(August 26, 2013 at 7:38 pm)Sword of Christ Wrote:

(August 26, 2013 at 6:33 pm)Chas Wrote: But you claim your god is eternal. Equally logically, I say the universe is eternal.

...But we know it isn't eternal? Big Bang? The beginning of time and space? The cosmic background radiation? The laws of thermodynamics?

No, we don't know. The big bang is one model that has a great deal of evidence, but there are other models.

Quote:

Quote:You eternal god has no cause, so if not caused it can't exist.

God isn't meant to have a cause God is the cause, being the cause of all things that are caused is the idea. Without a cause nothing can be caused.

That's simply wordplay. You are defining god to suit yourself without any basis.

(August 26, 2013 at 7:38 pm)Sword of Christ Wrote:

(August 26, 2013 at 6:33 pm)Chas Wrote: But you claim your god is eternal. Equally logically, I say the universe is eternal.

...But we know the universe isn't eternal though. Big Bang? The beginning of time and space? The cosmic background radiation? The laws of thermodynamics?

But we don't. What existed prior to one Planck unit of time *after* the big bang? What was the state of the universe?

Or are you going to dodge this question again?

(August 26, 2013 at 7:38 pm)Sword of Christ Wrote: God isn't meant to have a cause God is the cause, being the cause of all things that are caused is the idea. Without a cause nothing can be caused.

There you go with the word salad again, and you have tossed in some special pleading.

Do you even think before you type anything, realizing that the thoughts roiling through your mind are illogical to the point where they make absolutely no coherent sense?

(August 26, 2013 at 7:43 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: But we don't. What existed prior to one Planck unit of time *after* the big bang? What was the state of the universe?

You can't have a time before time itself existed. God exists beyond time and brought time into existence so you can have events that run in a sequence. The events begin with the Big Bang.

Quote:Or are you going to dodge this question again?

You're dodging the question because we are talking about what is responsible for the existence of the laws of physics. You can't use the laws of physics to explain the origins of the universe as they only exist within the universe as part of the universe. You can't use what you're trying to explain to explain what you're trying to explain. There has to be an explanation beyond and separate to what you're trying to explain. God would fit the bill very nicely. What kind of God? This one right here will do.



But that's a slightly different debate. You have to start with an appreciation of Gods general existence before you can get into what he told us about himself in the holy scriptures right there.

So, the answer is yes, then?

Quote: You can't have a time before time itself existed.

*bolding*

I think We can see where the problem is here.

So we can't have time before time itself, but we can have three entities combined into one? Fuck off.

(August 26, 2013 at 6:39 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:

(August 26, 2013 at 6:28 pm)discipulus Wrote: How so?

Premise 1 - all things that begin to exist have a cause.

This is not known to be true. As an examples, virtual particles come into existence without known cause.

Premise 2 - the universe began to exist.

This is also not known to be true. We know, and likely can know, nothing about the state of the universe prior to 1 unit of Planck time after the big bang. Therefore, we do not know that the universe began to exist, or whether it existed eternally, and began to expand.

The validity of an argument depends on the truth of it's propositions. The truth value of the KCA's premises are currently unknown, ergo, the argument is not valid.

QED

An argument in the philosophical sense is a set of statements which serve as premises leading to a conclusion. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is one of thee arguments that fall under the category of Cosmological arguments for the existence of God.

The cosmological argument is a family of arguments that seek to demonstrate the existence of a Sufficient Reason or First Cause of the existence of the cosmos. The roll of the defenders of this argument reads like a Who’s Who of western philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, Maimonides, Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Locke, to name but some. (Moreland, James Porter; William Lane Craig (2009-11-08). Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (p. 468). Intervarsity Press - A. Kindle Edition.)

The Kalam Cosmological argument may be formulated as follows:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

I get the impression from you that you do not believe this is a good argument. So I will accept the challenge, if that is what you are extending to me, to defend the argument.

I will start with the basics to see where you are at regarding your knowledge of what constitutes a good argument.

Tell me, what are the two main types of arguments in philosophy?

And please do not misunderstand my intent here. I simply want to see if you are going to be capable of sufficiently defending your view. The reason this is so is because you have already made several errors in reasoning evidenced in your post.

For example:

You stated that the validity of an argument depends on the truth of it's propositions.

This is incorrect. The validity of an argument is dependent upon it being both formally and informally valid in its formulation irrespective of whether or not its premises (which is the correct term) are in fact true.

An argument can be valid and be false at the same time if it is formally and informally valid but has a false premise.

What I think you intended to say was that the "soundness" not "validity" of an argument depends on the truth of its *premises.

But even on this revision, this is still incorrect. For an argument can have true premises but still be unsound because it may be either formally invalid or informally valid or both.

"An argument that is both logically valid and has true premises is called a sound argument." (Moreland, James Porter; William Lane Craig (2009-11-08). Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (p. 29). Intervarsity Press - A. Kindle Edition.)

You also stated something that is incorrect.

You stated:

" The truth value of the KCA's premises are currently unknown, ergo, the argument is not valid."

Not only is your conclusion a non-sequitur, but it presupposes that premises one and two are not known!

