The cosmological argument really needs to die already.

[Lion IRC]

You can evaluate the Cosmological Argument premises in terms of how plausible is the NEGATION of those premises.

What are the possible negations of the first premise and how plausible are they in comparison?

*That things/substance DO sometimes spontaneously come into existence. (And logically, therefore, do also sometimes spontaneously cease to exist) hock:

*That no substance (matter/energy/information/biology/consciousness/space/time) ever comes into existence.

*That there is no such thing as “nothing” or “non-existence”.

If you really want to argue for;

- an unintended,
- uncaused,
- past-eternal,
- perpetual motion,
- unguided

Universe…

- where nothing new is ever ‘created’,
- and which isn’t really expanding, because there is no “nothingness” into which it can expand,
- and where everything that can happen HAS already happened over and over an infinite number of times, (think Groundhog Day movie multiplied by infinity)

…knock yourself out.

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And while you’re at it you can throw away all those now-meaningless concepts such as;

*Singularity – the big bang happens repeatedly and inevitably. Yawn.
*Abiogenesis – biology is an illusion and there never was an “origin” or genesis.
*Sentience – Relax, it’s just the chemicals in your brain just doing what they always do.
*Evolution – Nope. We haven’t come from anywhere and we aren’t going anywhere.

[MindForgedManacle]

You can evaluate the Cosmological Argument premises in terms of how plausible is the NEGATION of those premises.

Actually you can't, and we have the philosopher David Hume for that important philosophical breakthrough, but we'll get to that in a mo'. Heck, Kalam's first premise ignores that there ARE in fact quantum mechanical effects with no preceding cause: atomic decay, virtual particle pair production, proton decay, etc.

What are the possible negations of the first premise and how plausible are they in comparison?

*That things/substance DO sometimes spontaneously come into existence. (And logically, therefore, do also sometimes spontaneously cease to exist)

*That no substance (matter/energy/information/biology/consciousness/space/time) ever comes into existence.

*That there is no such thing as “nothing” or “non-existence”.

The first negation is logically possible (a la Hume), so you can't rule it out a priori.
As for the second negation, what do you mean by 'comes into existence'?
And as for the third, that's quite possible. Nothingness is, in my view, an incoherent concept.

If you really want to argue for;

- an unintended,
- uncaused,
- past-eternal,
- perpetual motion,
- unguided

Universe…

- where nothing new is ever ‘created’,
- and which isn’t really expanding, because there is no “nothingness” into which it can expand,
- and where everything that can happen HAS already happened over and over an infinite number of times, (think Groundhog Day movie multiplied by infinity)

…knock yourself out.

Wow, you are strikingly ignorant on Big Bang cosmology if that's what you think the negation of the first premise entails. Firstly, it's entirely disingenuous of you to complain about an uncaused universe. YOU don't believe God has a cause for his existence, so there's hypocrisy there.

Secondly, past eternality is not entailed by rejecting the first premise or Kalam as a whole, In fact, many physicists (Stephen Hawking, for example) are atheists and do NOT hold to the past eternality of the universe, because they think the evidence supports time 'beginning'.

Thirdly, where the hell did you get perpetual motion from? That's a non sequitur.
Intention and guidance are red herrings here that literally have nothing to do with this and don't even make sense as objections.

The only sense in which we observe things to be created are as reformulations of pre-existing material.
That has no impact on the expansion of the universe. It isn't expanding into anything else, but into itself. In other words, the space itself is expanding. And you can't expand 'into' nothingness, that's incoherent. That literally means it isn't expanding into anything.

That is not entailed by anything to do with Kalam or Big Bang Cosmology. Seriously dude, go learn some shit; you're embarrassing yourself.

And while you’re at it you can throw away all those now-meaningless concepts such as;

*Singularity – the big bang happens repeatedly and inevitably. Yawn.

That's not what a singularity is. Many scientists think (rightly in my view) that the singularity conclusion simply shows a problem with their theoretical models, which we already know they possess. Yawn.

*Abiogenesis – biology is an illusion and there never was an “origin” or genesis.

Perhaps you should actually pay attention. The only empirical suppport we have is for creatio ex materia, so abiogenesis is perfectly compatible here. Again, do you know anything or do you just like straw manning?

*Sentience – Relax, it’s just the chemicals in your brain just doing what they always do.

"Relxas, it's just chemicals in your brain" which underwent billions of years of alteration, resulting in a complex system we call life, of which we are specifically adapted to analyzing and accurately predicting the future.

*Evolution – Nope. We haven’t come from anywhere and we aren’t going anywhere.

What are you talking about dude? Don't understand evolution either? Surprise.

[Freedom of thought]

Deja vu. It's almost like we had this thread already. . .

http://atheistforums.org/search.php?acti...order=desc


Or that there were already literally hundreds of posts mentioning it. . .

http://atheistforums.org/search.php?acti...order=desc


Maybe you should have contributed to one of those threads, where this response to Kalam would actually have been responsding to something?

To be fair, there hasn't been a thread about this recently, the last post in one of those threads was: 19th September 2013 13:47, which was over 3 months ago. And it's about more than just trying to refute it, I'm also talking about why the entire argument should be abandoned. This argument is really past it's expiry date.

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You can evaluate the Cosmological Argument premises in terms of how plausible is the NEGATION of those premises.

What are the possible negations of the first premise and how plausible are they in comparison?

