**Upvote this comment if you agree with OP, downvote this comment if you disagree with OP.**
Elsewhere in the thread, please upvote comments which contribute to debate (even if you believe they're wrong) and downvote comments which are [detrimental to debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/wiki/faq#wiki_downvoting) (even if you believe they're right).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DebateAnAtheist) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Basically. Both premise 1 and 2 are unsound: theists can never point to a thing that “began to exist” in the same sense they want it to, it’s always things that are just reassembled out of pre-existing materials. This leads to a conflation of two different concepts: creation ex materia (stuff being made from other stuff that’s already there) and creation ex nihilo (stuff being made out of nothing), which is what premise 2 really wants, but cannot actually support either.
This equivocation fallacy this leaves us with a non-sequitur conclusion.
And even if we grant all that anyway just for the sake of argument, saying the universe has a cause still leaves all the actual work for the theist to justify how this cause in anyway resembles the god they actually want to argue for. You’ll usually get a paragraph or a whole essay tacked on at the end of just bald assertions about how this cause “must” be intelligent, timeless, omnipotent, etc. etc. when the *only* property a cause for the universe *must* have is the ability to cause a universe.
Either the universe came into existence or it has always existed, and both of those options make little sense. But to be fair, the universe has no obligation to make any sense; it just is what it is.
>Either the universe came into existence or it has always existed, and both of those options make little sense
Third option: According to the laws of conservation of mass and conservation of energy, mass/energy cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore mass/energy has always existed, for all time. According to the Big Bang theory [at the beginning all of the mass/energy of the universe already existed but was unimaginably hot and compact (since then it has been expanding)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Timeline). Therefore the Big Bang event was the beginning of time but not the beginning of mass/energy. See [Hartle–Hawking state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartle%E2%80%93Hawking_state)
*According to the Hartle–Hawking proposal, the universe has no origin as we would understand it: before the Big Bang, which happened about 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was a singularity in both space and time. Hartle and Hawking suggest that if we could travel backwards in time towards the beginning of the universe, we would note that quite near what might have been the beginning, time gives way to space so that there is only space and no time.*
That makes sense.
Well, that fits into the first category (the universe always existed). We can concede a dynamic and changing universe which maybe exists in different ways through its evolution.
It does fit the first category. Having "always" mean a finite duration of time makes it make sense. The second category, however, "came into existence" doesn't make sense in terms of "mass/energy can not be created or destroyed."
My "neither make sense" comment is not literal nor absolute. Just because we can create a line of thought to explain something doesn't necessarily mean we can actually fathom it in its entirety. Like higher dimensional shapes, one can't visualize them, but they make perfect sense.
Regardless of what we can imagine, "coming into existence" doesn't make sense in relation to what we have measured of reality. This is an important consideration when trying to make sense of reality.
You're confusing the material out of which a thing is made with the thing in itself. A chair is different from the particles that make it up. Moreover, as regards the OP, why think the second law of thermodynamics applies to all systems? It applies ONLY to closed systems. Ironic this smug post is upvoted on a place for people who "love science".
Your last paragraph evinces a misunderstanding of the argument. Typically, theists will use the argument that there must be a first immediate cause of the universe by Occam's razor, as it is the only cause necessary to be granted to make the universe exist.
> A chair is different from the particles that make it up.
That's getting to be an arbitrary distinction. In any case, whoever was trying to fly the argument would need to make their definitions clear.
> Moreover, as regards the OP, why think the second law of thermodynamics applies to all systems? It applies ONLY to closed systems.
Is the universe open or closed?
>Typically, theists will use the argument that there must be a first immediate cause of the universe by Occam's razor, as it is the only cause necessary to be granted to make the universe exist.
Which amounts only to a fallacious argument from incredulity. It's not a legitimate basis for an assertion of fact.
The universe could be closed and the argument still go through. The kalām is a metaphysical, not a physical argument. The law of causation is a metaphysical, not a physical law. It applies even without any properties. The lynchpin premise of the argument simply states that everything must have a cause if it has an origin. Otherwise things would just pop into being out of nothing all the time.
> The kalām is a metaphysical, not a physical argument.
This isn't a license to pull facts from the rear. Any claim of fact is only as good as the objective evidence on which it stands. That applies to metaphysics just as much as anything else.
>The lynchpin premise of the argument simply states that everything must have a cause if it has an origin.
You can't just assume it had an origin.
Sure, but physicists increasingly say there was nothing before the Big Bang. If you'd like citations despite the number of people like Hawking, who have said that, you're more than welcome to them.
Metaphysically, the reduction ad absurdum argument against things just popping into being is a sound one because any argument against it is bound to involve premises which are less obviously true than their negations.
> Sure, but physicists increasingly say there was nothing before the Big Bang.
What?!?! Who is saying that?
>If you'd like citations
Obviously.
>people like Hawking, who have said that
You just weren't able to follow him. He clarified what he meant by that later:
https://www.livescience.com/61914-stephen-hawking-neil-degrasse-tyson-beginning-of-time.html
>Metaphysically, the reduction ad absurdum argument against things just popping into being is a sound one because any argument against it is bound to involve premises which are less obviously true than their negations.
That's really silly and irrational reasoning. You actually have to make an argument directly, not just propose an argument from incredulity about some other argument against it. Besides, you still haven't given any reason to assume that existence even had a beginning.
>What who is saying that?
Standard model of inflation: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220105-what-existed-before-the-big-bang
I disagree with its being silly and irrational. The argument would be that since time is fundamental to the universe, the universe just pops into existence on a causeless model of the universe.
> Standard model of inflation:
Again, you just don't understand what you are reading. Nowhere in that article do they claim that there was nothing before the big bang.
>I disagree with its being silly and irrational.
You are trying to make a negative argument based on incredulity. That's a double fallacy.
>since time is fundamental to the universe
What does that even mean? How did you prove it? You probably just misunderstood another entertainment article.
It's not incoherent, the argument is still perfectly valid. Your counterargument would just render the Kalam unsound depending on how the theist is using the terms.
If the theist is claiming that the energy of the universe began to exist from nothing, then they're just flat out wrong about premise 2 (per the first law). Or if they mean something deeper than that and they're simply questioning why anything exists at all, then they're simply begging the question in Premise 1 as they have never observed anything truly "begin" to exist.
On the other hand, If the theist instead means that objects "begin" to exist in a linguistic sense (e.g. new humans begin to exist in the womb) then the conclusion might be trivially true. Because then, all it's really saying is that spacetime expanded for a reason... which we already knew.
Edit: also, most lay theists are guilty of equivocation when presenting this argument, as they rely on the linguistic sense for P1 and then switch to ex-nihilo sense for P2
>On the other hand, If the theist instead means that objects "begin" to exist in a linguistic sense (e.g. new humans begin to exist in the womb) then the conclusion might be trivially true. Because then, all it's really saying is that spacetime expanded for a reason... which we already knew.
This is exactly what Craig means. He's defended it this way forever.
Craig himself knows how to present the argument in a potentially sound way, but a lot of apologists who parrot the argument don’t.
Also there’s the secondary problem of whether person presenting the argument is conflating our local spacetime vs the energy that makes up our universe vs the entirety of the natural Cosmos.
>Craig himself knows how to present the argument in a potentially sound way, but a lot of apologists who parrot the argument don’t.
That's no kidding.
>Also there’s the secondary problem of whether person presenting the argument is conflating our local spacetime vs the energy that makes up our universe vs the entirety of the natural Cosmos.