It is a non-sequitur for the aforementioned reason that an arguments validity obtains by virtue of it being formally and informally valid irrespective of the truthfulness of its premises.

You also state for example that premise one is currently unknown because virtual particles come into existence without a known cause. This objection is fallacious because you are using epistemology to attack a metaphysical principle.

Premise 1 reads:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Not.

1*Everything that begins to exist has a "known" cause.

Even on a charitable view of your objection that assumes we do not know what causes virtual particles to come into and go out of existence in the quantum vacuum, it simply does not follow that therefore said particles come into existence without a cause. At most, we can gather that said causation is "indeterminate". But this is not the same as "uncaused".

It simply is a non-sequitur informal fallacy to claim that our lack of knowledge regarding the cause of virtual particles necessarily means that they have no cause.

If scientists thought like this, and I am glad they do not, then it would completely undermine science! For whenever we discovered that we lacked an explanation for the way something came to be due to our limited knowledge, then we would have to say: "There is no cause! There is no explanation, it just exists, without a cause!" And throw our hands up in frustration and despair.

No no no....when we realize we lack knowledge regarding how something works or happens or came to be, this spurs us on to look harder, deeper into the matter. We don't take it as a sign to stop and say, there is no explanation!

(August 26, 2013 at 10:25 pm)discipulus Wrote: Premise 1 reads:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Not.

1*Everything that begins to exist has a "known" cause.

Even on a charitable view of your objection that assumes we do not know what causes virtual particles to come into and go out of existence in the quantum vacuum, it simply does not follow that therefore said particles come into existence without a cause. At most, we can gather that said causation is "indeterminate". But this is not the same as "uncaused".

It simply is a non-sequitur informal fallacy to claim that our lack of knowledge regarding the cause of virtual particles necessarily means that they have no cause.

If scientists thought like this, and I am glad they do not, then it would completely undermine science! For whenever we discovered that we lacked an explanation for the way something came to be due to our limited knowledge, then we would have to say: "There is no cause! There is no explanation, it just exists, without a cause!" And throw our hands up in frustration and despair.

No no no....when we realize we lack knowledge regarding how something works or happens or came to be, this spurs us on to look harder, deeper into the matter. We don't take it as a sign to stop and say, there is no explanation!

Here's how it goes:
Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

This is a claim of knowledge. That everything has a cause. This you do not know. You cannot say that causation is indeterminate, because by doing so you are assuming there is a cause, when you have no reason to assume so. The correct conservative conclusion is we do not know if they are caused but right now there are no apparent causes.

Cthulhu Dreaming's conclusion was the correct one.

(August 26, 2013 at 4:31 pm)Sword of Christ Wrote: Ok here's my work.

1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause

2) The universe began to exist

3) Therefore, the universe must have a cause

Any questions?

Let's take this a step at a time.

Premise 1 is false, as Cthulhu has pointed out, there are things which we know began to exist for which we can find no proximal cause for their beginning to exist. However, even setting that aside for the moment, the "beginning to exist" which this is referring to, that observed in everyday life, is not "beginning to exist" as a thing, but rather, beginning to exist as a form. When a cue ball strikes an eight ball, causing the eight ball to start rolling, nothing has begun to exist in the ontological sense. Energy that was contained in the rolling cue ball's atoms and rigid structure is transferred to the eight ball and it's rigid structure, causing it to roll. Nothing has "began to exist" in the sense of something coming from nothing. The atoms of both balls, as well as the total energy, remains. The form of matter and energy has changed, not its existence. When I create steel by heating iron and adding carbon, all the original atoms remain, only the form has changed.

Premise 2 is not known to be true, therefore it cannot be asserted as a true premise. The universe as we know it didn't exist before the big bang, but that doesn't mean the universe itself began with the big bang. There is no scientific consensus on the matter beyond we just don't know. However, what's important to note here is that the "began to exist" in the case of the universe is of a different kind than the beginning to exist referred to in premise 1. The beginning to exist of the universe, if there is one, is ontological, not simply formal, as in premise 1. The beginning to exist of the universe is a coming into being from nothing, whereas the beginning to exist of the first premise is the coming to be in a specific form that didn't previously exist, not of coming into existence from not existing.

So to reformulate, let's refer to "began to exist" in the first sense as having property P, and beginning to exist in the second sense as having property Q, and having a cause as property C.

Restating your original syllogism thus:

1. All things that have property P, have property C.
2. The universe has property Q.
3. Therefore the universe has has property C.

Stated in this way, it's clear that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. Moreover, it's worth noting that if the universe is included in the first premise of "everything that begins to exist has a cause," then this is already assuming that the universe has such a cause, as the universe belongs to "everything," and by your assertion, as something that began to exist. Since that the universe has a cause is the conclusion you are trying to reach, stating that "everything" or all things have a cause — all things including the universe — is assuming the truth of your conclusion in one of the premises; this is the fallacy of begging the question.

It's already been noted that putting "God" as the uncaused cause is both bare assertion and special pleading.

So to sum up, in order to reach your conclusion, you need to ignore: two false or indeterminate premises, the fallacy of equivocation (P=/=Q), begging the question, special pleading AND bare assertion. I'm sorry, but this is hardly persuasive.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcqhG2GFGz4