I've had this in the description for a while, but I figured I'd also put it here in case anyone misses it! And special thanks to commenter Tym Miara for inviting this helpful clarification: In the video, I argued that we cannot infer from the Kalam alone that the cause is spaceless. I began by using an example: “if, *for instance*, you’re only showing [in stage 1] that the past must be finite…” Using this example, I explained how we can’t then go on to infer that the cause of the beginning of (metric) time is spaceless. I intended the points I made subsequently - about the epistemic possibility of there being some sort of space in which the first cause resides, etc. - to generalize to *other* ways of defending stage 1 of the Kalam, including the appeals to Big Bang cosmology. I wasn’t intending to impute to Craig the inference from ‘x causes the beginning of time’ to ‘x is therefore spaceless’. My point was, firstly, that *if* we only show in stage 1 that metric time is past-finite, *then* we cannot infer that the first cause(s) thereof is spaceless; and, furthermore, that the point about the epistemic possibility of some space in which the first cause(s) resides is a problem for *other* extant ways of defending stage 1, not just a way of defending stage 1 which only shows that the past must be finite. I used the finite-metric-past defense of stage 1 as an example to introduce the point which I intended to generalize more broadly. So, then, the clarification is that I wasn't intending to say that Craig takes his spacelessness conclusion to be derived from the finitude of the past, though I can understand if what I said suggests that. I’m here canceling any such implicature, and explaining what I was intending to convey. My point, instead, is precisely that none of the points in Craig's stage 1 case show that the cause is spaceless - even the points pertaining to big bang cosmology. They only show, at best, that the cause doesn't exist in the spatial framework of our local spatiotemporal manifold, i.e., the self-contained one that began to expand about 13.8 billion years ago. As I noted in the video, there may be a different space that exists causally prior to the beginning of metric time (and hence causally prior to the beginning of the spatial manifold associated with that metric time) and in which the cause resides. This space may be the same sort of space as our local spatiotemporal manifold's space (e.g., three-dimensional); or it may be some more exotic state space that various philosophers have proposed for the 'location' of the universal wavefunction; or it may be a higher dimensional spatial framework; and so on. The epistemic possibilities are boundless, and Craig - in claiming the cause must be spaceless - illegitimately assumes that none of these are the case. The crucial point is that they straightforwardly undercut the claim that the cause of our local spatiotemporal manifold must be spaceless, i.e., without any space. And, of course, I think it's important to emphasize that big bang cosmology doesn't show that the universe, understood as all of physical reality, began to exist; for more on this, see Dr. Linford dissertation here :) philarchive.org/archive/DAN_SA-15
There seems to be a difference in how you and Craig defines "space". Because Craig defines "universe" as all of physical reality (including space "if it exists"), then he can infer that the cause is "spaceless." Whereas you think it's "epistemically possible" that there is "weird" space outside of physical reality, thus you don't think his argument works. In either case, it seems to me that you're both saying that the cause is outside our physical spacetime manifold.
@@robertsimonuy9743 If that's how Craig defines terms, then none of his arguments for premise (2) of the Kalam can succeed, since none of them rule out some form of space (and hence some form of physicality) existing timelessly sans metric time (or in a non-metric time prior to the beginning of metric time), and in such a case -- given Craig's understanding of 'begins to exist' -- it is untrue that physical reality *as such* began to exist. So if this is how we're understanding terms, then Craig's entire case for premise (2) falls well short of the mark. This highlights, also, that we aren't caught up in a merely verbal dispute; substantive points are at issue here! :)
@@MajestyofReason If i'm not mistaken, he does have some arguments against a "timelessly" existing physical reality. I think it's that a timeless physical reality is "stable", so it would either have to be eternally timeless or began to exist unless of course the state of timelessness was "disturbed" by an act of freewill which goes back to his argument for a personal cause. Don't quote me on this. Maybe I'm mixing things up in my head. lol But anyway, I would love to see you two discuss this matter.
@@robertsimonuy9743 From what I've read, he doesn't so much offer *arguments* here but instead offers *bare assertions* that physical things cannot be timeless in this manner. (And again, even if physical things cannot be timeless, physical things *could* in principle exist in a non-metric time, and that's all I need to make my point)
@@MajestyofReason I disagree with you that it doesn't mean spaceless and timeless It doesn't mean personal But it's definitely spaceless and timeless I think a better thing For Craig to do Instead of claiming that actual infinities are Impossible Is to establish that an infinite amount of objects cannot exist at the same time Therefore spacetime must have a beginning otherwise An infinite amount of objects would exist at the same time
Fodor made an interesting point in his book “Unreasonable Faith” which was asking the question “why did the cause have to be personal?” as opposed to impersonal like the Dao or something. I’m curious what Craig’s take on that would be because I’ve always thought there was a “leap” there to get to a personal God.
To be honest I think an immaterial mind and abstract concept/principle are kind of one and the same. Edit: But for that matter I don’t really see much of a difference between an abstract concept and some other impersonal principle whether it’s called Dao or whatever. They’re all immaterial, whether the immaterial can give rise to the material doesn’t seem to require a personality if it can anyway. But at the same time I feel like if an immaterial principle does cause the material that itself is kind of a “will” of this immaterial principle, a will maybe not like a libertarian free will decision, but a will consistent with itself. That there are immaterial principles seems to inherently be a kind of personality of the principle. I would consider that essentially God anyway.
im not a proponent of the kalam as a theist, but at about 6 minutes into the video you give a list of other potential candidates that could things other than a mind or an abstract object, but i think craig's point was that minds and abstract objects are the only things that we uncontroversially *know of*. not saying this is sound but i think that's what he's probably getting at, to be as charitable as possible.
You can get the same effect by playing their videos back to back. Craig is a master of not answering questions and MoR is very practiced at talking to himself.
@@matthieulavagna He doesn't "debate" at all. Just repeats canned responses. Fits well with the Kalam "argument": say something that sounds obvious then say something outrageous. Whenever they disagree pretend it was with the obvious part.
@@matthieulavagna I still think he said, that he only debates PhDs to explain why he does not want to debate Matt Dillahunty, cause Craig knows, that such a debate would end in a desaster for him.
You should really look into the theology of the shaykh of Islam Ibn Taymiyyah. He was a physicalist who believed that all ontological exitsents must be spatiotemporal, including angels, souls, the Resurrection, and Paradise and Hellfire. Even God Himself is a tremendous Creator being who is greater than the entirety of creation in a spatial sense and who has a spatial location outside the created world, such that we literally raise our hands towards God in prayer. Yes, he refrained from using the term "body" to describe God as it is non-scriptural, but he nevertheless believed that the meaning intended can be correct. He instead used scriptural terminology such as God is "above His creation", "has created Adam in His image", and is "upon His throne", arguing that the early Muslims believed that they will literally see the face of God above them when they enter Paradise, just as we today see the sun and the moon in the sky, and that this will be the most joyful experience in Paradise. Moreover, Ibn Taymiyyah believed that God must be described with successive volitions and acts that subsist in His essence and which call His created effects into existence in the world. This is because the world cannot be changing if its Cause is atemporal and motionless. He also committed to the necessity of perpetual divine activity. That is, God must have been acting voluntarily from the eternal past and must continue to act voluntarily into the infinite future, in full accordance with His perfect wisdom and mercy. He believed that it is impossible for God to start doing things after having not been doing anything at all from past eternity, because firstly, that is an imperfection that implies that God needed something to become more perfect, and secondly, it contradicts the very principle of causality on which the cosmological arguments for God's existence ought to be predicated in the first place. Ibn Taymiyyah also accepted towards the end of his life that God necessarily originates things ex materia, and that the notion of ex nihilo is metaphysically impossible. See "Ibn Taymiyyah on Creation ex Materia" for more information. Whenever God wishes to originate a substance after its nonexitsence, He necessarily prepares its prior causes and material conditions beforehand. Yes, the genus of material conditions is eternal according to Ibn Taymiyyah, but no particular matter accompanies God from eternity. Rather, God has been perpetually bringing things into existence in place of other conditions which He removes from existence entirely, such that God is the only eternal and necessarily existing being, and everything besides Him is created after its nonexistence. This beautiful theology goes hand in hand with the concerns of modern-day naturalists. There is no need to maintain that God breaks any necessary laws of physics as He creates things. Miracles such as splitting the moon and the sea and resurrecting the dead can be deemed physically possible. Yes, Abrahamic monotheism is incompatible with the notion of a deterministic universe, as such a view requires that there is only one way the universe can evolve, such that each state of the universe necessitates exactly one later state of the universe. Abrahamic monotheism, on the other hand, entails that God is able to miraculously change the world and keep it in existence forever. However, I am convinced that if one comes to accept that the universe is indeterministic, he would not be required to contradict the strong version of the PSR. This is because one can still commit to Ibn Taymiyyah's theological determinism, such that God necessarily preponderates one course of evolution of the universe over another course of evolution of the universe, from a prior state of the universe that carried the potential for both courses of evolution. I wish you all the best. May God guide you and show you the way.
Yeah, I'm interested in him, and I recently got some books from him (Majmoo' Al- Fatawa 1, 2, 3, 4, and his responses to the Jahamias and Suffis). He's a pretty interesting scholar. I am fond of the idea of the Islamic God being spacio-temporal, but outside the universe. As far as I've studied Islam, his understanding and people like him, are spot on and are consistent with the scripture and Hadiths. Personally, I dislike groups like the Asharia and Mu'tazila; their beliefs are alien to Islam and inconsistent with their faith.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. Romans 1:22-25 KJV
@@MajestyofReason nevermind. If Jesus is a necessary being, and a necessary being must win the league necessarily, then as long as he can stay fit for a whole season...