I'm actually happy to just grant the Kalam if someone means it in the tautological way Craig does.
It's the second stage where big problems really occur.
> It's not incoherent, the argument is still perfectly valid
No, it's not. The only thing that "began" IS the universe. Every other concept we have of "beginning" is ALWAYS based on the
re-arrangement of things that ALREADY exist. You're trying to impose the cause-effect relationship (time dependent) on something that occurs BEFORE time. Kalam is fucking stupid.
The form is still valid though. The thing you’re complaining about only addresses the soundness of the premises. It’s only incoherent if dishonest theists switch meanings midway through the argument.
>Everything that does B has C
>U does B
>Therefore U has C
You could plug anything for those letters, and it’s a valid argument.
Yes, I studied symbolic logic.
The problem with Kalam is the premises are always flawed.
Your argument is that "flawed premises" don't matter.
They do.
I never said they don’t matter. I’m saying they don’t make the argument incoherent/invalid.
Also, the premises are not *always* flawed if you’re talking to an intellectually honest debater rather than a dishonest apologist. So long as the presenter isn’t equivocating terms, I’m usually fine granting stage one of the Kalam. I just don’t think they can prove stage 2 which is where they try to say it must be God rather than a natural explanation.
> stage one of the Kalam
*Everything that begins to exist has a cause.*
That's the wrong hill to die on. It is TIME DEPENDENT. And it is wrong. It is the fallacy of human experience, rather than an anti-anthopomorphic view.
There is (to our knowledge) only ONE thing that "began" to exist, and that's the Universe. Everything else is simply the rearrangement of things that already existed. That being said, TIME didn't exist until the beginning of the Universe, therefore there can be no CAUSE. Nothing came BEFORE. You're allowing for something that CANNOT exist in logic or physics.
**Stage** One, not premise one. Stage one ends with the conclusion: the universe has a cause. I’m saying, as an atheist, I can grant that for the sake of argument and then say that the cause is a natural phenomenon such as a quantum field.
Stage Two is when theists try to argue the cause must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, personal, all-powerful, knowledgeable, etc., and that’s where I think their argument falls apart. (Edit: assuming they are being honest and consistent in stage one)
—
And I’m not dying on any hill. I never said I’m fully accepting premise one or two. Literally all I’m doing is saying the argument is coherent, because it is. This isn’t hard.
The fact that we potentially only have one example of something beginning to exist would invalidate our reason to accept P1 as SOUND, but that has nothing to do with whether the argument structure is valid.
> The fact that we potentially only have one example of something beginning to exist would invalidate our reason to accept P1 as SOUND
We only have one example of it's *possibility*. William Lane Craig only change his definition of premise one (P1) when atheists showed his previous version (everything that exists has a cause) was laughed out of the room.
I appreciate you're trying to be generous here, but there is nothing in Kalam even remotely resembling an argument. You're still buying into the plausibility of "something BEGINNING to exist needing a cause". Again, it is TIME DEPENDENT when time does not yet exist. If you can't establish that the premise applies to a UNIVERSE, then you really have nothing.
I feel like you’re arguing with the wind here lol. I agree with literally every single criticism you’re making.
I’m just saying none of that makes the structure of the argument incoherent, which is my only disagreement that started this whole comment thread. The argument only becomes incoherent depending on the intellectual honesty of the theist presenting the argument.
(Edit: intellectual honesty + how familiar they are with physics)
P1: all sharks are purple
P2: Bob is a shark
C: Bob is purple.
While logically consistent, NONE OF THE PREMISES ARE TRUE.
This is what you're arguing. It's logically consistent, but the truth of the premises is irrelevant.
That is simply stupid.
(If A, then B
If B then C
If A then C. Completely logically consistent. But the MOMENT you apply values to those premises, they become necessarily true or relevant.)
The first law of thermodynamics only applies to a closed system. If there is a megaverse or whatever that our universe came out of, then our universe could have begun to exist.
No one, of course, can say one way or the other.
This is the answer.
To expand. We have don’t know if there is a concept of before the Big Bang. The Kalam relies on the begging that question. Since we are ignorant and can’t explain, the Kalam attempts to insert an answer, when the best answer is “We don’t know.”
Invoking the first law of thermodynamics is very apt at showing our ignorance, as stated it is a law based on a closed system. We only have one system we can draw conclusions from and for all intents and purposes it seems to be closed.
There are IMO far bigger problem with the argument, and they are found within the religious position that they cannot, if their position is sound, compromise on, not the scientific one that they can dismiss and cherry pick at will.
If god is eternal and unchanging, then the universe cannot have begun to exist by an act of god, because that implies that there was infinite time (which is still the issue they intend to solve by saying "begin to exist", not solved but pushed back) in which god did not intend for there to be an Universe, and then god changing his mind.
My very limited understanding is that models of physics breakdown very close to the beginning of the Big Bang such that we don't know whether or not the first law of thermodynamics holds in relation to the Big Bang or not.
Kind of. It's not that all the laws break down, its that the math for certain properties approaches either infinity or zero, neither of which produce much in the way of usable results once you hit them. You can distinguish between infinities before you reach infinity, but not after.
A principle like the first law of thermodynamics could very well still hold, but it would be impossible to tell if you are dealing with what appears to be an infinite amount of energy.
It also is only asking the question from within our local instantiation of the universe. There is no "before" since time is a property of our universe. A different, larger multiverse could have entirely different rules when it comes to causation (time is really just a chain of causal relationships) and thus our question might be nonsensical.
Really, all of this is to say that "we don't know" is the best answer, and anyone saying otherwise is either lying or doesn't understand the problem.
Also, don't forget to add in the fun that is quantum physics.
Because matter is created and destroyed all the time, it's just that the net sum is zero, so the system's math remains unaffected.
I also have no idea how various universe theories would work if say something like the Big Crunch (where expansion slows, gravity starts winning, and we reset to another big bang) turned out to be plausible.
In a situation like that, it's still not knowable how things actually started in the way theologians try to claim.
Created is an oversimplification. Specifically, what I'm talking about is the theory of virtual particles, where little photon like blips of energy might be winking in and out of existence
In the above case there still existed something else. The word “universe” in premise 2 means the cosmos, essentially. It means all that is. If one has a multiverse there remains no need for a creator god. Premise 2 argues for creation ex nihilo (by a god).
You may not be, but that is the purpose of the argument. My point was that if there is a "megaverse" then it is identical to the "universe" of premise 2. Premise 2 is using "universe" as identical to "cosmos".
My bad if I didn't explain it well. You're correct, I'm just saying it doesn't help their argument.
It effectively changes nothing about the argument if there is one universe or many.
Couple of things.
First, thermodynamics are statistical laws. Quantum events can violate thermodynamics at the quantum scale, we just say that the laws of thermodynamics apply to interactions involving large numbers of particles.
Second, your attack vector is still valid because the statement "everything that begins to exist has a cause" is a generalization that has not been shown to be true for all events. We assume it to be true because most events that we are familiar with follow that rule.
We take as axiom the naturalist assumption: that natural causes result in natural events. But that holds open the possibility that some natural events may happen without cause. And have many such examples. What causes radioactive decay? If you have answer supported by evidence other than, "it appears to be an intrinsically random event", then you WILL win the Nobel prize in physics :-)
One theory in cosmology is that the universe IS a quantum event (popularized by Lawrence Krauss, but in discussion in physics since at least the 1960s).
I actually love this, cause I've been looking into quantum fluctuations and virtual Particles, and the way I see it is that even when we have something that "begins to exist" it appears to be random and without cause. Which would also render the argument incoherent or unsound.
