Kalam cosmological argument

[Scepticalguy]

Ok so i have been pestered by a fan of the Christian apologist and philosopher William Lane Craig who tends to use a version of the KCA and the moral argument in his so called argument for gods existence.

• Whatever begins to exist must have an external cause.
  The universe began to exist.
  Therefore, the universe must have an external cause.
  This cause is the God of Classical Theism, and is a personal being, because He chose to create the universe.

Classical KCA argument:

• Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;
  The universe has a beginning of its existence;
  
  Therefore:
  
  The universe has a cause of its existence.
  Since no scientific explanation (in terms of physical laws) can provide a causal account of the origin of the universe, the cause must be personal (explanation is given in terms of a personal agent)

[Thanas]

What is your point?

[Scepticalguy]

What is your point?

Oh sorry Thanas i was so busy dicking around with the list icon that i forgot to add the question before i clicked submit.

Anyway my question is does anybody have any arguments against it.

Mine was based on a discussion i saw involving Lawrence Krauss in regards to "something from nothing" he mentioned that WLC pretty much defined "nothing" as a thing that only god could create anything from and thereby pretty much making his argument worthless.

I also saw just recently from the ID site and a few fundie sites comments about "Worst Birthday Present Stephen Hawking Ever Received" in regards to the universe having a beginning.

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


So i was wondering if this had been discussed as i trust nothing from the ID camp and am not overly keen on WLC or any other apologists to be fair as i find them inherently dishonest.

[Bakustra]

The first mover argument fails to convince me because of two factors; firstly, there is nothing that requires the prime mover to be a conscious entity (or an entity period), and there is nothing to suggest that any particular conception of the prime mover should be preferred above the others from the first mover argument alone. So that being said, there is nothing really that can be said against it other than that- it is eminently reasonable that, assuming a finite universe, that there must have been a first event. One could argue for infinite regression of creation, but that's frankly pointless. So I don't think that there's any need to dispute that there was a first cause, but rather, one should focus on why one particular explanation is preferable.

[Serafina]

The argument falls apart in two ways:

Whatever begins to exist must have an external cause.

That this is universally true is an assumption. While we observe it in the current state of the universe, we can not say with certainty that it applies to the universe itself.

The universe began to exist.

This is simply false.
Put simply, the universe "before" the big bang (or rather the expansion of space-time) was a singularity (as in, a black hole). Due to the way space time works (relativity and all that), time slows down the more gravity increases - inside a singularity time actually STOPS. Therefore, time did not pass before the Big Bang - there literary was no "before" the Big Bang. A "before" would require time, and there was no time (and no space either) "before" space-time began to expand.


Or, in even shorter terms:
The Kalam cosmological argument is based upon a faulty view of space-time.

[Lord Zentei]

Even assuming that the premises are true, then it does not follow that the cause of the universe is the god of classical theism. Merely pointing out that we don't have an answer to a question does not mean that the cause is in any way a personal agent. That would amount to saying "we don't know what caused it, therefore we know that it was god who caused it".

I would also like to point out the peculiar human tendency to anthropomorphize the unknown. As has probably been pointed out to this person, people used to think that all kinds of natural phenomenae (like the tides, lightning, rain, etc.) were run by unseen people of supernatural power; when naturalistic explanations were found for them, then of course these explanations were seen as childish and silly. However, the Supreme Cause is apparently not seen that way, because a naturalistic explanation isn't forthcoming yet - nonetheless, the underlying psychology is the same.

[Terralthra]

The other issue is that it's special pleading. Everything must have a cause, thus the universe had a cause, which is God. What caused God to exist?

[Channel72]

The other issue is that it's special pleading. Everything must have a cause, thus the universe had a cause, which is God. What caused God to exist?

This is not a good rebuttal, because the cosmological argument is carefully worded as "Whatever begins to exist must have an external cause." Theists will claim that God is exempt from needing a cause because he never began to exist. He just always exists.

This is why it's difficult to debate the cosmological argument with idiots - because inevitably this will get into the question "did the Universe begin to exist?". The answer to that question is superficially "yes", since the Big Bang is pretty common knowledge. But the actual answer is "no", because time is a property of the Universe, and therefore to talk about "before" the Universe is as nonsensical as talking about what's north of the North Pole. Sadly, this goes over most people's heads, which is why the cosmological argument never dies. It remains a convincing argument to many people because it falls in line with their daily experiences where all effects have causes.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

Not to mention the fact that if the Universe did "begin to exist" in the way theists claim, it did so ex nihilo (from nothing), rather than ex materia (from a pre-existing material). Things which begin to exist ex materia do require an external cause to act upon the material. We have no evidence that things which begin to exist ex nihilo require a cause, however. In fact, as far as I'm aware, quantum theory states otherwise. In a vacuum, sub atomic particles pop in and out of existence ex nihilo without any observable external cause. Virtual particles, I believe they're called? I'm not an expert.

