The Kalam Cosmological Argument isn't about God
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- Опубліковано 31 бер 2019
- The Kalam Cosmological Argument, as made famous by William Lane Craig, is among the most popular arguments for God among online Christians. However, it doesn't really demonstrate what they think it does.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument
• The Kalam Cosmological...
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If I didn't already know about the Kalam Cosmological Argument, I'd swear this was an April Fools.
The April Fool has said in his heart, 'there is no video'.
HA!
Futility Belt you win the internet today.
@@sh33pboi Your comment is at 69 Likes, so I'm going to leave it there, but consider this a mystically invisible 70th. :D
@@Paulogia thx for the video, I went into a yt arguement about this, and had no bloody clue what it was, and know I know ty ;D
Ahh, the Kalaam argument. AKA the underpants gnome argument.
1. Universe.
2. ???
3. GOD
Necessarily in caps. Because they yell Jesus at you on top of their lungs.
4. PROFIT
Are you that stupid to not understand the argument?
@@dazedmaestro1223 He's actually basically right. It's a small simplification of it but "there is a universe with a point of origin" "(space where a reason that origin has to be god should go)" "God" It's hilariously accurate honestly. I didn't realize that before.
AkujiMalice The problem with the argument is that the premise is not even warranted. I do not know of any theists who actually understand enough physics to be able to justify the claim that "the universe began." The universe could just as easily be eternal. Sure, there is conclusive evidence "the universe began," but that comes with about a thousand different caveats about what we mean by "universe" and what we mean by "began" in the context of cosmology and quantum theory, all of which may or may not really align with what these apologists mean. And if they did understand that evidence and the physics mechanisms that evidence underlies, then they definitely would not be claiming God created the universe.
Why does a omniscient and Omnipotent god need apologists?
And why does he want to be worshipped?
But he does need a starship. ;)
Condor Boss I always wondered that as a kid. Why should I miss cartoons and movies going to church so that I can get the opportunity to worship him even more in heaven. That to me was unjust and selfish I mean how many people do you need to kiss your ass so that you could be satisfied weren't the angels enough for you?
God needs apologists and a starship because he has been locked away by the Q Continuum.
"sorry, I didn't mean to murder your entire village."
"You kicked the bloody bride in the face."
"Ah jeeze, sry. You see, I was commanded by God and was just doing his will, so you really should take it up with him. I'm terribly sorry, really"
Signed, Christan Appoligist
With the Kalam Cosmological Argument, you can insert whatever deity you happen to believe in, and define it as the first cause. It’s so convenient.
Or like Paulogia, say it is energy. Or really, you could insert a sex crazed honey badger if you wanted, since the assumptions don't lead you to anything specific.
Yes, this argument only gets you to generic theism. Which Craig (the strongest proponent of this argument) readily admits. That doesn't really make the argumen tany worse.
@@rjonesx Except no, it doesn't even get you to theism. It gets you to something, then they claim that the something is their god for no particular reason.
@@jeffc5974 You know "sex crazed honey badger" would seem to be a pretty good description of El/Adonai/YHWH/Jehovah
@@schwadevivre4158 You shouldn't denigrate honey badgers in that way.
This is the best and most succinct take-down of the Kalam argument I've seen. Well done, Paul.
thank you
Damn, so concise. I’ve see a lot of arguments against the Kalam but this has to be the best.
Going to the source video:
"comments are disabled for this video"
Why am I not surprised...
And yet they complain Mr. Atheist Jimmy Snow getting UA-cam to take down their Make America Straight Again videos for violating UA-cam's Terms of Service is "censorship".
Dr. Craig doesn’t respond unless he’s had ten months to research with his crack team of assistants, and a contract specifying the rules of engagement.
He's so confident in the truth of his claims that he doesn't need to listen to anything that refutes them. Perfect apologism!
Man, it feels like there’s such an obsession with WLC on some areas of UA-cam... I wonder why...?
@@CJ-sw8lc
Maybe because many Christians think that WLC is the best Christian Apologist... although this might have changed since free information is now so easily accessible on the internet.
Most arguments for the existence of gods only work when you hear them for the first time and you don’t know how easily they can be refuted.😂
The difference between magic and a miracle is mostly the actor performing. Otherwise, they are basically indistinguishable.
Which makes magic the more reasonable thing to believe in, since we can see the actor.
Basically, when God is performing magic he is doing a miracle...
@@coolmuso6108 That's pretty much the definition. Which makes the big scare about performing magic in the bible even more hilarious. Unless of course we're in the special dispensation area again where god is allowed to commit all sorts of atrocities that he himself outlawed.
0x777 Yeah Hahaha...It’s funny because some theists say they don’t believe in magic and then you point out a story in their Bible that they have to believe - like when Moses and Aaron have a dual with Pharaoh’s magicians. I remember in the debate between Hitchens and William Lane Craig, Hitchens pointed out Jesus’ use of sorcery when he cast out demons into the Gadarene swine. Anyway, Craig referred to that as Jesus “commanding the forces of darkness” which literally means black magic/sorcery. Lolol
Every apologist explanation eventually comes back to special pleading.
“Everything that exists is a rearrangement of things that already existed.”
Well put.
Therefore, God is an interior designer!
that doesn’t make sense how could something exist without being created
@@holetohell4140 I don’t know. The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us, but it’s a mistake to insert a creator god into the gaps of our knowledge.
@@Jordanmode infinite regress is illogical
@@holetohell4140 I don’t believe I said there’s an infinite regress. I’m not bold enough to make claims like that without evidence. I’m certainly open to the idea of a beginning, but I don’t have sufficient reason to accept it’s the case either. I don’t know, I don’t accept either position. You can tool around with logic, (the proposition of a prime mover is far from settled in philosophy anyway) but evidence is required for me to really make an informed decision. And there isn’t any evidence of a prime mover. It just makes sense to you
But I fear I’m incredulous towards a different logical impossibility. Namely, a being that exists outside of space and time, as both are necessary for existence. Then to go further, and ascribe it personality traits and desires, and even a gender. A creature who created this inconceivably vast expanse, with countless galaxies, arranging the stars and planets, worlds without end, and is deeply concerned about my masturbatory habits.
4:50 It's plausible that A and B, therefore it's proven C.....
I wish more people had noticed. It bugged me too.
The universe did not "come from" the Big Bang, the universe IS the Big Bang at its current state of expansion.
Ergo: Never was there a Time when the universe did not exist.
At least time as we know it. There is a hypothesis that before the expansion time as we currently know it would be "trapped" so to speak due to the massive gravity that would be present if all matter of the universe was collected into one small area. There are also rather sound (although not currently demonstrable) hypothesis that this matter has always existed in some state of expansion or attraction going through incredibly long cycles, although again not demonstrable.
@@cbeavo
"At least time as we know it."
Exactly, that's why I deliberately capitalized "Time".
Space is the relationship between objects, time is the change in that relationship. A singularity can be neither.
