Kalem cosmological argument

a reply to: Krazysh0t

The cause doesn't have to have been pre-universe.

a reply to: Astyanax

Most of this wasn't an argument. For the little part that perhaps was, i say this. I'm certinly not arging that the pre-universe cause is temporal.

a reply to: randyvs

Hi, Randy. Nice to hear from you.

So you disagree?

I agree completely. But there's a catch. The universe, in the model Hawking favours, is finite but boundariless. That means it's about 15bn years old, but also that it has existed 'forever'. See my third point earlier.

a reply to: Thetan

Most of this wasn't an argument.

Yes, the part commencing with the sentence that has the word 'privy' in it was just me expressing my opinion of your argument.

For the little part that perhaps was, i say this. I'm certinly not arging that the pre-universe cause is temporal.

Then it cannot be prior to the universe. Priority implies temporality. But this is nothing to the point; I demolished your first premise. Game over.

a reply to: Astyanax

Your "rebuttals," weren't rebuttals. I'm not arguing that the pre-universe cause is temporal, because i'm not arguing for a pre-universe cause. I'm not arguing against it, or for it. The first cause doesn't have to have been before time, it could have been the beginning of time itself.

a reply to: Thetan

Your "rebuttals," weren't rebuttals.

You deny that your first premise is inductive? Or are you insisting on the validity of inductive premises?

The first cause doens't have to have been before time, it could have been the beginning of time itself.

The beginning of time is not a cause. Spacetime is the framework within which causality is supposed to operate. Except, of course, that it doesn't, except as an illusion. Causes only increase probabilities; they don't actually produce effects.

You need to brush up on your physics as well as on your epistemology.

a reply to: Astyanax

I agree completely. But there's a catch. The universe, in the model Hawking favours, is finite but boundariless. That means it's about 15bn years old, but also that it has existed 'forever'. See my third point earlier.

Salutations!
You're speaking therfore of a different concept I believe?

Damn those catches!

a reply to: Astyanax

The first premise is inductive, however, it is also by far the most probable. Something isn't dismissed just because it's inductive. If I said, "when I jump in normal earth condions, i'll fall after," that's also inductive. I wasn't arguing that the beginning of time was the cause, only that it was included with the cause.

a reply to: Thetan

By the bye, excuse my abcenses when they exist and my apologies for them. I'm a very busy college student.

a reply to: Thetan

Probability isn't certainty. You claimed your argument was deductive, yet the opening premise is inductive. Inductive premises are intrinsically unreliable, and deductions made from them the more so. Dismissed.

I wasn't arguing that the beginning of time was the cause, only that it was included with the cause.

But it is not included. It is a precondition for a cause.

Also please see my earlier statement about physics.

a reply to: Astyanax

It is a deductive argument. It is a deductive argument because the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises.The cause would be temporal if it happended while time was present. If they were simultaneous, time would be present



study.com...

a reply to: spygeek

, "time" is part of the fabric of the universe,

Is it all velvetty? Fabric WTF?

a reply to: Thetan

It is a deductive argument because the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises.

A deductive argument from induced premises is not necessarily true; it depends on whether the premise is.

I don't need a tutorial for SAT students to help me distinguish between induction and deduction.

a reply to: Astyanax
That's correct, it isn't necessarily true,(whats called "sound," technically.) A deductive argument doesn't have to be true to be deductive, it just has to be whats called,"valid." A deductive argument is deductive if and only if the conclustoin follows necessarily from the premises.

All ducks can't fly.
X is a duck.
Therefore, X can't fly.

This is a deductive argument, it just isn't sound.
The argument I gave in the OP is deductive.

a reply to: Thetan

Oh. My appologies. I thought you said that my argument wasn't deductive. Taking my first premise and saying "It's inductive, so I dismiss it," isn't an argument.

a reply to: Thetan

We know that matter couldn't have always been here because matter is never quiescent.