[Lord Zentei]

^ This has been pointed out to WLC before now, only he claims that this is not "ex nihilo" since you need a vacuum to start with. When it's pointed out to him that it's possible to create space-time from nothing too, he still insists that this is not creation "ex nihilo", since quantum mechanics isn't "nothing". As mentioned above, apparently WLC's "nothing" is defined as that from which only god can create.

Of course, one might point out that if god exists, then god's power isn't "nothing" either. Doubtless he'd weasel his way around that too with more bullshit.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

So he's defining "nothing" in a way that's unsupported by any evidence, asserting that the Universe must have been formed from his unsupported idea of nothingness, asserting that only his God (whose existence is unsupported by evidence) is the only thing that can create something from this nothingness, and then saying it did and therefor his God exists. Really? That's... that's his brilliant argument?

Holy false premises batman.

[Formless]

Well, what are you expecting? The "Supreme Cause" argument has so many holes in it you would have to be walking around with your head stuck up your ass not to have heard at least one of them at some point in your life. I suspect the only reason they still teach what it is in philosophy class is to red flag anyone too stupid not to understand those (also taught) rebuttals.

Seriously, I can just pull them off the top of my head. How does something detached from the universe interact with the universe-- and on top of this, interact with a universe that does not yet exist? And would this thing not itself qualify as the universe if it existed? Isn't existence a prerequisite for things to interact? Think about it. From an ontological perspective, non-existence is a lack of having properties-- even a daydream has the property "imaginary", meaning that it exists within an entity that has physical presence in the universe and a mind. With no properties, interaction is impossible. Nothingness cannot be interacted with. Try it sometime and see.

This is not a good rebuttal, because the cosmological argument is carefully worded as "Whatever begins to exist must have an external cause." Theists will claim that God is exempt from needing a cause because he never began to exist. He just always exists.

Pure sophistry. The whole point of the cosmological argument is to prey on our bias towards thinking things "begin" and "end" even when its logically absurd, and talking about cause and effect is just a way of linking beginnings to endings in a logical manner. So saying that God has no "beginning," which is synonymous with saying he needs no cause, while also arguing that the universe must have a beginning, which is synonymous with insisting that it must have been caused? That's the very definition of special pleading, and a violation of parsimony to boot.

[Channel72]

This is not a good rebuttal, because the cosmological argument is carefully worded as "Whatever begins to exist must have an external cause." Theists will claim that God is exempt from needing a cause because he never began to exist. He just always exists.

Pure sophistry. The whole point of the cosmological argument is to prey on our bias towards thinking things "begin" and "end" even when its logically absurd, and talking about cause and effect is just a way of linking beginnings to endings in a logical manner. So saying that God has no "beginning," which is synonymous with saying he needs no cause, while also arguing that the universe must have a beginning, which is synonymous with insisting that it must have been caused? That's the very definition of special pleading, and a violation of parsimony to boot.

It's not special pleading if you accept the premises of the argument. One of the premises of the argument is that the Universe began to exist. William Lane Craig assumes few people will question this premise, since knowledge of the Big Bang is fairly common. So, given this premise, along with the premise that everything that begins to exist must have an external cause, the argument is correct: the Universe must have an external cause (which ultimately must be something that didn't begin to exist, unless you accept an infinite regress). Of course, the jump from "must have a cause" to "praise Jesus!" is not valid, but that's beside the point.

So there's no special pleading going on here - just factually incorrect premises. The Universe did not begin to exist, since time is a property of the Universe.

[Formless]

It's not special pleading if you accept the premises of the argument.

Get off the Special Bus and use your fucking brain cells. This has nothing to do with the premises of the argument. This has to do with the form of the argument being invalid. Special. Pleading. Look it up, asshole. Don't waste my goddamn time with further weaseling around the logic of the counterargument.

[Lord Zentei]

So he's defining "nothing" in a way that's unsupported by any evidence, asserting that the Universe must have been formed from his unsupported idea of nothingness, asserting that only his God (whose existence is unsupported by evidence) is the only thing that can create something from this nothingness, and then saying it did and therefor his God exists. Really? That's... that's his brilliant argument?

Holy false premises batman.

It's doubly hilarious since he apparently justifies his claim that the universe "began to exist" by appealing to (his interpretation of) the findings of certain scientific papers (I forget which ones). Yet when actual scientists challenge him, he refuses to budge. This happens regardless of whether said scientists challenge his belief in the universe beginning to exist, or his interpretation of the word "nothing". I remember a video where WLC smugly claims that scientist's understanding of "nothing" was "philosophically naive" or something like that. But his own argument hinges on premises that are assumed to be true due to scientific findings!