@majesty of reason, I really respect you as a philosopher, and as a Christian your content is always challenging and refreshing, although I think, this is my lamen opinion, if you approach the supposed origen of the universe you need to take into account the physics surrounding it. : Space Time A core observation in support of the big bang model is the dact that space is expanding, numerous cosmologist would argue that from the data space, the literal void/fabric of reality is expanding ever more rapidly. It follows quite easily that if time did began, and if space is expanding( meaning from moment tot moment the distances between atoms increase), it follows that space was atleast smaller every moment prior to the current moment. Couple that with the singularity theory, that space started at a particular point, point in physics usually means dimentionless object or area, then you have 2 observation at the core of moder physics that seem to make it more probable than not that space did in fact also begin at a singular point. I am mostlikely wrong, idk but I just wanted to share some thoughts.
The distances between atoms don't increase, the distances between galaxies decrease. I'm not sure about space starting, but it would have started small if it wasn't infinite. It's hard to tell whether it's infinite, but if it's finite then still it was bigger or smaller during the time the MBR was created depending on whether it's bigger or smaller now.
4:23 'in order to get a temporal effect from a Timeless cause you need something like a spontaneous free decision' What does 'decision' mean without temporality? Isn't temporality what orders cause and causation? What does non-random decision of creation mean if not that in reaction of being aware of non existence he caused existence? Does Craig (or anyone else) provide any argumentation of what decision is without temporality? Or does the ordering of cause-causation not necessitate temporality?
Can an omniscient being even make decisions? Decision seems to imply deliberation between alternatives through a conscious process, but an omniscient being does not (and based on a paper whose author escapes me at the moment, possibly cannot) deliberate, because it already knows what it's going to do (and/or what it wants to do and then knows exactly how to accomplish it). And yes, you can say God's will is eternal and co-equal to its essence or whatever, but that starts to sound very much IMpersonal, like it's just A Thing God Does(TM) and over which it has no meaningful control. If God's will to create is an essential aspect of its nature, and God is eternally timeless, then it's hard to see how it ever made a "spontaneous free decision" to create anything: It wasn't spontaneous (no time for spontaneity to occur), it wasn't free (if it was part of an essential nature), and it wasn't a decision (eternally timeless omniscient beings don't "decide" things).
Do you think causality only exists in a temporal space (like infinite regress)? Or is there a possibility of a timeless cause? Just curious what you think in that regard
I don't really have a settled view on the matter; I think there's at least *some* reason to think causation is a spatiotemporal relation; but I don't think it's conclusive reason, and there are also at least *some* considerations telling against it. Hence, no settled view!
@@christopherp.8868 I don't see why a timeless cause would imply indeterminism. Here's something that's really crucial, but is often simply glossed over. Causes can be either deterministic and indeterministic. And determinism can still be true even if there are no causes. For that reason, whether the causal principle is true and whether determinism is true are actually tangential issues. Here's an absolutely crucial point: even if there were no causes, that wouldn't imply indeterminism. Without causation, everything may still happen for a reason.
-If Presentism is the case, then this seems to imply a error theory about the past. -Positive propositions about the past can not correspond to reality if the past doesn’t exist. -This implies that there is no truth about whether the past is infinite or finite. -One could translate this into „there is no such thing that is the past and that is infinite“ and „there is no such thing that is the past and that is finite“. -The question „is the past finite or not?“ is similar to the question „is the present King of France bald or not?“.
That's a really interesting point. I've had similar thoughts about mathematical nominalism. If numbers don't exist, then do mathematical propositions like 2+2=4 actually correspond to reality? It seems to imply an error theory about mathematics, at least on the corresponds theory of truth. But I've never thought about the implications of presentism in that way.
I wonder what your thoughts would be on the notion of space-time being emergent. There's an article from Scientific American called What is Spacetime Really Made Of? that speaks on the AdS/CFT correspondence. Space-time as fundamental reality is questioned.
1:20 I don’t really get this bit Maybe matter/energy, especially given that the net energy in the universe is thought to be 0, but Spacetime is just … 4 dimensions into a single manifold. It sorta makes no sense to say space (as we know it) can be independent of time . That being said … yeah you have literally the entire concept of everything, not even limited by spacetime, and all you can think of is God? Like does the Kalam rule out a simulation, however unlikely that might be ?
I always took Craig's "spacelessness" conclusion to be derived not from the finitude of the past, but from Big Bang cosmology. In all of his debates he refers to the standard model of cosmology, so divorcing the stage 2 of his argument from what he always repeats in stage 1 is a bit uncharitable, I would think. If you ask any physicist, "where did the Big Bang happen", everyone will tell you that it happened everywhere at once, all of space expanded from one point. That's what Craig is getting at, I think
It's not uncharitable, since I wasn't doing any such divorcement :) I wasn't intending to say that Craig takes his spacelessness conclusion to be derived from the finitude of the past, though I can understand if what I said suggests that! Allow me to cancel any such implicature now :) My point, instead, is precisely that *none* of the points in Craig's stage 1 case show that the cause is spaceless -- even the points pertaining to big bang cosmology. They only show, at best, that the cause doesn't exist in the spatial framework of our local spatiotemporal manifold, i.e., the self-contained one that began to expand about 13.8 billion years ago. As I noted in the video, there may be a *different* space that exists causally prior to the beginning of metric time (and hence causally prior to the beginning of the spatial manifold associated with that metric time) and in which the cause resides. This space may be the same *sort* of space as our local spatiotemporal manifold's space (e.g., three-dimensional); or it may be some more exotic state space that various philosophers have proposed for the 'location' of the universal wavefunction; or it may be a higher dimensional spatial framework; and so on. The epistemic possibilities are boundless, and Craig is either unaware of them or pretends they don't exist. The crucial point is that they straightforwardly undercut the claim that the cause of our local spatiotemporal manifold must be spaceless, i.e., without space. If those physicists say 'all' of space expanded from one point, then unless they want to make a false claim, they can only *mean* 'all of the space *associated with our local spatiotemporal manifold* expanded from one point'. Finally, I think it's important to emphasize that big bang cosmology doesn't show that the universe, understood as all of physical reality, began to exist; for more on this, see Dr. Linford dissertation here :) philarchive.org/archive/DAN_SA-15
Okay, so the undercutting defeaters you mentioned rely on the epistemic possibility of the existence of some other spacetime within which our universe (local spatiotemporal manifold) is located. Is that approximately accurate? I do worry though that the appeal to "boundless epistemic possibilities" of unfalsifiable entities like these, which are even in principle empirically inaccessible can lead us to total skepticism. We could argue that no amount of evidence is sufficient to convict anyone of murder, because, as an undercutting defeater to the deductive arguments that prosecution presents in court, we can provide an alternative explanation that the axe in the victim's head was flung from a different universe, or a different dimension, or by means of any of the infinite epistemically possible scenarios. And even appeals to probabilities or rational credences fall apart, because as soon as you mention the boundless epistemically possible scenarios, probabilities associated with them are inscrutable. I am not defending the Kalam, here, btw, I am just worried that an appeal to "boundless epistemic possibilities" just stops the conversation, about almost any topic related to empirical facts.
@@tymmiara5967 I’ll offer some thoughts bit-by-bit! “Okay, so the undercutting defeaters you mentioned rely on the epistemic possibility of the existence of some other spacetime…” It needn’t be a spacetime; it could simply be a framework that’s spatial-but-non-temporal. At the very least, I don’t see any reason to rule this out, and yet if Craig wants us to infer spacelessness, he needs to rule it out. “…within which our universe (local spatiotemporal manifold) is located” It doesn’t require *our* (local) universe to be located in that other framework (although it may be); instead, the point was simply that the *cause* of our universe may be located within that framework (which may be a spatial-but-non-temporal framework, or it may be spatiotemporal but a different spatiotemporal framework from our local one, i.e., the one we inhabit). “I do worry though that the appeal to "boundless epistemic possibilities" of unfalsifiable entities like these, which are even in principle empirically inaccessible can lead us to total skepticism.” I don’t see how this leads to skepticism. Craig says he can show that the cause of our universe must be spaceless. But in order to do that, he needs to rule out the cause being spatial. And yet he does no such thing, since he totally fails to rule out any of these views which may very well be the case. Second, these aren’t unfalsifiable; some of them are consequences of empirically testable theories (e.g., the universal wavefunction existing in an exotic state space more fundamental than our spatiotemporal manifold has been argued to be in precisely this sort of position); and all of them are philosophically testable, i.e., amenable to refutation by the wielding of reasons against them (say, in the form of an assessment of the theoretical virtues that these views embody vis-a-vis other views about the nature of the cause of our spatiotemporal manifold, if there is one). “We could argue that no amount of evidence is sufficient to convict anyone of murder, because, as an undercutting defeater to the deductive arguments that prosecution presents in court, we can provide an alternative explanation that the axe in the victim's head was flung from a different universe, or a different dimension, or by means of any of the infinite epistemically possible scenarios.” It’s not like that, though; those are hypotheses which, while epistemically possible, are extremely low in probability due bro conflict with background knowledge. By contrast, nothing in our background knowledge tells strongly against the cause of our local spatiotemporal manifold existing in some sort of space. So no skepticism looms; in the case of the prosecution, those epistemic probabilities are ludicrously improbable by dint of conflict with what we know about the world, whereas no such improbability and conflict exist in the case at hand. It’s more like the following. Suppose the prosecution claims that the only way Smith could have gotten into the house was through the door. The defense then points out that there are twelve windows to the house, and the owners of the house sometimes leave windows open to let in fresh air. The defense then presses: how does the prosecution rule out that Smith didn’t go through the door but instead a window? If the prosecution is silent here - as Craig is silent - the prosecution’s case - just like Craig’s - fails. “And even appeals to probabilities or rational credences fall apart, because as soon as you mention the boundless epistemically possible scenarios, probabilities associated with them are inscrutable.” They don’t, though. First, my use of ‘boundless’ was rhetorical flourish; I wasn’t actually insisting that there are (potentially) infinitely may epistemic possibilities. But, second, it is simply untrue that, when there are boundless epistemically possible scenarios, probabilities associated with them are inscrutable. It’s an epistemic possibility that Newton’s gravitational law is not an inverse square law but instead an inverse 2.00000000000000001 law, or an inverse 1.99999999999999999 law, or an inverse 2.00000000000002 law, or etc. There are boundless epistemic possibilities here that fit the data, but clearly, we can still assign a very high credence to the inverse square hypothesis. The reason is because it outcompetes even the disjunction of the boundless competing epistemically possible alternative hypotheses on the range of theoretical virtues. (In particular, the inverse square law totally demolishes all the other hypotheses along dimensions of simplicity, non-ad-hocness, coherence, etc.)
