How much do you like philosophy?

[MindForgedManacle]

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.

Again, the set Craig is referencing is not "everything". The set is "everthing that begins/began to exist", which he says must have a cause for its existence if its existence had a beginning.

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.

He obviously isn't saying EVERYTHING began to exist. Do you think Craig believes God began to exist? Of course not. Craig's fundamental claim is to say that the regress of causes and effects must logically terminate at a beginning and that only God can be that termination point.

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 agree, that's a problem with the argument.

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.

Craig's definition of "begins to exist" is something like "X 'begins to exist', if and only X exists at time T, prior to which X did not exist". There are definitely problems there, and even Craig has realized that and amended it some (poorly).

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.

To be fair, Craig's argument is a metaphysical argument and isn't really inferring anything new about the material world. Craig emphatically states that the argument concludes that there must be a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal and enormously powerful creator of the universe. Granted, that's bullshit but we must needs critique him correctly.

I think philosophers have recognized that for centuries. That's why I said Craig (and Kalam in particular) is philosophy as if from 300-400 years ago. Philosophers have long since realized this sort of metaphysical speculation is flawed bullshit thanks to David Hume and Immanuel Kant (amomg others).