Besides, it's a paraphrase of a verse I like from the Bhagavad Gita (BG 2:12)
Exactly, the universe has literally existed for all Time.
0nly This This is not entirely accurate. You describe "space" and "time" as being different physical concepts, but the current cosmological and astrophysical understanding of the universe maintains that what exists is "spacetime," not "space" and "time" separately. In colloquial parlance, it makes sense that people talk about "space" and "time" as representing different ideas, because this is what intuition tells people, and the specific nuances of general relativity and the existence of spacetime are largely irrelevant for day-to-day purposes of most humans. However, if we are talking about the origin of the universe through a scientific lens, then it is noteworthy to realize that talking about "time" as opposed to "spacetime" is nonsensical. When scientists talk about the expansion of the universe, be it at the time of the Big Bang, in which case it would known as rapid inflation, or right now, what they really mean is that the metric tensor of spacetime is undergoing a certain change which is equivalent to the underlying manifold expanding. Simply saying "space" is expanding is inaccurate, because "space" and "time" are not separable. It is only accurate to say "spacetime" is expanding.
Your usage of the word "singularity" is also incorrect as well, although I admit that this is the fault of science popularizers, and to an extent, even the fault of physicists themselves. Physicists are unfortunately somewhat more sloppy with terminology than mathematicians are, so when we borrow this terms from mathematics, we assume the intended meaning is understood from context and move on, which does a disservice to people who are not physicists or mathematicians. A "singularity" is nothing more than a part of a scientific theory or law in which the underlying mathematical equations break for certain values or solutions. To give a very simple example: in Newtonian physics, we say F = GMm/r^2. This law works fine, except when r = 0. r = 0 is a singularity of Newton's universal law of gravitation. Why? Because for r = 0, the law no longer works: mathematically, it becomes nonsense. We do not actually necessarily know what really does happen at r = 0, all we do know, in the specific context of Newtonian physics, is that at r = 0, strange things probably happen that the theory is unable to understand.
The singularity in the Big Bang is a mathematical artifact more than a physical one. What it means is simply that at the precise time t = 0, the equations of general relativity sort of stop working, and they give you nonsense like division by 0 and other juicy stuff that we all know and love. That is all it means. The word "singularity" does not refer to a specific physical thing at all. However, we have to admit that the singularity aspect somewhat goes away once you begin to introduce additional models and quantum theory into the mix. But that is far beyond the scope of what my comment is about, so I will leave it at that.
@@angelmendez-rivera351
We observe the universe expanding. Based upon that observation, we can hypothesize that there must have a point at which that expansion began. We call that instant of initial expansion: The Big Bang.
It's really that simple, nothing particularly complicated about it. Even YECs and others of their ilk should be able to comprehend it.
I motion to name this rearrangemeent of kalam premises the 'Paulam Cosmological Argument'.
You fool.. do you want to cause the uncaused birth of the Paulogian religion?!?!
It must be really frustrating to have to rely on fallacy ridden old arguments in order to defend a belief you base you're entire life on.
I bet that when you drill down almost all theist will fall back on faith. And as we all know that faith is the excuse people use when they don't have a good reason to belive.
Faith isn't the excuse.. its very definition is belief without reason.
The fact that the argument is "old" means nothing. Truth does not age and die.
@@matthewlallinger9603 "Fallacy Ridden" is the key phrase, not "old".
@@matthewlallinger9603 The point of this video is that even if the kalam is valid and sound(debatable), it doesn't get you to any kind of deity, much less anyone's personal deity.
Faith is just pretending to know what you don't (or can't) know.
Simple. Concise. Well done (as usual). I've bookmarked this one. Hand me that crown.
The biggest problem with the kalam, is some how, time exists before the universe. As you pointed out Paul.
Ken Christiansen - um, no it doesn’t actually, space time did not exist until after the Big Bang
@@JV-tg2ne then there was no before the big bang so how did something cause it? Cause and effect needs time. Without time there is no before or after, so there is no cause or effect.
@@kenchristiansen2080 We don't know anything about the cosmos pre big bang, and may never know anything about that so we can say nothing about what was or was not there and then. There may or may not have been a before.
@@bulwinkle that is my point. We don't know if there is a before. So we don't know if cause and effect was even possible before the big bang. You have to assume that time was already in effect before what we understand as time started.
@@kenchristiansen2080 You said, "there's no before the big bang", but we can't even know that even.
This must be my favorite video so far, keep up the excellent work.
People who use the Kalam as an argument either do not understand the argument and are just parroting apologetics, or are being actively dishonest. I think most people you encounter who use it are the former, but people like WLC are defiantly the latter.
Zeus is out-dated, now in the 21st century lightning comes from Thor.
IMHO, this is one of your best and most valuable contributions.
Great video. Thanks again for taking the time to make such informative content.
How do you only have 30k subs? You do good work, Paul.
Good news, person from the past! He’s well over 100k now. 😊
Craig takes an even bigger leap in not only assuming that the KCA demonstrates "God", but specifically the God that he happens to believe in, and not Brahma, or The Tao, or Ahura Mazda, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Universe Farting Pixies etc. etc. etc.
Simon Giles
- I've heard WLC deliver this "argument" and even he admits that the most that the KCA gets to is a deistic god. He then goes on to make the huge, completely unsupported, leap to say that "the best candidate is the god of the bible." There is absolutely no logical or reasonable path from the possible god of the KCA to the god of the bible.
@@johns7734 From the conclusion reached by the Kalam a god is just as likely as the cause as a universe-farting fairy. Or a universe-manufacturing machine. Or a natural universe-creating process.
WLC actually presents the Kalam backwards. He starts with the supposition that god exists, that god has these qualities, that god created the universe, that the universe was created and finally that the universe began to exist.
When viewed in that order it's easy to see how he goes from "there was a cause" to "the cause has these qualities that exactly match the qualities I attribute to god".
Of course he thinks it was _his_ god, how could WLC know that the Universe was sneezed out of the nose of *The Great Green Arkleseizure* ?
@@fred_derf As far as I can tell that's pretty much what Aquinas does with at least the first four of his five arguments. So it's no wonder that a lesser thinker like Craig would do the same.
@@johns7734 What's even more amusing is that there isn't really "a" God if the Bible. The Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament presents a variety of different concepts of "God" and what that means, and what it means for worshippers. There's a chasm of difference between the EL figure in Genesis 1 that breathes life into the primordial waters, to the somewhat bumbling anthropomorphic figure on Genesis 2&3 that strolls around gardens and doesn't understand basic psychology, to the Chatty-Cathy fire God that follows Moses around, or figures like the Holy Wisdom found in Ecclesiastes and Sirach.
Therefore questions that Craig fails to answer are:
To premise one - does it?
To premise two - did it?
To the conclusion, that cause could anything, why do you say it's the God of the Bible?
And then as an addendum, which particular version of God in the Bible?