Perhaps you are right that Craig is appealing to some notions from relativistic spacetime, where a purely spatial region (for example) did not precede spacetime. But this is an odd thing for Craig to say for three reasons. First, Craig endorses an instrumental interpretation of General Relativity. For that reason, it's difficult to see how Craig could draw any metaphysical conclusions from General Relativity. In order for Craig to draw metaphysical conclusions, he'd need to supply us with a spacetime theory for which he does endorse a realistic interpretation; moreover, in order for Craig's argument to be convincing, he'd need to provide us with a sufficiently convincing argument as to why we should endorse this alternative theory, whatever it may be. Craig has simply failed to do anything of that sort. Second, there are plenty of cosmological models in which a non-temporal, spatial region precedes spacetime. It's true that there are some cosmological models on which nothing precedes spacetime, but so what? If we understand Big Bang cosmology as the view that the universe is expanding on the largest observable scales or that the universe, on the broadest observable scales, was hotter and denser in the past, then we have good evidence for Big Bang cosmology. But if we instead understand Big Bang cosmology as the view that the universe has an open boundary to the past (i.e., the Big Bang singularity) and so forth, then we do not have good evidence for Big Bang cosmology; it's difficult to see how we even ever could have good evidence for that view. I can expand on that if you'd like. Third, you say that if you ask any physicist, they'd tell you that the Big Bang happened everywhere at once. Physicists have a hard job to do when explaining physics to non-experts. Physical theories are written in terms of advanced mathematics and General Relativity is no exception. Cosmological models are written in terms of General Relativity. We have mathematical models on which, in some loose sense, the Big Bang happened everywhere at once; that's what those physicists are alluding to. But if you bother to dig deeper, you'll find that, since at least the 1970s, physicists have been thinking about the large scale structure of spacetime. (That phrase has a precise mathematical definition.) There's an excellent textbook by George Ellis, and co-authors, covering this topic called Relativistic Cosmology. There's also a shorter and more recent monograph by J.B. Manchak on the large scale structure of spacetime. In any case, philosophers (such as David Malament and J.B. Manchak) have been investigating the following epistemological question: given what we can see on the largest observable scales, can we determine the large scale structure of space-time? The answer here is no. (If you want something to google, you can search the phrase "observationally indistinguishable spacetimes".) Moreover, there's an almost trivial mathematical result according to which any observer who collects data consistent with their inhabiting a space-time where the Big Bang happened "everywhere at once" will not be able to determine whether they actually do inhabit such a spacetime, or if the Big Bang should instead be thought of as a feature of their local spacetime region. Among philosophers who take a serious interest in the philosophical foundations of relativistic spacetime, this is an extremely important result; I'll let you draw your own conclusions concerning why philosophers of religion and theologians seem to be almost completely ignorant of these developments.
@@daniellinford9643 I'm not sure that Craig is appealing to General Relativity, or that he needs to. I think his argument is simpler than that: "Starting with Hubble, physicists observed the universe expands, which according to the simplest extrapolations backwards suggests it started as a singularity". I absolutely agree that we cannot prove that it started from a singularity, but to the extent to which we assign credences that it started from a singulairty, to that extent the we should assign credence that the cause was outside of this spacetime. My question to you would be: How sure are you (i.e. what is your credence) that the universe did not start as a singularity? Even if that credence is as high as 90%, then the remaining 10% is the extent to which the evidence lends support for this small part of Craig's argument. Not impressive, I agree, and definitely not meriting the hype it gets, but not a total failure of that part of the argument either, lol. I would gladly hear your credence distribution on the singularity Big Bang cosmologies versus the other explanations of the data
Kalam with corrected terminology: P1. "The cosmos" that begins to exist has a "God cause". P2. "The cosmos" began to exist. Therefore "the cosmos" has a "God cause". There's nothing to generalize about P1. Neither the theorized cause nor theorized effect have any relationship to things that we experience.
Does timelessness lead to spacelessness when we take on the relativistic assumption that time and space are the same thing (and aren't even be separate words in physics anymore, despite lay usage)?
Excellent question; I take it to imply that anything timeless certainly won’t be part of *our* spatiotemporal framework. But I don’t see why it would entail that something timeless cannot be in *any* sort of spatial framework, Eg a higher dimensional one disjoint from ours, or a more exotic state space, or etc. As far as I’m aware, GR and SR don’t rule any such thing out
From my research, I believe he doesn’t address them. And you’re correct that, sadly, most of the academic literature focuses on stage 1 of the Kalam only. Which is frustrating, since it deserves attention!!
@@MajestyofReason That's because the two stage Kalan is a scam. It uses stage 1 to pretend to be logical so they can smuggle in stage 2 when you've given up thinking.
Joe, does any of these objections (concerning the cause not necessarily needing to be timeless, imaterial, etc) pressupose the b theory of time? (As craig is assuming the a)
Good question; I don't see how any of them assume a particular theory of time. They appear neutral between them. Notice, for instance, that nothing in my criticisms required the existence (or non-existence) of objective temporal becoming. :)
Guys like WLC and FT throw the word "universe"around like it's nothing. I don't think they have the concept of how insignificant our planet is in the universe. Like a grain of sand on a beach thinking the beach is there for it.
@@JustADudeGamer to debate, but not to discuss! He's had many discussions with non-PhD individuals. :) Cameron asked him to have a discussion with me the week following the release of my video "New objections to the Kalam still work", but Craig was too busy.
5:30 Also, Craig's argument here assumes there are such *things* as "minds" (as opposed to there just being living creatures who _have_ minds, i.e., who have a set of intellectual capacities).
A mind is not just a set of intellectual capacity. Also, how can you “have” something that doesn’t exist. By definition, if something doesn’t exist, the. You can’t have it.
@@crispyone5697 Presumably, what Legron means is that we can distinguish between two different conceptions of minds: 1. A mind as an independent object or entity unto itself; 2. A mind as a set of properties or capacities. Compare: an instance of the color red might not be an independent object or entity unto itself, but can be understood as a property that a red thing has. Likewise, someone might propose that a mind is not an independent object or entity unto itself but instead a set of properties or capacities that a minded thing, such as a person, has. In any case, I don't think Legron's objection is convincing. If a mind is a set of properties or capacities that a minded thing has, then God might just be a minded thing that has the corresponding set of properties or capacities.
@@crispyone5697 What I mean is that "mind" is just short-hand for talking about the intellectual capacities of human beings (and their exercise). When we say someone changed his mind, for example, we're not saying he changed an object called "his mind". We're just saying he reversed his previous decision. The "having" issue is part of what can mislead one into thinking "the mind" is an object that we possess. We speak of people having talents, but we don't mean that they possess objects called "talents". We simply mean that some people are very skilled at certain activities. Likewise, "having a mind" (e.g. a powerful mind, a sharp mind, etc.) has to do with our intellectual capacities and behaviour, not with owning an object.
The mind is an abstract object. Not something tangible, but still real. A dead person is still physically here, but their mind is gone. They cannot possess a mind at that point. But as living humans, we can possess one. It is still an “object”, just not a tangible one.
@@crispyone5697 That’s incoherent. A mind cannot be an abstract object because a mind is a particular or an instance and, on most views, have causal powers.
Just had to comment about the God-nipple in the thumbnail Hot Notifications are on now, I'll be listening from work. Glad I saw your last post, UA-cam doesn't seem to care much about subscriptions sometimes
I am a little confused as to what is the meaning of the term "amorphous time". Any help explaining it? Similarly, shouldn't there be a "metric" and "amorphous" space? What would that mean?
For technically precise and helpful characterizations, see (inter alia): Richard Swinburne’s 1993 article “God and Time” in Reasoned Faith (ed. Eleonore Stump), Cornell University Press; Alan Padgett’s 1992 book "God, Eternity and the Nature of Time", Palgrave Macmillan; and Ryan Mullins’ forthcoming book "From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker" [he might supply it upon email request, I'm not sure]. For popular presentations, Mullins has discussed it in some videos he's done on my channel, so check out those for more information :)
An interval of metric time is an interval of time where there is an objective fact concerning the length of the interval. An interval of amorphous time is an interval where there is no objective fact concerning the length of the interval. There is metric and amorphous space. A metric space is one where, for any given spatial interval, there is a fact concerning the length of that interval. An amorphous space is one where, for any given spatial interval, there is no fact concerning the length of that interval. We can also develop the notion of an amorphous space-time. Penrose's Conformal Cylic Cosmology -- which Joe mentions in the video -- includes a region of amorphous space-time as well as a region of metric space-time. The definitions I've offered above are non-technical. I can give a more technical definition (e.g., the notion of a metric space is one that was originally developed by mathematicians), but what I've should should at least provide an intuitive sense of what's going on here.
The Kalam cosmology argument is not an argument for god but it's an argument for the first cause. The argument doesn't remotely implies that the first cause is all powerful or all knowing. Let alone the god of the bible and the Quran. And what is really stoping us from saying is that the universe it self is not the first uncaused action?. Well nothing
@Roger That larger argument is a scam. By presenting the Kalam syllogism, they attempt to give it an air of deductive certainty and if pressed on that part, they will claim you're irrationally skeptical. However, if you agree with the Kalam, they'll try to bamboozle you with a swarm of unevidenced claims and hidden assumptions and which in my opinion actually contradict the Trinity.