So we can say for certain that matter couldn't have been here, but a disembodied timeless spaceless wizard could? I see no reason why the Universe could not be either 1) Eternal in some way (there are plenty of physicists working on eternal models of the Universe) or 2) Made out of some pre-existing STUFF (this stuff could be strictly material or could be some sort of non-physical/immaterial stuff).

I see no reason to think that absolute NOTHING is even a coherent state of affairs that could have ever existed. Even in the view of Craig and the proponents of Kalam there isn't actually NOTHING, there is God, there is always something. In the first case we have God, an all powerful complex living thing that can conjure Universe's through sheer power of will. In the second we have some sort of pre-existing eternal STUFF. Now I see no reason to go with the former explanation, that of the disembodied mind.

So this by definition wouldn't be a material cause of the universe, as the universe already existed as the material itself.

I don't think he means "material cause" in the sense that the Universe must be made of matter, please don't conflate the usage of the term "material cause" as anything to do with materialism. Also, you never defined Universe in the OP.

When TBS is arguing for the material causes he isn't necessarily arguing for MATERIAL causes (that is he isn't saying there is some MATTER that transcends time and space, instead he is saying, like with Craig's Efficient Cause (God) he can just as easily posit a material cause. We could have a completely IMMATERIAL "material cause" for the Universe, material cause simply meaning that the Universe is made of some pre-existing, but not necessarily PHYSICAL stuff. You yourself admitted that ex materia DOES NOT mean it has to be physical stuff.

there must be an actual infinite amount of past events if the universe has always existed, and it's impossible to have an actual infinite.

No one has never demonstrated that an actual infinite is impossible.

Personally I think the attributes of God become meaningless once you remove the Universe. My stance is that God is contingent upon the Universe. Think about the God that Craig proposes and argues for, outside of time, outside of the Universe, and creating out of absolute nothing. All powerful, all knowing, all loving, and present everywhere. Now imagine God in that state of nothing WITHOUT the Universe.

Power cannot exist meaningfully without time in which to act and something which to act upon. Knowledge cannot exist meaningfully without things external to oneself to know. Love and morality cannot exist without multiple living beings interacting. And God cannot be omnipresent without time and space to be present in. Without the Universe the God Craig proposes is NOTHING, his characteristics become meaningless impossibilities.

a reply to: Titen-SxullI'm not aruging for the existence of a god here. I don't see a single actual argument or rebuttal in here except that "no one has ever demonstrated that an actual infinite is impossible." You actually used the word "never," but i'm assuming you meant the word "ever," correct me if i'm wrong on that. They can't physically demonsrate it isn't true because it isn't physically possible. They can however demonstrate it mathematically and do, Hilbert's hotel is a good example, another is this. what's infinity, plus five? Of course this is just another example of the absurdity.
I should have put the definition of "universe," into the OP. You are right about that.

a reply to: Thetan

I'm not aruging for the existence of a god here.

For a cause of the Universe then?

If all you're arguing for is that the Universe has a cause I have no reason to argue against it, other than to reiterate the points TBS made in his video. There's no reason to think that there can be an efficient cause to the Universe without a material cause. Craig loves to put lot's of emphasis on our intuitions about causation being reliable when we're talking about the Universe and yet he advocates creation from nothing.

You say an actual infinite is impossible... fair enough, but I see a parallel there with my stipulation that an actual state of nothing is impossible. There was always something, the question is what was this "stuff" or this "cause". We don't know.

I doubt it's any kind of living being, but who knows.

a reply to: Titen-Sxull

Indeed, "nothing," isn't a thing, it's the abscence of things. Ex Nihilo does seem to be counterintuitive, doesn't it? It is however, the only logical conclusion. I'v already succintly rebutted his points, so unless you offer some new rebuttals I really don't have anthing to say.

originally posted by: Thetan
a reply to: spygeek

I'll not be arguing the existence of any god here.

Fair enough, you will only be arguing for the validity of an argument that presupposes the existence of a god to reach the conclusion a god exists.

Now lets take a look at your rebuttals.

Rebuttal to premise one- Surely, what you mean to say is, "There seem to be examples of things happening without a cause." Is this an accepted fact? Not at all, I direct you to David Bohm's interpretation.

