William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological Argument

[MorpheusSandman]

Again, I'm ignoring the mountain of ad hominem to simply stick to what little fragments you stated that have anything to do with anything that's been said.

Craig isn't giving us examples from his worldview, but yours. He's stating that if you assert that something can come from nothing then the following examples are consistent with your worldview. A 747 appearing in your bed for no reason would be, according to the atheist's proposition, logical.

No, that is not consistent with the atheist's proposition, and if you or Craig think so then you clearly ARE equivocating, because my bedroom and the space around it IS NOT NOTHING, it is not A COMPLETE ABSENCE OF ANYTHING, and that's the WHOLE F'ING POINT. Saying that nothing, in the scientific terms an absence of material, time, and space, could give rise to random events that could generate, say, mathematical laws, or something like gravity, from which everything else could be created, is not the same as saying that, once in that "something" that's been created that just anything can appear in it at any time. We're already in the system, and the laws that hold for it may be very different than those that exist (if they exist at all) outside it. Craig is using examples from inside the system to try and argue for how absurd it would be to believe such things outside the system, and it doesn't work, precisely because the "nothing" we refer to inside the system (empty space, the quantum vaccuum) is not CAN, and it is not the nothing outside of it.

The "nothing" that preceded the universe is gone at the point the universe is created. We are now living in a universe that is all "something," especially if we're going to consider space, time, and quantum fluctuations "something." It's this universe that we're observing that should give us whatever metaphysical principles we take as true, but that we take of as true within the universe. That we always look on something--because something is all that we can ever see--and see something coming from it, is evidence that when you're in a system that's all something that something always comes from something else, then that's a law within that system, it is not a law one can willy-nilly apply to anything outside of. There is no "nothing from CAN" that can be stated as a metaphysical principle when we don't know of if CAN is even a possible mode of existence, and if something is always there, then what is the point of evoking CAN to argue for the first premise, and, what's more, why evoke something like causality that is equally only understood within the system where there is no CAN as far as we can tell?

You like to talk about me not understanding anything, but I truly wonder if you (can) understand any of that. Craig's 1P is a proposition that is trying to pertain to more than just things within the universe, and yet, I'm sorry, the examples he gives are very much meant to provoke our "metaphysical intuitions" of how "nothing comes from nothing" inside the universe where his version of CAN doesn't exist. It's incredibly dishonest.

This is, I believe, a gross misstatement. Quantum mechanics is generally thought to involve probabilistic predictions rather than deterministic ones,

Yes, but I think you missed the context in which that bit was quoted: I was referring to predictions as it relates to causality, which were always deterministic until QM. When you're talking about probabilistic predictions it's very dubious as to whether you can still be talking about "cause" in any classic sense.

Besides, there isn't really a clear understanding about what's going on with quantum phenomena.

Indeed, which is why I stress that the Kalam is useless. We don't even have a clear picture of what's going on with the science that it relies on. And, no doubt, whatever interpretation wins out, Craig et al. will retrofit the argument to match the newest data. That's what happens when beliefs don't pay rent in anticipated experiences.

[YesNo]

Praise to Craig. He fights the sick and stupid attitude which atheists have which says that Christians are retarded. He's the man. Even if I disagree with him scientifically at least he fights the arrogance rampant among atheists.

Come to think of it, I think that is part of the reason Craig wins his debates over people like Hitchens and Krauss (and Dawkins if he debated Craig). They come into their debates with an attitude that Christians are intellectually beneath them. This is easy for Craig to work to his advantage.

Not all the people that Craig debates shoot themselves in the foot like these three do. I'm rereading the book version of the debate with Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and the Big Bang Cosmology. My motivation for doing so is that I want to hear the best atheistic argument that can be made. Smith may be able to do that. Hitchens, Krauss and Dawkins are not up to that challenge.

[MorpheusSandman]

So at the beginning of the universe there was nothing, at least nothing that depends on space and time for existence since there was no space and time. That means the universe did not have a material cause. Since it came into being, it must have had an efficient cause.

YesNo, you use the word "cause" so many times in your last post, but what you keep overlooking is this question: What does "cause" mean outside of spacetime?

I've asked that several times, and you keep glossing over it and returning to the word "cause" as if "cause" is something that simply MUST exist outside the universe and outside spacetime. One reason QM seems so mysterious is because it violates our classic notions of causality. Probabilities of events is not the same thing as causal, deterministic events, and whether "cause" is a word that has any meaning in such a context is debatable. So you can keep talking about "material causes" and "efficient causes" for the universe, when I'm asking "perhaps there wasn't a 'cause' at all in any meaningful, classic, intuitive sense of the word 'cause' as everyone understands it." To understand how the universe came into existence may require rethinking our notions of cause altogether. Again, we're trying to talk about reality outside of a fishbowl, and you're still at the point where you're assuming everything outside the fishbowl is wet, and that faces distort as they get closer.

(Some speculate that there is a multiverse which would provide a material cause and a ground for determinism, but even that had a beginning according to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theory Craig mentioned.)

FWIW, BGV states that the universe's expansion had a beginning, which is slightly different than what Craig often leads people to believe. Go to 10:28 here for a much fuller explanation of the GBV theory, what it argues for, and how it doesn't argue for the Kalam as much as Craig leads some to believe. For the most relevant conclusion snippet, Stenger asked Guth if his theory proved that the universe had a beginning, and Guth replied: "No, but it proves that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning."

Although one may not be able to predict the outcome accurately, one can still point to a cause. For example, take the changes in price of a stock index. These are not always predictable, but the cause of the change is obvious.

Yes, but virtual particles aren't stock prices. I'm a professional poker player so I do know a thing about probabilities as it applies to things like cards or the stock market. In such a case, probability does, indeed, express our epistemological ignorance. When I shuffle a deck of cards, whatever card is on the top is there because of how the deck was shuffled, and in such a case, the probability that any card is on top exists due to my ignorance of what that process resulted in. But this is still very different than the kind of indeterminacy that QM talks about in relation to things like virtual particles, because even though we seem to understand what they're contingent on, those fluctuations, we can find absolutely nothing that "causes" them to come into existence when and where they do. We can estimate based on our measurements of mass and velocity, but the more accurate we get on one, the more inaccurate the other gets, which has nothing relation to the probabilities of stocks or decks of cards.

When events "happen by chance" I think we both mean that we do not know enough about the cause to determine the outcome but we still can use a probabilistic model to predict the outcome.