I'm confused. Joe, how do you define time? If you define time as being "a metric succession of changes" or "the succession of measurable changes, with distinct 'beginnings/before' and 'ends/afters'," then isn't time necessarily metric/measurable? If so then isn't the notion of "non-metric time" just nonsense? Wouldn't that be "an immeasurable and successionless state of measurable successions?" I hope to learn, please explain to me how your conception of "non-metric time" is anything other than absurd/nonsensical! I hope you are having a good day!
You're correct that if one defines 'time' as metricated, then of course non-metric time is absurd; but we needn't define 'time' that way. The non-metric time view works best with a non-relational view of time, and it's spelled out i[at least in one variant] in various videos I've done with Ryan Mullins, so check those out if you're interested. Therein he also characterizes time in a way that does not entail metrication. (E.g., he characterizes it as something which makes change possible, is the source of moments [which are the ways things are but could be subsequently otherwise] and the orderings among them, etc.)
@@MajestyofReason i will check those out, thank you! It still doesn't make very much sense since that means that time, if it is fundamentally defined by Dr. Mullins and yourself as relational, should really make the phrase "non-metric time" to be redundant, right? I mean, if all time is basically "non-metric," then shouldn't we consider the notion of "non-metric time temporally prior to metric time" to be rather strange, since no actual metric time exists, per se? I simply mean to say that it is better to say "relational time" or "metric time" IN PLACE OF "non-metric time" vs "metric time" (if some would prefer to define time as purely relational and not actually metric at all)
I don't positively claim it takes a little power; my point is that Craig hasn't justified why it would take enormous power. All the relevant cause needs to do is kickstart either the beginning of our universe [assuming it began], or else a series of events leading to the beginning of our universe. Nothing in this description tells us how much power is needed to kickstart such a process, and we already know that extremely minor (non-enormously-powerful) causal perturbations of initial conditions of systems can kickstart chain reactions leading to monstrously huge effects. So we already know that there's nothing *in principle* requiring the kickstarter to be enormously powerful. The question for Craig, then, is: why think it must be enormously powerful? All he's ever offered on this front is pure assertion.
@@MajestyofReason okay, I see what you mean in most scenarios It's not necessarily required for a first cause to be more powerful than the effect. Like turning the keys in the ignition of a car isn't more powerful than the energy that the engine produces. However, in that scenario there are already existing external, and separate factors like turning the keys doesn't create the pistons. I can't think of a good example where you have a first cause that is less powerful than the effect, and there's no external factors besides from the beginning of the universe if It indeed began to exist.
@@theintelligentmilkjug944 Importantly, though, we also can't think of an example where we have a first cause that is *more* powerful than the effect (and where there aren’t already-existent external factors at play)! Truth be told, we don't really have any uncontroversial examples of first causes that meet this criterion; we're currently in precisely the epistemic state of trying to figure out what any such first cause must be like. So we don't have examples to go on either way; as far as I can tell, this only undercuts Craig's inference further, since our experience with causes and how powerful they are relative to their effects is radically unlike the conditions under which the (alleged) first cause would find itself. This only *further* removes his reason for saying it must be enormously powerful, it seems :)
@@MajestyofReason I'm way out of my league here, but would the beginning of the universe not be an example of a cause that is more powerful than the effect? There would be no known external factors so I can't see the cause being less than the energy of the big bang. I know there's some controversy with what even a first cause is, but still I'm not convinced that the cause of the universe wouldn't be presumably tremendously powerful.
@@theintelligentmilkjug944 good question; I’m also not convinced that it *wouldnt* be enormously powerful; but, equally, I’m not convinced that it *would* be enormously powerful. We really have no clue how powerful it needs to be, other than ‘having sufficient power to initiate a series of events leading to the beginning of the universe [assuming it began]’. But this doesn’t tell us *how* powerful (enormously, moderately, mildly, etc.) it must be. This is my key point, and I don’t think Craig has offered any reason to think it just be enormously powerful as opposed to only mildly-powerful-but-still-sufficiently-powerful-to-initiate-such-a-series.
I don't quite think so! The non-metric time is wholly temporally prior to the beginning of metric time, but it's hard to see how 'eternity' could be wholly prior to anything. Moreover, the non-metric time passes away, and yet eternity cannot pass away.
@@MajestyofReason Why would the non-metric time pass away? Wouldn't the pre-spacetime realm in which the first cause resides continue to exist with non-metric time and run parallel to the physical spacetime realm? Is there a reason the creation of metric time would prevent the continuation of non-metric time?
@@woolvey Ah, excellent question! I suppose that's an epistemically live alternative model to the Oxford school's conception of non-metric time! I was simply working with the Oxford school's conception, which does involve the non-metric time passing away :)
Non-metric time (or amorphous time) is a kind of time in which there are temporal intervals and temporal relations -- so that, for example, there is a fact about which events precede which others or about which events have passed and which have not yet passed. Eternity is usually understood as timelessness -- that is, a state in which there are no temporal relations at all. Note that we can define both A and B relations for amorphous time, but we cannot define A and B relations for a timeless state.
It's obviously not gibberish and has been systematically explained by both philosophers and scientists. See, e.g., Richard Swinburne’s 1993 article “God and Time” in Reasoned Faith (ed. Eleonore Stump), Cornell University Press; Alan Padgett’s 1992 book "God, Eternity and the Nature of Time", Palgrave Macmillan; and Ryan Mullins’ forthcoming book "From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker" [he might supply it upon email request, I'm not sure]. For popular presentations, Mullins has discussed it in some videos he's done on my channel, so check out those for more information. In brief, an interval of metric time is an interval of time where there is an objective fact concerning the length of the interval. An interval of non-metric or (metrically) amorphous time is an interval where there is no objective fact concerning the length of the interval. We can also develop the notion of an amorphous space-time which employs the notion of amorphous (non-metric) time. Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology includes a region of amorphous spacetime as well as a region of metric spacetime. Not only is amorphous or non-metric time philosophically respectable, but it's also taken seriously in science.
The KJV Bible is mathematically encoded. God showed me this: This occurs twice in the KJV Psalms 14:1 1The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. Psalms 53:1 1The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good. The square root of two is 1.4142... Psalms 14:1 is verse number 142 of Psalms The square root of the square root of two is 1.189... There are 1189 Chapters in the KJV.
It's been systematically explained by both philosophers and scientists. See, e.g., Richard Swinburne’s 1993 article “God and Time” in Reasoned Faith (ed. Eleonore Stump), Cornell University Press; Alan Padgett’s 1992 book "God, Eternity and the Nature of Time", Palgrave Macmillan; and Ryan Mullins’ forthcoming book "From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker" [he might supply it upon email request, I'm not sure]. For popular presentations, Mullins has discussed it in some videos he's done on my channel, so check out those for more information. In brief, an interval of metric time is an interval of time where there is an objective fact concerning the length of the interval. An interval of non-metric or (metrically) amorphous time is an interval where there is no objective fact concerning the length of the interval. We can also develop the notion of an amorphous spacetime which employs the notion of amorphous (non-metric) time. Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology includes a region of amorphous spacetime as well as a region of metric spacetime. Not only is amorphous or non-metric time philosophically respectable, but it's also taken seriously in science.
@@MajestyofReason I don't understand what is amorphous spacetime. To my understanding, space and time are already amorphous. So how are the hypothetical space and time that you conceive of are amorphous and the current spacetime that we experience is not amorphous? Edit: Ok I have tried to understand what you mean here by amorphous and does it mean amorphous in so far as it cannot be metrically divided into intervals?
I've had this in the description for a while, but I figured I'd also put it here in case anyone misses it! And special thanks to commenter Tym Miara for inviting this helpful clarification:
In the video, I argued that we cannot infer from the Kalam alone that the cause is spaceless. I began by using an example: “if, *for instance*, you’re only showing [in stage 1] that the past must be finite…” Using this example, I explained how we can’t then go on to infer that the cause of the beginning of (metric) time is spaceless.
I intended the points I made subsequently - about the epistemic possibility of there being some sort of space in which the first cause resides, etc. - to generalize to *other* ways of defending stage 1 of the Kalam, including the appeals to Big Bang cosmology. I wasn’t intending to impute to Craig the inference from ‘x causes the beginning of time’ to ‘x is therefore spaceless’. My point was, firstly, that *if* we only show in stage 1 that metric time is past-finite, *then* we cannot infer that the first cause(s) thereof is spaceless; and, furthermore, that the point about the epistemic possibility of some space in which the first cause(s) resides is a problem for *other* extant ways of defending stage 1, not just a way of defending stage 1 which only shows that the past must be finite. I used the finite-metric-past defense of stage 1 as an example to introduce the point which I intended to generalize more broadly.
So, then, the clarification is that I wasn't intending to say that Craig takes his spacelessness conclusion to be derived from the finitude of the past, though I can understand if what I said suggests that. I’m here canceling any such implicature, and explaining what I was intending to convey.
My point, instead, is precisely that none of the points in Craig's stage 1 case show that the cause is spaceless - even the points pertaining to big bang cosmology. They only show, at best, that the cause doesn't exist in the spatial framework of our local spatiotemporal manifold, i.e., the self-contained one that began to expand about 13.8 billion years ago. As I noted in the video, there may be a different space that exists causally prior to the beginning of metric time (and hence causally prior to the beginning of the spatial manifold associated with that metric time) and in which the cause resides. This space may be the same sort of space as our local spatiotemporal manifold's space (e.g., three-dimensional); or it may be some more exotic state space that various philosophers have proposed for the 'location' of the universal wavefunction; or it may be a higher dimensional spatial framework; and so on. The epistemic possibilities are boundless, and Craig - in claiming the cause must be spaceless - illegitimately assumes that none of these are the case. The crucial point is that they straightforwardly undercut the claim that the cause of our local spatiotemporal manifold must be spaceless, i.e., without any space.
