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Thread: William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological Argument

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    King of Dreams MorpheusSandman's Avatar
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    William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological Argument

    (to the mods: I'm posting this in the philosophical forum because the way the argument is framed is in the realm of philosophical discourse, even though it's on the nature of God; I felt it fit better here than in the Religious Texts sub-forum, but feel free to move it).

    For those who don't know the reference, I mean the (now famous) Kalam Cosmological Argument for the existence of God (there are subsets for these arguments if anyone wants to look them up):

    1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
    2. The universe began to exist.
    3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

    The argument from that basic syllogistic premise to the existence of God is (paraphrased, since I can't find the official version):

    4. The First Cause must be uncaused, personal, beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful.
    5. Only the God of Theism fits that description

    Basically: what does everyone here think of the argument? I'm an atheist myself, but it's been very entertaining reading and listening to the tons of debate over this argument. I do feel that the argument has significant flaws, but I also feel that Craig ultimately offers an inductive argument that's far stronger than most others I've heard for the existence of God. Ultimately, my take on it is that science is still very much up in the air over the truthfulness of both the central premises, and no matter of how many times I hear Craig claim that virtual particles are "caused" because they come out of a "sea of fluctuating energy," I really don't see how he gets from contingency to cause in that scenario. But that's just one minor flaw amongst many others that are interesting to explore.
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

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    Why should 'Whatever begins to exist' have a cause?

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    King of Dreams MorpheusSandman's Avatar
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    Well, because everything we can think of that comes into existence has a cause for that existence. Can you think of any exceptions?
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

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    Quote Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman View Post
    For those who don't know the reference, I mean the (now famous) Kalam Cosmological Argument for the existence of God (there are subsets for these arguments if anyone wants to look them up):

    1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
    2. The universe began to exist.
    3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

    The argument from that basic syllogistic premise to the existence of God is (paraphrased, since I can't find the official version):

    4. The First Cause must be uncaused, personal, beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful.
    5. Only the God of Theism fits that description

    Basically: what does everyone here think of the argument? I'm an atheist myself, but it's been very entertaining reading and listening to the tons of debate over this argument. I do feel that the argument has significant flaws, but I also feel that Craig ultimately offers an inductive argument that's far stronger than most others I've heard for the existence of God. Ultimately, my take on it is that science is still very much up in the air over the truthfulness of both the central premises, and no matter of how many times I hear Craig claim that virtual particles are "caused" because they come out of a "sea of fluctuating energy," I really don't see how he gets from contingency to cause in that scenario. But that's just one minor flaw amongst many others that are interesting to explore.
    (1) seems to be correct, because I cannot imagine any alternative.

    Anyone who rejects (2) must also reject the "standard model of cosmology" which is a key position of 21st century science. This model is so secure that the date of the universe's beginning has even been pinpointed to within 200 million years with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/

    So, (3) is a consequence of (1) and (2).

    (4) and (5) are what is still debatable. The alternative to these two statements is that the universe was created by some unconscious, random process. This has led to theories of a multiverse filled with perhaps 10^500 universes that failed to have any life in them for the one like ours that does.
    Last edited by YesNo; 05-05-2012 at 10:19 AM.

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    Registered User Calidore's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman View Post
    Well, because everything we can think of that comes into existence has a cause for that existence. Can you think of any exceptions?
    You have #4 as an exception above, and #5 to deal with it. A circle also has no beginning or end, nor would a circular process.
    You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi

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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    (1) seems to be correct, because I cannot imagine any alternative.
    (1) Have you heard of virtual particles? They seem to pop into existence completely uncaused by random chance, only contingent on the existence of quantum energy. A sticky matter here is whether contingency and cause is synonymous; I tend to think they aren't, because it's not hard to imagine many things that are contingent on something else that is, nonetheless, NOT the direct cause of that something else. Plus, if the universe brought spacetime into existence, then how does time "begin" when there was no time before? How does causality happen outside of spacetime?

    Quote Originally Posted by Calidore View Post
    You have #4 as an exception above, and #5 to deal with it. A circle also has no beginning or end, nor would a circular process.
    Yes, but Craig will argue that because God never begins to exist, he is not an exception to "everything that begins to exist has a cause." He would have to begin to exist to be an exception.
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

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    Quote Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman View Post
    (1) Have you heard of virtual particles? They seem to pop into existence completely uncaused by random chance, only contingent on the existence of quantum energy. A sticky matter here is whether contingency and cause is synonymous; I tend to think they aren't, because it's not hard to imagine many things that are contingent on something else that is, nonetheless, NOT the direct cause of that something else. Plus, if the universe brought spacetime into existence, then how does time "begin" when there was no time before? How does causality happen outside of spacetime?

