Kalam Cosmological Argument, Premise One

[Blastcat]

Hi gang !

Once again, while showering, something came to mind...

William Lane Craig is famous for his re-working of the old Kalam Cosmological argument for the existence of God. Here it is in a nut-shell for those who might need a bit of a refresher. Craig states the Kalam cosmological argument as a brief syllogism, most commonly rendered as follows:

______________

The argument:

P1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause;
P2. The universe began to exist;

Therefore:

C1. The universe has a cause.

From the conclusion of the initial syllogism, he appends a further premise and conclusion based upon ontological analysis of the properties of the cause:

P3. The universe has a cause;
P4. If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful;

Therefore:

C. An uncased, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.

____________

This thread wants to take a good look at P1. that is, the very first premise of the argument that states :"Whatever begins to exist has a cause."

As in all arguments, if we accept that this premise is true, we move on to the next premise, and so on, to it's conclusion that must follow from one to the next without any gaps.

Now, if we cannot demonstrate that a premise in the argument is TRUE, then the argument may be VALID, but not sound. The conclusion we get from an argument is just as weak as it's weakest link, so to speak.

So, what about the first premise?

Is it TRUE that "Whatever begins to exist has a cause"?

I am a skeptic at heart, so I am suspicious about that.


Let me give some preliminary reasons, that I got while showering with my Spiderman "Spidey Sense" Soft Soap ®... ( very refreshing ) :


1. Right off the bat, I would have my skeptical spidey sense tingling by the sentence itself. It seems to imply that some things begin to exist, and that others may not begin to exist. I'm not too sure what that means... What does it MEAN to say that something has a "beginning" to it's existence? What does it MEAN to say that not all things begin to exist? Which kinds of things begin to exist, and which kinds of things don't begin to exist? Now, we need rigorous definitions, don't we? Anyone has those? I sure don't. The more that I look, the more confused I get.

2. It doesn't say what hasn't begun to exist. But I suspect that the case is very well chosen. Some people might protest that there is a difference between saying that something doesn't begin to exist and saying that something hasn't yet begun to exist. We are now having to make a distinction that is very subtly grammatical.

3. Of course, if something has not yet begun to exist, it cannot yet exist. But if we are trying to prove that something has caused the universe, it at least has to exist in some way. Otherwise, the argument... is weird.

4. The Kalam is very old.. It wasn't always phrased the way that WLC does. In fact, WLC has introduced the word "begins to" ... because before we could ask "Who caused God?". So, it seems that Craig wants to save the argument by replacing "exists" by "begins to exist". If only GOD doesn't "begin to exist", then I see special pleading going on.

5. Craig says this about the nature of "God's" infinity:

"God's infinity is, as it were, qualitative, not quantitative. It means that God is metaphysically necessary, morally perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, and so on."

In other words, when Craig uses the term "infinite" to refer to a being who doesn't begin, he isn't talking about numbers, but characteristics. I "began to exist" in the middle 50's. See how that's a number? I could have started counting the years of my "existence" at 0, or 1, or some other NUMBER, but it's weird to think that we don't COUNT things without numbers.. but if there are no NUMBERS, to me, it's weird to say that something began or didn't begin. Time is a series of numbers, one after another.. seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, years.. eons.. we count those, because they are NUMBERED. If it can't be counted, I don't know how it can be called "time", and if it isn't "time" we are talking about.. causation seems a bit weird to be talking about.. and to begin.. implies "time"... so again.. very weird.

So, when I read "Whatever BEGINS to exist.." I think "What on earth is Craig talking about"? A quality or a measurable instance of time? If the word BEGINS is an instance of time that is measurable for everything ELSE but "God", this is special pleading once again.

