Your views on the Kalam Cosmological Argument

[Krampus]

Hello,

What are your views on Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument? Is there any short and effective response to it?

The KCA's premise "an actual infinite cannot exist" doesn't have any (significant) supporting evidence, is not tautological, and is not self-evident. We already have inductive reasons to let go of this premise, considering that each individual sees an exceedingly small portion of the Universe. The work necessary to confirm it may not be infinite, but it is so huge that it's not practical to take the idea seriously.

Can you elaborate on that please?  :)

I mean, how is an infinite past possible?

[Mister Agenda]

Chiming in, I don't know much about infinite pasts, but the universe seems to have an infinite future. It's as an ever-expanding cloud of photons that gets thinner and thinner, but there's no definitive physics that says it won't continue forever.

Most popular versions of God associate God with having an infinite past.

[Simon Moon]

Kalam contains several fallacies that invalidate it. There isn't even any need to refute any of the premises.

Crag's version is his attempt to polish a turd.

The 2  most obvious fallacies are equivocation and composition.

Kalam equivocates with regards to the definition of 'begins to exist'.

First is uses the phrase to define things that begin to exist 'ex material'. Which is a rearrangement of existing matter and energy. Trees, tables, computers, etc begin to exist under this definition.

But KCA is referring to creation 'ex nihilo' with regards to the beginning of the universe. Which is creation out of nothing.

Same phrase, different meanings. Bye Bye modus ponens.

The other fallacy, which is one of composition. To borrow from Iron Chariots, "The first premise refers to every "thing," and the second premise treats the "universe as if it were a member of the set of "things." But since a set should not be considered a member of itself, the cosmological argument is comparing apples and oranges."

[Sargon The Grape]

I mean, how is an infinite past possible?

How is a finite past possible?

The problem is that there is a gap in our knowledge here. Knowing either answer is pretty much going to require knowing when or if the universe had a beginning as we would understand it.

As far as we know, the Big Bang was the start of the observable universe. As far as we know, there is no "cause" of the Big Bang that we can observe. We should acknowledge that the observable universe is probably not the entire universe, and that our knowledge of time may not be a complete. Beyond these acknowledgements, there is no call to speculate further on the origins of the universe until we are able to put together a more complete picture of those origins.

[LikelyToBreak]

I think you guys are getting too complicated for the average Christian to understand.

I would just say, "Behold, a banana. Therefore it follows that Christ died on the cross for your sins.  Thus, you must give all the money you can to me, to support my ministry"  This is how the Kalam Cosmological Argument appears to me.  We don't know the first cause, and saying you do, doesn't make it so.  That simple.  At least to me.

[Colanth]

That's a good point. He also wouldn't be able to change his mind, I guess. That's also a key part of the bible.

He also wouldn't be able to change the fact that no universe existed.  The KCA is basically the thoughts of uneducated young children (mentally, regardless of their chronological ages) who can't understand the implications of what they're saying.  (Most "logical arguments" for any god are.)

BTW, the only reason the OP posted this thread is that we haven't had a thread on the KCA in ... oh ... about 2 weeks.  //http://atheistforums.com/search.php?keywords=kalam&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sk=t&sd=a&sr=posts&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search will show you a few older threads.  This is a good discussion (from about 3 weeks ago) on why it fails so miserably.

About the only reason to believe that there's more to the KCA than there is to a 3 year old's claim that there's a monster under his bed is that you need there to be a god that created the universe.  Once you get past that need, you not only see the KCA as nonsense, you see the search for whether it's valid or not as a monumental waste of time.  There's no evidence of any god (nor has there ever been any), the signs that ALL gods have been man-made are painfully evident and there's no explanatory need for any god (as long as you can accept "at this time, we don't know" as a valid answer to a question).  "God did it" is just another way of saying "we don't know" - for those people who can't accept uncertainty (read: reality).

[BabaBooey]

This argument automatically assumes that something can't come from nothing, and it requires special pleading by calling this God a timeless and spaceless being.