And, of course, I think it's important to emphasize that big bang cosmology doesn't show that the universe, understood as all of physical reality, began to exist; for more on this, see Dr. Linford dissertation here :)
philarchive.org/archive/DAN_SA-15
There seems to be a difference in how you and Craig defines "space". Because Craig defines "universe" as all of physical reality (including space "if it exists"), then he can infer that the cause is "spaceless." Whereas you think it's "epistemically possible" that there is "weird" space outside of physical reality, thus you don't think his argument works.
In either case, it seems to me that you're both saying that the cause is outside our physical spacetime manifold.
@@robertsimonuy9743 If that's how Craig defines terms, then none of his arguments for premise (2) of the Kalam can succeed, since none of them rule out some form of space (and hence some form of physicality) existing timelessly sans metric time (or in a non-metric time prior to the beginning of metric time), and in such a case -- given Craig's understanding of 'begins to exist' -- it is untrue that physical reality *as such* began to exist. So if this is how we're understanding terms, then Craig's entire case for premise (2) falls well short of the mark.
This highlights, also, that we aren't caught up in a merely verbal dispute; substantive points are at issue here! :)
@@MajestyofReason If i'm not mistaken, he does have some arguments against a "timelessly" existing physical reality. I think it's that a timeless physical reality is "stable", so it would either have to be eternally timeless or began to exist unless of course the state of timelessness was "disturbed" by an act of freewill which goes back to his argument for a personal cause.
Don't quote me on this. Maybe I'm mixing things up in my head. lol
But anyway, I would love to see you two discuss this matter.
@@robertsimonuy9743 From what I've read, he doesn't so much offer *arguments* here but instead offers *bare assertions* that physical things cannot be timeless in this manner. (And again, even if physical things cannot be timeless, physical things *could* in principle exist in a non-metric time, and that's all I need to make my point)
@@MajestyofReason
I disagree with you that it doesn't mean spaceless and timeless
It doesn't mean personal
But it's definitely spaceless and timeless
I think a better thing
For Craig to do
Instead of claiming that actual infinities are
Impossible
Is to establish that an infinite amount of objects cannot exist at the same time
Therefore spacetime must have a beginning otherwise
An infinite amount of objects would exist at the same time
More like the KaLAME cosmological argument, amirite? 😎
pwned
@@MajestyofReason and rekt. +L +ratio
@@utubepunk + ur a spurs fan
@@MajestyofReason 😄😄
Gottem
It would be crazy if you and WLC could have a dialogue on the Kalam.
WLC would get destroyed
@@Hi-cu2vx That’s not really the point of a dialogue.
@@sneakysnake2330I know dude, just an assumption.
Yeah but he wouldn't debate an unpublished philo- oh wait he can't use that excuse this time.
@@Uryvichk Excuses? The man spoke to Malpass about the kalam publicly.
Fodor made an interesting point in his book “Unreasonable Faith” which was asking the question “why did the cause have to be personal?” as opposed to impersonal like the Dao or something. I’m curious what Craig’s take on that would be because I’ve always thought there was a “leap” there to get to a personal God.
To be honest I think an immaterial mind and abstract concept/principle are kind of one and the same. Edit: But for that matter I don’t really see much of a difference between an abstract concept and some other impersonal principle whether it’s called Dao or whatever. They’re all immaterial, whether the immaterial can give rise to the material doesn’t seem to require a personality if it can anyway. But at the same time I feel like if an immaterial principle does cause the material that itself is kind of a “will” of this immaterial principle, a will maybe not like a libertarian free will decision, but a will consistent with itself. That there are immaterial principles seems to inherently be a kind of personality of the principle. I would consider that essentially God anyway.
im not a proponent of the kalam as a theist, but at about 6 minutes into the video you give a list of other potential candidates that could things other than a mind or an abstract object, but i think craig's point was that minds and abstract objects are the only things that we uncontroversially *know of*. not saying this is sound but i think that's what he's probably getting at, to be as charitable as possible.
Man I would pay 50$ to see you debate Craig. I really want him to engage with these objections.
You can get the same effect by playing their videos back to back. Craig is a master of not answering questions and MoR is very practiced at talking to himself.
@@goldenalt3166 he mainly debates people who have a PHD.
@@matthieulavagna He doesn't "debate" at all. Just repeats canned responses. Fits well with the Kalam "argument": say something that sounds obvious then say something outrageous. Whenever they disagree pretend it was with the obvious part.
@@matthieulavagna I still think he said, that he only debates PhDs to explain why he does not want to debate Matt Dillahunty, cause Craig knows, that such a debate would end in a desaster for him.
@@TgfkaTrichter no dillahunty is a dummy
"the KAW-lawm cosmological argument"
frank turek manages to hit new lows even when pronouncing things
As opposed to the COS-mological argument.
I want to see a discussion btw Joe and Craig, like Craig had with Cosmic Skeptic
Good ol' Bill. Our favorite parrot
You should really look into the theology of the shaykh of Islam Ibn Taymiyyah. He was a physicalist who believed that all ontological exitsents must be spatiotemporal, including angels, souls, the Resurrection, and Paradise and Hellfire. Even God Himself is a tremendous Creator being who is greater than the entirety of creation in a spatial sense and who has a spatial location outside the created world, such that we literally raise our hands towards God in prayer. Yes, he refrained from using the term "body" to describe God as it is non-scriptural, but he nevertheless believed that the meaning intended can be correct. He instead used scriptural terminology such as God is "above His creation", "has created Adam in His image", and is "upon His throne", arguing that the early Muslims believed that they will literally see the face of God above them when they enter Paradise, just as we today see the sun and the moon in the sky, and that this will be the most joyful experience in Paradise.
Moreover, Ibn Taymiyyah believed that God must be described with successive volitions and acts that subsist in His essence and which call His created effects into existence in the world. This is because the world cannot be changing if its Cause is atemporal and motionless. He also committed to the necessity of perpetual divine activity. That is, God must have been acting voluntarily from the eternal past and must continue to act voluntarily into the infinite future, in full accordance with His perfect wisdom and mercy. He believed that it is impossible for God to start doing things after having not been doing anything at all from past eternity, because firstly, that is an imperfection that implies that God needed something to become more perfect, and secondly, it contradicts the very principle of causality on which the cosmological arguments for God's existence ought to be predicated in the first place.
Ibn Taymiyyah also accepted towards the end of his life that God necessarily originates things ex materia, and that the notion of ex nihilo is metaphysically impossible. See "Ibn Taymiyyah on Creation ex Materia" for more information. Whenever God wishes to originate a substance after its nonexitsence, He necessarily prepares its prior causes and material conditions beforehand. Yes, the genus of material conditions is eternal according to Ibn Taymiyyah, but no particular matter accompanies God from eternity. Rather, God has been perpetually bringing things into existence in place of other conditions which He removes from existence entirely, such that God is the only eternal and necessarily existing being, and everything besides Him is created after its nonexistence.
This beautiful theology goes hand in hand with the concerns of modern-day naturalists. There is no need to maintain that God breaks any necessary laws of physics as He creates things. Miracles such as splitting the moon and the sea and resurrecting the dead can be deemed physically possible.
Yes, Abrahamic monotheism is incompatible with the notion of a deterministic universe, as such a view requires that there is only one way the universe can evolve, such that each state of the universe necessitates exactly one later state of the universe. Abrahamic monotheism, on the other hand, entails that God is able to miraculously change the world and keep it in existence forever. However, I am convinced that if one comes to accept that the universe is indeterministic, he would not be required to contradict the strong version of the PSR. This is because one can still commit to Ibn Taymiyyah's theological determinism, such that God necessarily preponderates one course of evolution of the universe over another course of evolution of the universe, from a prior state of the universe that carried the potential for both courses of evolution.
I wish you all the best. May God guide you and show you the way.
Yeah, I'm interested in him, and I recently got some books from him (Majmoo' Al- Fatawa 1, 2, 3, 4, and his responses to the Jahamias and Suffis). He's a pretty interesting scholar.
I am fond of the idea of the Islamic God being spacio-temporal, but outside the universe. As far as I've studied Islam, his understanding and people like him, are spot on and are consistent with the scripture and Hadiths.
Personally, I dislike groups like the Asharia and Mu'tazila; their beliefs are alien to Islam and inconsistent with their faith.
He also believed in a finite time in hell, not eternally as in heaven.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. Romans 1:22-25 KJV
What?
I think it was the famous thinker Odegaard who said, "just because Jesus inspires us, doesn't mean we're going to win the league"...
😭😭😭
@@MajestyofReason
nevermind. If Jesus is a necessary being, and a necessary being must win the league necessarily, then as long as he can stay fit for a whole season...
@@bengreen171 I’m just looking forward to when City gets relegated or points deducted for their almost-certain financial violations…
@@MajestyofReason
come now - that sort of sour grapes makes you sound like a Spurs fan ;)
@majesty of reason, I really respect you as a philosopher, and as a Christian your content is always challenging and refreshing, although I think, this is my lamen opinion, if you approach the supposed origen of the universe you need to take into account the physics surrounding it.
: Space Time
A core observation in support of the big bang model is the dact that space is expanding, numerous cosmologist would argue that from the data space, the literal void/fabric of reality is expanding ever more rapidly. It follows quite easily that if time did began, and if space is expanding( meaning from moment tot moment the distances between atoms increase), it follows that space was atleast smaller every moment prior to the current moment. Couple that with the singularity theory, that space started at a particular point, point in physics usually means dimentionless object or area, then you have 2 observation at the core of moder physics that seem to make it more probable than not that space did in fact also begin at a singular point.