6. The second part.. "A CAUSE" ... this is the really REALLY weird part.. and I will keep it short. You see, Craig doesn't like infinite regresses.. so, the universe can't be it's own cause due to an infinite regress.. what cause the cause of the cause.. and so on.. Physical matter NOT of this universe can't be the cause because.. what's the cause of THAT.. and so on.. more infinite regress. The very ODD thing about Craig's solution, "God", is that it is eternal in the past.. In other words, it seems to "cause the cause of the cause of the cause.. " in an infinite regress. To me, and this is just preliminary thinking, he solves one infinity.. "Cause" with another infinity "God".


Just some thoughts.. I have my doubts about the first premise.

_____________

So, here are the questions for debate:


1. Is it true that things that have a beginning have a cause?
2. How something hasn't begun to exist, continue to exist?

_____________

[hoghead1]

[Replying to Willum]

I'm not sure I quite follow your points. Modern science assumes the universe did have a definite beginning. Modern science has no idea what, if anything existed before. Just the point od singularity? How long, etc.? Modern science feels a large part of the universe is made up of dark matter, which may not be atoms at all as we know them. And just what are atoms? I think mind and matter re one, so I don't view atoms as passive, inert, deadd matter. I think even atoms have tiny minds. The Big Bang, at least as I understand it, is arguing yes, energy does first exist, but it has to be slowed down before we get specific objects such as atoms.

[Willum]

[Replying to hoghead1]

Not so.
Modern popularized science says something vaguely like that, but no respectable astronomer will claim that matter began at the Big Bang.

The Big Bang was not a creation, it was a transformation. From bosons to matter as we know it.

Matter as we know it is the beginning of the universe as we know it, but nothing (no mass) was created.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 78 by Cephus]

As I was trying to explain in my post, Craig does jump the gun by introducing a personal creator. That can be done and has been done, but requires additional arguments. Also, a key point issue here is how personal is Craig's creator. Anything I've seen of Craig strongly suggests that he hold with classical theism, the traditional doctrine that God is void of body, parts, passions, compassion, wholly immutable, wholly independent of the universe. As such, he isn't introducing a personal creator at all, just introducing God as an impersonal absolute, an Unmoved Mover. In that Craig also accepts that God exists eternally, he is open to an infinite regress.

If all you've seen of theism is Craig, then you have hardly seen it all. There is neo-classical theism, which has a much different concept of God and handles arguments for teh existence of God much differently from Craig. I'm not going to go into them here, as that would be off teh OP. I have done some of that in my previous posts with Blastcat. If interested, you might want to look there. However, that's as far as I want to go getting a bit off the OP.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 82 by Willum]

Yes, true, of course. I didn't say matter began. I was concerned with atoms. Obviously matter was there, going on the traditional definition of matter as that which has extension, occupies space. Even the point of singularity has some degree of extension. When you throw objects into a high heat, high energy state, they disappear, like throwing objects into a kiln. You have to cool them down to get specific objects. That is what I was thinking of.

As to mass, I find that an inexact concept. If you mean resistance, I find it hard to imagine there is anything that doesn't have some degree of resistance to it.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 82 by Willum]

P.S. All creation and creativity is a transformation. Nobody creates out of nothing.

[Cephus]

[Replying to post 83 by hoghead1]

But it really doesn't matter because the whole argument is faulty from the get go. Even ignoring the objection I made earlier and assuming that Kalam gets you anywhere, it only gets you to "something kick started the universe". It doesn't say anything at all about what it was. It doesn't say it was sentient, it doesn't say it was alive, it doesn't say it still exists or anything else. It doesn't say that it cares about us or even knows we're here. So what's the point of Kalam?

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 86 by Cephus]

Fair question. It is simply a start at an argument for a personal God. Note I said "a start." More needs to be added.

[Cephus]

[Replying to post 87 by hoghead1]

It's not any kind of rational argument, it's pointless gibberish in nice clothes.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to Cephus]

Writing it off as "pointless gibberish" and letting it go at that, is just inflammatory rhetoric. You need to give a solid counter-argument, not just call it names.

[alexxcJRO]

[Replying to For_The_Kingdom]

"Well, you know, based on things like..

