How would you rebut James Fodor's argument against the Contingency Argument?

James Fodor is an atheist physicist who has written rebuttals against the Christian faith and its arguments for God. One of those articles that he wrote was [*A Case for Christianity: a Critique*](https://jamesfodor.com/2014/05/02/a-case-for-christianity-a-critique/) in which he tried to debunk the contingency argument. I was wondering how you would reply to him? Here are some quotes from the article: **On Contingency** > The speaker argues that the universe is probably contingent, because > the universe is simply the sum total of everything in the universe, > and as far as we know everything in the universe is contingent. There > are several flaws with this argument. First, we simply do not know > very much about the large-scale structure, origin, and nature of the > universe. We do not know what was possible and what wasn’t – the > science (and philosophy) of these matters is a long way from being > settled. For the speaker therefore to simply assert that ‘as far as we > know everything is contingent’ grossly overstates the extent of our > knowledge, and dismisses too readily the high levels of uncertainty > that remain. Second, the speaker actually gives no reason as to why > the universe should be contingent even if all of its constituent > components are contingent. This is simply the fallacy of composition. > He does acknowledge that it isn’t logically necessary that this be the > case, but then he simply brushes off this objection and asserts that > ‘it is a real stretch’ to argue that the universe could be necessary > even though all its constituents are contingent. Why? No argument is > given. Indeed, there seem to be many obvious counterexamples where > properties of the whole are not manifested in any of the parts. For > instance, cells are alive, but cells are made up of nothing but atoms, > which are not alive. Words have meaning, but words are made up solely > of vibrations of air or dots of ink, which do not have any meaning > associated with them individually. To give another example, we would > have to ‘go and look’ to see if any particular book was in a library – > that fact would be contingent. But it would not be a contingent fact > that a library contains books of some sort, or else it would not be a > library at all. For these reasons, the speaker fails to establish > their conclusion that the universe is contingent. **On the Principle of Sufficient Reason** > The speaker argues that all contingent facts must have some reason or > explanation as to why they are the case, a notion which is called the > ‘principle of sufficient reason’. He argues that this principle > underpins essentially all of science, and that rejecting it leads to > nonsensical conclusions. However, I think the speaker fails to > establish their argument about PSR, for the following reasons. First, > he is not clear about exactly what constitutes a ‘reason’. Is it a > physical cause? A non-physical cause? An explanation? A purpose? What > exactly? It seems difficult to take the argument very seriously when > it is not even clear what claim is actually being made. On a related > point, even the notion of causation itself is philosophically > problematic, as David Hume and others have noted. To this the speaker > makes no reference at all, and seems content merely to take the > concept of ‘causation’ as an unproblematic given. Second, the fact > that something like the PSR (arguably) ‘underpins all of science’ does > not imply that it is everywhere and always true. The author falls into > the same trap that he accuses the naturalist speaker of falling into, > namely of assuming that because a given concept sometimes works or is > successful in a particular sphere (in this case science), it therefore > follows that it is universally applicable. That simply does not > follow. It could be the case that science works well for questions > where PSR (or something like it) is applicable, and does not work well > for questions where it does not. One can also raise the deeper > question of whether science actually provides ‘reasons’ or ’causes’ at > all, rather than merely describing empirical regularities (again, as > argued by Hume). These are complex and much-debated questions in > philosophy, but the speaker ignores them, and simply adopts as > ‘obvious’ particular simplistic answers which, conveniently enough, > also support his argument. Third, to reject the PSR does not imply > ‘nonsense’. It merely is to say that we do not properly understand > abstract and difficult concepts like ‘causation’ well enough to make > confident claims about them.