No, I don't think we're quite in agreement. I tried to spell it out above. Probabilistic models that have actual causes express our lack of knowledge about most things in reality, but not, perhaps, about QM. It could just be that we don't know enough about it, but it's been almost 3/4 of a century now, and a lot of people know an awful lot about QM, but we're still not able to talk about causality in any classic sense, and the theories that exist have proven very difficult to test.

Atheism is a belief system just as surely as Christianity

Atheism states what one doesn't believe in, not what one believes in; that makes it very different than Christianity. One can be an atheist without being a materialist, eg. I know atheists that believe in ghosts and the afterlife, but not any traditional Gods.

[YesNo]

YesNo, you use the word "cause" so many times in your last post, but what you keep overlooking is this question: What does "cause" mean outside of spacetime?

I don't think it means anything different outside spacetime as it does within spacetime. Certainly outside spacetime, there is no material cause for determinism to work with, but that doesn't mean there isn't a free, non-deterministic efficient cause, nor that we can skip such an efficient cause because it does not fit into our belief system.

I've asked that several times, and you keep glossing over it and returning to the word "cause" as if "cause" is something that simply MUST exist outside the universe and outside spacetime. One reason QM seems so mysterious is because it violates our classic notions of causality. Probabilities of events is not the same thing as causal, deterministic events, and whether "cause" is a word that has any meaning in such a context is debatable. So you can keep talking about "material causes" and "efficient causes" for the universe, when I'm asking "perhaps there wasn't a 'cause' at all in any meaningful, classic, intuitive sense of the word 'cause' as everyone understands it." To understand how the universe came into existence may require rethinking our notions of cause altogether. Again, we're trying to talk about reality outside of a fishbowl, and you're still at the point where you're assuming everything outside the fishbowl is wet, and that faces distort as they get closer.

I want to suggest something to you. My claim is that the only reason someone would want to say that there wasn't a cause at all is because they want to impose an atheistic set of beliefs upon reality.

Let's extend the fishbowl metaphor. What we thought the fishbowl contained was water and fish. We now know the fishbowl contains other fishbowls each of which contain water and fish.

I think it is OK to consider other ideas of causality. The one I am using comes from Francis Bacon's restriction of causality to material and efficient causes. This came from Aristotle who had four causes and this has grounded science. The test of any new idea of causality is whether it is consistent enough not to undermine our epistemology.

FWIW, BGV states that the universe's expansion had a beginning, which is slightly different than what Craig often leads people to believe. Go to 10:28 here for a much fuller explanation of the GBV theory, what it argues for, and how it doesn't argue for the Kalam as much as Craig leads some to believe. For the most relevant conclusion snippet, Stenger asked Guth if his theory proved that the universe had a beginning, and Guth replied: "No, but it proves that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning."

Actually, I think that might be adequate for Craig's argument. If there was an eternal material cause, that is fine. I think Craig would prefer that there was. I don't think it matters. However, since the expansion had a beginning, an efficient cause started the expansion. That is all Craig needs to use the theorem for his purposes.

Yes, but virtual particles aren't stock prices. I'm a professional poker player so I do know a thing about probabilities as it applies to things like cards or the stock market. In such a case, probability does, indeed, express our epistemological ignorance. When I shuffle a deck of cards, whatever card is on the top is there because of how the deck was shuffled, and in such a case, the probability that any card is on top exists due to my ignorance of what that process resulted in. But this is still very different than the kind of indeterminacy that QM talks about in relation to things like virtual particles, because even though we seem to understand what they're contingent on, those fluctuations, we can find absolutely nothing that "causes" them to come into existence when and where they do. We can estimate based on our measurements of mass and velocity, but the more accurate we get on one, the more inaccurate the other gets, which has nothing relation to the probabilities of stocks or decks of cards.

I agree with you about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I don't think this eliminates the need for a cause, but I will see if I can find out more about that.

No, I don't think we're quite in agreement. I tried to spell it out above. Probabilistic models that have actual causes express our lack of knowledge about most things in reality, but not, perhaps, about QM. It could just be that we don't know enough about it, but it's been almost 3/4 of a century now, and a lot of people know an awful lot about QM, but we're still not able to talk about causality in any classic sense, and the theories that exist have proven very difficult to test.

OK, then we are not in agreement. You claim that Chance (with a capital C) is the cause.

I was reading a little about the tau lepton yesterday that Martin Perl discovered. He found this by converting kinetic energy in an accelerated particle into mass energy and looked at the output. To my understanding he never saw direct traces of the tau particle itself, but he used the conservation laws (charge, baryon number, etc) to reason that the tau lepton must have existed very briefly in order for the output to be what it was. The tau lepton was the material cause for the output and that is the only reason to justify the brief existence of the tau lepton. It seems to me he used classical causality to get his results even though this was quantum mechanics.

Atheism states what one doesn't believe in, not what one believes in; that makes it very different than Christianity. One can be an atheist without being a materialist, eg. I know atheists that believe in ghosts and the afterlife, but not any traditional Gods.

Atheism now has to claim that Chance caused the universe to begin. The validity of atheism depends on this. The only difference between this and claiming that some God did it is that Chance is unconscious. It offers no better understanding of reality than some other generic God. It is just a "Nothing of the gaps" argument.

Actually, I suspect everyone who thinks about it is an atheist to some extent. No one believes in all possible Gods. One of the Gods I don't believe in is Unconscious Chance.

[stuntpickle]

Again, I'm ignoring the mountain of ad hominem to simply stick to what little fragments you stated that have anything to do with anything that's been said.

Perhaps you should learn what ad hominem is before you start accusing people of doing it. Ad hominem isn't simply saying something about someone or calling someone a name. It is to deduce a conclusion fallaciously from an irrelevant statement of character. You can actually make a deduction about a relevant statement of character and be perfectly logical. Or you can make a statement of character in addition to any deduction without committing the fallacy. An ad hominem is like saying Jane is wrong about evolution because she doesn't pay her taxes. Saying it is nearly impossible to discuss philosophy with you because you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding isn't an ad hominem. But please prove my point some more.

Consider:

The major difficulty with labeling a piece of reasoning as an ad hominem fallacy is deciding whether the personal attack is relevant. For example, attacks on a person for their actually immoral sexual conduct are irrelevant to the quality of their mathematical reasoning, but they are relevant to arguments promoting the person for a leadership position in the church. Unfortunately, many attacks are not so easy to classify, such as an attack pointing out that the candidate for church leadership, while in the tenth grade, intentionally tripped a fellow student and broke his collar bone.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#AdHominem

You fail again.