It's the "there has to be a cause" part that sticks in my craw. In our corner of the cosmos things begin to exist without cause. It's called the Casimir Effect and can be demonstrated with a rather trivial experiment
seen lots of takedowns of the Kalam. This is the best. Its succinct, comprehensive, and easily understood. I have seen the takedowns by almost every one of the folks you show at the beginning (many of whom I am also a fan). Please keep up the great work.
Paul says "the universal constant is energy" and I swear, every woowoo hippie nutbar on the hemisphere went "did you hear that?"(insert dramatic gopher gif)
Troy Robinson well, in real life, we’ve done some pretty spectacularly horrific things with mass/energy equivalence.
You can't create or destroy energy, merely transform it. So when the Universe reaches entropy, what form is the energy? Not heat because heat is molecules in rapid motion, light has mobile photons, so maybe gravity? I'll bite.
Maximum entropy is the lack of usable energy, or the ability to do work. It doesn't require fundamental particles to stop behaving energetically, just that everything is basically at the same state, no driving potential energy differences
Thanks you for not being an April fool's joke video. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this today.
Excellent deconstruction of Kalam! You made it easy to understand and in turn easy to debunk!
Also wanted to say this is the best debunking of the kalam argument I have heard ty for posting this.
Welp..... it's April 1st SO I am inherently skeptical of all things I see on social media.... at 0:06, lets hop this is the first real video I've seen today!
Of course comments are disabled on his video... I was going to ask them to demonstrate something that has begun to exist ex nihilo -- because I can't think of anything.
Yeah, preachers aren't that interested in feedback or questions…
Awesome explanation, thanks!
I absolutely love your reworking of the Kalam. It was my answer the first time I heard this argument. Although not written as concisely as you put it.
The Kalam has convinced me. I am now a Hindu.
Checkmate.
That’s not how argumentation works. You work with people piece by piece. I want to get you to believing a cause, then deity, then my God. The Full Kalam Argument gets you to a personal, eternal agent.
@Ψ sorry, I must ask for clarification as I don’t understand what part of my comment you are responding to. And also, I don’t know why an arguments conclusion has to be impressive. As I said, Kalam does not posit any exact God, but a personal first agent.
@Ψ I don't have to convince you of my God at this stage, in fact, that is intellectually irresponsible as there is no healthy way to believe that God does not exist to not only believing a god exist but that my specific God exists. That is what cults do. We build an argument on multiple different pieces of evidence.
Also, as for the term impressive evidence. There is nothing in a court case that one might call impressively. There is circumstantial evidence and direct evidence. Look, if I am going to be as fair as possible I will consider the description of impressive evidence to be direct evidence. I need to make it clear, it is a misconception that circumstantial evidence (by itself) cannot lead to a guilty verdict. A circumstantial piece of evidence cannot lead to a guilty verdict, but many pieces linked together can. It should also be clear what is considered circumstantial and direct. A piece of circumstantial evidence can either be a piece of evidence that links a person to a crime (like texting you wish that person A. died and then mysteriously that person died), but it can also be evidence that otherwise might be considered direct evidence but still can have other explanation (your DNA is found somewhere on the victims body but you are in a relationship with person A. where it would be expected your DNA might be). Direct evidence is evidence in which only one conclusion can be drawn. The Kalam is direct evidence because if Premise one and two are true only that conclusion can be drawn. You cannot draw another conclusion. You either agree with a personal agent or you are wrong.
All i see here is two logical fallacies, 1,an argument from ignorance, and 2,the god of the gaps.
One of my favorite parts of this argument is that they make up a rule specifically so that they can say their thing does not abide by that rule, aka the special pleading fallacy.
Klabam Comical argument is logic fallacy bingo.
The longer you examine it, the more fallacies you can cross off.
It gets even funnier when people start to defend the premises.
It’s also a non sequitur and an obfuscated circular argument, demanding the premise from the conclusion. It can really be boiled down to “if the universe exists god exists, the universe exists therefore god exists.” It’s such a freaking train wreck I have no idea why no one has taken Craig to task over this nonsense.
@@Mostlyharmless1985 Logically, there must be a first cause. Based on logical inference and probability, we can deduce that the first cause is the creator.
@@OmarOsman98 Update your physics, we've gone a ways since Aristotle. Logically, the creator will need a creator, and the creator creator will need a creator creator creator, and so on, turtles all the way down.
Fact is, nothing requires a first cause, only by reconfiguring matter from other matter "creates" anything. It is entirely plausible that the universe is eternal, it's always been, everything that ever was already existed.
It's a fair sight more parsimonious than your creator.
Thank you for being a real upload and not an April fool's prank (love King Crocoduck - but!)
Awesome video. Finally someone who addresses these problems in one video as well. The many times debunked cosmological argument deconstructed. I have nothing to add but my gratitude and I'll just do what's expected of the internet.
SAURON LIVESSSS!!!
Superb, Paul. Extremely well marshalled and lucid.
and false.
1. God is derived from the conceptual analysis of the "Cause" in premise 3.
2. Everything that begins to exist isn't just a rearrangement. For example, thoughts begin to exist but there was no previous thought material.
3. Time is unnecessary. Something begins to exist at point T if there is no prior point to T at which it exists. Thus, you could have a timeless, simultaneous cause. In fact, many philosophers argue that ALL causes are simultaneous.
4. The "Cosmos" or, perhaps multiverse, is still subject to the BGV theorem. Vilenkin and Guth both admit that when they say "eternal inflation", they mean future eternal inflation, not past.
5. The "Cosmos" may have its own spacial dimension, but it still must answer to the BGV theorem AND to philosophical and mathematical arguments against the impossibility of an actual infinite number of things.
6. Natural physical laws apply to the Universe or Cosmos, they are not metaphysical, they are physical. This means that there is no reason to expect them to apply to the transcendent cause. They can apply to the transcendent cause's creation, but the transcendent cause itself, unless it too is a physical system.
7. Universe could have been caused by a quantum fluctuation, but if a cause is infinite in the past, then the effect is infinite in the past. Since our Universe isn't infinite, it follows that the cause is not past-infinite (notice it doesn't follow that it is not timeless, it simply can't be infinitely in-time past)
Paul. You have a gift of making things easy to understand. You did it again. Can't thank you enough for making these videos. The kalam fits to any god. If had to grant the existence of the universe to a god it would be to the spaghetti monster, at least he is funny.
Great video!
Solid video!
Ah yes that incredibly dull dead-end of an argument, the Kablam Cosmological Argument.
Sorry did I type Kablam, I mean Kalam, as in Kalamity Jane.
P1) everything that begins to exist has a material cause.
P2) the universe began to exist
C) the universe had a material cause
So creatio ex nihilo is out. That is why Craig means _efficient_ cause in p1 and purposely excludes material cause even though the same logic applies to both forms of cause being required for anything that begins to exist.
munstrumridcully “Nihil” in Latin is indeclinable: “Ex nihil”.
munstrumridcully Still no god.
@@Scyllax It is declinable indeed: neutral noun 2nd declension. Nihilo is the ablative of the neutral noun "nihilum". "Creatio ex nihilo" is the correct Latin. "Nihil" is an indefinite pronoun and it declines too, but very differently: ablative "nulla re".
