The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Kalām cosmological argument:

" 1. Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe has a beginning of its existence.

Therefore:

3. The universe has a cause of its existence.
4. If the universe has a cause of its existence then that cause is God.

Therefore:

5. God exists."

See any holes in this? Ever see or hear of anything that does not have a source? I haven't.
I must say that I agree with the premise but the obvious comeback is then... who created God? This sums things up very well.
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c039.html

God, as the supreme Creator/Being, is necessarily outside of our puny restrictions and outside of our concept of time and space itself. Therefore, it's meaningless to ask who created God. God is, and was, and will be.

I believe in God because I can conceive of no other force that could be behind the universe (both in micro and macro form) and stating the cosmos just exists is a startlingly lazy intellectual cop out. Good thing the brilliant minds of humanity haven't been so lazy and lacking in intellectual curiosity.
Can anyone think of something, anything, that just happens to be? A rock?
A box of Cheerios? A tree?


I don't know where everything came from and why we are here. I don't believe in God. Therefore, it just is.It all just inexplicably is That's the atheist bottom line.

 

Many. In fact, every point listed has flaws.

1. Says who? It is entirely possible that the universe does not have a beginning (or an end).

2. Assumption. See #1

3. Not necessarily. See #1

4. Even if #3 is true, immediately jumping to "God" as the cause is illogical. There would need to be some evidence or other reason to determine that cause as "God".

Argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.

Fallacy. If there exists some being who was not create and has always been, then there is no logical reason why this property cannot also be assigned to the universe and the idea of God eliminated.

I believe in God because I can conceive of no other force that could be behind the universe (both in micro and macro form)...[/quote]
Argumentum ad ignorantiam and fallacy of the single cause.

No, the lazy cop out is just declaring "god did it" and being done with it all instead of learning and trying to figure things out. I am baffled how you could claim otherwise.

Not exactly. To anyone being intellectually honest (including atheists), the proper response to some things is simply, "I don't know".

 

Actually yes, several. But lets tackle just a couple out of the gate.

Argument 1: Your minor premise is false.

This is a bald assertion for which no actual evidence exists. And in fact, if the laws of conservation and/or casualty are true (as asserted by the major premise) then there can be no beginning to the universe. Both of these laws (which are empirically derived) can only lead logically to an infinite causal regress; i.e. an eternal universe. While such a conclusion is admittedly counter-intuitive, it is also unavoidably logical. There is no other conclusion possible without abandoning the major premise that "Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence."

Note: The Kalam Cosmological argument cannot simply reject the concept of an eternal universe as "absurd," since it ultimately concedes the possibility of eternal things itself, instead calling that eternal thing "God."

Argument 2: The universe is not a "thing."

The universe is not an actual "thing" that exists in the same sense that any of the entities contained within it exists. It is instead a conceptual category, the sum total of all "things" that exist. As long as a single thing exists, there is conceptually a universe. And the universe conceptually persists even if every single thing within it is ephemeral.

In this way, everything that exists within the universe has a beginning and a cause, and fully satisfies the major premise. But since the universe is not one of those things, it is not something "that has a beginning of its existence." It therefore requires no cause.

And neither have I. As a result, I am driven empirically to observe that everything that exists or has ever existed has a source. Correspondingly, I cannot justify the proposition of a completely different class of "thing" that has no source. Such a class of "thing" has never been observed to exist.

Yet... the Kalam Cosmological Argument proposes just such an entity, and calls it God. In this way, the naturalistic argument is superior in that it satisfies the major premise without requiring the ad hoc proposition of a class of entity for which there is no evidence.

I will not debate your links. I am here to debate you. Links should be reserved to support factual assertions if needed, but not as proxies for making our own arguments.

If you feel that link "sums things up" then restate the argument here in your own words.

Why "necessarily?" What actual reasoning would lead us to require the existence of any being that is "outside of our current concept of time and space?"

Such an argument is simply a bald assertion, and no line of reasoning has been demonstrated that would require such an entity. If the universe is eternal and uncreated (as demanded by your own argument's major premise), then there is no basis for proposing anything that is outside of time and space.