You like to talk about me not understanding anything, but I truly wonder if you (can) understand any of that. Craig's 1P is a proposition that is trying to pertain to more than just things within the universe, and yet, I'm sorry, the examples he gives are very much meant to provoke our "metaphysical intuitions" of how "nothing comes from nothing" inside the universe where his version of CAN doesn't exist. It's incredibly dishonest.

Yeah, I understand perfectly what you're saying: amateurish gobbledygook.

There's no reason that because we now have something, your spontaneous generation ceases to be possible. I demand that you demonstrate the necessity of this proposition logically. I also demand evidence that something can come from nothing.

This is simply another fallacy.

Special pleading is a form of inconsistency in which the reasoner doesn’t apply his or her principles consistently. It is the fallacy of applying a general principle to various situations but not applying it to a special situation that interests the arguer even though the general principle properly applies to that special situation, too.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#SpecialPleading

Yes, but I think you missed the context in which that bit was quoted: I was referring to predictions as it relates to causality, which were always deterministic until QM. When you're talking about probabilistic predictions it's very dubious as to whether you can still be talking about "cause" in any classic sense.

There can be no appropriate context for a material misstatement of fact.

I guess we can simply add quantum mechanics to the list of things you have no clue about.

and if you or Craig think so then you clearly ARE equivocating, because my bedroom and the space around it IS NOT NOTHING, it is not A COMPLETE ABSENCE OF ANYTHING, and that's the WHOLE F'ING POINT.

Talking to you is like engaging in a bad Abbot and Costello routine. To say something is caused by nothing is to say it has no cause, not that it was caused by a thing called "nothing'. The actual equivocation occurs when the person objects to the statement "From nothing, nothing comes" with another implausible, inexplicable variety of nothing. I have already shown you explicitly Krauss's equivocation. You were absolutely incapable of pointing out Craig's supposed equivocation. Dude, you're making the rudimentary error of a kindergartner here. You are making the mistake of thinking "nothing" has positive philosophical properties rather than being a particular grammatical structure. I refer you back to the video of Craig's you've already seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfsYhWNMYr4

The relevant section is AGAIN 24:40

You're again making accusations of equivocation that are unfounded, which you did and then didn't and then did do. The truth is that the objection Craig is answering includes the actual equivocation. You apparently have no clue what I was saying about the reductio ad absurdum. The "you" I was using in my explanation was rhetorical.

Indeed, which is why I stress that the Kalam is useless.

HA! Dude you really do make me laugh. Nice argument.

1. We don't understand quantum mechanics.
Therefore, the Kalam is useless.

Consider:

When a conclusion is supported only by extremely weak reasons or by irrelevant reasons, the argument is fallacious and is said to be a non sequitur. However, we usually apply the term only when we cannot think of how to label the argument with a more specific fallacy name. Any deductively invalid inference is a non sequitur if it also very weak when assessed by inductive standards.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#NonSequitur

At this rate we're going to cover every possible logical fallacy. Keep 'em coming. Nothing quite so invigorating as playing whack a mole with pseudo-arguments.

[stuntpickle]

I want to suggest something to you. My claim is that the only reason someone would want to say that there wasn't a cause at all is because they want to impose an atheistic set of beliefs upon reality.

Bingo! All while claiming that they don't actually have any positive beliefs about it.

I commend you for seeing so clearly through the smokescreen.

BTW, you might find the following interesting, YesNo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg_95wZZFr4

Yes, that's atheist Roger Penrose (of Hawking-Penrose fame) really giving the skinny on some of the issues we're discussing.

[MorpheusSandman]

I don't think it means anything different outside spacetime as it does within spacetime.

Well, there you go, you don't think it means anything different, but how in the world (or, maybe "how in the universe") are you supposed to know when your (and our) entire understanding of causality has been restricted to events in spacetime? I don't think you seem to grasp how radically different things would be without spacetime, and you and Stunt bringing up theories that go back to the ancient Greeks, thousands of years before modern science, even longer before we realized that there was a point when there was no space and time, seems very peculiar to me. Any causes that any philosopher prior to the 20th century talked about was necessarily drawn from observations of events in spacetime, so using that to talk about causality sans-spacetime seems quite silly to me.

Listen, I'm not saying that we must abandon causality and accept the randomness of chance, but what I am saying is that, right now, QM makes sense in no other way. Right now, that's where science is: the relationship between chance and events on the quantum level. Not deterministic causality. Even the deterministic model of QM still have an innate mystery to them as in, eg, MW I haven't heard any theory that proposes why one wave goes to one world and the other stays within ours that we observe. So far, all it's concerned with is stating that this DOES happen, and if it does then it would be determined, but BY WHAT would still be left wide open. Really, what I'm suggesting is that we may have run into the barrier of the fishbowl, we may have reached the point where we cease to be able to understand things in ways that relate to how we experience them within a system where time, space, and certain laws exist. We're trying to penetrate past that point using models that were created to model what is, seemingly, a very different system. Whether or not we can understand anything outside of that is still very much in question, but in such a state of ignorance one can not reliably fall back on notions like causality, or God. Even "chance" seems inadequate considering how the word means something very different inside the system.

Atheism now has to claim that Chance caused the universe to begin. The validity of atheism depends on this.

This is theistic thinking, not atheistic thinking. Again, the validity of atheism doesn't rest on anything except the lack of proof for Gods. That's it. As for the universe, we prefer to let it tell us what to believe. Right now it's telling us that random chance seems to rule things at the quantum level, so that's what I believe. If we suddenly find a deterministic causal mechanism for why things happen as they do, then I'll believe that, including if that mechanism turns out to be God. As Yudkowsky's 3rd Virtue of Rationalism states: "The third virtue is lightness. Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own... Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can... Be faithless to your cause and betray it to a stronger enemy." If the winds of evidence blows towards chance, I believe chance, if they blow towards causal determinism, I believe that, if they blow towards materialism, I believe that, if they blow towards God, I'll believe that. Right now, my belief is directed the same way the winds seem to be blowing, and that's towards chance ruling at the quantum level. That belief, though, is only expressing the best of what's understood now, and that may not reflect what's discovered tomorrow.

[MorpheusSandman]

There's no reason that because we now have something, your spontaneous generation ceases to be possible. I demand that you demonstrate the necessity of this proposition logically. I also demand evidence that something can come from nothing... To say something is caused by nothing is to say it has no cause, not that it was caused by a thing called "nothing'.

Talk about "amateurish gobbledygook."