[Colanth]

This argument automatically assumes that something can't come from nothing, and it requires special pleading by calling this God a timeless and spaceless being.

Who came from nothing, or didn't have to "come" but the universe did - the same fallacy in either case.

[GurrenLagann]

I think some of you are way off. I think Craig's usage of Kant's old argument against the possibility of an infinite past are sound, and some of you aren't really responding to it fairly. For one, the argument against a past temporal infinity is not an argument from ignorance, just straightforward deductive reasoning.
In a nutshell, if you say there was an infinite series of temporal events in the past, then there is no way to have reached any particular moment because then an infinite series would have had to have been traversed. However, a future infinite isn't a problem because no matter when you stop, there will always have been a finite time from your time to the beginning, so it's never an actual infinite.

In regards to the Kalam argument, the better responses (aside from Simon Moon's) tend to be that the KCA necessitates what is called the A-theory of time, which is in direct conflict with the usual (and experimentally supported) interpretation of Special Relativity (or was it General Relativity?), while the B-theory of time works with SR. Further, addition, the A-theory of time seems to force its adherents to conclude the the observed phenomenon predicted and confirmed by SR - time dilatation and length contraction - only (in the words of William Lane Craig, a supporter of it) "appears to happen".

Another thing is that Craig and his minions tend to claim that the Big Bang theory supports creatio ex nihilo, which sounds like bullocks. You know anything about that Joe?

[the_antithesis]

In a nutshell, if you say there was an infinite series of temporal events in the past, then there is no way to have reached any particular moment because then an infinite series would have had to have been traversed.

Actually, with an infinite amount of time, not only is every particular moment possible but that infinite series would have multiple versions of that same moment. And infinite series not only would have something happening during it, but would have everything happen during it an infinite number of times. This argument of reaching this particular point places undo value on that particular point, usually referring to the here and now when the speaker is alive. It is therefore an argument from egotism. But the speaker has been alive an infinite number of times already on an infinite timeline and been an insufferable twit in every single one of them.

[josephpalazzo]

I think some of you are way off. I think Craig's usage of Kant's old argument against the possibility of an infinite past are sound, and some of you aren't really responding to it fairly. For one, the argument against a past temporal infinity is not an argument from ignorance, just straightforward deductive reasoning.
In a nutshell, if you say there was an infinite series of temporal events in the past, then there is no way to have reached any particular moment because then an infinite series would have had to have been traversed. However, a future infinite isn't a problem because no matter when you stop, there will always have been a finite time from your time to the beginning, so it's never an actual infinite.

In regards to the Kalam argument, the better responses (aside from Simon Moon's) tend to be that the KCA necessitates what is called the A-theory of time, which is in direct conflict with the usual (and experimentally supported) interpretation of Special Relativity (or was it General Relativity?), while the B-theory of time works with SR. Further, addition, the A-theory of time seems to force its adherents to conclude the the observed phenomenon predicted and confirmed by SR - time dilatation and length contraction - only (in the words of William Lane Craig, a supporter of it) "appears to happen".

Another thing is that Craig and his minions tend to claim that the Big Bang theory supports creatio ex nihilo, which sounds like bullocks. You know anything about that Joe?

In QFT, we postulate that there's an electron field, a quark field, etc., and for evry field, there is a particle, like the electron, quarks which are kinks or ripples in those fields. It would explain why an electron created in a lab today is exactly identical to an electron created 13.7 billion years ago, or created at any other intervening time. Identical particles is a must in QFT, otherwise no calculation of any results is possible. Also, quantum fluctuations are created from the vacuum of these fields. IOW, those fields are always there. Or there is no such thing as a spot somewhere in the universe that is really "nothing". So from there, we can postulate that these fields had to exist concurrently with the universe. The theists would answer that God had to create these fields when the universe was created. So nothing is really resolved from the science POV. People like Krauss and Hawking have argued that the universe CAN create itself from quantum fluctuations. From the theory we know, that is a definite possibility.