I'll definitely look into the quantum event universe, that would make some good content.
The Big Bang does not describe the beginning of the universe. It describes the beginning of this iteration of spacetime.
We don’t know anything about what came before this iteration of spacetime.
We don’t know that the universe is not eternal. Or not infinite.
The laws of this spacetime may or may not apply to whatever came before.
The definition of "universe" kalām proponents are using is "the iteration of spacetime studied by contemporary cosmology". Further, the Bord-Guth-Villenkin maths proves that any universe that is on average in a state of cosmic expansion through its history cannot be past eternal.
>The definition of "universe" kalām proponents are using is "the iteration of spacetime studied by contemporary cosmology".
This iteration of spacetime is not proven to fundamentally be the entire universe.
>Further, the Bord-Guth-Villenkin maths proves that any universe that is on average in a state of cosmic expansion through its history cannot be past eternal.
How many universes were studied to make this conclusion? If we’re concerning ourselves with “any” universe, hopefully that means we’ve studied at least several dozen universes, otherwise someone making such a claim would sound quite foolish.
And have we observed that cosmic expansion of this spacetime is not local? Or part of a multiverse?
Because one could sound quite foolish if we didn’t know that either.
1. Ok, but it's also the only spacetime we know of so it doesn't really harm the argument
2. You don't need to know about any other universes. Why would that matter? All you need to do is look at conditions which could physically obtain. Here's the paper's outline https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110012
You can’t claim that “any universe must X” when you’ve only observed one version of spacetime that we don’t even know definitely represents an entire universe.
You have observed no other universes. So you can’t claim that “any” universe must behave a certain way. Because you know literally nothing about “any” other universes.
So pardon me if I dismiss the unproven claims you’re making about what you’re assuming is the entire universe.
> The Big Bang does not describe the beginning of the universe. It describes the beginning of this iteration of spacetime.
I thought it describes what happened from a short time after the beginning of this iteration of spacetime. But not the beginning itself.
Here is the thing. Let's assume that universe does not have a cause. Then Premise one is false. This argument only works when we already know (or assume) its conclusion to be true. It's worthless.
P1&2: Begins to exist implies time before and after - the subject is inside time. But by definition, time is inside the Universe. The argument's terms wage war.
Edit: Thermodynamics is statistical laws. It's statements begin **the sum of** the energy in a closed system cannot change. Of course photons can be created and destroyed - beginning and ending. Anyway, themo isn't compatible with relativity - it assumes communication between the parts of the system, while relativity limits and forbids it, and rules the roost where the Universe is concerned.
My favorite refutation of this argument is also the simplest. Is there anything that began to exist that isn’t part of the universe? Obviously not.
So if everything that began to exist is part of the universe, you can basically replace the phrase “Everything that begins to exist” with “The Universe.” At that point, the argument becomes:
1) The Universe has a cause.
2) The Universe began to exist.
3) The Universe has a cause.
Which I don’t think requires any explanation for how silly it is on its face.
I like this refutation, but I don't think it is obvious that nothing that began to exist is outside of the universe. How would we know what is outside of the universe or whether it began to exist?
While I get what you mean from a philosophical perspective, I’d counter that the universe is literally defined as “everything that exists.” If it exists, it is part of the universe by default. I don’t see any way to base a premise on something existing that is outside of the universe.
Aren't there theories that include the possibilities of multiple universes? Presumably if multiple universes exist then they do so outside our own universe?
Also presumably God (or any other cause of the Creation of the universe) if they were to exist would also exist outside of the universe (otherwise how would they exist to be the cause?): does this definition not presuppose that God (or an alternative cause) does not exist?
"Begins to exist" always does a lot of heavy lifting in this argument. Does something formed out of already existing components "begin to exist" to the same extent that something created out of nothing as if by magic "begins to exist"? We have a lot of examples of the former. None of the latter. It kinda reminds me of when people say, "Evolution is just a theory," knowing full well they're using the wrong one of two definitions the word theory has.
The argument is wrong for many reasons, but probably the biggest one is that the second premise is an equivocation. Spacetime itself having a first moment of time is a completely different type of phenomenon than something in the universe "beginning to exist". It relies on the reader taking their everyday intuition about things like bicycles and hastily extending it to a domain where it is completely inapplicable.
But.... but... that only applies to non-magic answers! *Magic* doesn't *have to* follow the laws of physics, that's why it's *magic*!
And it's not entirely clear if quantum fluctuations can violate the First Law anyway.
Keep in mind that the "laws of thermodynamics," as with any scientific "laws," are descriptive - not prescriptive. In other words, we don't know for sure that reality is the way it appears to us. We can only interpret our observations in the way that makes the most sense for us. As soon as we discover information that defies these "laws," we need to adjust our understanding, and rewrite the laws.
And there is always new information being discovered that should at least make us question what we know. The more advancements come out of studying quantum physics, the more it seems like we really have no idea how the universe works at its most intrinsic levels. We can only keep pressing forward to figure it out one step at a time.
That's why I have a lot of issues with debating theology or metaphysics using current understanding of science and physics. All debates along these lines must operate on the presupposition that what we currently believe about physics is true and correct. Given how much science we got horrifically wrong in the last 1000 years alone -- hell, how much we've gotten wrong just in the last 10 years -- I feel like that's a big "if" to hang your beliefs on.
Just my two cents.
edit: To make absolutely clear, I am not saying science can't be trusted or should be disregarded totally. The accumulation of human observations and interpretations about the universe is magnificent and we should treasure it. I only caution against putting too much faith in what one thinks they know for certain, whether science or religion.
The Kalam is flawed because it's premise is fallacious. A "Fallacy of Composition", or the assumption that what is true of the parts must be true of the whole.
As an analogy, every sheep in a flock must logically have 1, and only 1, mother. It does not follow that the whole flock *itself* has 1, and only 1, mother.
So if everything that "begins to exist" in the universe (whatever that means) has a cause, it does not follow that universe itself has one.
And even if it did, it does not imply that such a cause is a god.
As to the laws of thermodynamics, it's important to remember that the physical laws are not actually objective things. They are a means of description, created by humans for humans. They are the map, not the territory. They may therefore be inaccurate because they are tailored for our observational abilities. There maybe something we, and certainly Newton in his century, were incapable of seeing or conceptualizing regarding energy. So relying on these "laws" always puts us on thin ice.
I mean, if we're being really technical here, the first law of thermodynamics is a conservation law, which means that, at all times, the quantity of energy is the same. Let's ignore for the moment that the first law of thermodynamics might not even hold on cosmic scales of time and space... even if we take it for granted, all we are committed to saying is that there was never a time when the quantity of energy was different than it is now. In particular, there was never a time when there was no energy.
It seems like we can say the universe began to exist without insisting there was a time when there was no energy. All we have to say is that, at the very first instant, all the energy was present. As long as there was no prior time when there was no energy, it can be the case that the universe began to exist and energy is conserved.
Yep
The only way theists get away with it is by substituting one definition of the word "create" : "recombine things to be recognized as something else" with the actually relevant definition of the word : "causing something from nothing"
It is dishonest. Especially when they then go on to say "something from nothing is impossible"
To be sure though. It is a "law". That does not necessarily mean it is true. There is no example of "causing existence" that we can point to to estimate how it would work. Existence is magic. It could 'pop' from nothingness; it could be turtles all the way down; it could be a snake eating its own tail; it could be back to the future; it could be any of a million versions of sentience: creation, simulation, accidental self annihilation and reset, tenet
That's why it's dumb to think that we + a single omnipotent version of us are all there is
>Kalam cosmological argument, incoherent?!!