The "something" we have includes all of the laws that have created the universe as we know it, the universe that we have observed and in which we have extrapolated laws by those observations and tests. Within that system there are limitations on what can and can't happen based on those laws. What the Kalam addresses is not those laws of the universe as it exists and as it has been observed, but what must precede those laws. Yet, in doing so, all of the arguments I have heard regarding the Kalam falls back on arguments based on observations inside the universe. The 20th Century has provide ample proof of how observing things on the macro level (the lack fo 747s spontaneously appearing) tells us little about how things work on the micro-level. This isn't special pleading, this is a statement of fact has been (and is still being) shown through QM and our lack of understanding about it and inability to test the theories that try to explain it.

There is no way in which the general principles that exist to describe what happens in the universe, within its boundaries of spacetime and laws, is equally applicable outside of that. And yet, the Kalam must be applicable to more than just events inside the universe. What we're talking about with the beginning of the universe is, again, things that happen outside of spacetime, outside of those laws that prevent a 747 from spontaneously appearing "uncaused" inside the system. Outside the system there are no such limitations or, at least, if there are limitations we have not discovered them. So it's not special pleading because we are talking about two very different things: the universe and laws that hold within it, and what preceded (and "created") the universe and the laws (if any) that hold there. When science talks about things that can and can't happen inside the universe, that's not to say it must be that way outside the universe. One doesn't even have to appeal to the universe/pre-universe to argue this, since Newton's laws seem to hold perfectly well on the macro-level, even though they're, technically, inaccurate.

So, to conclude: To say everything is caused by something inside the universe is not to say that this general principle holds outside the universe. Outside the universe such a thing would create a system with its own set of laws that would be obeyed, and observing those laws may or may not be relevant to describing reality outside of that. That Craig can amply prove that inside the universe nothing that comes into existence lacks a cause does not prove that this applies to the universe itself.

There can be no appropriate context for a material misstatement of fact.

The context can easily qualify what any propositional statement is referring to. I've mentioned numerous times in this thread that QM is probabilistically predictable, so you trying to make it out as if I was claiming it wasn't predictable at all is either ignorant or dishonest. You choose which one. My statement about it not being predictable was quite clearly related to deterministic causality.

You were absolutely incapable of pointing out Craig's supposed equivocation.

Using examples from physical reality within the universe to argue how nothing comes from "no cause" while using "nothing" (CAN) in a very different way to argue that things don't come from nothing outside the universe.

Again, if I have misunderstood Craig's usage of nothing, then I am far from the only one. There's a lot of smart people that have made this objection, a lot of smart people that are not unused to dealing with very complicated subjects with a lot of terminology that is not easily or immediately understood. I don't think I'm willfully misunderstanding Craig's "nothing," or even your attempted clarification, but even here again now you're switching from "nothing" being related to "CAN" to "nothing" being related to "no cause," which again are two different kinds of nothing.

1. We don't understand quantum mechanics.
Therefore, the Kalam is useless.

When an argument rests upon the truthfulness of things we don't understand, I'd say it is completely useless. If you'd like a silly modus ponens formulation:

1. If an argument relies on the truthfulness of propositions which themselves rely on the truthfulness of theories which are doubtful, then the argument is useless.

2. The Kalam argument relies on the truthfulness of propositions which themselves rely on the truthfulness of theories which are doubtful

3. Therefore, the Kalam is useless

Again, most scientists would just give you a "duh" look if you stated 1. Only would a theist be so concerned with asserting an argument whose premises rest in areas of study that are so full of doubt and uncertainty. Figure out how things work, and then put forth the argument. Don't knowingly admit that things are unknown, yet you're going to arbitrarily pick which is right and formulate an argument out of it. Scientific discoveries have a history of making such attempts look silly, and the people that insisted on them look sillier.

[stuntpickle]

here is no way in which the general principles that exist to describe what happens in the universe, within its boundaries of spacetime and laws, is equally applicable outside of that.

1. If an argument relies on the truthfulness of propositions which themselves rely on the truthfulness of theories which are doubtful, then the argument is useless.

WOW! I have never in my life seen such a brazenly ridiculous claim. You say there is "no way". Wow! Now all you need to do is prove the impossibility of any "general principle" existing apart from the universe such as the basic principles of mathematics (commutative, associative, distributive, property of zero, etc.) and the laws of logic (identity, excluded middle, non-contradiction) --oh no! Wait a second!

All these are generally held to exist apart from the universe already. Oh, crap! You've got your work cut out for you. You're probably going to be busy for the next hundred years, but you might want to check out Roger Penrose's (the guy that did all Hawking's math) The Road to Reality in which he argues quite forcefully for their actual existence apart from material and temporal existence. You might want to check out all of philosophy, most of which contradicts you, with particular interest paid to Plato's theory of forms. I guess you might as well check out all of Western thought, which generally holds counter to your claim. The good news is that somewhere in your reading, around the 18th Century, you'll start to find some persons sympathetic to your cause, but unfortunately, they mostly disappear in the 1930s.

Well, you're certainly ambitious. I wish you luck. Perhaps somewhere along your journey, you'll actually learn how to make an argument that isn't totally asinine.

Using examples from physical reality within the universe to argue how nothing comes from "no cause" while using "nothing" (CAN) in a very different way to argue that things don't come from nothing outside the universe.

Again, if I have misunderstood Craig's usage of nothing, then I am far from the only one. There's a lot of smart people that have made this objection, a lot of smart people that are not unused to dealing with very complicated subjects with a lot of terminology that is not easily or immediately understood. I don't think I'm willfully misunderstanding Craig's "nothing," or even your attempted clarification, but even here again now you're switching from "nothing" being related to "CAN" to "nothing" being related to "no cause," which again are two different kinds of nothing.

Just give me an example with an apparent equivocation. You failed at this once, so let's try again. I will need a source with an apparent equivocation in which two different definitions of the same term are used in one argument. Better luck this time.

The context can easily qualify what any propositional statement is referring to. I've mentioned numerous times in this thread that QM is probabilistically predictable, so you trying to make it out as if I was claiming it wasn't predictable at all is either ignorant or dishonest. You choose which one. My statement about it not being predictable was quite clearly related to deterministic causality.

The statement that quantum mechanics results in "no predictable outcomes" is false. Period. Try your hand waving on someone else.

Consider:

The law of excluded middle can be summarized as the idea that every proposition must be either true or false, not both and not neither.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-log/

Seriously, bud, this is probably your most ridiculous post. I have never, ever, ever seen anyone say stuff this absurd. I've heard stories but never actually witnessed it...until now.

[MorpheusSandman]

This is why I suggested we drop this, Stunt. I'm addressing something, like the Kalam's claims about how things work inside and outside the universe, how that relates to causality and "nothing from nothing", and you completely eliminate that entire context to make it seem as if I'm applying that to everything. Granted, I misstated that first quote, but instead of assuming I misstated it, and that the statement is actually related/limited to what I spent 400 of the 450 words of those three paragraphs discussing, you'd prefer to extract that piece from the whole and base your entire sardonic reply on that.

