Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[R00tKiT]

The problem with Kalam is that it employs colloquial, generic, non-specific language to try and describe complex, technical hypotheses physics and cosmology,

Um.. that's a feature of the Kalam, actually. Technical details don't add much to the assertion "the universe began to exist" which has a perfectly clear meaning. 

What's ironic about your statement above is that atheists generally complain about how hard proving God is, and when they are given simple, generic arguments that don't delve into the details, they switch to LadyForCamus mode.....?

Edit: It’s not even an argument for a god.

Which doesn't give you the right to trample it carelessly. It still proves there is a cause to the universe.

Computers are designed by us to mimic the operations we want. We use transistors to mimic nand gates and use those for more complicated operations. but there is nothing about computers, per se, that disallows designing them to operate via other systems of logic.

Given how useful these computers proved to be, by only using classical logic, do we really need a different system of logic?

But if you look through history, those 'laws of thought' have changed and been modified. 

I am not sure what you mean by "changed". Sure, one can pick axioms different from these laws of thought, but what use would it have? I think you already know that dropping one law of thought topples all our results in mathematics, all of them. Classical logic deals with propositions that are two-valued, they only have {true, false} as truth values. And two-valued propositions reflet our thinking very well. Any statement, when formulated properly, about an abstract object or a real phenomenon, can only be true or false.

There are of course more "controversial" axioms like the axiom of choice. Interestingly, many results require the AC, and dropping the AC renders many famous theorems in mathematics unprovable. Now imagine dropping the excluded middle...........

Logic alone is *very* limited. Topics such as causality are NOT part of logic, but are properly part of physics. They are ideas that need to be subject to testing and modification to see when and how they apply.

You use vague phrases like 'began to exist' and don't eve say *exactly* what they mean (does it mean there is a time when the thing does not exist?). Can time itself 'begin to exist'? What does it mean if it does?

Why does something 'beginning to exist' imply that it must be 'caused'? What does it mean to be 'caused' anyway?

I am not sure why many here keep bickering about the meaning of "began to exist". It simply means that it didn't exist at some point. And by "at some point", I mean at some point along the causal chain of all things that ever existed or exist or will exist in any prior/current/future universe.

I think it's perfectly clear what "began to exist" means when we picture a causal chain, something that began to exist didn't exist when some prior cause of it did. A deity, as usually defined, is posited as the first element of this causal chain, but it continues to exist after the "appearance" of the universe/the beginning of time.

With regads to causality, I am assuming here that the principle of causality holds, that anything that began to exist has a cause. If you allow for the possibility of something to just pop into existence, then I really don't think any argument can possibly be made.

Except that it is possible to have an 'eternity' (infinite past) and have the interval between any two times be finite. So, at any time an eternity *has already passed*. There is no need to wait for an eternity to pass. It already has.

The basic mistake is thinking that there is a *starting point* after which an eternity much past. And that is NOT the case even if there is an infinite past.

Your example above only applies to potential infinities, not actual infinities like events in the real world. We already know potential infinities are possible. The set of (EDIT:real numbers) is infinite and uncountable, and one can "get" to the number 13 for example without counting infinitely many numbers (which is what actual infinites kind of require).

What you're referring to as a "mistake" is the key reason why an eternal past is impossible. The words past and eternal are mutually exclusive, if something is eternal, it's improper to speak of its past, because it doesn't have a present.

You say "there is no need to wait for an eternity", are you sure you thought clearly about this statement? If an eternal past really exists, then the universe (not us) really waited for this eternity to get to where it is now, which is clearly impossible.

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This is merely assertion.

It's the causality principle. Are you sure you want to drop causality ?

Basically, the universe needs a reason for its existence

Sloppy and incorrect. Humans need reasons to try and make sense of things. A rock needs no reason for its existence, it simply exists. It requires causality, not a back story.

Don't be unfair to rocks. A rock is simply a component of the Earth's crust, without which you would be swimming in valleys of iron/nickel at their melting temperature. That's the "reason" rocks exist.
 
It's true though that the word "reason" is sloppy, the principle of sufficient reason isn't universally accepted. 

Kindly demonstrate that the universe is contingent.

X is contingent if it could have not existed. The universe could have not existed. QED.