However Craig assumes that sufficient cause is the only possibility. Oh and P1 is false, in our section of the cosmos things can and do come into existence without cause
Great content.
Good video thanks for sharing it with us
I love how they get to the God they believe exists as the answer. "We have decided the cause of the Universe must be these things. We have decided to define our God as those same things. Therefore, the cause must be our God." Super convenient when you can just define something any way you want to fit the space provided.
Not that you can find these qualities for God actually specified in the Bible.
The point of the argument is to prove the existence of a Creator aka the first cause that is eternal and is necessary to all things after it. Separate argument is required to demonstrate a particular theological tradition.
@@OmarOsman98 -- I'm aware of the point of the argument. But they have framed the argument starting with the conclusion they want to reach.
Even the assertion that any supposed "first cause" is eternal is a claim that requires a demonstration of fact.
If there was a first cause then it follows that it is necessary for anything that follows the causing. If I'm the cause of a game of football to be organized and played, then I am necessary to all the events after I caused it to occur.
@@Kevin_Williamson I come from the epistemology of fallibism. Essentially, I believe nothing to be fact but am willing to accept certain conclusions on the basis of evidence. That being said, suppose number series of 1,2,3,4,5. Clearly from 2-5 , we recognize that there is a chain of causation. However, we realize that 1 has nothing before it. How can this be?
I mean it's equivalent to say in this case that: 0+0=1 which is a logical impossibility.
Infinite regress is impossible, and therefore kalamists hold 1 to be eternal. Therefore, logically it can be proven.
@@Kevin_Williamson As for framing the argument a certain way, it is a logical necessity. Premises are assumed truths which lead to a conclusion I would need to make. That is what logical argumentation is about.
@@Kevin_Williamson Furthermore, empirically there is no evidence to suggest that 0+0=1. That being said, on the basis of logical and empirical evidence it is reasonable to suggest that the first cause is eternal.
Even if we accepted the argument that Craig puts forth, and even if we accept that means god exists, Craig has done nothing to prove what that god is, or if that god is the Christian god, or the Hindu god's, working together, or just some exceptionally powerful magician in an infinitely larger universe that created us in a petri dish in a vacuum.
So in essence, William Lane Craig has proven nothing except the ability to conceptualize a god, but provided no proof that god is his specific and chosen sky magician.
This is for the Christian believers' sake. Although it does not prove the existence of the Christian god, the Christians may think that nevertheless it is not unreasonable to believe in a creator god.
I mean, if you accept the argument, it's quite difficult to remain an atheist
Excellent Paul!
Very well done!
I find it remarkable an otherwise intelligent mind could assert the leap between cause and a specific agent. If two clouds can randomly produce lightening, which can then randomly produce a forest fire, which can then randomly burn a house down; do we then rationally claim Zeus had a score to settle with the homeowner? We can do better than this.
I think you do not have the academic training necessary to comment on a subject of this size ... I am surprised by the existence of these objections, and even more so by the existence of people who take them seriously. Okay, the video is for beginners, but the most it allows you to do is say that you have doubts about it that need to be answered by those who really understand. So, here we go:
"What does it mean to say that something started to exist?"
It means that something (i.e. a real referent of a singular term in a true proposition with a truthmaker, with well-defined properties) exists during a finite and continuous amount of intervals after a certain time set as a limit.
In my dictionary, "chairs" are everything that has an individual back and seat, and that was intentionally designed. Any object without these properties is not a chair in any sense. Therefore, a chair begins to exist when a non-degenerate chronological moment is obtained with an object with all its properties. Any deeper analysis is tautological or false.
If the question is "how do we know that something starts to exist", the answer is: establishing the impossibility of having infinite intervals in which the object (with all its properties) exists, or the impossibility of the object being timeless. I know that chairs started to exist because I know that there were times when there were no objects with the properties of chairs (in the Jurassic era).
It is false that everything that begins to exist is a rearrangement of previous things, because we have a counterexample: the universe itself. Since the universe is matter itself, it is not possible that the beginning of its existence is a rearrangement. Therefore, by logical necessity: if the universe started to exist, the universe is not a rearrangement of previous things.
Furthermore, Kalam's causal premise is much more powerful than the causal premise of the parody argument. No proof of the Kalam premise is used for the parody premise, not even the inductive proof - not only the universe, but human thoughts cannot be rearranged from previous things either.
Causes need not precede their effects; in fact, every sufficient cause is necessarily simultaneous with its effect.
Although I could be as ridiculous as you are to the point of dismissing your statements as a semantic error - etymologically, universe is synonymous with cosmos -, I will endeavor to correct misunderstandings.
Any space that could exist before the universe would necessarily be causally disconnected. This is the implication of beginning to exist as an initial singularity. Therefore, the cause cannot be spatial. And "the same goes for time".
Initial singularities are ontologically equivalent to nothing, which is why the cause must be immaterial. I think that even a layman could reach this conclusion if he hears that something is "infinitely dense, with zero size". Division by zero is mathematically incoherent, and matter of size zero is unintelligible. The counter-apologist and excellent philosopher of the time Quentin Smith correctly noted this.
Every physical law is a description of provisions in relation to certain exemplified essences. Therefore, all that the first law of thermodynamics establishes is that energy cannot be created by something material. But that is exactly why the cause must be immaterial! You try to find inconsistencies in the science itself.
Quantum fluctuations only exist in voids, and no space can be causally connected to ours. In fact, the very space in which the fluctuations occur must have an absolute beginning, according to the BGV theorem.
Stones cannot be sufficient causes of avalanches. To say that Y is sufficient cause of X is to affirm the counterfactual "if Y exists, then X exists" under the scope of the modal necessity operator (you have no idea what that is, I know. But it is for the informed that eventually are reading). The existence of a stone, by itself, does not guarantee the existence of avalanches. Avalanches are caused by the force of gravity and all kinds of interactions in matter. It's just amazing that someone gave you any credit after that.
@Ψ When I mentioned the universe as a counterexample, it was to affirm that the premise "the universe began to exist" has much more support than the premise "everything that begins to exist has a material cause".
Thoughts are not abstract, the supposed objects of their second formal intentions (called "entia rationis") are what they are. I'm talking about your own ideas. What the atheist needs to do here is to deny that mental and physical states are not identical (eliminative materialism). But this is clearly absurd; my inscription expressed in a private proposition, for example, is not identical to any neurophysiological description.
Space only makes sense in reference to bodies (matter marked by dimensions). But the bodies cannot be sufficient and merely efficient of other bodies, under pain of emptying the content of their concept. In fact, bodies cannot be sufficient and merely efficient at all.
In addition, any physically intelligible space must obey the most fundamental laws, which guarantee temporality. The case here is not comparable to that of the theist, because God is not the object of study of the empirical sciences in any way. Therefore, He is not expected to be susceptible to any physical analysis.
In any case, the timeless cause of a temporal effect must still be a person endowed with free will, according to the Islamic principle of indeterminacy.