As to the question of infinity, actual or as potential as Craig has debated, that is pure speculation. We have no evidence supporting that claim.

[Colanth]

I think some of you are way off. I think Craig's usage of Kant's old argument against the possibility of an infinite past are sound, and some of you aren't really responding to it fairly. For one, the argument against a past temporal infinity is not an argument from ignorance, just straightforward deductive reasoning.

You can't "deduce" unknowable conditions (and the "whatever" that existed before the universe did is probably, but certainly at this time, unknowable to us.

It's not deductive reasoning, it's bald assertion, which is argument from ignorance.  The only difference from the classical condition is that this isn't "we don't know, so" it's "we can't know, so".

In a nutshell, if you say there was an infinite series of temporal events in the past, then there is no way to have reached any particular moment because then an infinite series would have had to have been traversed.

Huh?  Because A, therefore 3?  One has nothing to do with the other.

However, a future infinite isn't a problem because no matter when you stop, there will always have been a finite time from your time to the beginning, so it's never an actual infinite.

Then there is a problem with a future infinite, since there can't be one.

Another thing is that Craig and his minions tend to claim that the Big Bang theory supports creatio ex nihilo, which sounds like bullocks. You know anything about that Joe?

If the universe always existed (we don't know that it didn't), the problem is eliminated.  But the universe could have created itself ex nihilo, as Joseph explained.  Ex nihilo isn't an argument for the KCA, any more than the SLoT is an argument against evolution - it just sounds "scientificy" to the illiterati.

[SkepticOfMyOwnMind]

Hello,

What are your views on Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument? Is there any short and effective response to it?

The KCA's premise "an actual infinite cannot exist" doesn't have any (significant) supporting evidence, is not tautological, and is not self-evident. We already have inductive reasons to let go of this premise, considering that each individual sees an exceedingly small portion of the Universe. The work necessary to confirm it may not be infinite, but it is so huge that it's not practical to take the idea seriously.

Can you elaborate on that please?  :)

I mean, how is an infinite past possible?

Would you please travel into the past and come back to tell me whether it's infinite? Do you at least understand the Big Bang, Big Crunch, multiverse, vacuum instability, and other such ideas relating to the origin/fate of the Universe?

I'm arguing that epistemological issues make the KCA insubstantial, and I would suggest that modern physics (AFAIK, I follow it but I'm no physicist) has not settled on a definite answer to the question of an infinite past.

[Thumpalumpacus]

In a nutshell, if you say there was an infinite series of temporal events in the past, then there is no way to have reached any particular moment because then an infinite series would have had to have been traversed.

Actually, with an infinite amount of time, not only is every particular moment possible but that infinite series would have multiple versions of that same moment. And infinite series not only would have something happening during it, but would have everything happen during it an infinite number of times. This argument of reaching this particular point places undo value on that particular point, usually referring to the here and now when the speaker is alive. It is therefore an argument from egotism. But the speaker has been alive an infinite number of times already on an infinite timeline and been an insufferable twit in every single one of them.

See, now that's funny.

[SixNein]

"An actual infinite cannot exist."

It's very strange to hear a philosopher propose such an assumption since the view of potential infinity is a rather ancient view. We could say that 1, 2, 3, ..., N are all natural numbers where the next number is given by N+1. And we could also propose that we'd never reach actual infinity no longer how long we tried. But if we go too far down that road of thinking, we would lose our ability to declare the set of N or natural numbers, and work with the set of natural numbers as an object. As a set (actual infinity), we can iterate over the collection of elements using a rule. We can also compare those sets. For example, we know the set of real numbers is larger than the set of integers thanks to Cantors diagonal argument.

And now that gets us to the next one:
"An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite."

Seems to me like some philosophers need to play catch up ball with mathematicians. But I'll bite anyway....

Suppose then that time is finite, and also suppose it was created. Now we look at "Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence."

Suppose the first moment has arrived.

Where is the past for the first moment?