And I'm dishonest? Yeah right.

Why couldn't you have quoted this part: "Outside the universe such a thing (another general principle) would create a system with its own set of laws that would be obeyed, and observing those laws may or may not be relevant to describing reality outside of that."

Let me rephrase more precisely: We have ample reasons for not assuming that ALL of principles that we have observed holding within the universe, within spacetime, mostly concerning how material reacts to other material, automatically holds in the same way outside of that. This is not to say that NOTHING will hold, that, eg, math or logic or other models won't hold, but it is to suggest that something like causality, something which we only understand within spacetime, may not, and we already have reason to doubt it does thanks to the probability based predictions of QM that are described as happening by chance.

To restate even clearer, for the umpteenth time, The Kalam absolutely relies on the principle of causality to hold outside the universe as well as inside it. Unfortunately, every example it has of supporting itself is inside the universe, and QM and, specifically, virtual particles is one existing potential defeater to the principle, the validity of causality outside of spacetime is another, not to mention all of the scientists suggesting that if the universe began with some quantum event it was likely due to chance, rather than some deterministic cause.

I don't know how you can wiggle away from the fact that the Kalam needs science to be settled on the correct interpretation of QM, as well as the correct interpretation of whether some quantum event is at the universe's origin and how causality works in the absence of spacetime. Unless you want to throw out some scientific names that have solved these issues, there is ample reason to reject the first premise as anything approaching truthfulness. It has the potential of truth, but I'm not about going around promoting potential truths as being something more.

[YesNo]

Well, there you go, you don't think it means anything different, but how in the world (or, maybe "how in the universe") are you supposed to know when your (and our) entire understanding of causality has been restricted to events in spacetime?

Perhaps part of the problem is with the word "causality". The wikipedia article on Aristotles Four Causes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes) says this:

"Cause" might be better translated as "explanatory conditions and factors".

Replace the word "cause" with "explanation". To say that something has no cause is to say that is has no explanation. The no explanation is not a description of our limited knowledge, but a claim that there is no possible explanation.

Again, the validity of atheism doesn't rest on anything except the lack of proof for Gods. That's it. As for the universe, we prefer to let it tell us what to believe. Right now it's telling us that random chance seems to rule things at the quantum level, so that's what I believe. If we suddenly find a deterministic causal mechanism for why things happen as they do, then I'll believe that, including if that mechanism turns out to be God. As Yudkowsky's 3rd Virtue of Rationalism states: "The third virtue is lightness. Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own... Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can... Be faithless to your cause and betray it to a stronger enemy." If the winds of evidence blows towards chance, I believe chance, if they blow towards causal determinism, I believe that, if they blow towards materialism, I believe that, if they blow towards God, I'll believe that. Right now, my belief is directed the same way the winds seem to be blowing, and that's towards chance ruling at the quantum level. That belief, though, is only expressing the best of what's understood now, and that may not reflect what's discovered tomorrow.

The Kalam argument, based on scientific evidence for the second premise, is telling us that there is an efficient cause (aka explanation) for the universe. Why are you not willing to "surrender to the truth as quickly as you can" as Yudkowsky suggests?

Also, just as a side note, I don't want to quickly convince you or to convince you at all. I'm glad you are bringing objections to what I have to say and not following Yudkowsky's suggestion. It helps me clarify my own thoughts. If you agreed with me, who would perform that role? Thanks for the discussions.

I don't think the failure of determinism at the quantum level implies a failure of classical causality at the quantum level, but it is something you have got me thinking about. Perhaps there is an element of freedom at that level that determinism has refused to acknowledge because it would undermine determinism.

[stuntpickle]

Look, Morpheus, I'm going to pay you a gratuitous courtesy and stop arguing with you for a moment. Instead, I'm going to explain a few things to you that I think might be helpful. Now, it's up to you how you react to this, but if I may be so bold, I'd like to suggest that you react reasonably, which is to say differently than you have reacted thus far. Now I suspect you think what I have just said is preposterous and unfair, but I think this might just be symptomatic of the problems I'm about to address.

Consider, for a moment, the first premise of the Kalam cosmological argument:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

This is called, in logic, a statement, and it is the basic building block of any argument. A statement is simply a declarative sentence. Questions are generally not good for the purpose of constructing arguments, nor are imperative statements, such as “Take out the trash!” Now it is generally agreed that the first premise of the Kalam takes the form of a good statement.

I want you now to consider the following amendment to the premise:

1. Everything that begins to exist MAY have a cause.

Now this sentence actually satisfies the requirements of being a statement. However, we're going to run into a problem when we try to deduce a conclusion from this statement. The truth is that the above statement is implying the follow one:

1. Everything that begins to exist MAY or MAY NOT have a cause.

And this one in turn implies the following:

1. The statement “Everything that begins to exist has a cause” is either true or false.

Now the above statement is necessarily true since it includes both possible dispensations of its subject. It is basically a summary of the law of excluded middle with regards to a particular statement. Of course, this is a good statement, but it, alone, cannot be used to derive the truth of its subject. To do so would be a textbook example of begging the question.

Consider:

1. Statement A is either true or false.
2. Statement A is true (absent any further justification).
Therefore, A.

You see, a statement of excluded middle with regards to ANY subject is absolutely irrelevant to the truth of the subject. Everyone presumes that every statement is either true or false, and to attempt to deduce either truth or falsity from that knowledge is blatantly fallacious.

Consider:

1. Either an elephant will or will not fall out of the sky and land on top of my car.
2. I don't know whether an elephant will fall on my car.
Therefore, I should not get into my car.

The absurdity of the above should be obvious. The conclusion is a non sequitur that does not follow logically from the preceding statements.

Consider:

1. A is either true or false.
2. I'm not sure if A is true.
Therefore, not A.

Now you seem to think I have treated you and your arguments unfairly. You even go so far as to suggest that I should have dealt with another statement in particular, which is as follows:

Outside the universe such a thing (another general principle) would create a system with its own set of laws that would be obeyed, and [b]observing those laws may or may not be relevant to describing reality outside of that.

Now the truth is that this statement actually includes two statements, the first of which is so bad that we're going to ignore it for the moment and, instead, concentrate on the second one. I'm going to try to fairly paraphrase the second statement so that we can consider it in isolation from the first one.