@Ψ You don't understand the dialectic here. We know that everything that begins to exist has a cause. There is no solid premise to counter this.
On the other hand, we do not know that everything that begins to exist has a material cause. There is a solid premise to the contrary: the universe began to exist (and therefore has no material cause).
The point is that, even assuming that induction proves both principles, the second suffers a defeat.
Kalam has many assumptions. But they are obvious (even contested) assumptions. That is why the argument does not lose a bit of strength, nor is it necessary to expose subtleties without what the skeptic perceives (I do not need to prove presentism every time I present the argument, I can assume that the person is rational). For example, only a very deep deformity in intuitions would lead one to identify mental states with brain states - which is not to admit substantial dualism.
The move of someone who proposes the existence of a space-time with absolutely no isomorphism to current physics (even speculative) is certainly permissible in the realm of possibility, but discarded by the extreme degree of ad hoc. The point is that all physical models of alternate universes or multiverses ever conceived involved time, which may even be an indication that change is metaphysically necessary for bodies.
A "hyperspace" is certainly an object of physics. What happened was that you removed all the features that we know of space (including time and conservation laws), abstracting as much as possible to fit in as an explanation - a method that would destroy any science. The characteristics of the causal explanation of the universe fit perfectly well with the God adored by theists for millennia, but they are totally artificial and perhaps incomprehensible in a physical object, even considering the speculative fantasies of cosmology and theoretical physics of the contemporary era.
The principle of indeterminacy is being used as an epistemic guide. Once again, postulating a physical object capable of producing any effect "deciding" between equivalents is almost absurd, so ad hoc. Since Plato, the object's ability to "choose" equivalents is understood in philosophy as a characteristic of the will, and creatio ex nihilo has been orthodox theological doctrine since the origin of Judaism.
You did not respond to what I said about the fact that one body needs to act on another or on itself (in which case it would be a material and efficient cause simultaneously) to produce an effect. The problem here is that it seems inconceivable for an object with dimensions to cause something out of nothing. This gets worse if we remember that such an object must be finite, otherwise there would be a quantitative infinite (aporia that does not apply to God because he does not have any definable measures or units).
@Ψ It is simply false that I did not rule out the possibility of making an argument similar to the second. Formulated correctly, the first premise means "everything that begins to exist and has a material cause, has an efficient cause".
It turns out that inductive reasoning works by inference for the best explanation, and certainly the best explanation for our observations is the original premise of kalam. The parodied premise requires the absurd assumption that the absence of a temporal state X in the past (the state in which the previous matter of the effect exists) is capable of eliminating the need to infer an efficient cause.
The fact that the hypothesis "not all possible physical substances are similar to current physical substances" is not ad hoc is irrelevant to the fact that the hypothesis "there is a completely unlike physical substance that caused the universe" is ad hoc. It is irrelevant to be expected that other strange physical objects are possible, this has already been admitted. The point is that the cause of the universe was never expected to be such an object (a hypothesis is ad hoc according to the amount of postulates collected without independent motivation). You are building logical confusions.
It is false that your proposal is more parsimonious. A timeless and indeterministic physical object capable of creating ex nihilo is obviously much more different than an incorporeal mind.
A body can only bring about transforming effects by transforming itself or by transforming another. This is, plausibly, the ratio of "body". Therefore, it is clear that you cannot conceive it. All effects of something with volume must extend to the volume itself. Note that I am not specifying properties, I am talking about the ratio of space as space and body as body.
Imagination is irrelevant. I cannot imagine solids with thousands of faces, or extradimensionality, or timeless objects. But such things are conceivable and therefore possible. My imagination is limited by my physical condition, but conceivability is the result of the abstraction of essences.
Studying timeless universes is no less interesting, as in fact many models claim to be timeless (indeed, the most common interpretation of special relativity spacializes time, making it non-existent!). Hartle-Hawking's semiclassical approach even requires admitting that time is fundamentally non-existent. Models based on quantum geometrodynamics often involve superspaces without time. Penrose CCC eliminates time at crucial stages in the universe. Vilenkin's model of the early universe has even creation ex nihilo.
My point is that these models take time, if they are to be internally consistent.
As fanciful as they may be, cosmological theories are not successful in postulating substances genuinely similar to what you imagine because such a thing already seems a priori inconceivable.
A imutable cause that has not had an effect since eternity is a cause that "selects" in the sense that I am saying. It is an indeterminate cause, which could have passed eternity without causing anything. The cause somehow "opted" for a decision. A problem with using words with less baggage associated with psychological aspects is due precisely to the fact that an ability to actualize one between two equivalent options is commonly proper to minds.
Craig's answer that you read was assuming that the opponent admits the immateriality of the cause, so that nothing with physical characteristics could be included. If you sent a question to reasonable faith and were given an answer, I suspect he would say that your object is inconceivable as the cause of something ex nihilo. After all, it is not a proposal that is susceptible to the same criticism: you are not just repeating the attributes of the explanation.
@Ψ
The hyperspace of your proposal is no more qualitatively similar to the entities that we know exist than a incorporate mind, because none of the entities that we know exist has properties so apparently incompatible. Even though a hyperspace has in common with our space the fact that they are spaces, they do not have in common the fact that they have capacities and predicaments that seem essentially opposite. I'm really scared of your delay in understanding that kind of detail (maybe it's my English ...).
And I am not contradicting myself. Many speculative cosmological models were made with the PURPOSE of not involving time - the authors themselves insist on saying that they do not. But they actually IMPLY time, if we are to admit that they are logically consistent.
It is true that the fact that a hypothesis is proposed for the first time does not make it ad hoc. You are the one who attacks a strawman.
What makes an ad hoc hypothesis is the lack of independent motivation compared to the alternative, end. The theistic alternative has been proposed for millennia, with all kinds of specific considerations in its favor. It is more than obvious that your proposal is comparatively ad hoc.
There was never any motivation against the theistic hypothesis that was not contrary to your hypothesis. The arguments against divine creation could only be enough to motivate completely different alternatives (eternal universe, etc.). The consideration of "lack of evidence" does not serve, because you yourself admitted that there can be no evidence for your hypothesis. Nor does it serve the historical standard, the discarded "supernatural" causes you refer to are actually natural. Physical entities taking place in space.
In fact, his dichotomy between physical and supernatural is silly in itself. No one is motivated to postulate physical entities in general and indiscriminately; at most (giving too much to the naturalist) only those that obey or explain well-known natural laws.
"you just claimed it is not possible but didn't present any clear and straightfoward argument supporting your claim".
It makes no sense. I can't give an argument for it, any more than I can give any argument for the impossibility of a prime minister being a prime number, an event preceding itself, something having a shape but not having a size, something looking totally green and totally red at the same time, something disappears and reappears from nowhere, or something occupies two unconnected places at the same time. All I can do is trust my interlocutor to have no faulty intuitions. You, in particular, seem to me to be the kind of person with good reasoning but little familiarity with metaphysics (as has become so clear many times). So you don't think deeply about what you say because you're not as concerned with the truth as much as you are about the possibility of getting me wrong.