I am mostlikely wrong, idk but I just wanted to share some thoughts.
The distances between atoms don't increase, the distances between galaxies decrease.
I'm not sure about space starting, but it would have started small if it wasn't infinite.
It's hard to tell whether it's infinite, but if it's finite then still it was bigger or smaller during the time the MBR was created depending on whether it's bigger or smaller now.
4:23 'in order to get a temporal effect from a Timeless cause you need something like a spontaneous free decision'
What does 'decision' mean without temporality? Isn't temporality what orders cause and causation? What does non-random decision of creation mean if not that in reaction of being aware of non existence he caused existence? Does Craig (or anyone else) provide any argumentation of what decision is without temporality? Or does the ordering of cause-causation not necessitate temporality?
Can an omniscient being even make decisions? Decision seems to imply deliberation between alternatives through a conscious process, but an omniscient being does not (and based on a paper whose author escapes me at the moment, possibly cannot) deliberate, because it already knows what it's going to do (and/or what it wants to do and then knows exactly how to accomplish it). And yes, you can say God's will is eternal and co-equal to its essence or whatever, but that starts to sound very much IMpersonal, like it's just A Thing God Does(TM) and over which it has no meaningful control. If God's will to create is an essential aspect of its nature, and God is eternally timeless, then it's hard to see how it ever made a "spontaneous free decision" to create anything: It wasn't spontaneous (no time for spontaneity to occur), it wasn't free (if it was part of an essential nature), and it wasn't a decision (eternally timeless omniscient beings don't "decide" things).
Let's go, new Joe vid drop
Do you think causality only exists in a temporal space (like infinite regress)? Or is there a possibility of a timeless cause? Just curious what you think in that regard
Isn’t causality a product if time?
I don't really have a settled view on the matter; I think there's at least *some* reason to think causation is a spatiotemporal relation; but I don't think it's conclusive reason, and there are also at least *some* considerations telling against it. Hence, no settled view!
@@MajestyofReason like quantum mechanics? Or indeterminacy?
Would a timeless cause imply indeterminism?
@@christopherp.8868 I don't see why a timeless cause would imply indeterminism.
Here's something that's really crucial, but is often simply glossed over. Causes can be either deterministic and indeterministic. And determinism can still be true even if there are no causes. For that reason, whether the causal principle is true and whether determinism is true are actually tangential issues.
Here's an absolutely crucial point: even if there were no causes, that wouldn't imply indeterminism. Without causation, everything may still happen for a reason.
Which specific argument are we talking about here? Because it seems that your objections work for some but fail for other cosmological arguments.
-If Presentism is the case, then this seems to imply a error theory about the past.
-Positive propositions about the past can not correspond to reality if the past doesn’t exist.
-This implies that there is no truth about whether the past is infinite or finite.
-One could translate this into „there is no such thing that is the past and that is infinite“ and „there is no such thing that is the past and that is finite“.
-The question „is the past finite or not?“ is similar to the question „is the present King of France bald or not?“.
That's a really interesting point. I've had similar thoughts about mathematical nominalism. If numbers don't exist, then do mathematical propositions like 2+2=4 actually correspond to reality? It seems to imply an error theory about mathematics, at least on the corresponds theory of truth. But I've never thought about the implications of presentism in that way.
I wonder what your thoughts would be on the notion of space-time being emergent. There's an article from Scientific American called What is Spacetime Really Made Of? that speaks on the AdS/CFT correspondence. Space-time as fundamental reality is questioned.
The Cosmological Argument/Contingent Argument was put forward by Imam Ghazali, A Muslim Scholar and Philosopher
Bit late to this but WLC out here dressed like Wallace.
love your videos ,can you please explain more about abstract objects outside the mind what about maths
the amount of speculation the rebuttal has is its weakpoint .
Could you do a video about Rasmussen's argument from his book? Or, what do you think about it?
Clearly the universe was caused by an abstract object...the number 42.
Enormous power full.. how do you quantify this
enormous power full indeed!
1:20 I don’t really get this bit
Maybe matter/energy, especially given that the net energy in the universe is thought to be 0, but Spacetime is just … 4 dimensions into a single manifold.
It sorta makes no sense to say space (as we know it) can be independent of time .
That being said … yeah you have literally the entire concept of everything, not even limited by spacetime, and all you can think of is God? Like does the Kalam rule out a simulation, however unlikely that might be ?
I always took Craig's "spacelessness" conclusion to be derived not from the finitude of the past, but from Big Bang cosmology. In all of his debates he refers to the standard model of cosmology, so divorcing the stage 2 of his argument from what he always repeats in stage 1 is a bit uncharitable, I would think. If you ask any physicist, "where did the Big Bang happen", everyone will tell you that it happened everywhere at once, all of space expanded from one point. That's what Craig is getting at, I think
It's not uncharitable, since I wasn't doing any such divorcement :)
I wasn't intending to say that Craig takes his spacelessness conclusion to be derived from the finitude of the past, though I can understand if what I said suggests that! Allow me to cancel any such implicature now :)
My point, instead, is precisely that *none* of the points in Craig's stage 1 case show that the cause is spaceless -- even the points pertaining to big bang cosmology. They only show, at best, that the cause doesn't exist in the spatial framework of our local spatiotemporal manifold, i.e., the self-contained one that began to expand about 13.8 billion years ago. As I noted in the video, there may be a *different* space that exists causally prior to the beginning of metric time (and hence causally prior to the beginning of the spatial manifold associated with that metric time) and in which the cause resides. This space may be the same *sort* of space as our local spatiotemporal manifold's space (e.g., three-dimensional); or it may be some more exotic state space that various philosophers have proposed for the 'location' of the universal wavefunction; or it may be a higher dimensional spatial framework; and so on. The epistemic possibilities are boundless, and Craig is either unaware of them or pretends they don't exist. The crucial point is that they straightforwardly undercut the claim that the cause of our local spatiotemporal manifold must be spaceless, i.e., without space.
If those physicists say 'all' of space expanded from one point, then unless they want to make a false claim, they can only *mean* 'all of the space *associated with our local spatiotemporal manifold* expanded from one point'.
Finally, I think it's important to emphasize that big bang cosmology doesn't show that the universe, understood as all of physical reality, began to exist; for more on this, see Dr. Linford dissertation here :)
philarchive.org/archive/DAN_SA-15
Okay, so the undercutting defeaters you mentioned rely on the epistemic possibility of the existence of some other spacetime within which our universe (local spatiotemporal manifold) is located. Is that approximately accurate?
I do worry though that the appeal to "boundless epistemic possibilities" of unfalsifiable entities like these, which are even in principle empirically inaccessible can lead us to total skepticism.
We could argue that no amount of evidence is sufficient to convict anyone of murder, because, as an undercutting defeater to the deductive arguments that prosecution presents in court, we can provide an alternative explanation that the axe in the victim's head was flung from a different universe, or a different dimension, or by means of any of the infinite epistemically possible scenarios.
And even appeals to probabilities or rational credences fall apart, because as soon as you mention the boundless epistemically possible scenarios, probabilities associated with them are inscrutable.
I am not defending the Kalam, here, btw, I am just worried that an appeal to "boundless epistemic possibilities" just stops the conversation, about almost any topic related to empirical facts.
@@tymmiara5967 I’ll offer some thoughts bit-by-bit!
“Okay, so the undercutting defeaters you mentioned rely on the epistemic possibility of the existence of some other spacetime…”
It needn’t be a spacetime; it could simply be a framework that’s spatial-but-non-temporal. At the very least, I don’t see any reason to rule this out, and yet if Craig wants us to infer spacelessness, he needs to rule it out.
“…within which our universe (local spatiotemporal manifold) is located”
It doesn’t require *our* (local) universe to be located in that other framework (although it may be); instead, the point was simply that the *cause* of our universe may be located within that framework (which may be a spatial-but-non-temporal framework, or it may be spatiotemporal but a different spatiotemporal framework from our local one, i.e., the one we inhabit).
“I do worry though that the appeal to "boundless epistemic possibilities" of unfalsifiable entities like these, which are even in principle empirically inaccessible can lead us to total skepticism.”
I don’t see how this leads to skepticism. Craig says he can show that the cause of our universe must be spaceless. But in order to do that, he needs to rule out the cause being spatial. And yet he does no such thing, since he totally fails to rule out any of these views which may very well be the case.
Second, these aren’t unfalsifiable; some of them are consequences of empirically testable theories (e.g., the universal wavefunction existing in an exotic state space more fundamental than our spatiotemporal manifold has been argued to be in precisely this sort of position); and all of them are philosophically testable, i.e., amenable to refutation by the wielding of reasons against them (say, in the form of an assessment of the theoretical virtues that these views embody vis-a-vis other views about the nature of the cause of our spatiotemporal manifold, if there is one).
“We could argue that no amount of evidence is sufficient to convict anyone of murder, because, as an undercutting defeater to the deductive arguments that prosecution presents in court, we can provide an alternative explanation that the axe in the victim's head was flung from a different universe, or a different dimension, or by means of any of the infinite epistemically possible scenarios.”
It’s not like that, though; those are hypotheses which, while epistemically possible, are extremely low in probability due bro conflict with background knowledge. By contrast, nothing in our background knowledge tells strongly against the cause of our local spatiotemporal manifold existing in some sort of space. So no skepticism looms; in the case of the prosecution, those epistemic probabilities are ludicrously improbable by dint of conflict with what we know about the world, whereas no such improbability and conflict exist in the case at hand.
It’s more like the following. Suppose the prosecution claims that the only way Smith could have gotten into the house was through the door. The defense then points out that there are twelve windows to the house, and the owners of the house sometimes leave windows open to let in fresh air. The defense then presses: how does the prosecution rule out that Smith didn’t go through the door but instead a window? If the prosecution is silent here - as Craig is silent - the prosecution’s case - just like Craig’s - fails.
