My former professor and friend, the late Canadian postmodern philosopher David Goicoechea, gave this assessment of philosophy since Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the Continental (as opposed to Analytic) tradition:

Postmodernism and deconstruction are usually associated with a destruction of ethical values. The volumes in the Postmodern Ethics series demonstrate that such views are mistaken because they ignore the religious element that is at the heart of existential-postmodern philosophy. This series aims to provide a space for thinking about questions of ethics in our times. When many voices are speaking together from unlimited perspectives within the postmodern labyrinth, what sort of ethics can there be for those who believe there is a way through the dark night of technology and nihilism beyond exclusively humanistic offerings? The series invites any careful exploration of the postmodern and the ethical.  (Goicoechea, David. Agape and Personhood: with Kierkegaard, Mother, and Paul (A Logic of Reconciliation from the Shamans to Today) (Postmodern Ethics Book 2) . Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.)

If religion and superstition reside at the heart of postmodernism and existentialism, then my MA degree focusing on Heidegger is useless.  Now, while it’s clear postmodernity uses theological terminology, it has nothing to do with “gods” in the faith sense, and as a secular writer I try to show this in everything I write about Heidegger.  For example, Heidegger says regarding pantheism:

In its formal meaning, pantheism means: pan-theos, ‘Everything – God’; everything stands in relation to God; [this means] all beings are in relation to the ground of beings. This ground as the One, hen is as ground what everything else, pan, is in it, in the ground. Hen kai pan. The One is also the whole and the whole is also the One … Hen kaipan, this followed Heraclitus’ fragment hen panta einai, Fr. 50, and was according to the spirit of the time the chosen motto of the three young Swabian friends, Schelling, Hegel, and Holderlin. (S, 68)

Clearly here is the use of the god of pantheism to get at a more original concept of ground.  For all their obsession with the Greeks (which I share, lol), postmodern thinkers like Goicoechea have neglected the insights of Protagoras.  Protagoras, the 5th-century BCE Greek sophist, is famous for his agnostic stance on the existence of gods, encapsulated in a fragment that’s both bold and cautious for its time. Here’s what we know he said, based on surviving references (since his own works are mostly lost). His most relevant statement comes from a fragment preserved by Diogenes Laërtius in Lives of the Philosophers (9.51). Protagoras reportedly wrote, in his work On the Gods:

“Concerning the gods, I am unable to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form; for many are the things that hinder knowledge: the obscurity of the matter and the brevity of human life.”

Let’s explore this. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is a traditional proof for the existence of God that says everything that begins to be has a cause.  The universe began to be (The Big Bang), so the universe  had a cause which is not itself caused by anything (God).  This doesn’t offer evidence for any particular God (Zeus, Yahweh, Thor, etc.,) just that there must have been something. 

The logic of the argument is straightforward.  For example, I had parents, and they had parents, as did my grandparents.  This cannot go on indefinitely and so presupposes a cause that did not have parents.

 The Kalam Cosmological Argument is a philosophical and theological argument for the existence of God, rooted in the idea that the universe had a beginning and therefore requires a cause. It’s named after medieval Islamic scholastic theologians (particularly Al-Ghazālī), though it has been refined and popularized in modern times by philosophers like William Lane Craig. The argument is relatively straightforward but has sparked plenty of debate. Here’s the basic structure:

Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause. 

This leans on the intuitive principle of causality—things don’t just pop into being without something making them happen. You don’t see a chair appear out of thin air without someone or something crafting it.

Premise 2: The universe began to exist. 

This is supported by both philosophical reasoning (e.g., the impossibility of an infinite regress of events) and scientific evidence (e.g., the Big Bang theory, which suggests the universe had a starting point about 13.8 billion years ago).

Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause. 

If both premises hold, logic demands a cause for the universe. The argument then often extends to say this cause must be timeless, spaceless, immaterial, and immensely powerful—qualities typically ascribed to God.

Key Points of Debate:

Premise 1: Critics (like some physicists or philosophers) might argue that quantum mechanics allows for uncaused events—like particles popping into existence. Defenders counter that these events still occur within a framework of physical laws, not from absolute nothing.

Premise 2: Some propose the universe could be eternal or part of a multiverse, avoiding a beginning. Proponents respond with arguments against actual infinities (e.g., Hilbert’s Hotel paradox) or point to cosmological evidence like the second law of thermodynamics suggesting a finite past.

The Cause: Even if accepted, does the cause have to be God? Could it be something impersonal, like a quantum fluctuation? Theists argue the cause must have agency to initiate a universe with fine-tuned complexity.

This all relates to the concept of cause and effect, so lets look at the nature of concepts, specifically the category of cause.  What does it mean to be a category? 