It seems fine to me. But as an argument for a god, it's horrible. It doesn't even mention the word god.
>Would love to hear what you guys think about this.
As I said, as an argument for a god, it falls apart because it doesn't even mention a god. And as you point out, it's not clear what "beings to exist" means. Did the universe even begin to exist? Does matter and energy changing configurations constitute "begins to exist"? I think the only people proposing the universe came out of nothing are the theists.
If we accept the conclusion of the argument, it tells us nothing about what the cause is. Was it nature and natural processes forming existing matter energy time space into a universe, into a singularity? We don't know. But far more reasonable to speculate on things we do know exist, natural forces/ processes, matter and energy, rather than magic beings.
It's completely incoherent.
Premise 1: We don't know this to be true. It's also special pleading for God to claim he has no beginning, since they can't demonstrate it to be true.
Premise 2: We don't know this to be true. Our particular instantiation of space/time had something we are calling a beginning, but that doesn't mean anything. It just changed form from a state of intense density and heat to time, matter and energy. That's not really a beginning.
Conclusion: If the premises were true, fine, but they aren't necessarily, plus, that doesn't make the cause a god. Kalam doesn't even argue for a god. It's just a generic "cause" that the religious then just assume must not only be a god, but their god.
Kalam is useless.
energy is eternal and has no beginning meanwhile other atheists like Hawking say there was no before the big bang, so if energy didn't begin at the big bang how did it exist when nothing existed? If you take this logic, you must dismiss the claim of nothing before the big bang, that's incoherency.
If the KCA user defines universe as post-Big Bang expansion then it has a beginning, this is what scientific consensus calls the universe and gives it an age of 13.77 billion years meaning it began 13.77 billion years ago.
I see nothing wrong with using the terminology of scientific consensus to see the universe as an expansion of space having a beginning 13.77 billion years ago, despite the energy of it being eternal.
One flaw is the unstated Premise 0: There is a preexisting god powerful enough to cause the universe.
Theists find the Kalam persuasive because they carry around the unstated Premise pre-loaded in their heads. They do not need to state it because it is integrated into their world view.
The Kalam is not persuasive to atheists. They do not have a creator god embedded in their worldview.
Theists are left scratching their heads asking "What other cause could there be? It must be god because nothing else could be the cause." They reject the question about what caused god because they define their god as uncaused. Theists assume atheists are willfully ignoring what is so obvious to them.
Yeah its been said here above but I like the argument that we have never really observed anything coming into existence in a real sense, just rearrangements of already existing energy and particles.
What I can add though is that to the extent we have seen anything truely begin to exist it would be stuff on the quantum scale, were virtual particles can "begin" to exist in what seems an uttelry random process (even though the energy already exists in some form so its not truely from nothing).
So, not only do we not have examples of anything actually coming into existence from scratch, the closest example we do have seems to have a very tenuous relationship with cause and effect.
In their book *The Anthropic Cosmological Principle*, physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler explained that this law is not violated by the thesis that the universe began to exist from no pre-existing matter-energy: “It is sometimes objected that the Universe cannot have originated a finite proper time ago in the past, as the Friedman universe does, because this would violate the law of conservation of mass-energy. **This objection is invalid. At every instant of time in the Friedman universe the general relativity stress-energy conservation law holds. The law does not hold at the singularity, but the singularity is not in time.**” (p.443)
Accepting that the universe began at the point of a singularity resolves this imo.
The natural rules in force throught the universe break down within singularities. On the other side of the event horizon, we have no basis to argue that the rules of cause and effect apply.
Within the universe on our side of the event horizon of that first singularity, causation abounds, at least at the macro scale. Reconciling that with what we know of quantum mechanics is a little more tricky.
The main issue with this argument that theists think it's an argument for God, and it simply is not. It doesn't matter whether this argument is true or not, it doesn't get you to God and it doesn't get you CLOSER to a God. I'm happy to accept the argument. Our intuition tells us this argument is probably true. That doesn't mean it IS true, but we have no reason to think it is not true.
Both premises are assumptions, so the conclusion is an assumption.
It's amazing that anyone has ever found this 'argument' compelling.
Even sadder is when someone like WLC goes on to claim that the assumed 'cause' has all the same attributes as the infinitely more complex 'creator' he infers to explain the existence and complexity of the universe.
> *Premise 2: the universe began to exist.
This is a claim and not a fact.
The Big Bang is an event in time affecting this portion of the universe that we live in. There is no reason to believe that the universe began to exist from that point - the key word being began.
For all we know, the universe is eternal and life is the default.
Nope, not at all. The rule holds true for all things extant. In the very beginning, physics itself was subject to change. Physical law that defines the relationship between all things has since hardened into its current form. Everything beyond that is speculation and conjecture. Anything that is magical / religious is just lazy thinking.
An honest rendition of the Kalam would begin with either:
* Premise 1: Within our universe, everything that begins to exist has a cause.
or
* Premise 1: Both within and before and outside our universe, everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Either way, the problems with the argument become more apparent.
For most arguments, there is no need to stipulate "within our universe" in the premises, because the entire argument is within the context of the universe. With this one, it is important.
I don't really agree. The laws of physics (such as the first law of thermodynamics) are descriptive, not prescriptive. So it's not impossible that they could be ever broken, it's just that this has never been observed to happen. So far.
I have issues with the argument but this is not one of them.
The first two premises of the kalam are unsound. There is no way to demonstrate them. In addition, even if the kalam was sound, it take a huge leap of special pleading to get to a creator, than even more special pleading to get to the Christian version of god.
I don't tend to invoke any scientific laws. I just say something like this...
Name something other than the universe that began to exist.
I'll wait.
Say they say "tree"... Well, a tree didn't begin to exist. We started calling it a tree when it started looking like a tree. The materials it used to make itself into a tree was taken from the air and soil and energy from the sun. It's like the difference between a pile and a mound and a hill and a mountain. At no point does a mountain begin to exist. There's just a point where a majority of people, given the definition of a mountain would CALL it a mountain.
The fact of the matter is... the only thing we have that ever began to exist and wasn't just reformed out of existing material is the universe itself. And science isn't even clear that 'begin to exist' is a reasonable phrase to use when describing the universe itself either.
So kalam makes generalizations out of a set of one.
I don't see why that is relevant.
Things existed. Arrange those things differently and we call it a tree. The tree didn't begin to exist when the arrangement changed. The tree never began to exist. We just started calling that arrangement of matter a tree.
It's not what it is. It's just what we call it.
I've been reading all your points and I'm receiving alot of quite interesting ideas and information that I need to look into, alot of knowledge I'm yet to acquire 😅.
Just wanna thank everyone for sharing their pov.
Check out SkyDivePhil’s you tube channel to hear what physicists (i.e., people who actually do cosmology) have to say on the subject. There are a couple of videos on Kalam and a couple on fine tuning.
Correct. Kalam is just begging the question and incompatible with everything we actually know about existence and causal relationships.
In other words, it’s poop.