Nope. I meant to say what I said. It is an accepted fact that there are things that exist or begin to exist without cause. It is not an accepted fact that all things that begin to exist have a cause, which makes the first premise invalid.
Bohm's interpretation requires that the wave function be treated as a physically existing field. This is contradictory to Occam's razor as the wave function alone is enough to explain all of our observations and the inclusion of Bohm's particle definition is unnecessary. Bohm's interpretation is superfluous and its ability to assist in solving the quantum measurement problem is highly debatable.

Furthermore, doesn't it seem more probable that we just simply don't have instruments to measure particles that small correctly yet? Besides, as people debating about this before us have said. Extrapolating that there are no causes for these things just because we haven't found any yet , decisevely, is like extrapolating that due to our inability to detect alien life, there is no alien life in the universe.

On the contrary, extrapolating that all things have external causes simply because most of the things we observe do, decisively, is like extrapolating that all possible alien life is carbon based because all life on our planet is.

No extrapolation is taking place here, rather we do not assume that there is a cause until one becomes necessary or we find one. If a cause is not required to explain the existence of something, and none is found, it is not logical to assume there is one outside of itself.

I'll leave you with a quote by John Jefferson Davis.

"Quantum-mechanical events may not have classically deterministic causes, but they are not thereby uncaused or a causal. The decay of a nucleus takes place in view of physical actualities and potentialities internal to itself, in relation to a spatiotemporal nexus governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. The fact that uranium atoms consistently decay into atoms of lead and other elements--and not into rabbits or frogs--shows that such events are not causal but take place within a causal nexus and lawlike structures."

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make with this. This quote serves to illustrate rather well that deterministic causes such as those implied by the first premise of the KCA may not apply to quantum events. It describes these events as noncausal, or self caused. It does nothing to help your case or bolster the first premise of the KCA at all, and clearly demonstrates the point I made in my refutation of it about so-called "probabilistic causation". If something is self caused through the potentialities of its own nature, it is noncasual; without a definable separate cause.

originally posted by: Thetan
a reply to: spygeek

I'll adress your refutation to premise two now.
It is not an assumption but a notion very much grounded in general concensus among scientists, it is also the only logical probablility in an inductive sense. The multiverse hypothisis is irrelevant since that would be incudled in the definiton we are using for universe.

Wow. Where do I start?
There is no consensus at all amoung scientists about whether or not the universe has a cause, or whether it even needs to have one. I have no idea where you get this idea, but it is not the scientific community.

I covered the arguments failure to define properly the essential properties of its concepts, you haven't addressed this. If you are including the multiverse in your definition of the term "universe", you are not using the term scientifically. To extrapolate the term "universe" to include every conceivable universe and multiverse, is to render the first premise even less rationally acceptable than if is taken to mean only our universe. If we allowed that, what possible consensus is there that the multiverse could have a beginning, when we know even less about it than our universe?

As for this "pre big bang universe," how could it be static when energy isn't quiescnet? Also, this raises the highly interesting question, if it was eternally static beforehand, what was the cause of it's change? For example,(and actually I think this is Craig's example.) If a pool is frozen for eternity and then melts, what made it melt?

At what point did I imply this state was static? What do even mean by the term static? Quantum vacuum is not "static", it fluctuates. Probabilistically these fluctuations can produce a big bang. The pool is not frozen, it does not melt; it is a very poor analogy and is demonstrative of the lack of Craig's scientific knowledge regarding these matters.

You have not adequately rebuffed my refutation of the KCA, and you have fallen into the trap created by its failure to define the essential properties of its core concepts and terminology. You have not demonstrated that it should be reasonably accepted that the first premise is correct, or the second. You have not demonstrated a sufficient level of knowledge of scientific opinion, or even terminology, required to discuss in any meaningful way the substantiation of the premise, just like everyone else who has presented and attempted to validate this argument as sound.

The KCA remains a circular, deeply flawed argument that presupposes its own conclusion from the first premise, a premise which is not even sound to begin with.