Dr. Craig is a liar.

[Jehanne]

Because god did not cause mathematical truths to be; they simply are.  God could have created the Cosmos to be different, no?  Different physical constants?  Laws?  Number of planets?  Even us!  But, god could not have caused 2 + 2 to equal anything but 4.  Why not just say that "abstract objects" created the Cosmos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb10QvaHpS4

That has got to bet he worst rebuttal I have ever heard. Can you pull out the point you think he made that made sense?

Daniel Dennett, unlike William Craig, is a true philosopher; Craig is an Aristotelian who only sees limited possibilities ("chance", "necessity" or "design") and who is unwilling to ever concede that there could be other possibilities that simply transcend the human imagination.  For Craig, physics is just "common sense" or it must be wrong.  As I posted to you before, Craig could never make sense of a stationary test charge in a lab which has no magnetic field but only an electric field; and yet, an observer moving through the lab would see both a magnetic and an electric field.  For Criag, this is absurd; for how could one observer see no magnetic field yet another observer see a magnetic field.  For Craig, this is an insurmountable contradiction, therefore, the theory (in this case, the Theory of Special Relativity) must be wrong.  "Evidence and theory be damned," if the philosopher says so!

For Craig, Philosophy is the King of all the Sciences, the immutable bar of truth that any and all academic disciplines must submit their findings to, and it is to the philosopher alone that final judgment is to be rendered over the truth claims of anyone or anything.  If the Philosopher says that something does not make sense, well, then it does not make sense.  If you don't believe me in this regard with respect to Craig's narcissistic arrogance, watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKuEbbDi-tQ

Professor Daniel Dennett, on the other hand, being a true philosopher, understands, rightly so, that philosophy must follow Science and not lead it.  Philosophy must be shaped by Science and not try to shape Science, for Science is "knowledge", rooted in evidence.  As the late Carl Sagan said, "A philosopher has no laboratory in which to test his ideas."

[SteveII]

A brute fact uncaused first cause?  

I ask again, how is your position less embarrassing than the position you attribute to me?  If an uncaused rest of the universe is embarrassing, why isn't an uncaused god embarrassing?   If an eternal universe is absurd, why isn't an eternal god absurd?  

Just by examining the problem, you get the properties of this entity: eternal, timeless, powerful enough to make something out of nothing, non-physical, has intent, etc.

Word salad, non-sequitur, contradiction, and equivocation.  I don't know what your argument is going to be, but you've definitely got the ingredients for a classic theist apology there.    

I'm willing to entertain your argument, but you'll have to spell it out.  I'm not going to guess at it or make it up for you.

To avoid the absurdity of the infinitude of the past, you ask yourself the question what would stop the causal chain. I listed some of the necessary properties of a cause that would avoid the absurdity:

eternal-uncaused (avoids the infinite causal chain problem)
timeless (existed before time)
non-physical (exists before all of physical matter existed)
has intent (decided to create something rather than not create something)
powerful enough to make something out of nothing,

There is something that may fit the first 3 (depending on your view): abstract objects. 
There is only one thing that fits the first 4: a mind
Adding the fifth, we have an extremely powerful mind.

This is all the conclusions we get from this particular question. Note I did not say the God of the Bible.

[Jehanne]

Stephen Hawking's "no boundary" proposal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartle%E2%...king_state

The Hartle-Hawkings model does not answer the question of explanation. It is just another theory with a boundary.

The Universe would just BE.  Read the first paragraph from the article:

Hartle and Hawking suggest that if we could travel backward in time toward the beginning of the universe, we would note that quite near what might have otherwise been the beginning, time gives way to space such that at first there is only space and no time. Beginnings are entities that have to do with time; because time did not exist before the Big Bang, the concept of a beginning of the universe is meaningless. According to the Hartle–Hawking proposal, the universe has no origin as we would understand it: the universe was a singularity in both space and time, pre-Big Bang. Thus, the Hartle–Hawking state universe has no beginning, but it is not the steady state universe of Hoyle; it simply has no initial boundaries in time nor space.[1]

In this sense, the Universe is its own cause because even though it is finite, it had no beginning.  Therefore, the Universe is a "necessary entity" with no need for its explanation; even though it is finite, it has always existed.

