wise not to give it a second look. Paulos explains that a big problem is #1 above, which assumes too much. An alternative #1 is, "Either everything has a cause, or there's something that doesn't," and there isn't any way of getting around the truth of that. If everything has a cause, then God does, too, as does his cause and so on forever; and if there is something that doesn't have a cause, there is no reason that this something has to be elevated into the supernatural, for the physical world itself might be the thing that does not have a cause, and that's an end of the chain.