    Yes, but Craig will argue that because God never begins to exist, he is not an exception to "everything that begins to exist has a cause." He would have to begin to exist to be an exception.
    Perhaps what you say about (1) makes the conclusion (3) invalid. I don't know. The random popping into existence of virtual particles is how I view the proponents of a multiverse explaining how that might happen. However, the way I look at (1) is that there needs to be some kind of trigger to get the universe started since it had a beginning.

    All I think one can get from the conclusion is that something exists outside of the universe that allowed it to start, that was powerful enough to do such a thing, and that was controlled enough so we are not seeing universes popping out all over the place. Although I believe this is a conscious reality, unlike those who promote a multiverse, I don't think this has to be the God of any particular religion. Craig has 5 arguments suggesting that the Christian God exists. This is his first argument, and the strongest one when confronting materialistic atheism, since it relies entirely on the philosophy of (1) and the modern science of (2). His other four arguments I did not find as convincing.

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    King of Dreams MorpheusSandman's Avatar
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    FWIW, the multiverse is a theory that arises to explain the wave function collapse of quantum mechanics, ie, the famous problem that gave rise to Schroedinger's Cat and the puzzle about why wave functions seem to reduce to a single state (rather than being in a position of several possible states) when it interacts with an observer. It's part of the Many-Worlds (or maybe MW is really a part of MV, come to think of it) interpretation that every possible outcome actually does happen, and we merely observe one of them.

    The multi-verse proponents can also argue that if you combine quantum theory with gravity you have everything needed to create spacetime, so if quantum fluctuations existed before the universe, then it merely needed one to produce the law of gravity. Perhaps the real question then becomes why quantum fluctuations exist at all... my rather simplistic theory is that it's simply not possible for nothing (complete and absolute) nothing to exist, but I'm very interested in being able to perhaps see even further down in the order of things... though it is possible that quanta is really all there is, and everything else is just the way in which certain fluctuations orders itself inside its randomly created laws.

    As for having universes popping out all over the place, I'm not sure why you think that would be likely to happen, or how, exactly, we could know if there actually aren't other universes already out there. Although, out there already supposes a kind of space-time, which maybe other universes wouldn't need (although it's impossible to imagine a universe without them). But it's just as hard for me to imagine a conscious entity existing beyond spacetime, as consciousness is something we only understand through its processes happening within time itself. The very nature of "I think, therefor I am" is innately a sequence of temporal events.
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

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    From what I can tell the multiverse is as speculative as is God in the context of how our universe started or what might exist outside of it.

    Regarding whether there can be a state of nothingness, I think when scientists say that the universe came "out of nothing" (which sounds a lot like it came out of a Catholic catechism), they mean that it came out of nothing like what the universe is made of. However, I may be wrong about that. I'm not a physicist.

    As for having universes popping out all over the place, I'm not sure why you think that would be likely to happen, or how, exactly, we could know if there actually aren't other universes already out there.
    If I remember correctly, one of the early multiverse theories to explain the origin of the universe was rejected because of this possibility. That's the only reason I mention it. One can try to look for evidence of a multiverse indirectly.

    But it's just as hard for me to imagine a conscious entity existing beyond spacetime, as consciousness is something we only understand through its processes happening within time itself.
    The primary question about the cause of the universe that I would find interesting is whether it came from chance or from some act of choice. If it was a choice then there was something that would resemble consciousness involved. I agree that consciousness is normally experienced by us through our physical bodies in space and time. An out of body experience would be an abnormal experience for us but something worth studying as a way to understand more about consciousness in order to understand more about how such a choice could have occurred.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman View Post
    I really don't see how he gets from contingency to cause in that scenario.

    Perhaps you don't see it because you don't understand the difference between efficient and material causes.

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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    From what I can tell the multiverse is as speculative as is God in the context of how our universe started or what might exist outside of it.
    No. Those who propose MV and MW are trying to make sense of actual data and physically occurring phenomena and looking for ways to test it, rather than just mind-projecting a being similar (and thus understandable) to us and walking away from it and boiling everything down to this metaphysical being making conscious choices (somehow outside of things in which we have our only examples of conscious entities doing anything) and looking for more and more ways to make it cleverly unfalisifiable and untestable. Are you more likely to believe the people that say "let me show you" or the people that say "trust me, even when you find evidence to the contrary of what I say"? To put God on the same level as MV/MW is similar to putting flat-earthers on the same level as round-earthers, or Creationists with Evolutionists. Evidence doesn't play fair sometimes, and there's far more evidence for MV/MW than for God.

