The universe is in the set of "everything". We do not know whether the universe, if it began to exist, had a cause. Therefore we cannot say everything that begins to exist has a cause. Just because everything we have observed so far has been seen to have a cause, it doesn't mean everything does. If his everything doesn't include the universe, then it doesn't work. It's like saying that all underwater animals breathe through gills that have so far been discovered, therefore all future ones will. (Assuming we hadn't discovered dolphins etc)
I think an analogy of the argument is this. I have 10 beads, of which I can see only 9 and those 9 are all white.
P1: All beads are white
P2: Bead 10 is a bead
C: Bead 10 is white
The flaw being I have to observe bead 10 in order to make P1 valid. But then I don't need the argument, for I have seen that bead 10 is white.
I also don't agree with Craig saying actual infinites do not exist (depending on the definition of infinite), but I won't go into that here. Actually thinking about it, "begins to exist" is also a very sloppy term and could mean almost anything subject to a persons understanding of it.
The point I'm trying to make is that any philosophy that tries to infer something new about the material world, has to be based on some sort of observation of the universe we live in. This is very problematic as we don't really understand the universe very well, and our observations are very very limited. This is why we run into difficulties understanding things like QM and Relativity.
By the real world, I was talking about science, should have used something different perhaps.
I think an analogy of the argument is this. I have 10 beads, of which I can see only 9 and those 9 are all white.
P1: All beads are white
P2: Bead 10 is a bead
C: Bead 10 is white
The flaw being I have to observe bead 10 in order to make P1 valid. But then I don't need the argument, for I have seen that bead 10 is white.
I also don't agree with Craig saying actual infinites do not exist (depending on the definition of infinite), but I won't go into that here. Actually thinking about it, "begins to exist" is also a very sloppy term and could mean almost anything subject to a persons understanding of it.
The point I'm trying to make is that any philosophy that tries to infer something new about the material world, has to be based on some sort of observation of the universe we live in. This is very problematic as we don't really understand the universe very well, and our observations are very very limited. This is why we run into difficulties understanding things like QM and Relativity.
By the real world, I was talking about science, should have used something different perhaps.