Consider:

1. Observing laws inside the universe may or may not be relevant to describing reality outside the universe.

I suspect you'll agree (or have to) that this is essentially what you're saying. But I also suspect you already recognize the error since you're a bright guy. The problem, as I see it, is not that you're stupid, but that you're ignorant of how to properly formulate good statements—to say nothing of good arguments.

Of course, the above statement implies this:

1. It is either true or false that laws inside the universe are applicable outside the universe.

This, alone, is obviously true and satisfies the requirements of being a good statement. However, the only way it could be used to address the issue at hand is to resort to begging the question.

1. It is either true or false that laws inside the universe are applicable outside the universe.
2. It is false that laws inside the universe are applicable outside the universe.
Therefore, laws inside the universe are not applicable outside the universe.

This is blatantly fallacious reasoning. The reason I quoted the statement that I did rather than what you preferred is that what I quoted was actually part of a well structured argument rather than a fallacy. Of course, that argument was, itself, a very bad one, but it was nonetheless better than the fallacy.

I think I can anticipate your thoughts on this. You're probably wondering “Well, aren't you begging the question when you say that cause is applicable outside the universe?” And this leads us to my next subject.

I know you think I'm just unfairly picking away at minor errors in your posts, but the truth is that I have actually ignored most of your errors. Nearly every sentence you write is in some way based on a straw man fallacy. This might sound harsh, but if you give me a second, I think you just might agree with me.

Consider:

The Kalam absolutely relies on the principle of causality to hold outside the universe as well as inside it.

There's something very interesting occurring in this statement. And I could actually write a fairly long essay explaining it to you, but since that wouldn't be particularly enjoyable for either of us, I'll try to make it as succinct as possible.

Consider the following argument:

1. Everything made out of wood tastes like cherries.
2. Chairs are made out of wood.
Therefore, chairs taste like cherries.

Metaphysical arguments generally try to address categories. The above argument starts with the term “everything”, which is probably the broadest category possible. It includes all “things”: bicycles, air, integers, really any “thing.” Of course, the first statement narrows the category to things made of wood, and this would include pianos, benches, desks, really anything constructed of wood. Now perhaps there's a celestial chair that exists in the Dimension of Weird. Does that chair taste like cherries?

The first thing you ought to notice is that the initial argument was not addressing the category of “things in the Dimension of Weird.” Nor was it addressing the category of “things outside the Dimension of Weird.”

Consider:

1. Knowledge of things outside the Dimension of Weird is not necessarily applicable to things inside the Dimension of Weird.

Now something very interesting has occurred in this objection, which is that we now have two new categories. Now it is an error to assume that the initial argument was asserting anything about the Dimension of Weird since it never distinguished that category. It would necessarily be a straw man fallacy to pretend that the initial argument “requires our knowledge hold both inside and outside the Dimension of Weird” since the initial argument makes no such distinction. In fact, the objection makes new distinctions and suggests that they are necessary distinctions.

Of course, according to the argument, any chair, so long as it was actually a chair, would taste like cherries, whether it was in the Dimension of Weird or not. Of course, we have no reason to privilege the category of "things in the Dimension of Weird" unless we have strong evidence that chairs do not, in fact, taste like cherries in the Dimension of Weird, or that taste is an improper measure in there. That we do not have absolute knowledge of chairs in all instances is not a natural impediment to making inferences regarding chairs unless you have strong evidence that suggests that such inferences are false under certain circumstances. The suggestion that chairs may or may not behave as we expect in the Dimension of Weird is not even an objection. To state that we know that chairs behave differently when we do not, in fact, know that is an error. The fact that we do not have knowledge of all chairs is not, itself, an impediment to making an inference but rather a characteristic of inference itself. You can't simply bring up the Dimension of Weird unless you have specific and strong evidence that there is some necessary contradiction, and until you have some verifiable instance to the contrary, then you cannot cite the Dimension of Weird as an exception. In fact, it begins to look like the objector is using the Dimension of Weird as an arbitrary distinction simply because the argument is problematic for his own assumptions.

That is unless....

...the objector actually means that our statements depend upon our experience and that the statements should not overreach our experience. And here we arrive at Hume.

Hume was an empiricist, which distinguished him historically from rationalists (like Descartes and Leibniz). Hume thought all our knowledge was extrapolated from experience and that metaphysics was just an irrational way of overstepping that experience. He preferred a “wait and see” approach, which is the essence of empiricism. He thought causality was an illusion, metaphysics was a racket and that human experience could never provide for proper deduction since all our knowledge was inductive by nature.

With the advance of modern science, empiricism became the de facto philosophy, despite being basically antagonistic to science, and even Hume, himself, acknowledged that science had to be exempted from his scorn. Hume's ideas reached their zenith in the early 20th Century in the form of logical positivism.

Logical positivism was essentially philosophy remade in the image of science, and at its core was the verification principle, which allowed only empirical data and analytic statements of logic, which is to say statements that are true by definition such as “bachelors are not married.” Everything else was considered nonsense. The word “God” was thought to be incoherent.

Consider:

The clarification or logical analysis advocated by positivism is two-sided. Its*destructive*task was the use of the so-called verifiability principle to eliminate metaphysics. According to that principle, a statement is meaningful only when either true by definition or verifiable through experience. (So there is no synthetic apriori. See*Kant, Metaphysics, section 2, and*A Priori and A Posteriori.) The positivists placed mathematics and logic within the true-by-definition (or analytic apriori) category, and science and most normal talk in the category of verifiable-through-experience (or synthetic aposteriori). All else was deemed meaningless. That fate befell metaphysical statements and finds its most famous illustration in Carnap’s attack (1931) on Heidegger’s ‘What is Metaphysics?’ It was the fate, too, of ethical and aesthetic statements. Hence the non-cognitivist meta-ethics (see Ethics, section 1) that some positivists developed.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/con-meta/

It's hard to imagine a more fearsome intellectual edifice than that belonging to logical positivism. Nearly every titan of early 20th Century philosophy was, at least peripherally, connected. The advances of science were impossible to deny. At last, humanity could see the way forward. Science and positivism would draw us inevitably toward truth. Or so we thought, with typically modernist certainty.

As it turned out, the most fundamental feature of positivism was its most problematic. The verification principle was essentially a ban on metaphysics, yet, ironically, it was, itself, a metaphysical statement. If we were to say “We must rely on science as the primary mechanism of determining truth,” the most telling aspect of the statement would be that it wasn't scientific. If we were to say “Philosophy must give way to science” we'd have to notice that the statement, itself, was an instance of philosophy presiding over science. The statement “synthetic statements of logic are nonsensical” is itself a synthetic statement!