In this way, the proposition of an eternal and uncaused universe is superior to the proposal of an eternal and uncaused god, for no more reason than we actually have evidence for a universe, while there is none for this unique and anomalous class of entity you call "God."

Fascinating how even in your first post you could not resist throwing gratuitous insults, but let's try and bring it back to an unemotional and impersonal argument. And let us at least both be humble enough to acknowledge that what is or is not true is not dependent upon what we are able to personally conceive.

So stripped of invective, your comment here betrays a certain double standard. You write that "stating the cosmos just exists is a startlingly lazy intellectual cop out." And yet you show no resistance whatsoever to stating that God just exists. By taking that stand, you have fully conceded that things can "just exist." So our disagreement is not over that detail, but it is over what is that thing that we both agree "just exists."

You contend it is God... a class of entity that we have never seen, and for which we have no evidence. I contend that is the universe, which consists entirely of entities that we see every day and for which we have vast amounts of evidence.

In this way, my proposal is both evidentially superior, and conforms more closely to the concept of Occam's razor in that it does not require the completely superfluous step of "God" to explain the universe as we see it today.

I cannot. But of course, my argument does not depend on it.

In contrast, your argument not only depends on something that "just happens to be," it is entirely designed to try and reach that as its ultimate conclusion.

Again, both arguments are in complete parity regarding the origin of our respective proposed eternal and uncreated things. You have no better explanation for where God came from or why than I do for the universe. When you earlier tried to poison the well by asserting that it was a "startlingly lazy intellectual cop out" to assert that the universe "just is," you actually were coming very close to acknowledging an important truth; what Bertrand Russel called "a brute fact."

There actually is a cosmos. This is the inescapable truth from which our reasoning must begin. I fully admit that I can come up with no good reason why it had to exist, or why it had to be like this, but that is neither here nor there.

This is the universe we have.

The Kalam Argument pretends to argue from that "brute fact" to the existence of God. But it fails primarily because in order to reach its desired conclusion it must cut the Gordian knot of logic which can only lead to an infinite regress, and arbitrarily assert God.

 

Atheists question that the universe has a beginning because that throws a big monkey wrench into atheism.

But my understanding is that the Big Bang theory is accepted by the scientific community.

"Let there be light!"

 

The Big Bang is not the point at which the universe began.

It is the point at which the universe became as it is now.

 

Scientists believe it began approximately 15 billion years ago. That's the best scientific estimation available.

That eternal thing (God) cannot be judged or have rules applied to it that apply to the rest of the universe. By necessity of being the creating force of the universe, it stands outside those confinements just as an artist is not confined by what he creates on a canvas.

This is like claiming the sea is not a thing and only exists as a concept of all the sum total of things contained within it. It is a false assumption or contention.

The evidence of God is in the Kalam Cosmological Argument. If the universe has a cause of existence (it must have since it exists) there must be a reason for that existence and the only explanation possible is a Supreme Creator.

What else could possibly account for the universe, time and space, energy, etc.? Care to hazard a guess?

I didn't see this asserted in my argument. I saw just the opposite. The universe is not eternal, it has a beginning and presumably an end at some point, and it was created.

The proof of God is in what He created, for nothing else could do such a thing and the idea of a universe without cause is absurd. It flies in the face of what we know about all matter.

I have merely made a non startling acknowledgment that, by necessity, one cannot judge or standardize the concept of a Supreme Being by the same standards one applies to all of Creation.

The evidence for God is all around us because nothing else comes remotely close to explaining how all this stuff got here.

Then how would you account for time, space, the universe, etc.? Just shrug your shoulders and mumble I don't know?

There is nothing magical about the concept of Occam's razor (that it should rule out God) and there is nothing "superfluous" about some mechanism for supplying and creating everything we can possibly know, see, think of or anything else.
On the contrary, it's absolutely essential for matter to have a source, obviously. Is there any other source but God? I can't conceive of one, and neither can anyone else, in all honesty. The best you can do is profess ignorance (I just don't know).

Then how do you account for those things (a rock, a box, etc.)?
If you do not and cannot, account for them, then you readily admit that God might be a possible explanation (since you've done nothing to disprove or rule out God...you just can't say). And when you realize you've taken that step, whether you like it or not, all of your arguments must fall down on their own for lack of foundation.