The word “category” comes from the Greek word κατηγορία (kategoria), which has an interesting and layered etymology tied to ancient Greek language and philosophy. κατά (kata) is a preposition meaning “down,” “against,” or “concerning,” depending on context. Here, it suggests something being directed or applied.  ἀγορεύω (agoreuo) is verb meaning “to speak in the assembly” or “to proclaim publicly,” derived from ἀγορά (agora), the Greek word for the public marketplace or gathering place where people debated and discussed.  Literally, κατηγορία means “a speaking against” or “an accusation” in its earliest usage, as in a public charge or statement made in the agora. It carried the sense of calling something out or naming it in a formal setting.

The term was famously adapted by Aristotle in his work Categories (part of his Organon). He used κατηγορία to mean a fundamental way of classifying or predicating things about a subject—essentially, the basic “things that can be said” about something. Aristotle’s categories (e.g., substance, quantity, quality) became foundational to Western logic and metaphysics. Here, the sense shifted from “accusation” to how something is “spoken of” in a systematic way.

“Cause” isn’t one of the ten categories for Aristotle because it’s a principle that underlies and explains the categories, not a predicate within them. For example, “action” (poiein) or “affection” (paschein) might involve causality implicitly, but they describe the state or activity of a thing, not its reason for being. Cause is a meta-concept for Aristotle, not a standalone category.  Just the same, it retains the idea of the different ways things can be spoken of.  “Cause” is central to Aristotle’s metaphysics and physics, elaborated in works like the Physics and Metaphysics. He identifies four types of causes (αἰτίαι, aitiai), often called the “Four Causes (which can be taken figuratively) “:

Material Cause – What something is made of (e.g., the bronze of a statue).

Formal Cause – The form or essence that makes it what it is (e.g., the shape of the statue).

Efficient Cause– The agent or process that brings it about (e.g., the sculptor; a feminist interpretive paradigm, etc).

Final Cause – The purpose or end for which it exists (e.g., to decorate or honor).

If we think of the idea of accusations made out in public, the publicness of the statement implies an everyday averageness of the proclamation: simple statements accessible to everyone.  The categories bear this sense as the average way one finds that predicates are said about things.  The categories do not extend to sophisticated and difficult understanding of things, and as physicist Carlo Rovelli notes categories used for average addressing of the world like time and substance with properties don’t fit well at the level of the really small.  Kant explicitly noted cause was a category and reflected work by the mind because to say A causes B means B follows A “according to a rule,” the Understanding being the faculty of rules.

These causes answer why something exists, not just what it is, so they operate at a different level from the categories. For Aristotle, understanding a thing fully requires knowing its causes, but the categories are more about classifying its attributes.  Parmenides noted apprehending and Being are the same, categories function well enough in the everyday world to apprehend but fall into thoughtlessness the further we press them.  For example, apprehending distance fractionally is fine for everyday purposes but falls into conceptual absurdity the further we press the matter.  For example, in order to go from point A to B, I must first make it halfway between A and B to middle point C.  But in order to get to C, I must make it halfway between A and C to point D, and so on absurdly to infinity.  A similar problem pops up with the Kalam cosmological argument, as Kant noted.  The problem is that space is conceived by Kalam as a massive finite container.  But if the universe is such a finite container, it is itself an object and so has dimensions.  This means thought demands that the universe must be contained by something bigger, since we can’t think a finite space unless we think it contained in some bigger space container.  Kant thus noted a finite universe takes thought into thoughtlessness just as an infinite universe does.

(wiki)

This proceeds on indefinitely and so finite space is impossible if we try to grasp it using everyday categories like substance and quantity.  The Kalam cosmological argument only has force because it’s conception of space as a giant container remains unexamined.  Cause and substance are not fundamental descriptions of reality, but ways in which we apprehend and speak about things.  For example, Hegel noted the category of Unity is not a characteristic of the sock, but rather how the mind inconspicuously and unconsciously organizes experience, which is made manifest when we tear the sock the category of unity is made conspicuous “as” a lost Unity. Craig is right infinite space leads to thoughtlessness, but so does finite space. We naturally and without justification apply everyday examples and analogies to try to defend something beyond everyday experience.

Aristotle simply took his categories from how they show up in everyday language as the way we address things. In this regard Aristotle chose of his word for Being “ousia,” this expression ousia was still synonymous in Aristotle’s time with what was at someone’s immediate disposal: with property, possessions, means, wealth (BP, 108). In this way, while the presence-at-hand of the table is inconspicuous, if it is in dispute whether a table is green or not the dispute is resolved by appealing to the table “at-hand.”