**Upvote this comment if you agree with OP, downvote this comment if you disagree with OP.** Elsewhere in the thread, please upvote comments which contribute to debate (even if you believe they're wrong) and downvote comments which are [detrimental to debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/wiki/faq#wiki_downvoting) (even if you believe they're right). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DebateAnAtheist) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Basically. Both premise 1 and 2 are unsound: theists can never point to a thing that “began to exist” in the same sense they want it to, it’s always things that are just reassembled out of pre-existing materials. This leads to a conflation of two different concepts: creation ex materia (stuff being made from other stuff that’s already there) and creation ex nihilo (stuff being made out of nothing), which is what premise 2 really wants, but cannot actually support either. This equivocation fallacy this leaves us with a non-sequitur conclusion. And even if we grant all that anyway just for the sake of argument, saying the universe has a cause still leaves all the actual work for the theist to justify how this cause in anyway resembles the god they actually want to argue for. You’ll usually get a paragraph or a whole essay tacked on at the end of just bald assertions about how this cause “must” be intelligent, timeless, omnipotent, etc. etc. when the *only* property a cause for the universe *must* have is the ability to cause a universe.
Either the universe came into existence or it has always existed, and both of those options make little sense. But to be fair, the universe has no obligation to make any sense; it just is what it is.
>Either the universe came into existence or it has always existed, and both of those options make little sense Third option: According to the laws of conservation of mass and conservation of energy, mass/energy cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore mass/energy has always existed, for all time. According to the Big Bang theory [at the beginning all of the mass/energy of the universe already existed but was unimaginably hot and compact (since then it has been expanding)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Timeline). Therefore the Big Bang event was the beginning of time but not the beginning of mass/energy. See [Hartle–Hawking state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartle%E2%80%93Hawking_state) *According to the Hartle–Hawking proposal, the universe has no origin as we would understand it: before the Big Bang, which happened about 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was a singularity in both space and time. Hartle and Hawking suggest that if we could travel backwards in time towards the beginning of the universe, we would note that quite near what might have been the beginning, time gives way to space so that there is only space and no time.* That makes sense.
Well, that fits into the first category (the universe always existed). We can concede a dynamic and changing universe which maybe exists in different ways through its evolution.
It does fit the first category. Having "always" mean a finite duration of time makes it make sense. The second category, however, "came into existence" doesn't make sense in terms of "mass/energy can not be created or destroyed."
My "neither make sense" comment is not literal nor absolute. Just because we can create a line of thought to explain something doesn't necessarily mean we can actually fathom it in its entirety. Like higher dimensional shapes, one can't visualize them, but they make perfect sense.
Regardless of what we can imagine, "coming into existence" doesn't make sense in relation to what we have measured of reality. This is an important consideration when trying to make sense of reality.
Why do neither of these not make sense?
You're confusing the material out of which a thing is made with the thing in itself. A chair is different from the particles that make it up. Moreover, as regards the OP, why think the second law of thermodynamics applies to all systems? It applies ONLY to closed systems. Ironic this smug post is upvoted on a place for people who "love science". Your last paragraph evinces a misunderstanding of the argument. Typically, theists will use the argument that there must be a first immediate cause of the universe by Occam's razor, as it is the only cause necessary to be granted to make the universe exist.
> A chair is different from the particles that make it up. That's getting to be an arbitrary distinction. In any case, whoever was trying to fly the argument would need to make their definitions clear. > Moreover, as regards the OP, why think the second law of thermodynamics applies to all systems? It applies ONLY to closed systems. Is the universe open or closed? >Typically, theists will use the argument that there must be a first immediate cause of the universe by Occam's razor, as it is the only cause necessary to be granted to make the universe exist. Which amounts only to a fallacious argument from incredulity. It's not a legitimate basis for an assertion of fact.
The universe could be closed and the argument still go through. The kalām is a metaphysical, not a physical argument. The law of causation is a metaphysical, not a physical law. It applies even without any properties. The lynchpin premise of the argument simply states that everything must have a cause if it has an origin. Otherwise things would just pop into being out of nothing all the time.
> The kalām is a metaphysical, not a physical argument. This isn't a license to pull facts from the rear. Any claim of fact is only as good as the objective evidence on which it stands. That applies to metaphysics just as much as anything else. >The lynchpin premise of the argument simply states that everything must have a cause if it has an origin. You can't just assume it had an origin.
Sure, but physicists increasingly say there was nothing before the Big Bang. If you'd like citations despite the number of people like Hawking, who have said that, you're more than welcome to them. Metaphysically, the reduction ad absurdum argument against things just popping into being is a sound one because any argument against it is bound to involve premises which are less obviously true than their negations.
> Sure, but physicists increasingly say there was nothing before the Big Bang. What?!?! Who is saying that? >If you'd like citations Obviously. >people like Hawking, who have said that You just weren't able to follow him. He clarified what he meant by that later: https://www.livescience.com/61914-stephen-hawking-neil-degrasse-tyson-beginning-of-time.html >Metaphysically, the reduction ad absurdum argument against things just popping into being is a sound one because any argument against it is bound to involve premises which are less obviously true than their negations. That's really silly and irrational reasoning. You actually have to make an argument directly, not just propose an argument from incredulity about some other argument against it. Besides, you still haven't given any reason to assume that existence even had a beginning.
>What who is saying that? Standard model of inflation: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220105-what-existed-before-the-big-bang I disagree with its being silly and irrational. The argument would be that since time is fundamental to the universe, the universe just pops into existence on a causeless model of the universe.
> Standard model of inflation: Again, you just don't understand what you are reading. Nowhere in that article do they claim that there was nothing before the big bang. >I disagree with its being silly and irrational. You are trying to make a negative argument based on incredulity. That's a double fallacy. >since time is fundamental to the universe What does that even mean? How did you prove it? You probably just misunderstood another entertainment article.
Right, P1 is making a more modest claim by leaving open the question whether the cause is material or efficient.
It's not incoherent, the argument is still perfectly valid. Your counterargument would just render the Kalam unsound depending on how the theist is using the terms. If the theist is claiming that the energy of the universe began to exist from nothing, then they're just flat out wrong about premise 2 (per the first law). Or if they mean something deeper than that and they're simply questioning why anything exists at all, then they're simply begging the question in Premise 1 as they have never observed anything truly "begin" to exist. On the other hand, If the theist instead means that objects "begin" to exist in a linguistic sense (e.g. new humans begin to exist in the womb) then the conclusion might be trivially true. Because then, all it's really saying is that spacetime expanded for a reason... which we already knew. Edit: also, most lay theists are guilty of equivocation when presenting this argument, as they rely on the linguistic sense for P1 and then switch to ex-nihilo sense for P2
>On the other hand, If the theist instead means that objects "begin" to exist in a linguistic sense (e.g. new humans begin to exist in the womb) then the conclusion might be trivially true. Because then, all it's really saying is that spacetime expanded for a reason... which we already knew. This is exactly what Craig means. He's defended it this way forever.
Craig himself knows how to present the argument in a potentially sound way, but a lot of apologists who parrot the argument don’t. Also there’s the secondary problem of whether person presenting the argument is conflating our local spacetime vs the energy that makes up our universe vs the entirety of the natural Cosmos.
>Craig himself knows how to present the argument in a potentially sound way, but a lot of apologists who parrot the argument don’t. That's no kidding. >Also there’s the secondary problem of whether person presenting the argument is conflating our local spacetime vs the energy that makes up our universe vs the entirety of the natural Cosmos. I'm actually happy to just grant the Kalam if someone means it in the tautological way Craig does. It's the second stage where big problems really occur.
Agreed, that sums up my thoughts on contingency arguments in general lol. I’ll just grant stage one and say the first cause is a quantum field.