Consider:

Positivism had its problems and its detractors. The believer in ‘special philosophical pronouncements’ will think that positivism decapitates philosophy (compare section 4.a below, on Husserl). Moreover, positivism*itself*seemingly involved at least one ‘special’ – read: metaphysical – pronouncement, namely, the verifiability principle. Further, there is reason to distrust the very idea of providing strict criteria for nonsense (see Glendinning 2001). Further yet, the idea of an*ideal logical language*was attacked as unachievable, incoherent, and/or – when used as a means to certify philosophical truth – circular (Copi 1949). There were doubts, too, about whether positivism really ‘served life’. (1) Might positivism’s narrow notion of fact prevent it from comprehending the real nature of society? (Critical Theory leveled that objection. See O’Neill and Uebel 2004.) (2) Might positivism involve a disastrous reduction of politics to the discovery of technical solutions to depoliticized ends? (This objection owes again to Critical Theory, but also to others. See Galison 1990 and O’Neill 2003.)

Positivism retained some coherence as a movement or doctrine until the late 1960s, even though the Nazis – with whom the positivists clashed – forced the Circle into exile. In fact, that exile helped to spread the positivist creed. But, not long after the Second World War, the ascendancy that positivism had acquired in Anglophone philosophy began to diminish.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/con-meta/

The truth was that positivism was a shambles and always had been. By now everyone understood that Hume's attack on metaphysics was, itself, metaphysical, his attack on induction, itself, inductive. All the empiricists were doing, it transpired, was sawing the legs off the chair they were standing on.

So how does this relate to our conversation?

As I see it there are only a few possibilities for your assertion, all which of are, unfortunately, doomed.

1. You can pretend that the Kalam “absolutely relies on the principle of causality to hold outside the universe as well as inside it.” But you end up in a straw man fallacy since not only does the Kalam NOT rely on such categories, but it doesn't even mention them.
2. You can demonstrate the metaphysical necessity for the category “things outside the universe” and justify experientially how things within it cannot adhere to our notions of causality (otherwise you are left with begging the question).
3. You can propose a requirement that any investigation into the nature of things ought to adhere to such and such methodologies while using only the methodologies prescribed to justify the proposition, which is to say you'll need to use empiricism to justify empiricism, or science to justify science, and considering that neither method can usually produce the types of answers you're groping after, the outlook is dim.

“Okay, okay,” you might be saying. “But doesn't the Kalam technically require that our knowledge of things inside the universe hold outside it?” That is, of course, implicit in the Kalam. But there's no reason to think otherwise unless you can make an unequivocal argument that demonstrates the impossibility, which is precisely what you tried to do in the statement I quoted. And you failed completely—not because you're stupid, but because the project is doomed from the start.

But isn't it possible that chairs in the Dimension of Weird do NOT taste like cherries?

Of course, that's true, but it's also possible that elephants are going to fall out of the sky on top of your car, that right now a car full of clowns carrying tubas is racing toward your house and that an alien race of self-aware canines will tomorrow invade Earth. We're just not concerned with what's possible, but rather with what's LIKELY.

The Kalam's first premise is based on all our experience, and that leads us to believe that some cause precipitates the becoming of things. To try and overturn this statement REQUIRES sufficient experiential evidence to the contrary.

1. You can't state that some arbitrary point might or might not change how things work because it's not a proper objection and results in begging the question.
2. You can't state that beyond the universe cause doesn't hold as a meaningful mechanism because it's a ludicrous statement that contradicts the entirety of our experience and has zero experiential justification.
3. You can't prohibit the types of reasoning that the Kalam uses because to do so would require the same type of reasoning.

The Kalam uses our understanding of what is and extrapolates from that just like science does. If you think that cause cannot be a mechanism outside our universe, then you must state that and defend it logically and experientially against the totality of our knowledge. You see, when you say such a thing (as you actually did), you make a claim more audacious than anything the Kalam asserts and you assume a monstrous explanatory burden that no one can bear.

But the real truth is you're simply not ready for this discussion—not because you're stupid or because you're necessarily wrong, but because you seem to have no idea how to go about making reasonable statements and assembling them into a reasonable arguments. You're trying to grapple with some of the weightiest problems in philosophy without so much as an acquaintance with logic. It's a bit like trying to compete in the NFL without ever having held a football.

I have NOT treated your arguments unfairly—primarily because you haven't been making any. You seem to think that using a bunch of non-committal language makes it difficult for me to pin you to any statement, which is true. But the result of this is that you fail to ever state anything of consequence to the conversation. So, for instance, you end up talking about how you didn't understand Craig, and absolutely no relevant conclusion can be made, or you say these wishy-washy unimportant things like “This may or may not be true” from which, again, no relevant conclusion can be made. And when finally you actually draw a conclusion and I address it, you get mad because I'm not addressing all the other errors.

You see, I'm SUPPOSED to find the fulcrum upon which your argument rests and address it, not simply to refute it, but to understand what you're trying to say. You have this strange idea everything you say needs to be accompanied by loads of unimportant obfuscation. It is a virtue that I am able to sort through that stuff and find the essence of the point. It's not being dishonest.

What IS being dishonest is when you say Craig is equivocating, then can't prove it, deny you ever said it, then say he's equivocating again, and then just ignore the whole thing. You say you just said it “seemed” that way, as though softening the language changes the nature of the statement. You seem to be a thief. You seem to be a murderer. “Seems” doesn't soften the accusation.

You said somewhere else that these sorts of discussions are “word games.” And I think that's the root of the problem. You seem to be conducting yourself as though it were simply a word game. You seem to think a mountain of bologna can be ignored if it's hidden behind some non-committal language. And, frankly, you're just wrong. My guess is that you have zero acquaintance with logic, have gathered
most of your ideas about this subject from popular literature and are a touch narcissistic. The result is that you vigorously but ignorantly try to push some point that isn't even a point and then, when it becomes apparent that you're wrong, you try to lawyer your way out of it because the only thing you're really committed to is being right. And, frankly, that's the worst possible characteristic for any interlocutor. We must all be persuadable. We must all consent to changing our minds. Otherwise, we end up making asses of ourselves.

Of course, it's true that I can be a jerk and not at all charitable in a conversation, and that certainly doesn't help things. If this conversation is to be more than simply a nasty confrontation then I need to try to be more conciliatory and you need to be willing to concede when it is proper. I think you might want to stop trying to refute everything I say since it seems apparent that you aren't quite capable of assembling your thoughts in the form of a proper refutation. Let me just ask you: is it possible that I am right—not about the existence of God, but about the particularities of the conversation? Is it likely?