1. The origin of the universe
2. The origin of life
3. The origin of consciousness
4. The origin of language

You know, things like that. My point was, theism has more explanatory power to explain the ORIGIN of things like those."

First,

Yeah but you didn’t put those in your response.
You just put your Leibniz argument and then said the theism make more sense then atheism.

Secondly,

Your making again a case for God of the Gaps and argument from ignorance.
We have a gap in knowledge when it comes of origin of universe, life, language. Therefore God.

There are different hypothesis which try to explain these gaps, anyone of of which could be true.
But because you can’t understand how any of them can explain these mysteries or can't think of anything else your saying God did it.

Why is so wrong in saying you just don’t know. We may know more in the future.
Ancient people didn’t understood how the wind, the sun, storms works and they said therefore God.
You basically doing the same thing.

The argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone decides that something did not happen, because they cannot personally understand how it could happen.

The fallacy is an argument from ignorance and an informal fallacy.


The Multiverse hypothesis:

Brian Greene's nine types

The American theoretical physicist and string theorist, Brian Greene, discussed nine types of parallel universes:[57]
The quilted multiverse works only in an infinite universe. With an infinite amount of space, every possible event will occur an infinite number of times. However, the speed of light prevents us from being aware of these other identical areas.

Inflationary
The inflationary multiverse is composed of various pockets in which inflation fields collapse and form new universes.
Brane
The brane multiverse follows from M-theory and states that our universe is a 3-dimensional brane that exists with many others on a higher-dimensional brane or "bulk". Particles are bound to their respective branes except for gravity.
Cyclic
The cyclic multiverse (via the ekpyrotic scenario) has multiple branes (each a universe) that have collided, causing Big Bangs. The universes bounce back and pass through time until they are pulled back together and again collide, destroying the old contents and creating them anew.

Landscape
The landscape multiverse relies on string theory's Calabi–Yau spaces. Quantum fluctuations drop the shapes to a lower energy level, creating a pocket with a set of laws different from that of the surrounding space.

Quantum
The quantum multiverse creates a new universe when a diversion in events occurs, as in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Holographic
The holographic multiverse is derived from the theory that the surface area of a space can simulate the volume of the region.

Simulated
The simulated multiverse exists on complex computer systems that simulate entire universes.

Ultimate
The ultimate multiverse contains every mathematically possible universe under different laws of physics.

M-theory
See also: Introduction to M-theory, M-theory, Brane cosmology, and String theory landscape
A multiverse of a somewhat different kind has been envisaged within string theory and its higher-dimensional extension, M-theory.[58]
These theories require the presence of 10 or 11 spacetime dimensions respectively. The extra 6 or 7 dimensions may either be compactified on a very small scale, or our universe may simply be localized on a dynamical (3+1)-dimensional object, a D3-brane. This opens up the possibility that there are other branes which could support other universes.[59][60] This is unlike the universes in the quantum multiverse, but both concepts can operate at the same time.[citation needed]
Some scenarios postulate that our Big Bang was created, along with our universe, by the collision of two branes.[59][60]

Black-hole cosmology
Main article: Black-hole cosmology
A black-hole cosmology is a cosmological model in which the observable universe is the interior of a black hole existing as one of possibly many universes inside a larger universe. This includes the theory of white holes, which are on the opposite side of space-time.
While a black hole sucks everything in, including light, a white hole releases matter and light. Hence the name "white hole".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

Origin of languages hypothesis :