> It's not incoherent, the argument is still perfectly valid No, it's not. The only thing that "began" IS the universe. Every other concept we have of "beginning" is ALWAYS based on the re-arrangement of things that ALREADY exist. You're trying to impose the cause-effect relationship (time dependent) on something that occurs BEFORE time. Kalam is fucking stupid.
The form is still valid though. The thing you’re complaining about only addresses the soundness of the premises. It’s only incoherent if dishonest theists switch meanings midway through the argument. >Everything that does B has C >U does B >Therefore U has C You could plug anything for those letters, and it’s a valid argument.
Yes, I studied symbolic logic. The problem with Kalam is the premises are always flawed. Your argument is that "flawed premises" don't matter. They do.
I never said they don’t matter. I’m saying they don’t make the argument incoherent/invalid. Also, the premises are not *always* flawed if you’re talking to an intellectually honest debater rather than a dishonest apologist. So long as the presenter isn’t equivocating terms, I’m usually fine granting stage one of the Kalam. I just don’t think they can prove stage 2 which is where they try to say it must be God rather than a natural explanation.
> stage one of the Kalam *Everything that begins to exist has a cause.* That's the wrong hill to die on. It is TIME DEPENDENT. And it is wrong. It is the fallacy of human experience, rather than an anti-anthopomorphic view. There is (to our knowledge) only ONE thing that "began" to exist, and that's the Universe. Everything else is simply the rearrangement of things that already existed. That being said, TIME didn't exist until the beginning of the Universe, therefore there can be no CAUSE. Nothing came BEFORE. You're allowing for something that CANNOT exist in logic or physics.
**Stage** One, not premise one. Stage one ends with the conclusion: the universe has a cause. I’m saying, as an atheist, I can grant that for the sake of argument and then say that the cause is a natural phenomenon such as a quantum field. Stage Two is when theists try to argue the cause must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, personal, all-powerful, knowledgeable, etc., and that’s where I think their argument falls apart. (Edit: assuming they are being honest and consistent in stage one) — And I’m not dying on any hill. I never said I’m fully accepting premise one or two. Literally all I’m doing is saying the argument is coherent, because it is. This isn’t hard. The fact that we potentially only have one example of something beginning to exist would invalidate our reason to accept P1 as SOUND, but that has nothing to do with whether the argument structure is valid.
> The fact that we potentially only have one example of something beginning to exist would invalidate our reason to accept P1 as SOUND We only have one example of it's *possibility*. William Lane Craig only change his definition of premise one (P1) when atheists showed his previous version (everything that exists has a cause) was laughed out of the room. I appreciate you're trying to be generous here, but there is nothing in Kalam even remotely resembling an argument. You're still buying into the plausibility of "something BEGINNING to exist needing a cause". Again, it is TIME DEPENDENT when time does not yet exist. If you can't establish that the premise applies to a UNIVERSE, then you really have nothing.
I feel like you’re arguing with the wind here lol. I agree with literally every single criticism you’re making. I’m just saying none of that makes the structure of the argument incoherent, which is my only disagreement that started this whole comment thread. The argument only becomes incoherent depending on the intellectual honesty of the theist presenting the argument. (Edit: intellectual honesty + how familiar they are with physics)
P1: all sharks are purple P2: Bob is a shark C: Bob is purple. While logically consistent, NONE OF THE PREMISES ARE TRUE. This is what you're arguing. It's logically consistent, but the truth of the premises is irrelevant. That is simply stupid. (If A, then B If B then C If A then C. Completely logically consistent. But the MOMENT you apply values to those premises, they become necessarily true or relevant.)
The first law of thermodynamics only applies to a closed system. If there is a megaverse or whatever that our universe came out of, then our universe could have begun to exist. No one, of course, can say one way or the other.
This is the answer. To expand. We have don’t know if there is a concept of before the Big Bang. The Kalam relies on the begging that question. Since we are ignorant and can’t explain, the Kalam attempts to insert an answer, when the best answer is “We don’t know.” Invoking the first law of thermodynamics is very apt at showing our ignorance, as stated it is a law based on a closed system. We only have one system we can draw conclusions from and for all intents and purposes it seems to be closed.
There are IMO far bigger problem with the argument, and they are found within the religious position that they cannot, if their position is sound, compromise on, not the scientific one that they can dismiss and cherry pick at will. If god is eternal and unchanging, then the universe cannot have begun to exist by an act of god, because that implies that there was infinite time (which is still the issue they intend to solve by saying "begin to exist", not solved but pushed back) in which god did not intend for there to be an Universe, and then god changing his mind.
My very limited understanding is that models of physics breakdown very close to the beginning of the Big Bang such that we don't know whether or not the first law of thermodynamics holds in relation to the Big Bang or not.
Kind of. It's not that all the laws break down, its that the math for certain properties approaches either infinity or zero, neither of which produce much in the way of usable results once you hit them. You can distinguish between infinities before you reach infinity, but not after. A principle like the first law of thermodynamics could very well still hold, but it would be impossible to tell if you are dealing with what appears to be an infinite amount of energy. It also is only asking the question from within our local instantiation of the universe. There is no "before" since time is a property of our universe. A different, larger multiverse could have entirely different rules when it comes to causation (time is really just a chain of causal relationships) and thus our question might be nonsensical. Really, all of this is to say that "we don't know" is the best answer, and anyone saying otherwise is either lying or doesn't understand the problem.
Sure. I can get behind that.
Also, don't forget to add in the fun that is quantum physics. Because matter is created and destroyed all the time, it's just that the net sum is zero, so the system's math remains unaffected. I also have no idea how various universe theories would work if say something like the Big Crunch (where expansion slows, gravity starts winning, and we reset to another big bang) turned out to be plausible. In a situation like that, it's still not knowable how things actually started in the way theologians try to claim.
There is no situation from quantum mechanics where matter is created. You have misunderstood something
Created is an oversimplification. Specifically, what I'm talking about is the theory of virtual particles, where little photon like blips of energy might be winking in and out of existence
Got a link to anything regarding this?
In the above case there still existed something else. The word “universe” in premise 2 means the cosmos, essentially. It means all that is. If one has a multiverse there remains no need for a creator god. Premise 2 argues for creation ex nihilo (by a god).
I'm not sure how that is a response to my comment. I'm not arguing for a Creator God.
You may not be, but that is the purpose of the argument. My point was that if there is a "megaverse" then it is identical to the "universe" of premise 2. Premise 2 is using "universe" as identical to "cosmos". My bad if I didn't explain it well. You're correct, I'm just saying it doesn't help their argument. It effectively changes nothing about the argument if there is one universe or many.
Oh you're absolutely right. I'd say the kalaam is flawed for many reasons.
Couple of things. First, thermodynamics are statistical laws. Quantum events can violate thermodynamics at the quantum scale, we just say that the laws of thermodynamics apply to interactions involving large numbers of particles. Second, your attack vector is still valid because the statement "everything that begins to exist has a cause" is a generalization that has not been shown to be true for all events. We assume it to be true because most events that we are familiar with follow that rule. We take as axiom the naturalist assumption: that natural causes result in natural events. But that holds open the possibility that some natural events may happen without cause. And have many such examples. What causes radioactive decay? If you have answer supported by evidence other than, "it appears to be an intrinsically random event", then you WILL win the Nobel prize in physics :-) One theory in cosmology is that the universe IS a quantum event (popularized by Lawrence Krauss, but in discussion in physics since at least the 1960s).
I actually love this, cause I've been looking into quantum fluctuations and virtual Particles, and the way I see it is that even when we have something that "begins to exist" it appears to be random and without cause. Which would also render the argument incoherent or unsound. I'll definitely look into the quantum event universe, that would make some good content.