“And even appeals to probabilities or rational credences fall apart, because as soon as you mention the boundless epistemically possible scenarios, probabilities associated with them are inscrutable.”
They don’t, though. First, my use of ‘boundless’ was rhetorical flourish; I wasn’t actually insisting that there are (potentially) infinitely may epistemic possibilities. But, second, it is simply untrue that, when there are boundless epistemically possible scenarios, probabilities associated with them are inscrutable. It’s an epistemic possibility that Newton’s gravitational law is not an inverse square law but instead an inverse 2.00000000000000001 law, or an inverse 1.99999999999999999 law, or an inverse 2.00000000000002 law, or etc. There are boundless epistemic possibilities here that fit the data, but clearly, we can still assign a very high credence to the inverse square hypothesis. The reason is because it outcompetes even the disjunction of the boundless competing epistemically possible alternative hypotheses on the range of theoretical virtues. (In particular, the inverse square law totally demolishes all the other hypotheses along dimensions of simplicity, non-ad-hocness, coherence, etc.)
Perhaps you are right that Craig is appealing to some notions from relativistic spacetime, where a purely spatial region (for example) did not precede spacetime. But this is an odd thing for Craig to say for three reasons.
First, Craig endorses an instrumental interpretation of General Relativity. For that reason, it's difficult to see how Craig could draw any metaphysical conclusions from General Relativity. In order for Craig to draw metaphysical conclusions, he'd need to supply us with a spacetime theory for which he does endorse a realistic interpretation; moreover, in order for Craig's argument to be convincing, he'd need to provide us with a sufficiently convincing argument as to why we should endorse this alternative theory, whatever it may be. Craig has simply failed to do anything of that sort.
Second, there are plenty of cosmological models in which a non-temporal, spatial region precedes spacetime. It's true that there are some cosmological models on which nothing precedes spacetime, but so what? If we understand Big Bang cosmology as the view that the universe is expanding on the largest observable scales or that the universe, on the broadest observable scales, was hotter and denser in the past, then we have good evidence for Big Bang cosmology. But if we instead understand Big Bang cosmology as the view that the universe has an open boundary to the past (i.e., the Big Bang singularity) and so forth, then we do not have good evidence for Big Bang cosmology; it's difficult to see how we even ever could have good evidence for that view. I can expand on that if you'd like.
Third, you say that if you ask any physicist, they'd tell you that the Big Bang happened everywhere at once. Physicists have a hard job to do when explaining physics to non-experts. Physical theories are written in terms of advanced mathematics and General Relativity is no exception. Cosmological models are written in terms of General Relativity. We have mathematical models on which, in some loose sense, the Big Bang happened everywhere at once; that's what those physicists are alluding to. But if you bother to dig deeper, you'll find that, since at least the 1970s, physicists have been thinking about the large scale structure of spacetime. (That phrase has a precise mathematical definition.) There's an excellent textbook by George Ellis, and co-authors, covering this topic called Relativistic Cosmology. There's also a shorter and more recent monograph by J.B. Manchak on the large scale structure of spacetime. In any case, philosophers (such as David Malament and J.B. Manchak) have been investigating the following epistemological question: given what we can see on the largest observable scales, can we determine the large scale structure of space-time? The answer here is no. (If you want something to google, you can search the phrase "observationally indistinguishable spacetimes".) Moreover, there's an almost trivial mathematical result according to which any observer who collects data consistent with their inhabiting a space-time where the Big Bang happened "everywhere at once" will not be able to determine whether they actually do inhabit such a spacetime, or if the Big Bang should instead be thought of as a feature of their local spacetime region. Among philosophers who take a serious interest in the philosophical foundations of relativistic spacetime, this is an extremely important result; I'll let you draw your own conclusions concerning why philosophers of religion and theologians seem to be almost completely ignorant of these developments.
@@daniellinford9643 I'm not sure that Craig is appealing to General Relativity, or that he needs to. I think his argument is simpler than that: "Starting with Hubble, physicists observed the universe expands, which according to the simplest extrapolations backwards suggests it started as a singularity".
I absolutely agree that we cannot prove that it started from a singularity, but to the extent to which we assign credences that it started from a singulairty, to that extent the we should assign credence that the cause was outside of this spacetime.
My question to you would be: How sure are you (i.e. what is your credence) that the universe did not start as a singularity? Even if that credence is as high as 90%, then the remaining 10% is the extent to which the evidence lends support for this small part of Craig's argument. Not impressive, I agree, and definitely not meriting the hype it gets, but not a total failure of that part of the argument either, lol.
I would gladly hear your credence distribution on the singularity Big Bang cosmologies versus the other explanations of the data
Kalam with corrected terminology:
P1. "The cosmos" that begins to exist has a "God cause".
P2. "The cosmos" began to exist.
Therefore "the cosmos" has a "God cause".
There's nothing to generalize about P1. Neither the theorized cause nor theorized effect have any relationship to things that we experience.
Change "the cosmos" with "everything" in P1 and you got al-Ghazali's kalam (not Craig's two-step kalam, though)
@@TCSpartan7 "Everything" excludes a God? Sounds like he'd still need of step 2 etc to be a Muslim.
Does timelessness lead to spacelessness when we take on the relativistic assumption that time and space are the same thing (and aren't even be separate words in physics anymore, despite lay usage)?
Excellent question; I take it to imply that anything timeless certainly won’t be part of *our* spatiotemporal framework. But I don’t see why it would entail that something timeless cannot be in *any* sort of spatial framework, Eg a higher dimensional one disjoint from ours, or a more exotic state space, or etc. As far as I’m aware, GR and SR don’t rule any such thing out
Has Craig responded to these kinds of objections? It seems that the academic debate on the Kalam is only focused on stage 1.
From my research, I believe he doesn’t address them.
And you’re correct that, sadly, most of the academic literature focuses on stage 1 of the Kalam only. Which is frustrating, since it deserves attention!!
@@MajestyofReason That's because the two stage Kalan is a scam. It uses stage 1 to pretend to be logical so they can smuggle in stage 2 when you've given up thinking.
Is that Alex Malpass?
Joe, does any of these objections (concerning the cause not necessarily needing to be timeless, imaterial, etc) pressupose the b theory of time? (As craig is assuming the a)
Good question; I don't see how any of them assume a particular theory of time. They appear neutral between them. Notice, for instance, that nothing in my criticisms required the existence (or non-existence) of objective temporal becoming. :)
I think Mullins approach to God fits better w the Kalam.
Guys like WLC and FT throw the word "universe"around like it's nothing. I don't think they have the concept of how insignificant our planet is in the universe.
Like a grain of sand on a beach thinking the beach is there for it.
Why won’t Craig respond to you?
He's obviously intimidated by my soccer skills
@@MajestyofReason you hit the nail on the head 🔥
@@JustADudeGamer to debate, but not to discuss! He's had many discussions with non-PhD individuals. :)
Cameron asked him to have a discussion with me the week following the release of my video "New objections to the Kalam still work", but Craig was too busy.
@@MajestyofReason Can’t wait until he’s not busy! Lol!
I just subed and i see this.
5:30 Also, Craig's argument here assumes there are such *things* as "minds" (as opposed to there just being living creatures who _have_ minds, i.e., who have a set of intellectual capacities).
A mind is not just a set of intellectual capacity. Also, how can you “have” something that doesn’t exist. By definition, if something doesn’t exist, the. You can’t have it.
@@crispyone5697 Presumably, what Legron means is that we can distinguish between two different conceptions of minds:
1. A mind as an independent object or entity unto itself;
2. A mind as a set of properties or capacities.
Compare: an instance of the color red might not be an independent object or entity unto itself, but can be understood as a property that a red thing has. Likewise, someone might propose that a mind is not an independent object or entity unto itself but instead a set of properties or capacities that a minded thing, such as a person, has.
In any case, I don't think Legron's objection is convincing. If a mind is a set of properties or capacities that a minded thing has, then God might just be a minded thing that has the corresponding set of properties or capacities.
@@crispyone5697
What I mean is that "mind" is just short-hand for talking about the intellectual capacities of human beings (and their exercise). When we say someone changed his mind, for example, we're not saying he changed an object called "his mind". We're just saying he reversed his previous decision.
The "having" issue is part of what can mislead one into thinking "the mind" is an object that we possess. We speak of people having talents, but we don't mean that they possess objects called "talents". We simply mean that some people are very skilled at certain activities. Likewise, "having a mind" (e.g. a powerful mind, a sharp mind, etc.) has to do with our intellectual capacities and behaviour, not with owning an object.
The mind is an abstract object. Not something tangible, but still real. A dead person is still physically here, but their mind is gone. They cannot possess a mind at that point. But as living humans, we can possess one. It is still an “object”, just not a tangible one.
@@crispyone5697 That’s incoherent. A mind cannot be an abstract object because a mind is a particular or an instance and, on most views, have causal powers.
But david hume said its intuitive 😂
Just had to comment about the God-nipple in the thumbnail
Hot
Notifications are on now, I'll be listening from work. Glad I saw your last post, UA-cam doesn't seem to care much about subscriptions sometimes
I am a little confused as to what is the meaning of the term "amorphous time". Any help explaining it?
Similarly, shouldn't there be a "metric" and "amorphous" space? What would that mean?
For technically precise and helpful characterizations, see (inter alia):
Richard Swinburne’s 1993 article “God and Time” in Reasoned Faith (ed. Eleonore Stump), Cornell University Press; Alan Padgett’s 1992 book "God, Eternity and the Nature of Time", Palgrave Macmillan; and Ryan Mullins’ forthcoming book "From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker" [he might supply it upon email request, I'm not sure].
For popular presentations, Mullins has discussed it in some videos he's done on my channel, so check out those for more information :)
An interval of metric time is an interval of time where there is an objective fact concerning the length of the interval. An interval of amorphous time is an interval where there is no objective fact concerning the length of the interval.