[Scepticalguy]

So he's defining "nothing" in a way that's unsupported by any evidence, asserting that the Universe must have been formed from his unsupported idea of nothingness, asserting that only his God (whose existence is unsupported by evidence) is the only thing that can create something from this nothingness, and then saying it did and therefor his God exists. Really? That's... that's his brilliant argument?

Holy false premises batman.

You missed off the fact that in doing so god proves himself to be all loving and so that also leads to YAHWEH lol, he then justifies the genocides in Canaan by saying the babies slaughtered on YAHWEH's orders went to heaven and were saved from being sacrificed.

YAHWEH not doing that genocide for a extra 400 years also proves how nice he is but i forget how he justifies it.

[Channel72]

Get off the Special Bus and use your fucking brain cells. This has nothing to do with the premises of the argument. This has to do with the form of the argument being invalid. Special. Pleading. Look it up, asshole. Don't waste my goddamn time with further weaseling around the logic of the counterargument.

No idiot, you've got it entirely wrong. In fact, the cosmological argument is specifically worded in order to avoid the charge of special pleading. The only reason the cosmological argument is invalid is because it has faulty premises. Otherwise, it's logically valid up until it jumps from "the Universe must have an external cause" to "Christianity is true." This is pretty obvious, but for some reason I guess I have to walk you through it:

Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist must have an external cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe must have an external cause.

Yeah... that's pretty fucking logically valid if you accept premise (1) and (2). If you can't grasp a simple syllogism, it's not my problem. There's no special pleading here because nowhere is it necessary or implied that God also began to exist. So the only reason the argument fails is because premise (2) is definitely wrong, and premise (1) might be wrong as well.

Yeah, the cosmological argument is a shitty argument. But it's cleverly worded and in practice, it's important to understand exactly why it's so shitty. I've seen numerous debates with theists over this, and whenever the atheist rebuts with "but then God also requires a cause", the theist will counter that God never began to exist, whereas the Universe did. That's why the argument is worded so carefully: it defines the Universe as a contingent entity in premise (2). Even if you counter that there's no proof God never began to exist or even exists at all, you've still let the theist get away with establishing that the Universe requires some external cause. So a better strategy is just to attack the premise itself, because clearly the Universe did not begin to exist, and therefore the argument fails immediately due to false premises.

[Lord Zentei]

And "god" is defined as that which does not begin to exist, and from this definition, their bullshit premises and their final leap in logic, they infer that this thing they just defined must exist. They may be attempting to avoid the special pleading accusation, but it's still obvious sophistic bullshit; not just because of the other reasons mentioned in this thread, but because they're trying to avoid their special pleading cake and eat it too.

[Formless]

No idiot, you've got it entirely wrong. In fact, the cosmological argument is specifically worded in order to avoid the charge of special pleading.

Go fuck yourself, you dishonest sack of shit. I was wondering why your first response was completely irrelevant to the point, now I know why. You have not read my criticisms at all. I dealt with this in my first fucking post. But just so you can't weasel out of it, let me go over this one again.

Regardless of what bullshit redefining of language the theists use on this one, their argument is inherently tied to causality. To talk about something needing a cause in this context inherently implies it needs to have a beginning: the statement "whatever does not have a beginning need not have a cause" is tautological unless it is permitted that causality can have infinite regress. And infinite regress is disregarded out of hand by the First Mover argument. To claim that God need not have a beginning when premise number one is that everything needs a beginning? That is either a blatant contradiction,, or a case of special pleading. To add that god is defined as needing no beginning (alternatively, no cause, or an infinite regress of causes) makes it special pleading.

An invalid argument form, regardless of the validity of the first premise.

It is clear the only thing you understand is rhetoric. This isn't a high school debate club where we aim to score points by carefully wording arguments so that they sound irrefutable, this is a place of actual philosophical debate. So get the fuck out of here, you shitlicking little sophist. I don't care what side of this debate you side with, we do not need you here.

[Serafina]

The only reason this

Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist must have an external cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe must have an external cause.

fools people is because it's not actually the whole chain of logic. It is fallacious by omission.
Premise 0: Something can exist without having a beginning
This is inherently NECESSARY for this argument to be logical, otherwise it is self-contradicting and results in infinite regress.

If we do NOT include Premise 0, then the "external cause" either a) does not exist or b) had a beginning. If it does not exist, then how could it have caused the universe? The only answer is that the rules changed later on, which invalidates the argument because it allows internal cause (something causing itself to exist), in which case the universe might as well have caused itself to exist and demanding an external cause is special pleading. If the "external cause" began to exist, then we must ask what it's external cause was, resulting in infinite regress.

If we DO include Premise 0, then it becomes obvious that the universe could just as well exist without having a beginning. Arguing that there must be some external cause for the universe is, again, special pleading.


The entire Kalam cosmological argument is just one big rhetorical trick - people only believe it because those who use it lie about the contents of the argument.