The Big Bang does not describe the beginning of the universe. It describes the beginning of this iteration of spacetime. We don’t know anything about what came before this iteration of spacetime. We don’t know that the universe is not eternal. Or not infinite. The laws of this spacetime may or may not apply to whatever came before.
The definition of "universe" kalām proponents are using is "the iteration of spacetime studied by contemporary cosmology". Further, the Bord-Guth-Villenkin maths proves that any universe that is on average in a state of cosmic expansion through its history cannot be past eternal.
>The definition of "universe" kalām proponents are using is "the iteration of spacetime studied by contemporary cosmology". This iteration of spacetime is not proven to fundamentally be the entire universe. >Further, the Bord-Guth-Villenkin maths proves that any universe that is on average in a state of cosmic expansion through its history cannot be past eternal. How many universes were studied to make this conclusion? If we’re concerning ourselves with “any” universe, hopefully that means we’ve studied at least several dozen universes, otherwise someone making such a claim would sound quite foolish. And have we observed that cosmic expansion of this spacetime is not local? Or part of a multiverse? Because one could sound quite foolish if we didn’t know that either.
1. Ok, but it's also the only spacetime we know of so it doesn't really harm the argument 2. You don't need to know about any other universes. Why would that matter? All you need to do is look at conditions which could physically obtain. Here's the paper's outline https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110012
You can’t claim that “any universe must X” when you’ve only observed one version of spacetime that we don’t even know definitely represents an entire universe. You have observed no other universes. So you can’t claim that “any” universe must behave a certain way. Because you know literally nothing about “any” other universes. So pardon me if I dismiss the unproven claims you’re making about what you’re assuming is the entire universe.
> The Big Bang does not describe the beginning of the universe. It describes the beginning of this iteration of spacetime. I thought it describes what happened from a short time after the beginning of this iteration of spacetime. But not the beginning itself.
Yes, that’s probably a more accurate description.
Here is the thing. Let's assume that universe does not have a cause. Then Premise one is false. This argument only works when we already know (or assume) its conclusion to be true. It's worthless.
P1&2: Begins to exist implies time before and after - the subject is inside time. But by definition, time is inside the Universe. The argument's terms wage war. Edit: Thermodynamics is statistical laws. It's statements begin **the sum of** the energy in a closed system cannot change. Of course photons can be created and destroyed - beginning and ending. Anyway, themo isn't compatible with relativity - it assumes communication between the parts of the system, while relativity limits and forbids it, and rules the roost where the Universe is concerned.
My favorite refutation of this argument is also the simplest. Is there anything that began to exist that isn’t part of the universe? Obviously not. So if everything that began to exist is part of the universe, you can basically replace the phrase “Everything that begins to exist” with “The Universe.” At that point, the argument becomes: 1) The Universe has a cause. 2) The Universe began to exist. 3) The Universe has a cause. Which I don’t think requires any explanation for how silly it is on its face.
I like this refutation, but I don't think it is obvious that nothing that began to exist is outside of the universe. How would we know what is outside of the universe or whether it began to exist?
While I get what you mean from a philosophical perspective, I’d counter that the universe is literally defined as “everything that exists.” If it exists, it is part of the universe by default. I don’t see any way to base a premise on something existing that is outside of the universe.
Aren't there theories that include the possibilities of multiple universes? Presumably if multiple universes exist then they do so outside our own universe? Also presumably God (or any other cause of the Creation of the universe) if they were to exist would also exist outside of the universe (otherwise how would they exist to be the cause?): does this definition not presuppose that God (or an alternative cause) does not exist?
"Begins to exist" always does a lot of heavy lifting in this argument. Does something formed out of already existing components "begin to exist" to the same extent that something created out of nothing as if by magic "begins to exist"? We have a lot of examples of the former. None of the latter. It kinda reminds me of when people say, "Evolution is just a theory," knowing full well they're using the wrong one of two definitions the word theory has.
The argument is wrong for many reasons, but probably the biggest one is that the second premise is an equivocation. Spacetime itself having a first moment of time is a completely different type of phenomenon than something in the universe "beginning to exist". It relies on the reader taking their everyday intuition about things like bicycles and hastily extending it to a domain where it is completely inapplicable.
But.... but... that only applies to non-magic answers! *Magic* doesn't *have to* follow the laws of physics, that's why it's *magic*! And it's not entirely clear if quantum fluctuations can violate the First Law anyway.
And don't forget magic must have a consciousness ....
Keep in mind that the "laws of thermodynamics," as with any scientific "laws," are descriptive - not prescriptive. In other words, we don't know for sure that reality is the way it appears to us. We can only interpret our observations in the way that makes the most sense for us. As soon as we discover information that defies these "laws," we need to adjust our understanding, and rewrite the laws. And there is always new information being discovered that should at least make us question what we know. The more advancements come out of studying quantum physics, the more it seems like we really have no idea how the universe works at its most intrinsic levels. We can only keep pressing forward to figure it out one step at a time. That's why I have a lot of issues with debating theology or metaphysics using current understanding of science and physics. All debates along these lines must operate on the presupposition that what we currently believe about physics is true and correct. Given how much science we got horrifically wrong in the last 1000 years alone -- hell, how much we've gotten wrong just in the last 10 years -- I feel like that's a big "if" to hang your beliefs on. Just my two cents. edit: To make absolutely clear, I am not saying science can't be trusted or should be disregarded totally. The accumulation of human observations and interpretations about the universe is magnificent and we should treasure it. I only caution against putting too much faith in what one thinks they know for certain, whether science or religion.
The Kalam is flawed because it's premise is fallacious. A "Fallacy of Composition", or the assumption that what is true of the parts must be true of the whole. As an analogy, every sheep in a flock must logically have 1, and only 1, mother. It does not follow that the whole flock *itself* has 1, and only 1, mother. So if everything that "begins to exist" in the universe (whatever that means) has a cause, it does not follow that universe itself has one. And even if it did, it does not imply that such a cause is a god. As to the laws of thermodynamics, it's important to remember that the physical laws are not actually objective things. They are a means of description, created by humans for humans. They are the map, not the territory. They may therefore be inaccurate because they are tailored for our observational abilities. There maybe something we, and certainly Newton in his century, were incapable of seeing or conceptualizing regarding energy. So relying on these "laws" always puts us on thin ice.
I mean, if we're being really technical here, the first law of thermodynamics is a conservation law, which means that, at all times, the quantity of energy is the same. Let's ignore for the moment that the first law of thermodynamics might not even hold on cosmic scales of time and space... even if we take it for granted, all we are committed to saying is that there was never a time when the quantity of energy was different than it is now. In particular, there was never a time when there was no energy. It seems like we can say the universe began to exist without insisting there was a time when there was no energy. All we have to say is that, at the very first instant, all the energy was present. As long as there was no prior time when there was no energy, it can be the case that the universe began to exist and energy is conserved.