"Non-deterministic laws" is meaningless. Descriptive laws are by definition deterministic ("If y, x follows"). None of the three nomological perspectives allows for the logical possibility of what you are saying. In fact, laws are not objects that govern anything, but merely describe essences. What exists, in this case, is a formally indeterminate object.
Cause of the agent IS an undetermined causation. There are possible worlds where God has no eternal intention to create something. Therefore, the effect is not guaranteed (there is no sufficient cause for God's desire). You need to be more rigorous in terminology.
The truth of the libertarian position is known in an appropriately basic way (in fact, I am more sure that I have free will than I am sure that I have a brain), and it has always been so. What you claim to know about it depends on the absurd identification of the brain with the mind. Anyway, the key point here is that this property has always been considered to identify minds. This is relevant to the ad hoc criterion.
@Ψ
I have already defined ad hoc; you are the one who is stubborn.
Consider the following example: I am playing a game of luck that I have never played before and I get a very specific ten-digit number (192837465). The best explanation would be chance.
But imagine that, before participating in the game, I heard from a friend that another of the participants usually cheats, causing the most inexperienced player to win the number 192837465. In that case, the best explanation could never be chance (it would be ad hoc, because there is a hypothesis already proposed that gives me additional motivation).
If you have any experience with philosophical reading, you know that in mental experiments the details don't matter. And the point is that this mental experiment illustrates how the criterion under discussion works. I am not saying that your definition of a common dictionary is wrong, it is just too inaccurate.
"I would say it doesn't have to perfectly similar, the simple concept of non-deterministic is enough"
No, it's not. What you are doing is finding common ground between rabbits and dragons (there are some, of course). The supposed quantum indeterminism is completely incompatible with timelessness and other attributes that we always find impossible to be instantiated in physical things, but that are part of your hypothesis.
Either way, your strategy is counterproductive. You strive to find some similarity threads that will save you, while I have lots and lots of explicit references to creatio ex nihilo and "pure indeterminism", related to theism. It is not true that creatio ex nihilo, divine timelessness and freedom were controversial. In fact, opposing positions were (and still are, by classical theists) considered heretical. The motivations of creatio ex nihilo were purely theological, everyone knows that. Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy is declared favorable to the eternity of the world.
"The anti-apologist can say that it may be true that non-deterministic causation has been considered by many to be a feature of mind, but is not actually a feature of minds"
False dilemma, the situation is far from being analogous. No one can say that free will is not really a characteristic of minds (this is recognized everywhere in philosophy of mind, no one can prove or even argue against the libertarian position without unpredictable premises in itself), and no one can to say that the PER SI libertarian position implies determinism. I have the impression that you are trying to hold on to anything that appears in front, because I myself would never have made such absurd associations.
"Again, an immaterial agent obeys no laws, has no regularities, is not a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient causal conditions, is non-spatial, immaterial, timeless"
Apart from non-spatiality (which implies immateriality, and vice versa), all characteristics are shared by their "hyperspace". If "laws" here are any counterfactual descriptions, then God "obeys" laws. In fact, I noticed that you ignored my point about this in the other comment - it doesn't seem like a coincidence.
There are no "mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient causal conditions" in purely indeterministic objects, by definition. I don't know what you're talking about.
The point remains: the most qualitatively parsimonious explanation is the theist, as it has in common with the observed universe the fact that it does not have apparently essentially contradictory predicates. You didn't do the homework.
"The arguments against supernatural creation are evidence that the substance responsible for causing our manifold is non-supernatural"
They are not. The arguments against divine creation are identical to arguments against creatio ex nihilo. But the second is admitted by both alternatives.
"That's why it is non-deterministic and perfectly random"
No, both are perfectly non-deterministic, and neither is random (again, terminological rigor is lacking). "Nothing guarantees Y, and Y guarantees X" is not counterfactually different from "nothing guarantees X". And randomness is a characteristic that implies time.
"God's essence is necessarily the way that it is and is unalterable"
That is why creation is accidental, not essential. You have no idea what you're talking about from that point on.
"Apologists believe that god has a sufficient reason for doing what he does"
No, no orthodox believes that. If something is free, by definition it does not have sufficient reasons for its choices.
"Supernatural explanations were always found to be wrong"
This never happened. They were purely natural explanations being replaced by other purely natural explanations.
"That's not to say that we can't find philosophical evidence of it"
But we cannot, nor is there any.
"Then other evidence in favor of naturalism will also favor the existence of this physical cause"
It is clear. But such evidence does not exist and cannot be. And it is irrelevant, the other evidence of theism in general would also serve to confirm theism as a specific explanation of creation. No progress has been made here, naturalism has no advantage.
"We should, indeed, prefer physical entities in general"
We should not. First, no one takes ordinary physical explanations as a motivation to prefer physical entities in general. If people had an idea that naturalism would demand the kind of cause you say, they wouldn't really see any advantage. In fact, it was precisely this feeling with the appearance of the first standard big bang model. Second, Its criterion would serve to support a contrasting premise: "we should prefer entities with apparently compatible properties in general". I don't accept the criterion, but if I do, that's a conclusion.
"You're a follower of the apologist Plantinga"
Plantinga is not an apologist. And the notion of "appropriately basic beliefs" is common to all contemporary epistemology based on foundationalism. It has nothing to do with reformed epistemology (a thesis on warrant, not justification). Be honest: have you read anything in analytical philosophy about epistemology or metaphysics? You are so mired in confusion of concepts and lack of rigor from the start that I fear I am speaking to an ignorant.
"Now are you going to say dualism is also properly basic?"
No, I will say that it is the logical implication of certain appropriately basic beliefs.
Absence of evidence is by definition not and cannot be a defeat. How crazy!
Anyway, do your homework.
"I can say the same thing, in fact"
You can tell, but given your lack of intellectual performance in metaphysics, I doubt anyone would take it seriously. You are not familiar with the subject, you do not have the proper theoretical tools, much less experience. After all, you are clearly predisposed to scientism (anti-metaphysical and, therefore, counter-intuitive by nature).
Another relevant aspect of the issue involves the widely recognized fact that judgments about what is impossible are substantially more reliable than their counterparts. Anyway, compared to the main one, this is just curiosity. I am sure that the critical reader can clearly see the incompatibility of intrinsic notes between space and causation ex nihilo - which reminds me of the beginning of the discussion, when my opponent did not even know how to analyze causality (he still does not know, because he has never read metaphysics).
For the relation between God and the Kalam cosmological argument, you can check out Andrew Loke’s God and Ultimate Origins: A Novel Cosmological Argument.
that rearrangement argument though.
i love this video just for that.
Agreed. That was brilliant.
Great video, Paul. I love the analogy about the heir to the throne. Even if the KCA proved there is a god (it doesn't), you'd still be left with the question, "Which one of these thousands of claimants is the correct one?". It still doesn't get them to their real goal, which is, "You have to do what this book says." The part about the chair is equally brilliant. I love it.
