Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[Angrboda]

Okay, I think I understand better what you're confused about. This proposal says that time began together with the universe. But time - I assume you already know- is a dimension of the universe, of the spacetime, it's not some independent frame or some nebulous existence that accompanies the universe, it is a building block of the universe. 

With that said, we can define a time frame allowing us to define a beginning more clearly: any point in this time frame corresponds to an event. The universe's beginning is simply an event, like any other, along this time frame, if we assume, for example, that other events preceded it, then each of them correspond to different consecutive points along our time frame, etc. 

The bolded is explicitly ruled out by Hawking-Hartle. Therefore, either you have conceded the point, or you are using 'to begin' in a different sense than you have defined here. What is that other sense and is it consistent with the first premise of Kalam?

And, even if that were not the case, as noted, it is not necessary for the Hawking-Hartle hypothesis to be satisfactory for it to show that the idea of an uncaused cause is possible in the case of the universe without directly entailing a contradiction;

How do you get from the Hawking-Hartle hypothesis to the uncaused cause..............?

The unmoved moves. This is what happens when you eliminate the regression of causes existing in the universe's past. Eliminate the regression, you eliminate Kalam.

If indeed it in fact is not a third possibility, you need something better than claiming that two nebulous concepts are in some undefined sense each other's negation or the pitiful word games surrounding the meaning of beginning that you've employed here.

Come on, @Angrboda, you can do better than that. A universe either began or did not begin, these are not word games or empty semantics. I am walking you through the most basic rule of thought, without which no discussion is possible.

I am not trying to gotcha you here. I am going to be very charitable and assume you accept these basic rules of thoughts, and that you're just confused by some proposals in theoretical physics that seem to contradict them.

What you are arguing are the basic rules of thought are instead conventions of language which you, to my eye, have inconsistently adopted. The alternative conceptions presented, even if one were the negation of the other, would not themselves be basic rules of thought. The basic rule of thought is that two mutually exclusive possibilities do not admit of a third possibility; it's not the rule of thought that is at issue, but rather what you consider possible given the analytical content of the described two possibilities. As noted, their analytical content does not entail that they are necessary negations of each other, and so you must pursue a contradiction elsewhere. That isn't violating a rule of thought; that's pointing out that what you thought satisfied a specific rule of thought does not necessarily satisfy that rule of thought. The problem is not the rule, but your inability to show that it is satisfied.

2) Show that you can demonstrate that God is necessary without reference to Kalam.

Sure, choose any traditional argument about God and we can discuss it all day. What do you think about the moral argument? Even Kant, who rejected all traditional arguments for theism, acknowledges that God is necessary for moral order. Conscience reveals some kind of a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, and thus point to a lawgiver. In other words, a lawgiver is necessary.

Let's not get sidetracked by an additional topic at this point. As to the moral order, it's not clear that there is a moral order or that a god can provide a foundation for one. As previously remarked, in order to show that a cause is supernatural, you need to show that some entity is able to violate the nomological principles of its local reality. There doesn't appear to be any argument grounded in knowledge of a specific reality that would entail the existence of a violation; any arguments not grounded in knowledge fail as an appeal to ignorance. This is why I hold that only ontological arguments can provide evidence for a god -- arguments grounded explicitly in the laws of thought. Your attempt to find a contradiction in (not (began to exist) and not (past eternal)) does not appear to be grounded in the laws of thought so much as it does in the way you choose to make use of certain words.

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Well, surely, people can design cars, and cars have attributes that people don't. When you look at it more carefully, all we did when designing a car was mental operations on existing matter. A car is the sum of its mechanical components, which in turn are merely an assembly of different materials.

Are you not, then, simply once again showing that "you can't give what you haven't got" is not a valid rule?