    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    I think when scientists say that the universe came "out of nothing" (which sounds a lot like it came out of a Catholic catechism), they mean that it came out of nothing like what the universe is made of.
    You are right about that. When (eg) Krauss talks about nothing he's talking about quantum vacuums, ie, empty space, and even that space is filled with quantum events, that "seething sea of energy" as Craig loves to call it. The problem is is that that vacuum is what pre-20th Century people meant when they said "nothing." They meant "non-tangible matter such as empty space," without ever dreaming that there were things so small occurring constantly in that space. Nothing is a word that arose out of our observation on no tangible matter in empty space, but has somehow gotten dragged through our discoveries of such empty space not being empty. So we can still imagine "nothing" even when it doesn't correspond to what we previously thought as nothing.

    My point being that Craig loves to argue that "nothing comes from nothing," but he does so by arguing things like "an eskimo village doesn't just appear on a road!" but that's, of course, because the road and the space around it isn't nothing at all! I contest that "nothing" in terms of complete absence of quanta or physical laws or whatever may not even be a possible state of (non)-existence.

    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    The primary question about the cause of the universe that I would find interesting is whether it came from chance or from some act of choice.
    Well, we know quantum events are inherently probabilistic (by chance) rather than consciously caused, so if such things can cause they universe (and it seems like they can), then I'd put my money on "chance".

    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    An out of body experience would be an abnormal experience for us but something worth studying as a way to understand more about consciousness in order to understand more about how such a choice could have occurred.
    That assumes out-of-body experiences actually happen. Most of the famous reports are exaggerated stories (in the way stories seem to get exaggerated in the repeated telling), and most stated experience can by explained by our brain going into panic mode and attempting to reconstruct the space around us and "put us there" so we can figure a way out of whatever mess we're in. But I do agree it's a phenomenon that needs to be studied more, if only to understand how it works.

    Quote Originally Posted by stuntpickle View Post
    Perhaps you don't see it because you don't understand the difference between efficient and material causes.
    Or maybe it's that Aristotlean philosophy has no place in modern science. Although I'd be curious to hear how either concept can be applied to virtual particles (though I'd pay to watch you explain it to a physicist! Oh, the hilarity!).
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

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    Quote Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman View Post
    Evidence doesn't play fair sometimes, and there's far more evidence for MV/MW than for God.
    What evidence are you referring to?

    Quote Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman View Post
    That assumes out-of-body experiences actually happen.
    I suspect people tend to reject evidence that conflicts with their belief-system. Don't worry. I do it also. Usually, though, I find facing the evidence leads to better insight.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman View Post
    Or maybe it's that Aristotlean philosophy has no place in modern science. Although I'd be curious to hear how either concept can be applied to virtual particles (though I'd pay to watch you explain it to a physicist! Oh, the hilarity!).
    I wonder if it would be as funny as you trying to explain the "serious flaws" in the Kalam to Craig.

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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    What evidence are you referring to?
    I gave you links. FWIW, MW is becoming the most popular theory to explain the mysteries of quantum physics, and while many of the most technical, mathematical details go over my head, I trust the physicists I've talked to that tell me that the math and evidence is there more strongly for it than its competing theories. But I also trust them when they tell me that it's hard to argue for without a thorough understanding of that math. One book I'd recommend is Vilenkin's Many Worlds in One, which is written for lay audiences (and that means anyone who did not study quantum physics formally, including mysef).

    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    I suspect people tend to reject evidence that conflicts with their belief-system.
    I'm not rejecting evidence. I acknowledge that what people refer to as out-of-body experiences are legitimate phenomena (that they experience something that feels as if they're out of their body), and I should acknowledge that since I experienced myself once (when I almost drowned as a child). It's just that the way you phrased the statement made it sound as if you accept such experience as ACTUAL out-of-body experiences, which assumes that there's not a purely neuro-biological explanation, and experiments have been done that have replicated a lot of the aspects of such things, as well as those of NDEs.

    AFAIC, these things are legitimate phenomena, but they are legitimate unexplained phenomena that, right now, don't provide solid evidence for being representative of a conscious LITERALLY out of a body, as opposed to a brain merely projecting itself as imagining being out of its body (as can happen in, say, lucid dreaming).

    Quote Originally Posted by stuntpickle View Post
    I wonder if it would be as funny as you trying to explain the "serious flaws" in the Kalam to Craig.
    Craig lost a lot of credibility to me when he admitted that the first proposition was actually a probability claim based on a very incomplete picture of modern quantum cosmology, but yet he's still using it as proposition and pretending that the conclusion is a deductive proof. One of the major problems with the argument in general is that all of the evidence for the 1st proposition are found in observing physical space-time, and yet he's attempting to apply the principles learned inside space-time to something that must've happened "outside" or "before" space-time (again, whatever concepts like "outside" and "before" even have in such a state).