There is also an idea among many cosmologists that the universe contains a net energy of zero, making it possible for it to have just popped into existence from "nothing"
superb video.
This is good. It answers some scientific questions with “I don’t know” but raises philosophical ones like, How does this break down solve for the absurdity of infinite regress?
I like how you define the necessary cause as “energy”.
This objection is sadly no good and I believe whoever bought into it is only being mislead. You're ironically preaching to the choir I'm afraid.
First, William Lane Craig commits himself to an A-theory of time so saying his argument fails under B-theory is correct but certainly not everyone holds a B-theory of time. Assuming the B-theory of time is correct without providing any arguments for it just puts you on par with the apologists you despise. Thus, if an atheist holds an A-theory of time (such as Quentin Smith) your objection fails and if A-theory is real then God is real (because you failed to provide an objection under A-theory.)
Secondly, saying the argument says nothing about God just because it doesn't have the word "God" is absurd. The argument ultimately deduces that the beginning of time, space, and all matter requires an efficient cause that is uncaused. This objection is almost as bad as Dawkins' objection to the cosmological argument.
Thirdly, the universe refers to all material matter that exists and the argument itself argued that an infinite regress of material matter have efficient causes is absurd and thus you can deduce it to an uncaused cause that's immaterial (because we already argued that material matter can't have an infinite regress) spaceless, and timeless. You don't really contend any of these but instead you just say "how do we know?" We don't know it for certain 100% hence why an argument is given to show why it's the best explanation. Craig provides philosophical and scientific reasons as to why this may be true and you still don't refute them.
So you fail to refute the argument while asserting that an infinite regress of material causes is possible with no justification. I'm sure you know asking "how do you know" is not a tenable objection.
I also think people should take your objection with skepticism because when I read actual atheist literature none of them take your objections seriously because they are ultimately untenable.
@@CosmoPhiloPharmaco The religious apologist has no burden of proof to refute all alternative theories (Especially in a 10 minute UA-cam video). But even then, Craig has written why the B-theory of time doesn't work and it's just a matter of you reading the material and determining whether it's true or not.
In this video Paulogia assumes B-theory is true without any justification thus we have no reason to side with Paulogia on this one especially considering Craig has written extensively on A-theory and I personally find his arguments convincing.
If an apologist gives an argument why something like the A-theory of time is true we can't appeal to "well there are other types of theories of time" and give no justification.
@@CosmoPhiloPharmaco Intelligence in the Kalam is irrelevant to the argument thus we needn't worry about it. I believe an argument could be made deductively as to why the Kalam can appeal to a free willed agent namely that.
1. There are only two things outside space and time that could cause the universe: Numbers and a Mind
2. Numbers do not have causal powers
3. Which it follows that it was a mind that caused the universe
But if a mind caused the universe one would have to ask, "why would it want to cause the universe?" Which I think appealing to a free willed nature of the mind would give us a sufficient answer
@@CosmoPhiloPharmaco And I think you're right about the scientific arguments not justifying a beginning of the universe which is why I like to appeal to philosophical arguments namely those that argue against the finitude of the past. After all, the Kalam Cosmological Argument is a metaphysical argument not a scientific argument.
@@CosmoPhiloPharmaco I don't think it's that easy though. I don't think Craig makes any "clear" mistakes in the A-theory of time. Apart from philosophy of religion Craig is a prominent philosopher of time. I don't believe one should appeal to Einstein's theory of relativity to prove Craig wrong because the Lorentzian theory of relativity is perfectly consistent with our current knowledge of physics and it can adopt an A-theory of time.
@@CosmoPhiloPharmaco Could you send me some links to those objections to the Neo-Lorentzian interpretation? As far as I know it seemed to me the biggest problem with it was that it wasn't as simple as Einstein's. But I could be wrong. And I'll check out that book thanks for the suggestion!
FIRST
NOT FIRST!
Okay, that really brief shot of an alien playing dice...I've seen it before, but for the life of me, I can't remember where.
What's that from?
men in black. -don't ask me which one though -the first I think.
I've only seen the first, so...
@@BionicDance
hang on- I think I can put two and two together here...
@@BionicDance
..... it was the first one.
Unless you saw the clip in someone else's video .
Damn.
1:45 _"Nonsense: Hand me the crown"_ Love it!
I really don't get why anybody finds the kalam convincing ... maybe they are just looking for an actual reason to believe, and the kalam'll just about do 🤔
I love the opening 😄
Thank you!
I saw the recent video with Matt... Love the Inigo Montoya reference here. Amazing. Please keep going with all your fantastic work. Its a rare combination to be amazing and truthful. Better than Starwars... cause it's real.
Great video. Two comments: 1) Cosmologists do not all believe that the Universe started as a singularity. If we extrapolate back with the standard model that is what we get. However, we know the standard model does not explain dark matter or dark energy. It is possible that the starting point was not a singularity. 2) The first Axiom cannot be verified experimentally. The first law of thermodynamics says that energy is conserved. It can be rearranged into a chair, but on a fundamental level that is not coming into being. It is just a shuffle of the cards. The deck is still the same. Therefore, we have never and will never see something "come into existence." This makes the Axiom incapable of falsification which puts it in the realm of a religious belief (according to Popper). So the religious argument starts with a statement of faith. It is essentially a circular argument that is cleverly disguised.
good video.
@Paulogia, hey did you know Apologia Radio is a thing? If you ever wanted to take a break from eggs and ham, sam I am, that might be a good one for you... there are a few on mormonism so decent collaboration opportunities with Mr. Atheist as well. Though you might have to take on Bionic Dance if she wants to make it her regular thing, though she doesn't seem to have a regular thing so I don't know how all that works in the back end but I do like your colabs and your solo stuff. :-) Keep up the good work.
I like thinking of time in the universe being a nested property of time in the Cosmos, like we do with CSS style sheets and so forth, in order to wrap my head around events that may or may not have preceded the BB (if it's not an illusion).
Agreed that the kalam cosmological argument doesn’t necessarily show that God of the Bible exists, but I think it’s important to point out first what we mean by “God” the same way you try to define the universe and the cosmos as two different things
i don't know why this argument is still being used. it is so bad it hurts.
I’m always delighted by videos of the tiny dominos knocking down successively larger dominos.
Conveniently you also seemed to exclude the portion that spoke on the possibility of other universes existing. Besides the fact that there is no reason to believe it, even if a multiverse existed, the rules would still apply. We’d still need an uncaused cause. Otherwise we’d be stuck with an infinite regress of causes and effects.
Well said atheists ignore this and don't true understand the Kalam. Even cosmic skeptic has debunked himself in a video.
Inconceivable!