I would say God doesn't just happen to be (like a pair of tennis shoes that happen to be hanging over a telephone line) but God must be, as nothing else accounts for the universe, for time, for energy and for space.

Except the concept of God (as the only possible Being capable of creation) tips that argument totally in my favor.
I'm sure you don't know how the universe came to be or why it's here. And yet, it is. And because it is (as we all know and agree on) there must be a cause and God is the only possible cause.

Suppose I wake up tomorrow with a 747 Boeing jet parked on my lawn. I don't have to know how or why it's there to realize that it came from somewhere and someone is responsible for it.

 

Can you prove that statement? I note that you have not provided a link.

 

False.

Scientists believe that the Big Bang occurred approximately 15 billion years ago. But the Big Bang does not mark the beginning of the universe. It marks the point at which the universe became as it is now.

You are getting very far ahead of yourself here. You have not yet demonstrated the necessity for any "creating force" of the universe. You have merely and baldly asserted it.

So back up and justify from your premises the necessity of a creative force.

Actually yes, that is a very good analogy. The idea of sea is purely conceptual, since the water of which it consists exists independently of whether it is part of the sea or not. It is also arbitrary, since the boundaries between seas are simply human conventions and do not represent real boundaries between anything. And more to the point, from one moment to the next, the components of that sea can completely change... yet the sea (being merely conceptual) persists.

In the same sense that the universe is not an actual thing, a sea is not an actual thing. It is a conceptual thing that cannot and does not exist independently of the actual things that comprise it.

And that is where the argument fails, since it is unable to logically establish either that the universe has a beginning, or that it requires a cause. Again, remember your own premises. Only something that has a beginning requires a cause.

Therefore if the universe does not have a beginning, it requires no case.

The same exact thing that accounts for God in your argument. Care to hazard a guess?

I did not say it was asserted by your argument. I said it is demanded by your major premise. Even Craig admits that the major premise (essentially a restatement of the law of causality) can only logically lead to an infinite regress.

The point at which you arbitrarily throw up your hands and declare "God" however, that is where your argument makes assertions. But they are merely bald assertions. You have to show us how they would follow from your premises... or you are not actually making the Kalam argument at all.

So again... your major premise is that everything that has a beginning is caused. And you yourself repeatedly pointed out that we have no experience with anything that does not have a beginning and a cause. And in an eternal universe, that rule remains perfectly intact; everything in the universe has a beginning and a cause.

But here you are suddenly abandoning your premise and contradicting your own argument. You are suddenly saying, "Never mind. The law of casualty is not really true after all, because there is at least this one thing that exists but does not have a cause."

That moment is the point where the Kalam argument collapses. In fact it is the unavoidable failure of all versions of the Cosmological Argument. The premises cannot get you to God, they can only get you to an eternal universe.

Actually, what we know about matter/energy is that it cannot be created or destroyed. It is conserved.

But you are denying that. You are asserting that it was created... again arbitrarily violating an empirically established law of nature. Simply declaring it absurd is not an argument.

Demonstrate its absurdity. From your own premises laid out in your opening post, show us how you can get there.

Again... we are at perfect parity on that point. I cannot tell you why the universe exists. And you cannot tell my why God exists.

But I can show you that the universe exists, while you cannot show me God.

So again, to the extent that I have no answers, you lack the same answers. The difference is that I have evidence for a universe and you have none for God.

Oh no. It's not magical at all. It simply forces you to consider your theory with greater rigor. It demands that you have a good reason for inserting the extra step of God. What is your justification for abandoning your own premises, contradicting your own argument and asserting God?

Lets compare again our two arguments.

Both concede the possibility of an eternal and uncreated thing.

In my argument, your major premise is perfectly preserved without exception even as it leads to an infinite regress.

In your argument, you explicitly and arbitrarily abandon your major premise when it leads to an infinite regress.

In my argument, I propose only classes of entities that have been shown to actually exist.

In your argument, you propose a class of entity for which there is no evidence whatsoever.

In my argument, the empirically derived laws of conservation and causality are perfectly obeyed.

In your argument, those laws are declared false... with no actual evidence.

They were all caused by things that came before them. Remember? That was your own major premise.