...in other words - your argument is bullshit.

[Chirios]

What is your point?

Oh sorry Thanas i was so busy dicking around with the list icon that i forgot to add the question before i clicked submit.

Anyway my question is does anybody have any arguments against it.

Mine was based on a discussion i saw involving Lawrence Krauss in regards to "something from nothing" he mentioned that WLC pretty much defined "nothing" as a thing that only god could create anything from and thereby pretty much making his argument worthless.

I also saw just recently from the ID site and a few fundie sites comments about "Worst Birthday Present Stephen Hawking Ever Received" in regards to the universe having a beginning.

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


So i was wondering if this had been discussed as i trust nothing from the ID camp and am not overly keen on WLC or any other apologists to be fair as i find them inherently dishonest.

Who created God?

[Chirios]

^ This has been pointed out to WLC before now, only he claims that this is not "ex nihilo" since you need a vacuum to start with. When it's pointed out to him that it's possible to create space-time from nothing too, he still insists that this is not creation "ex nihilo", since quantum mechanics isn't "nothing". As mentioned above, apparently WLC's "nothing" is defined as that from which only god can create.

Of course, one might point out that if god exists, then god's power isn't "nothing" either. Doubtless he'd weasel his way around that too with more bullshit.

It's possible to create space-time from nothing?

[Channel72]

And "god" is defined as that which does not begin to exist, and from this definition, their bullshit premises and their final leap in logic, they infer that this thing they just defined must exist. They may be attempting to avoid the special pleading accusation, but it's still obvious sophistic bullshit; not just because of the other reasons mentioned in this thread, but because they're trying to avoid their special pleading cake and eat it too.

No, God is not "defined" at all. Up until Premise 4 (which I happily concede is an egregious leap in logic), the cosmological argument is only concerned with establishing that the Universe requires an external cause. Given the premises, the argument successfully demonstrates that the Universe requires an external cause. It's only because the premises themselves are factually inaccurate that the argument fails.

Regardless of what bullshit redefining of language the theists use on this one, their argument is inherently tied to causality. To talk about something needing a cause in this context inherently implies it needs to have a beginning: the statement "whatever does not have a beginning need not have a cause" is tautological unless it is permitted that causality can have infinite regress. And infinite regress is disregarded out of hand by the First Mover argument. To claim that God need not have a beginning when premise number one is that everything needs a beginning? That is either a blatant contradiction,, or a case of special pleading. To add that god is defined as needing no beginning (alternatively, no cause, or an infinite regress of causes) makes it special pleading.

You really seem to have a problem understanding, um... words. Premise number 1 doesn't say or imply that "everything needs a beginning." Please read the argument again and then revise your response. Also, preferably keep your bluster to a nice 10-15 word compact format, in order to improve your overall content-to-bluster ratio. Only 55% of your last post is actual content, and it's boring to wade through your post searching for where the actual arguments begin. Asshole.

[Channel72]

The only reason this

Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist must have an external cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe must have an external cause.

fools people is because it's not actually the whole chain of logic. It is fallacious by omission.
Premise 0: Something can exist without having a beginning
This is inherently NECESSARY for this argument to be logical, otherwise it is self-contradicting and results in infinite regress.

I agree that Premise 0 is implicitly required here, but the cosmological argument isn't trying to hide this fact.

If we do NOT include Premise 0, then the "external cause" either a) does not exist or b) had a beginning. If it does not exist, then how could it have caused the universe? The only answer is that the rules changed later on, which invalidates the argument because it allows internal cause (something causing itself to exist), in which case the universe might as well have caused itself to exist and demanding an external cause is special pleading. If the "external cause" began to exist, then we must ask what it's external cause was, resulting in infinite regress.

But we DO include Premise 0, implicitly. All the cosmological argument is saying is that some things begin to exist, some things don't. Since we know the Universe began to exist (the Big Bang), it must require an external cause.

So, the best way to attack the argument is to attack premise 2. A better understanding of space-time reveals that, despite the Big Bang, the Universe didn't actually begin to exist.

[Channel72]

Also, in general - many posters in this thread are demonstrating a serious misunderstanding about what we're actually talking about here. The argument we're discussing is NOT the general "First Mover" argument put forth by Aquinas. The OP is specifically talking about a variation on the Kalam Cosmological Argument commonly argued by William Lane Craig.

For those unfamiliar with Craig's arguments, he specifically cites Big Bang theory as validating his premise that the Universe has a beginning. So Craig is not committing any form of special pleading when he says the Universe requires an external cause. All he's saying is that some things require an external cause, some things don't - and science proves the Universe is among the set of things which require an external cause.

So, accusations of special pleading are NOT a good way to address Craig. His argument is best refuted by attacking his premise, which shows a very superficial understanding of space-time.