"Spaceless, Timeless, Immaterial, Uncaused." All of those "properties" are shared with the non-existent. That leaves "Powerful" hanging alone in the Void as a floating abstraction. How can a thing be "powerful" if there is nowhere for it to act, no time for it to act in, no matter or energy for it to act with, and an absence of causality (no principle by which power can act to cause things)? Since the thing is "timeless," it cannot be sentient (able to perceive or have a sequence of thoughts). It would not be capable of thinking about creating a universe and deciding to do so. Nor would it be capable of changing to a state where it could, since change requires time. Thus it would have no power, either, and its match to the non-existent is perfect.
I find it interesting that you would bring up quantum fluctuations in this video. Because, as I understand it, so-called "virtual particles" come about and disappear again without any cause. Not seemingly without or caused by something we don't yet understand but _completely at random_ (governed by certain probabilities).
Doesn't that already disprove the first premise by virtue of counterexample?
"Nonsense. Hand me that crown." ^_^
Yeah,I know.Funny but to the point.
@Paulogia, Craig defines the universe as "all of space-time reality". So by universe he means what you mean by cosmos.
What Craig means to do is use scientific evidence and consensus for the start of our universe, and falsely pretend it applies to the cosmos in the minds of people who don't realize what he's doing. Very dishonest.
@@Paulogia Craig often appeals to the BGV theorem in support of a beginning to the cosmos. Vilenkin thinks the universe had a beginning, but Guth disagrees. Let's say scientists are divided. Craig still puts forth two philosophical arguments for a beginning, which he takes to be the primary arguments.
@@Paulogia I can make a statement that is always true: Christians lie.
Hi Paul,
Have you done a video disproving creationist claim about DNA being to complicated and origin of language?
WLC does have a habit of equivicating a beginning "ex nihilo" with a beginning "ex materia"....but I love your analogy of the son of the king.
It always amazed me that Christian apologists seemed to think that making the case for a hypothetical "First Cause" led automatically to whatever denomination of Christianity they themselves believed in, without any intervening steps. Instead it's "The universe must have a cause, therefore papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception. Or therefore King James Version only and the Rapture. Or Joseph Smith and baptism by proxy. No matter what their faith, the postulate that the universe was "caused" is sufficient to prove that their religion but *only* their religion is the Truth.
Not to mention that if the universe has to have a First Cause in order to exist, by that same logic, God Himself ALSO would need to have a First Cause, else He couldn't exist, either.
One million thumbs up.
Many physicists think that the net sum of energy in the universe could well be zero. Vilenkin is one, which is handy when talking to proponents of the Kalam since WLC loves him some Vilenkin.
The PUREFLIX ads are excruciating
The second law of thermodynamics is an emergent property, not an essential one. There is no reason why, in the short term, atoms cannot spontaneously arrange into a more ordered state. However, because there are vastly more unordered states they might be arranged into compared to ordered states, it very quickly becomes astronomically unlikely that entropy will decrease for more than a few fractions of a nanosecond. In the entire lifetime of the universe, we would not expect to ever observe a sustained decrease in entropy, but it is not prohibited by the laws of physics.
In quantum physics, they have observed the effect preceding the cause. There is so much we have yet to learn so there is no way a book written hundreds to thousands of years ago can be considered an authority on anything other than antiquated morality.
2:57 Mathematicians have actually done some work in defining causality in a way that does not require time; it isn't as necessary as you would think.
I don't know if people have already pointed this out or not, but virtual particles pop into existence without any apparent prior cause.
I’m not sure Paulogia is familiar with WLC’s writings on this subject because he covers all of these objections in them at one time or another. Interesting video though!!
Apparently he is not and so are all the pseudo intellectuals here who claims that this is the best video that debunks the KCA. Pathetic
@@mysterypink824 Seems strange eh!
I'm a bad ex-christian I have never heard of Kalam. However, I do have a 6" figurine of Inigo Montoya standing next to my modem. He used to have a sword in his left hand but it broke. As I always say, "You killed my father, prepare to die." Dayam, I'm a bad atheist too. I just assumed that the Cosmos was the same as the Universe. I need to pay more attention.
I didn't notice the first time I watched, but it's quite curious that when Craig's video finally gets to "God", what looks like a stream of intrusive thoughts show up on screen. I have to worry about the mental health of whoever made that editing decision.
Hallo, Paulogia. I have this constant thinking about Kalam argument and free will. Would't you agree that logic behind Kalam argument, debunk possibility of free will? If everything that happen to exist has a cause, decision of our action must have cause, therefore no free will.
@@SNORKYMEDIA Yes, I know Sam Harris position on free will. I was rather making point that theists contradict themselfs when they try to use Kalam as evidence, but at the same time they believe in free will.
I had not known there was a distinction between "universe" and "cosmos." Interesting. I do love precise terminology!
Embrace it, Use it.
Am I alone in being reminded of the opening theme to True Romance by the opening music of this vid?
There are those that don't know and there are those that do know.
NOT FIRST , but I'm okay with that. :D Love your work Paul .
thanks sparX
@@Paulogia No , thank You Sir 😃
I notice that God has disabled drcraigvideos
' comments.
This argument (as a proof of god) is self defeating the second they say “everything” because that makes special pleading invalid so I always shoot back asking “what caused god”
what's your thought about causal finitism?
You missed the part of the video where they say that "any universe which has been expanding throughout its history cannot be eternal in the past and must have had an absolute beginning" and assert that this would apply to the multiverse if it exists. You didn't address this part, so I'm going to counter it myself: First, it is possible that our universe originated from a universe which has not been expanding throughout its history and therefore could have been eternal. We have no reason to think that all universes have been expanding. Second, the video provides no explanation for why this would apply to the multiverse, unless it's assuming that the multiverse has to be expanding the same way the universe is, which again is not substantiated. It is entirely possible for there to exist a multiverse which is made up of an infinite number of finite universes, each universe's absolute beginning being predated by a previous universe in an infinite chain or even an infinite branching tree. This, in a nutshell, is what the big bounce theory proposes. Of course none of these hypotheses have any evidence for them, but neither does the god hypothesis.
Also, in 7:45, the video concludes that the cause of the universe is "much like God". Then, it starts to rapidly flash words like "Yahweh", "omnipotent", "love", "just", El Shaddai", "perfect", "good", "holy one", "everlasting father", "supreme being", and "beautiful". This 5-second flash of words is a bigger leap in logic than the whole rest of the video. Even if all of their conclusions were correct, there would still be no reason whatsoever that the creator of the universe would be omnipotent, perfect or loving, let alone that it's the specific God of Christianity. They're just throwing these words and titles on the screen without addressing a single one of them or arguing for them. This to me is the ultimate proof that they aren't trying to convince anyone of what they're saying, they're just trying to reassure people that already agree with them.
Every April 1 I hope to wake up and have all of the Christian apologists come out and admit that they were just foolin' when they used ridiculous arguments such as the Kalam Cosmological. I guess I'll hold out hope for 2020.
Never gonna happen. Sorry.
Thank you. I had not heard this specific rebuttal before, so it was very helpful.
When silly people argue this I advise that Helium is God and I will have no others Gods before Helium.
Reminds me of a ray Bradbury reference I saw in a Robert Heinlein book.