[robvalue]

It's amazing people have such a hard time accepting that possibility, but then allow their "God" exactly the same position without the slightest quibble.

Out of sight, out of mind. The answer is "out there somewhere".

[Jehanne]

It's amazing people have such a hard time accepting that possibility, but then allow their "God" exactly the same position without the slightest quibble.

Out of sight, out of mind. The answer is "out there somewhere".

Yeah, I don't know how Steve can claim that god is "timeless" and yet claim that it is absurd to make the same claim about the Universe, that is, it is also "timeless".  For if god is "timeless", then, clearly, there must have been a "time" when god decided to create the Universe (hence, time), but Steve would have us believe that god's decision to create the Universe was simultaneous with god's acting to create the Universe which was simultaneous with the Universe's actual creation.  So, three events all happened at the same time -- deciding, doing and result, and that is absurd!

[robvalue]

Yup. It just sounds cool, doesn't it? God is outside of time! Seriously, I don't think people stop and look at what this actually implies. I'll plop my angry video down again, in case I didn't already in this thread

http://youtu.be/baoHEPkixhQ

[Pat Mustard]

Since WLC never produces any evidence for anything he says, I think we should be able to say whatever the fuck we want about him without evidence either.

Who's first?

WLC's ears are shaped like pig penii

[robvalue]

I have the self-affirming evidence of the pig penii fairy, which confirms this beyond doubt.

[SteveII]

The Hartle-Hawkings model does not answer the question of explanation. It is just another theory with a boundary.

The Universe would just BE.  Read the first paragraph from the article:

Hartle and Hawking suggest that if we could travel backward in time toward the beginning of the universe, we would note that quite near what might have otherwise been the beginning, time gives way to space such that at first there is only space and no time. Beginnings are entities that have to do with time; because time did not exist before the Big Bang, the concept of a beginning of the universe is meaningless. According to the Hartle–Hawking proposal, the universe has no origin as we would understand it: the universe was a singularity in both space and time, pre-Big Bang. Thus, the Hartle–Hawking state universe has no beginning, but it is not the steady state universe of Hoyle; it simply has no initial boundaries in time nor space.[1]

In this sense, the Universe is its own cause because even though it is finite, it had no beginning.  Therefore, the Universe is a "necessary entity" with no need for its explanation; even though it is finite, it has always existed.

Your summation make no sense. Our universe is either infinite or finite. 

So, when you didn't get the right answer from Carroll, you moved to Hawkings (with whom Carroll does not agree).

Hawkings uses "imaginary time" in his equations to avoid a singularity. "Only if we could picture the universe in terms of imaginary time would there be no singularities . . . . When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities." Brief History of Time, pp. 138-39. 

I could not find an explanation of this strategy, so it appears that the only reason to use this "trick" is to stop the time component of space-time before you get back to the singularity and then declares because there was no time, you can't discuss what was before his "time boundary". That still does nothing to answer the question of where did this prior state come from? And what happened that time started up? 

If you are claiming that this theory (that many cosmologists disagree with) somehow removes the need for an explanation because causality no longer applies before the imaginary time-induced boundary, it is up to you to defend why despite 100% of our observations indicate its truth and science would not exist without it that you are justified to dismiss it when it is inconvenient.

[Time Traveler]

It's amazing people have such a hard time accepting that possibility, but then allow their "God" exactly the same position without the slightest quibble.

Out of sight, out of mind. The answer is "out there somewhere".

Yeah, I don't know how Steve can claim that god is "timeless" and yet claim that it is absurd to make the same claim about the Universe, that is, it is also "timeless".  For if god is "timeless", then, clearly, there must have been a "time" when god decided to create the Universe (hence, time), but Steve would have us believe that god's decision to create the Universe was simultaneous with god's acting to create the Universe which was simultaneous with the Universe's actual creation.  So, three events all happened at the same time -- deciding, doing and result, and that is absurd!

There is a fourth absurdity with a timeless god, and that is that god's very existence couldn't have preceded the decision, action, and creation of the universe. Thus, if the universe had a beginning, so did god. If god is eternal, so then the universe. And given that we have evidence of the universe, but zero evidence for god, Occam's razor slices the unnecessary deity out like an unwanted tumor.