Quentin Smith

Quentin Smith is an American analytic philosopher of religion, language, and time, long associated with Western Michigan University. He is among the most prominent atheist philosophers in late twentieth-century analytic philosophy of religion, best known for his sustained critique of theistic uses of Big Bang cosmology. In Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (1993), co-authored with William Lane Craig, Smith argues that the standard cosmological model is consistent with atheism and that any first physical state is uncaused, undermining the kalam cosmological argument. Against Craig, he defends the coherence of an uncaused universe and the legitimacy of speaking of states 'at' the initial singularity. Smith has also developed a tensed (A-theory) philosophy of time, notably in Language and Time (1993), and edited influential volumes on time, tense, and modality with L. Nathan Oaklander and others. His provocative essay 'The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism' criticized professional philosophers for what he saw as the field's failure to push back against the resurgence of analytic theism led by Plantinga, Swinburne, and Craig. Critics including Craig, William Lane Craig's collaborators, and Robin Collins have contested his interpretation of quantum cosmology, the Hartle–Hawking model, and the metaphysics of causation. Smith's work remains a central reference point in debates over the kalam argument, fine-tuning, and the relationship between physical cosmology and natural theology.