    The Kalam also is completely reliant on the A theory of time, especially for Craig's claims about impossible infinities, but B theory of time is probably more popular amongst cosmologists right now, and that would (or, at least, should) stop Craig from arguing infinity when viewed as a series of linear succession because there is no such thing (it only appears so from our perspective). I also find it curious he insists on arguing against "actual" infinities when infinity is used all of the time by physicists. He says we only engineer the rules against adding and subtracting to/from infinity because allowing it leads to contradictions, but I've never heard him explain how that's different than any mathematical axioms we have! Everytime he talks about "actual" infinities he does it by imagining finite things, and Hilbert's Hotel is still very much an attempt to imagine infinite through the finite. A better example is to imagine a circle as infinite. One cannot add to or subtract from the circle until they've made it finite to begin with, and I've often thought that ever model we have is just our attempts to cut finite chunks out of an omnipresent infinite.

    Finally, even if our universe begun to exist, that doesn't necessarily mean that whatever is "outside" it or "before it" (again, whatever such words can mean in this case) necessarily had to begin to exist, and causeless, timeless, spaceless seems to fit just as well with quantum fluctuations as it does with a theoretical God (actually, much better because we know quanta exists, and it prevents us from having to work our way around how consciousness can work outside of space-time, as there's no need for such thing in randomly occurring fluctuations).

    I will say this: Craig is a smart guy, and I have as much respect for him as I do any modern theist philosopher (except Plantinga), but there is a reason that his logical arguments fail to impress actual scientists (Stenger, Krauss) and that's because they recognize how silly it is to apply high-school syllogisms to something that has turned out be as completely counter-intuitive as quantum physics and early cosmology. The Kalam, as interesting it is, is still capitalizing on "God of the Gaps" as there are still "gaps" in our knowledge when it comes to this subject.
    Last edited by MorpheusSandman; 05-06-2012 at 05:14 AM.
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

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    it's simply not possible for nothing (complete and absolute) nothing to exist
    http://www.historum.com/religion/368...servation.html
    http://www.christianityboard.com/top...ost__p__139842

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/
    Parmenides maintained that it is self-defeating to say that something does not exist. The linguistic rendering of this insight is the problem of negative existentials ... No relation without relata!

    Parmenides and his disciples elaborated conceptual difficulties with negation into an incredible metaphysical monolith. The Parmenideans were opposed by the atomists. The atomists said that the world is constituted by simple, indivisible things moving in empty space. They self-consciously endorsed the void to explain empirical phenomena such as movement, compression, and absorption.

    http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-...-universe.html
    The earliest philosophers argued that out of nothing, nothing comes (ex nihilo, nihil fit). This ignited intense philosophical and theological debates and invoked challenging questions over the coming centuries. How could our universe in all its complexity come into existence from absolute nothingness, if nothing comes from nothing? In his new book, "A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing.

    Everything that we know about the universe allows for it to come from nothing, and moreover all the data is consistent with this possibility," says Krauss, who teaches in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Department of Physics in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

    The question of creating something from nothing is first and foremost a scientific one—as the very notions of 'something' and 'nothing' have been completely altered as a result of our current scientific understanding. science has literally changed the playing field for this big question. The latest physics research into the origins of the universe shows that, not only can our universe arise from nothing, but more generally, the laws of quantum mechanics and relativity imply that something will generally always arise from nothing.

    http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...d-origins.html

    http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2...ohn-ankerberg/
    As I understand it, the astronomers were reluctant to accept the theory. They doubted it not because of scientific evidence but because of the metaphysical implications: if the Universe was not eternal, then where did it come from? The theory bore too much resemblance to the Creation “myth” of Genesis. Being good scientists, they tried as hard as they could to disprove the whole idea but in the end the evidence was too convincing.

    http://spectrummagazine.org/review/2...signature-cell
    Meyer methodically challenges the central doctrine of today’s scientific establishment that life arose from purely undirected materialistic and naturalistic forces in the absence of intelligence. [bio-info precedes evolution]

    a conscious entity existing beyond spacetime, as consciousness is something we only understand through its processes happening within time itself. The very nature of "I think, therefor I am" is innately a sequence of temporal events.
    Actually, if there are multiple dimensions, universes ... it is possible to communicate across them... provided you know the laws which govern the other universe

    http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...-big-bang.html
    http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...d-origins.html

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