I have to confess that I now regard "the case for theism" as a fraud and I can no longer take it seriously enough to present it to a class as a respectable philosophical positionno more than I could present intelligent design as a legitimate biological theory. BTW, in saying that I now consider the case for theism to be a fraud, I do not mean to charge that the people making that case are frauds who aim to fool us with claims they know to be empty. No, theistic philosophers and apologists are almost painfully earnest and honest... I just cannot take their arguments seriously any more, and if you cannot take something seriously, you should not try to devote serious academic attention to it.
"There are certain things [an evangelical like William Lane Craig] takes to be metaphysical intuitions, like that it's undeniable that the universe must have had a causeand for me it's not. My intuitions are quite different," Parsons says. And what then? He adds, "And then, once we've reached that point, there's just no further to go."