[MorpheusSandman]

Perhaps part of the problem is with the word "causality". The wikipedia article on Aristotles Four Causes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes) says this:

"Cause" might be better translated as "explanatory conditions and factors".

But now we're just into word games, YesNo. "Explanatory conditions and factors" is incredibly vague, and hardly "explains" how these "explanatory conditions and factors" are discovered, determined, etc. That was part of the value of modern science, in working out a method for figuring out causes that weren't just vague "explanations of conditions and factors." "Explanations of conditions and factors" would allow Phlogiston to be as good an explanation of fire as would oxygen.

I can't stress you read that article enough, because at this point we need to squash the notion of causality as being equivalent with fake causality and, again, bringing up the Ancient Greeks in the context of a debate on an argument that relies on modern science is silly. We have learned some things about how things work in the past several thousand years.

The Kalam argument, based on scientific evidence for the second premise, is telling us that there is an efficient cause (aka explanation) for the universe. Why are you not willing to "surrender to the truth as quickly as you can" as Yudkowsky suggests?

If you read that Yudkowsky article I posted above, you'll see why. Fake explanations (which I feel the Kalam is) is not sufficient evidence to surrender my beliefs (there is a whole series of posts on Lesswrong about how much evidence is enough, what is real evidence, etc.).

Thanks for the discussions.

Thank you as well. At least we've been able to avoid hostility, unlike another certain poster.

I don't think the failure of determinism at the quantum level implies a failure of classical causality at the quantum level, but it is something you have got me thinking about.

Well, I'm not ready to completely betray classical causality yet myself, but I'm merely saying that there is a strong reason to doubt it.

[MorpheusSandman]

Stunt,

You keep doing this, but what you're doing is cloaking a whole lot of nothing (ha!) in a whole lot of words. There's not a word of what you wrote in all of your multiplicity of examples and explanations and historical context that I do not understand, and a lot of which I've already addressed within this thread. I can't help but feeling like you don't even read what I write.

For about the tenth time in this debate, I'm going to pare everything you say down to the modicum that's actually relevant.

1. You can't state that some arbitrary point might or might not change how things work because it's not a proper objection and results in begging the question.

We already know that things as we observe and experience and know them on the macro level are not how things work on the micro level. This is not begging a question, but a statement of fact. That Craig always uses examples from the macro level of our understanding, our "metaphysical intuitions," is very deceptive and dishonest.

2. You can't state that beyond the universe cause doesn't hold as a meaningful mechanism because it's a ludicrous statement that contradicts the entirety of our experience and has zero experiential justification.

Virtual particles are experiential justification. The knowledge that there was a point without spacetime is experiential justification because everything we know about causality is limited to spacetime. You can not name a cause we know of that is not understood because of predictions made withing spacetime, nor can you name a single cause we know of outside of spacetime. That spacetime is a barrier to our knowledge, and therefor should be a barrier to how far we extrapolate our knowledge, is hardly a radical or unreasonable notion.

3. You can't prohibit the types of reasoning that the Kalam uses because to do so would require the same type of reasoning.

I'm not trying to prohibit anything. All I'm trying to do is show that its premises are clearly contained within a certain system (our material universe and spacetime) and that there are already things that exists in modern science that challenge those terms. That causality is in question is something that's existed ever since the beginning of QM, and that you think I'm somehow "unreasonable" for wanting to limit causality to spacetime seems to show more of your ignorance of modern science than my ignorance of logic and philosophy.

The Kalam uses our understanding of what is and extrapolates from that just like science does.

No it doesn't. It cherry-picks conclusions and ignores all others that disagree with those conclusions and often misstates (or elides) parts of the conclusions that it does use. The BGV theory that Craig loves to parott doesn't even say what he says it says. He always says that it proves the universe has a beginning, but what he leaves out is that all it really says is that our universe had a beginning to its expansion. It says nothing of an ultimate beginning. Does Craig ever mention this? I wonder why?

What's more, The Kalam doesn't use any of its "understanding" to make hypotheses, theories, or tests that seek to explain that current understanding, so it most certainly isn't "just like science". It's nothing but Phlogiston (see my link/response to YesNo).

[stuntpickle]

Stunt,

You keep doing this, but what you're doing is cloaking a whole lot of nothing (ha!) in a whole lot of words. There's not a word of what you wrote in all of your multiplicity of examples and explanations and historical context that I do not understand, and a lot of which I've already addressed within this thread. I can't help but feeling like you don't even read what I write.

For about the tenth time in this debate, I'm going to pare everything you say down to the modicum that's actually relevant.

We already know that things as we observe and experience and know them on the macro level are not how things work on the micro level. This is not begging a question, but a statement of fact. That Craig always uses examples from the macro level of our understanding, our "metaphysical intuitions," is very deceptive and dishonest.

Virtual particles are experiential justification. The knowledge that there was a point without spacetime is experiential justification because everything we know about causality is limited to spacetime. You can not name a cause we know of that is not understood because of predictions made withing spacetime, nor can you name a single cause we know of outside of spacetime. That spacetime is a barrier to our knowledge, and therefor should be a barrier to how far we extrapolate our knowledge, is hardly a radical or unreasonable notion.

I'm not trying to prohibit anything. All I'm trying to do is show that its premises are clearly contained within a certain system (our material universe and spacetime) and that there are already things that exists in modern science that challenge those terms. That causality is in question is something that's existed ever since the beginning of QM, and that you think I'm somehow "unreasonable" for wanting to limit causality to spacetime seems to show more of your ignorance of modern science than my ignorance of logic and philosophy.

No it doesn't. It cherry-picks conclusions and ignores all others that disagree with those conclusions and often misstates (or elides) parts of the conclusions that it does use. The BGV theory that Craig loves to parott doesn't even say what he says it says. He always says that it proves the universe has a beginning, but what he leaves out is that all it really says is that our universe had a beginning to its expansion. It says nothing of an ultimate beginning. Does Craig ever mention this? I wonder why?

What's more, The Kalam doesn't use any of its "understanding" to make hypotheses, theories, or tests that seek to explain that current understanding, so it most certainly isn't "just like science". It's nothing but Phlogiston (see my link/response to YesNo).

Never mind. I'll just go back to embarrassing you by pointing out all your sophomoric fallacies.

It's not like you're capable of understanding anything anyway.

I'll probably start with your hilarious "there's no causality in quantum mechanics, like in deterministic physics." I've never seen a better demonstration that someone has no clue about what he's saying since the most obvious thing is that there is no causality in deterministic physics. But you probably already knew that, right?

Embarrass you later.