I have no problem accounting for them. And unlike you, I don't have to appeal to magic to do so.

Now I note you have suddenly tried to shift the burden here. I am not making any effort whatsoever to disprove or rule out God. Remember how this started? You were going to defend William Craig's proof of God. You took the affirmative mantle of the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

And so please... justify your decision to abandon your own premise, contradict your own argument, and simply arbitrarily declare God. This was supposed to be an argument, not the rote recitation of sectarian dogma.

But the universe has already accounted for time and energy and space. Look around you. They don't "just happen to be."

They are. I can show them to you. This is a brute fact.

Where's God?

You are arguing in a circle here. Let me pretend arguendo that God is the only possible being capable of creation.

If there was no act of creation, then there was no opportunity for such a unique capability to prove useful. Once again, God is rendered completely superfluous.

So your problem remains, Yosh. Your major premise logically leads not to God, but to an infinite regress. Craig admits that. Al Ghazali admitted that. Aquinas admitted it. Your premise does not allow for an act of creation. It denies such an act.

So... why hypothesize a God? Why do we need one?

Just as everything in the universe came from somewhere. At least in my argument.

But in your argument? Not so much.

 

Its called common sense. Not link needed.

Its pretty apparent that with humans limited technological capability, that we simply do not have the wherewithal to find out what happened before the big bang.

And no, that does not mean 'god' is involved in any way shape or form.

 

Who needs a link? The proof is entirely deductive... assuming you accept the laws of conservation and casualty as true.

1. If matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, then they must have existed before the Big Bang.

2. If all effects must have causes, and the Big Bang is an effect, then it must have a cause that precedes it.

3. If matter, energy and the Big Bang's cause preexisted the Big Bang, then by definition the universe preexisted the Big Bang.

QED: The universe did not begin at the Big Bang. It (or at least part of it) simply passed through the singularity that demarcates it.

Note: The singularity of the Big Bang was dimensionless. That also means it was durationless; i.e. it existed for exactly zero time. Just as a line passes seamlessly and without interruption through any point along its length, time and energy/matter would pass seamlessly through the cusp of the Big bang singularity.

Note 2: Entropy is energy divided by a temperature. The passage of the universe through a singularity would necessarily reset entopy to zero. Hence contrary to naive belief, the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not impose a time limitation to the existence of a universe.

 

Atheist makes blanket statement of fact but won't provide any evidence to back it up. LOL.

Can anyone see the irony here?

 

Trying to address that beginning/ending argument is not with religion or the current paradigm of how energy/time is defined.

Neither are correct.

trying to identify energy with the model used of 'speed'

is practically stupid

claiming that a 'god' created everything from a nothing is even worse

What 'we' can identify, without fail is to address NOW, with the knowledge learned over time.

Focus on life, not the beliefs, from either discipline.

 

I read your explanation and it's very interesting but at some point time, matter and space must have had a beginning or a source.

The necessity of a creating force? Isn't that like asking what is the necessity of your parents? There is a universe, something put it here (nothing comes from nothing) and God is the only possible explanation.

God accounts for the universe and God accounts for God. You cannot hold God to the same standard of creation as a woodpecker or a comet. God is the standard.

I don't see any contradictions that negate God in my original thread post. Everything with an origin has a cause, the universe has a beginning, God is that cause.
Funny that you can assert some mythical universe that existed before our universe came into being but you cannot imagine or infer a God that created time itself and who has no origin, as we would apply it to the universe. As I said you cannot apply the same standards to a woodpecker as you would to the Supreme Creating Force.

Well we cannot create matter. That's for sure.

In fact, matter was created at a point about 15 billion years ago (to the best knowledge of our science at this point). Everything was. Everything. If the facts are found to be in error I will reformulate my thinking on the matter as new facts arise. Until then I see no need to change and don't anticipate having to.

No. I cannot tell you why we all exist. I only know that we do.

I can show you all of creation, for which there is no other explanation but God, but I cannot make you acknowledge God since you don't want to.

I'm not going to repeat myself but while you are pointing out the universe it must take an act of supreme denial and delusion to think the vast macro and micro universes somehow just happen to exist.
It is the antithesis of a scientific mind to think the vast cosmos have no source, but it's a defect of a small percentage of human minds to deny a source of creation since everything has one.