There is metric and amorphous space. A metric space is one where, for any given spatial interval, there is a fact concerning the length of that interval. An amorphous space is one where, for any given spatial interval, there is no fact concerning the length of that interval.
We can also develop the notion of an amorphous space-time. Penrose's Conformal Cylic Cosmology -- which Joe mentions in the video -- includes a region of amorphous space-time as well as a region of metric space-time.
The definitions I've offered above are non-technical. I can give a more technical definition (e.g., the notion of a metric space is one that was originally developed by mathematicians), but what I've should should at least provide an intuitive sense of what's going on here.
The Kalam cosmology argument is not an argument for god but it's an argument for the first cause. The argument doesn't remotely implies that the first cause is all powerful or all knowing. Let alone the god of the bible and the Quran. And what is really stoping us from saying is that the universe it self is not the first uncaused action?. Well nothing
It doesn't even get to "a" first cause.
@Roger That larger argument is a scam. By presenting the Kalam syllogism, they attempt to give it an air of deductive certainty and if pressed on that part, they will claim you're irrationally skeptical. However, if you agree with the Kalam, they'll try to bamboozle you with a swarm of unevidenced claims and hidden assumptions and which in my opinion actually contradict the Trinity.
I'm confused. Joe, how do you define time?
If you define time as being "a metric succession of changes" or "the succession of measurable changes, with distinct 'beginnings/before' and 'ends/afters'," then isn't time necessarily metric/measurable? If so then isn't the notion of "non-metric time" just nonsense? Wouldn't that be "an immeasurable and successionless state of measurable successions?" I hope to learn, please explain to me how your conception of "non-metric time" is anything other than absurd/nonsensical!
I hope you are having a good day!
You're correct that if one defines 'time' as metricated, then of course non-metric time is absurd; but we needn't define 'time' that way. The non-metric time view works best with a non-relational view of time, and it's spelled out i[at least in one variant] in various videos I've done with Ryan Mullins, so check those out if you're interested. Therein he also characterizes time in a way that does not entail metrication. (E.g., he characterizes it as something which makes change possible, is the source of moments [which are the ways things are but could be subsequently otherwise] and the orderings among them, etc.)
@@MajestyofReason i will check those out, thank you! It still doesn't make very much sense since that means that time, if it is fundamentally defined by Dr. Mullins and yourself as relational, should really make the phrase "non-metric time" to be redundant, right? I mean, if all time is basically "non-metric," then shouldn't we consider the notion of "non-metric time temporally prior to metric time" to be rather strange, since no actual metric time exists, per se? I simply mean to say that it is better to say "relational time" or "metric time" IN PLACE OF "non-metric time" vs "metric time" (if some would prefer to define time as purely relational and not actually metric at all)
3:55 alright buddy you create an event that would initiate the construction of the entire universe, and tell me that doesn't take a lot of power.
I don't positively claim it takes a little power; my point is that Craig hasn't justified why it would take enormous power. All the relevant cause needs to do is kickstart either the beginning of our universe [assuming it began], or else a series of events leading to the beginning of our universe. Nothing in this description tells us how much power is needed to kickstart such a process, and we already know that extremely minor (non-enormously-powerful) causal perturbations of initial conditions of systems can kickstart chain reactions leading to monstrously huge effects. So we already know that there's nothing *in principle* requiring the kickstarter to be enormously powerful. The question for Craig, then, is: why think it must be enormously powerful? All he's ever offered on this front is pure assertion.
@@MajestyofReason okay, I see what you mean in most scenarios It's not necessarily required for a first cause to be more powerful than the effect. Like turning the keys in the ignition of a car isn't more powerful than the energy that the engine produces. However, in that scenario there are already existing external, and separate factors like turning the keys doesn't create the pistons. I can't think of a good example where you have a first cause that is less powerful than the effect, and there's no external factors besides from the beginning of the universe if It indeed began to exist.
@@theintelligentmilkjug944 Importantly, though, we also can't think of an example where we have a first cause that is *more* powerful than the effect (and where there aren’t already-existent external factors at play)! Truth be told, we don't really have any uncontroversial examples of first causes that meet this criterion; we're currently in precisely the epistemic state of trying to figure out what any such first cause must be like. So we don't have examples to go on either way; as far as I can tell, this only undercuts Craig's inference further, since our experience with causes and how powerful they are relative to their effects is radically unlike the conditions under which the (alleged) first cause would find itself. This only *further* removes his reason for saying it must be enormously powerful, it seems :)
@@MajestyofReason I'm way out of my league here, but would the beginning of the universe not be an example of a cause that is more powerful than the effect? There would be no known external factors so I can't see the cause being less than the energy of the big bang. I know there's some controversy with what even a first cause is, but still I'm not convinced that the cause of the universe wouldn't be presumably tremendously powerful.
@@theintelligentmilkjug944 good question; I’m also not convinced that it *wouldnt* be enormously powerful; but, equally, I’m not convinced that it *would* be enormously powerful. We really have no clue how powerful it needs to be, other than ‘having sufficient power to initiate a series of events leading to the beginning of the universe [assuming it began]’. But this doesn’t tell us *how* powerful (enormously, moderately, mildly, etc.) it must be. This is my key point, and I don’t think Craig has offered any reason to think it just be enormously powerful as opposed to only mildly-powerful-but-still-sufficiently-powerful-to-initiate-such-a-series.
Actually, I think your conception of "non-metric time" is the same as "eternity"
I don't quite think so! The non-metric time is wholly temporally prior to the beginning of metric time, but it's hard to see how 'eternity' could be wholly prior to anything. Moreover, the non-metric time passes away, and yet eternity cannot pass away.
@@MajestyofReason ah, i see. I think I am confused because I'm not sure how you define time. That seems to be the real issue here.
@@MajestyofReason Why would the non-metric time pass away? Wouldn't the pre-spacetime realm in which the first cause resides continue to exist with non-metric time and run parallel to the physical spacetime realm? Is there a reason the creation of metric time would prevent the continuation of non-metric time?
@@woolvey Ah, excellent question! I suppose that's an epistemically live alternative model to the Oxford school's conception of non-metric time! I was simply working with the Oxford school's conception, which does involve the non-metric time passing away :)
Non-metric time (or amorphous time) is a kind of time in which there are temporal intervals and temporal relations -- so that, for example, there is a fact about which events precede which others or about which events have passed and which have not yet passed. Eternity is usually understood as timelessness -- that is, a state in which there are no temporal relations at all.
Note that we can define both A and B relations for amorphous time, but we cannot define A and B relations for a timeless state.
What would amorphous time even be? That’s gibberish
It's obviously not gibberish and has been systematically explained by both philosophers and scientists. See, e.g., Richard Swinburne’s 1993 article “God and Time” in Reasoned Faith (ed. Eleonore Stump), Cornell University Press; Alan Padgett’s 1992 book "God, Eternity and the Nature of Time", Palgrave Macmillan; and Ryan Mullins’ forthcoming book "From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker" [he might supply it upon email request, I'm not sure].
For popular presentations, Mullins has discussed it in some videos he's done on my channel, so check out those for more information.
In brief, an interval of metric time is an interval of time where there is an objective fact concerning the length of the interval. An interval of non-metric or (metrically) amorphous time is an interval where there is no objective fact concerning the length of the interval.
We can also develop the notion of an amorphous space-time which employs the notion of amorphous (non-metric) time. Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology includes a region of amorphous spacetime as well as a region of metric spacetime. Not only is amorphous or non-metric time philosophically respectable, but it's also taken seriously in science.
The KJV Bible is mathematically encoded.
God showed me this:
This occurs twice in the KJV
Psalms 14:1
1The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalms 53:1
1The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.
The square root of two is
1.4142...
Psalms 14:1 is verse number 142 of Psalms
The square root of the square root of two is
1.189...
There are 1189 Chapters in the KJV.
Your work,is cut out for you.
Now all you have to do is demonstrate a god exists.
We’re eagerly awaiting.
So God wants you to point out that biblical numerology is foolish and doesn't do any good??
In the beginning
3 words 14 letters
Exodus 3:14
John 3:14
Genesis 1:1 in the KJV Bible has ten words.
√10 is 3.16
Jesus is Lord
?
Omg
I notice you skipped genesis 3:14. Is that because you don't want to admit Satan is behind your work??
Yes the arrow points to the appropriate place to put your god of the gaps and offer nothing more to prove the claim that god did it.
What does "non-metric" time even mean?😂😂
It's been systematically explained by both philosophers and scientists. See, e.g., Richard Swinburne’s 1993 article “God and Time” in Reasoned Faith (ed. Eleonore Stump), Cornell University Press; Alan Padgett’s 1992 book "God, Eternity and the Nature of Time", Palgrave Macmillan; and Ryan Mullins’ forthcoming book "From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker" [he might supply it upon email request, I'm not sure]. For popular presentations, Mullins has discussed it in some videos he's done on my channel, so check out those for more information.
In brief, an interval of metric time is an interval of time where there is an objective fact concerning the length of the interval. An interval of non-metric or (metrically) amorphous time is an interval where there is no objective fact concerning the length of the interval.
We can also develop the notion of an amorphous spacetime which employs the notion of amorphous (non-metric) time. Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology includes a region of amorphous spacetime as well as a region of metric spacetime. Not only is amorphous or non-metric time philosophically respectable, but it's also taken seriously in science.
@@MajestyofReason I don't understand what is amorphous spacetime. To my understanding, space and time are already amorphous. So how are the hypothetical space and time that you conceive of are amorphous and the current spacetime that we experience is not amorphous?
Edit: Ok I have tried to understand what you mean here by amorphous and does it mean amorphous in so far as it cannot be metrically divided into intervals?
Theist doing very bad gymnastic to justify their sky daddy 😅
do you know what channel you're on, clown?