Yep The only way theists get away with it is by substituting one definition of the word "create" : "recombine things to be recognized as something else" with the actually relevant definition of the word : "causing something from nothing" It is dishonest. Especially when they then go on to say "something from nothing is impossible" To be sure though. It is a "law". That does not necessarily mean it is true. There is no example of "causing existence" that we can point to to estimate how it would work. Existence is magic. It could 'pop' from nothingness; it could be turtles all the way down; it could be a snake eating its own tail; it could be back to the future; it could be any of a million versions of sentience: creation, simulation, accidental self annihilation and reset, tenet That's why it's dumb to think that we + a single omnipotent version of us are all there is
>Kalam cosmological argument, incoherent?!! It seems fine to me. But as an argument for a god, it's horrible. It doesn't even mention the word god. >Would love to hear what you guys think about this. As I said, as an argument for a god, it falls apart because it doesn't even mention a god. And as you point out, it's not clear what "beings to exist" means. Did the universe even begin to exist? Does matter and energy changing configurations constitute "begins to exist"? I think the only people proposing the universe came out of nothing are the theists. If we accept the conclusion of the argument, it tells us nothing about what the cause is. Was it nature and natural processes forming existing matter energy time space into a universe, into a singularity? We don't know. But far more reasonable to speculate on things we do know exist, natural forces/ processes, matter and energy, rather than magic beings.
It's completely incoherent. Premise 1: We don't know this to be true. It's also special pleading for God to claim he has no beginning, since they can't demonstrate it to be true. Premise 2: We don't know this to be true. Our particular instantiation of space/time had something we are calling a beginning, but that doesn't mean anything. It just changed form from a state of intense density and heat to time, matter and energy. That's not really a beginning. Conclusion: If the premises were true, fine, but they aren't necessarily, plus, that doesn't make the cause a god. Kalam doesn't even argue for a god. It's just a generic "cause" that the religious then just assume must not only be a god, but their god. Kalam is useless.
energy is eternal and has no beginning meanwhile other atheists like Hawking say there was no before the big bang, so if energy didn't begin at the big bang how did it exist when nothing existed? If you take this logic, you must dismiss the claim of nothing before the big bang, that's incoherency. If the KCA user defines universe as post-Big Bang expansion then it has a beginning, this is what scientific consensus calls the universe and gives it an age of 13.77 billion years meaning it began 13.77 billion years ago. I see nothing wrong with using the terminology of scientific consensus to see the universe as an expansion of space having a beginning 13.77 billion years ago, despite the energy of it being eternal.
One flaw is the unstated Premise 0: There is a preexisting god powerful enough to cause the universe. Theists find the Kalam persuasive because they carry around the unstated Premise pre-loaded in their heads. They do not need to state it because it is integrated into their world view. The Kalam is not persuasive to atheists. They do not have a creator god embedded in their worldview. Theists are left scratching their heads asking "What other cause could there be? It must be god because nothing else could be the cause." They reject the question about what caused god because they define their god as uncaused. Theists assume atheists are willfully ignoring what is so obvious to them.
Yeah its been said here above but I like the argument that we have never really observed anything coming into existence in a real sense, just rearrangements of already existing energy and particles. What I can add though is that to the extent we have seen anything truely begin to exist it would be stuff on the quantum scale, were virtual particles can "begin" to exist in what seems an uttelry random process (even though the energy already exists in some form so its not truely from nothing). So, not only do we not have examples of anything actually coming into existence from scratch, the closest example we do have seems to have a very tenuous relationship with cause and effect.
In their book *The Anthropic Cosmological Principle*, physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler explained that this law is not violated by the thesis that the universe began to exist from no pre-existing matter-energy: “It is sometimes objected that the Universe cannot have originated a finite proper time ago in the past, as the Friedman universe does, because this would violate the law of conservation of mass-energy. **This objection is invalid. At every instant of time in the Friedman universe the general relativity stress-energy conservation law holds. The law does not hold at the singularity, but the singularity is not in time.**” (p.443)
Accepting that the universe began at the point of a singularity resolves this imo. The natural rules in force throught the universe break down within singularities. On the other side of the event horizon, we have no basis to argue that the rules of cause and effect apply. Within the universe on our side of the event horizon of that first singularity, causation abounds, at least at the macro scale. Reconciling that with what we know of quantum mechanics is a little more tricky.
The main issue with this argument that theists think it's an argument for God, and it simply is not. It doesn't matter whether this argument is true or not, it doesn't get you to God and it doesn't get you CLOSER to a God. I'm happy to accept the argument. Our intuition tells us this argument is probably true. That doesn't mean it IS true, but we have no reason to think it is not true.
Both premises are assumptions, so the conclusion is an assumption. It's amazing that anyone has ever found this 'argument' compelling. Even sadder is when someone like WLC goes on to claim that the assumed 'cause' has all the same attributes as the infinitely more complex 'creator' he infers to explain the existence and complexity of the universe.
> *Premise 2: the universe began to exist. This is a claim and not a fact. The Big Bang is an event in time affecting this portion of the universe that we live in. There is no reason to believe that the universe began to exist from that point - the key word being began. For all we know, the universe is eternal and life is the default.
Nope, not at all. The rule holds true for all things extant. In the very beginning, physics itself was subject to change. Physical law that defines the relationship between all things has since hardened into its current form. Everything beyond that is speculation and conjecture. Anything that is magical / religious is just lazy thinking.
An honest rendition of the Kalam would begin with either: * Premise 1: Within our universe, everything that begins to exist has a cause. or * Premise 1: Both within and before and outside our universe, everything that begins to exist has a cause. Either way, the problems with the argument become more apparent. For most arguments, there is no need to stipulate "within our universe" in the premises, because the entire argument is within the context of the universe. With this one, it is important.
I don't really agree. The laws of physics (such as the first law of thermodynamics) are descriptive, not prescriptive. So it's not impossible that they could be ever broken, it's just that this has never been observed to happen. So far. I have issues with the argument but this is not one of them.
The first two premises of the kalam are unsound. There is no way to demonstrate them. In addition, even if the kalam was sound, it take a huge leap of special pleading to get to a creator, than even more special pleading to get to the Christian version of god.
I don't tend to invoke any scientific laws. I just say something like this... Name something other than the universe that began to exist. I'll wait. Say they say "tree"... Well, a tree didn't begin to exist. We started calling it a tree when it started looking like a tree. The materials it used to make itself into a tree was taken from the air and soil and energy from the sun. It's like the difference between a pile and a mound and a hill and a mountain. At no point does a mountain begin to exist. There's just a point where a majority of people, given the definition of a mountain would CALL it a mountain. The fact of the matter is... the only thing we have that ever began to exist and wasn't just reformed out of existing material is the universe itself. And science isn't even clear that 'begin to exist' is a reasonable phrase to use when describing the universe itself either. So kalam makes generalizations out of a set of one.
Surely you would agree though that a tree is differently arranged to the things that make it up?
I don't see why that is relevant. Things existed. Arrange those things differently and we call it a tree. The tree didn't begin to exist when the arrangement changed. The tree never began to exist. We just started calling that arrangement of matter a tree. It's not what it is. It's just what we call it.
I've been reading all your points and I'm receiving alot of quite interesting ideas and information that I need to look into, alot of knowledge I'm yet to acquire 😅. Just wanna thank everyone for sharing their pov.
Check out SkyDivePhil’s you tube channel to hear what physicists (i.e., people who actually do cosmology) have to say on the subject. There are a couple of videos on Kalam and a couple on fine tuning.
Correct. Kalam is just begging the question and incompatible with everything we actually know about existence and causal relationships. In other words, it’s poop.
We have no reason to assume the universe as a closed system "began" to exist, no. Or that words like began are relevant beyond what we can observe.
The first law is a property of time Symmetry. At the point of creation there wouldn't be time Symmetry and conservation would not apply.
In order to accept premise 1, you would need supreme knowledge of everything in the universe and the origins.
You are correct. Theists love arguing about the second law (incorrectly) while ignoring the first law.