In my thread opener I discussed how God does not follow or apply to the major premise, i.e.
" 1. Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence," because God exists outside our understandings of time and does not have a beginning (to our way of understanding, anyway). I've already explained.

I don't see where I've violated the Kalama Argument. The universe has a beginning, something caused or created that beginning, God is the only Being capable of creating that beginning.
You want to trip me up by claiming I arbitrarily declare God? I do no such thing.

The universe has the properties of time, energy and space. You cannot claim that the universe has "accounted" for them anymore than you can say the dog with long coat accounted for his own fur length.

If there was no act of creation, then no one would be here to argue about it. I don't understand your point.
There was an act of creation (science verifies this) and here we all are.

Why should I not hypothesize a God when everything points to it?

 

My understanding is that entropy can never be reversed. What makes you think entropy can be reversed? Do you have a link? This is not a logical problem, it's a scientific problem. Provide a link or admit you are just making stuff up.

 

In a closed system. Please provide a link that the Universe is a closed system, or admit you are just making stuff up

 

That is not an obvious comeback. It says basically all that begins to exist has a cause. That would simply not be true by definition because God does not have a beginning.

The comeback is usually done to Thomas Aquinas' first cause argument, which is basically the same as Craigs, except that Aquinas left out the word BEGIN. So atheists just responded, well if God exists he needs a cause too! But Craig muffled that objection by changing it to BEGIN to exist.

There are two ways to POSSIBLY criticize this argument. And this is more of an intellectual exercise. I'm not saying I am endorsing these criticism as downright fatal.

The first is that the word cause is being used in two different ways in the argument. Cause is used WITHIN time in the first premise and OUTSIDE of time in another. So it would be fallacious if that is the case.

The 2nd problem is that the first premise APPEARS to be false on the quantum level. Electrons disappear and reappear at different locations without any apparent cause. There is no definite prediction, only probability (written as a non-physics major). But since quantum is still being debated and worked out, this will just be a wait and see approach.

 

The burden of proof is on you. You said entropy can be reversed. If you can't prove it, admit you can't prove it.

 

I never said (*)(*)(*)(*) about entropy. Please provide a link where I said anything about entropy, or admit you are making (*)(*)(*)(*) up.


Here is what you said:

Now, in a closed system, entropy can never be reversed. Please provide a link that says the universe is a closed system, or admit you are making (*)(*)(*)(*) up.

 

I found nothing on the internet saying entropy can be reversed. I don't think it matters whether or not the universe is closed or open. If you have evidence that entropy can be reserved in an open system then please provide it. This is the fifth time I've asked for a link and I wonder why you are refusing to provide it. Do you expect me to believe you on faith?

 

1 - Evolution proves that entropy can be reversed in an open system, as life becomes more and more organized, not less. The Earth-Sun is an open system. The Earth receives energy from the Sun.

2- You stated:

You brought this up as a rebutttle to WongKimArk post. This would be true IF the universe was a closed system.

Now PROVIDE A LINK that states the Universe is a closed system, or admit you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

Isn't the universe simply a word that means everything that exists? If the universe is everything that exists doesn't that mean it must by definition be a closed system? Are you saying that something from the outside is pumping energy or matter into the universe?

 

Replace "God" with "unstable singularity" and you will have something more plausible.

 

Sure, God is a subjective term.
By identifying the 'cause of existence' as God you have basically sid nothing.
This is not logic, it is simply nonsensical assertions of personal and subjective opinion.

 

Now you to claim the Universe is everything that exists? So a multiverse is not possible? Do you have a link for this claim, or do you want to admit you have no idea what you are talking about?

Now you to claim the Universe is everything that exists? So a multiverse is not possible? Do you have a link for this claim, or do you want to admit you have no idea what you are talking about?

We do not have the technology to know whether or not the Universe is open or closed, a multiverse or not. Many assumptions on your part here.


But I digress, I’m still waiting from you either:

1- a link that says the Universe is a closed system
2 - you to admit you do not know what you are talking about.

 

You have said entropy can be reversed. This is a statement you need to prove. I asked for a link on multiple occasions and you have refused to provide it.

I win.