Language origin hypothesis[edit]
Early speculations[edit]
I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries.
— "Charles Darwin, 1871. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex".[36]
In 1861, historical linguist Max Müller published a list of speculative theories concerning the origins of spoken language:[37]
Bow-wow. The bow-wow or cuckoo theory, which Müller attributed to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, saw early words as imitations of the cries of beasts and birds.
Pooh-pooh. The Pooh-Pooh theory saw the first words as emotional interjections and exclamations triggered by pain, pleasure, surprise, etc.
Ding-dong. Müller suggested what he called the Ding-Dong theory, which states that all things have a vibrating natural resonance, echoed somehow by man in his earliest words.
Yo-he-ho. The yo-he-ho theory claims language emerged from collective rhythmic labor, the attempt to synchronize muscular effort resulting in sounds such as heave alternating with sounds such as ho.
Ta-ta. This did not feature in Max Müller's list, having been proposed in 1930 by Sir Richard Paget.[38] According to the ta-ta theory, humans made the earliest words by tongue movements that mimicked manual gestures, rendering them audible.
The 'mother tongues' hypothesis

The 'obligatory reciprocal altruism' hypothesis

The gossip and grooming hypothesis

Ritual/speech coevolution

Gestural theory

Mirror neurons and language origins

Putting the baby down theory

Grammaticalisation theory

Self-domesticated ape theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

Origin of life:

Primordial soup

Electric Spark

Community Clay

Deep-Sea Vents

Chilly Start

RNA World

Panspermia
http://www.livescience.com/13363-7-theo ... -life.html

A New Thermodynamics Theory of the Origin of Life

Using Jarzynski and Crooks’ formulation, he derived a generalization of the second law of thermodynamics that holds for systems of particles with certain characteristics: The systems are strongly driven by an external energy source such as an electromagnetic wave, and they can dump heat into a surrounding bath. This class of systems includes all living things. England then determined how such systems tend to evolve over time as they increase their irreversibility. “We can show very simply from the formula that the more likely evolutionary outcomes are going to be the ones that absorbed and dissipated more energy from the environment’s external drives on the way to getting there,� he said. The finding makes intuitive sense: Particles tend to dissipate more energy when they resonate with a driving force, or move in the direction it is pushing them, and they are more likely to move in that direction than any other at any given moment.
“This means clumps of atoms surrounded by a bath at some temperature, like the atmosphere or the ocean, should tend over time to arrange themselves to resonate better and better with the sources of mechanical, electromagnetic or chemical work in their environments,� England explained.
Self-replication (or reproduction, in biological terms), the process that drives the evolution of life on Earth, is one such mechanism by which a system might dissipate an increasing amount of energy over time. As England put it, “A great way of dissipating more is to make more copies of yourself.� In a September paper in the Journal of Chemical Physics, he reported the theoretical minimum amount of dissipation that can occur during the self-replication of RNA molecules and bacterial cells, and showed that it is very close to the actual amounts these systems dissipate when replicating. He also showed that RNA, the nucleic acid that many scientists believe served as the precursor to DNA-based life, is a particularly cheap building material. Once RNA arose, he argues, its “Darwinian takeover� was perhaps not surprising.

http://www.livescience.com/13363-7-theo ... -life.html


Q: Don't tell me you believe the whole Babylon Tower story from the bible is true. Are you ?

“But that is irrelevant to the argument. If you are a homicide detective, and you are called to the scene of a homicide, when you arrive at the scene...based on what you OBSERVE and all of the evidence at the scene, you may be IMMEDIATELY able to rule out "death by natural causes".

At that point, who did it or how many people were involved in the homicide is irrelevant...the first thing is to determine whether it was a homicide or not and if it was, you know there is at LEAST ONE SUSPECT in the crime.

Now, as your investigation goes further, you may even determine that there were multiple suspects involve instead of just one...but that would still led you further and further away from "death by natural causes", wouldn't it? “


But man I already said it was a creation/homicide. I said that there could be more personal agents/perpetrators responsible for the creation/murder.

“Yet there could be that more then one personal creator are responsible for the creation.
The option remains and it could be true regardless of your subjective opinion.�

So it’s relevant if there were more personal creators aka more murderers. Then your religion goes out the window.


“It may be that a billion old alien race from one of the universes inside the multiverse created our universe in a successful experiment�

“Logically impossible. “

Q: If the multiverse hypothesis is true. How is it logically impossible?