*That things/substance DO sometimes spontaneously come into existence. (And logically, therefore, do also sometimes spontaneously cease to exist) hock:

Yes, virtual particles spontaneously come into existence. And the entire universe could be destroyed instantaneously at any time if the standard model is correct: We could be in what's called a 'false vacuum' of a bubble universe, at any time due to instability, a 'true vacuum' could appear and spread faster than the speed of light, destroying everything in the universe instantaneously. Again: Some design!

*That no substance (matter/energy/information/biology/consciousness/space/time) ever comes into existence.

I really don't understand what you're getting at here. I'm not arguing that material doesn't cause other material to 'begin existing', if fact I would agree with the first premise if it was "every material has a material cause". In fact a material cause is much more supported by what we understand about the universe. I just don't think it's reasonable to therefore extrapolate that to all the material itself having a cause. It's going into unknown territory which we don't know much about, and the things we know about that DO come into existence (virtual particles) have no cause.

*That there is no such thing as “nothing” or “non-existence”.

That could very well be the case, I don't have a clue, and neither do you.

If you really want to argue for;

- an unintended,

Why does ANYTHING have to be intended? The wind is not intended, it's purely a feature of nature, but the universe is not unintended either. It simply is here because this is just how nature has accumulated, it simply 'happened'.

- uncaused,

Just because I disagree with the argument doesn't mean I think the universe could never possibly have a cause. Scientists could very well discover the 'cause' of the universe, whatever that may be.

- past-eternal,

I don't think the universe is past eternal, but the evidence shows it has a beginning. Just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I am frightened, and try to avoid a beginning. In fact, I think it's the most highly probably scenario. Because the universe came into existence, does it mean there is a god? Obviously not. A beginning to the universe means a beginning to the universe.

- perpetual motion,
- unguided

You talk about these things like it's a bad thing, and you're simply appealing to emotion with the 'unguided' part. "Oh, I don't want to be living in a universe without a magical sky daddy to wipe my ass, boohoo!". Really, get over it, emotion should have no bearing on what is to be thought of as true.

Universe…

- where nothing new is ever ‘created’,

I've already said this, just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I cannot think the universe had a beginning.

- and which isn’t really expanding, because there is no “nothingness” into which it can expand,

This is wrong on so many levels, you treat nothingness like it's something. If there is no 'nothingness', then that perfectly describes what nothing is! Once you define the word 'nothing', you're already describing it, when nothing should really have no description at all.

And second of all, it's actually quite silly: The idea that the universe shouldn't be able to expand into where there was previously no area. Because nothingness is simply the absence of anything, as soon as the universe expands out, it's creating new space for particles to enter.

- and where everything that can happen HAS already happened over and over an infinite number of times, (think Groundhog Day movie multiplied by infinity)

Are you talking about the multiverse now? Oh, don't you like the idea that things are repeating over and over again, and will continue to be in the future, due to the vast amounts of universes? Too bad, current scientific evidence says otherwise, your emotional response should have no bearing on what is thought to be true. I care about what is true, I'm not a weak willed individual that needs a comfort blanket (like religion).

…knock yourself out.

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And while you’re at it you can throw away all those now-meaningless concepts such as;

*Singularity – the big bang happens repeatedly and inevitably. Yawn.
*Abiogenesis – biology is an illusion and there never was an “origin” or genesis.

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There was an origin of life, and what's wrong with multiple big bangs? Does the idea frighten you that our universe is not the only one?

*Sentience – Relax, it’s just the chemicals in your brain just doing what they always do.
*Evolution – Nope. We haven’t come from anywhere and we aren’t going anywhere.

You're simply throwing around your own emotional turmoils, mistaking them for actual arguments. If you're going to complain about how you don't like certain science ideas, I think there's plenty of religious fundamentalist forums you can complain on. We atheists care about what is true, not what makes you feel good or bad, we don't care. If you're going to be like that, there's the door. We actually want an intellectual discussion, not based on petty emotions.

[Lemonvariable72]

The argument is literally older then jesus., it was started by aristotle

[MindForgedManacle]

Well, Aristotle's was different in the sense that it didn't conclude with a being.

[Freedom of thought]

The argument is literally older then jesus., it was started by aristotle

EXACTLY. Also, my problem with this argument is it originated as a 'prime mover' or 'first mover', because according to common logic at the time, people know that things didn't move unless they are acted apon, due to basic physics, and that a being would have to 'move' everything into motion. Now, that concept has been misconstrued to creation ex nihilo, which is why there are so many problems when you do this kind of metaphysics.

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William Craig really likes to put this shit over and over. It was debunked 1000 times yet he keeps on doing it. But oh well.

Gah, William Lane Craig. There is no one else that puffs his case for god up larger than it actually is. For example he claims there are good grounds for believing the historicity of the bible, and this is flat out false. The bible is a collection of Chinese whispers over many decades, with stories of stories being written down, edited, changed, rewritten, changed more, all by anonymous sources who we have no clue it was written by. Historically, a Resurrection of Jesus supported by the bible, is about as realistic as a spiderman saving the city supported by the spiderman comics. All religious people have is a book that says so, with all sorts of conflicting information, all from second, third, fourth hand accounts decades after the events from biased sources. The historical basis for the bible is a fucking joke, and anyone that believes it, does so not on evidence, but faith. And if you believe in it on faith, you have absolutely no good intellectual reason to do so, and you are automatically discarded from any serious intellectual discussion. Anyone that seeks truth will become an atheistic/agnostic, those that seek comfort blanket in a random chaotic universe will become theistic. Sure, religious people can believe what they want, but they should know that their beliefs has no basis in reality of skepticism, science, critical thinking, and intellectual discourse: And WLC doesn't do just that, he claims that his god is widely supported by science and history.

[Esquilax]

You can evaluate the Cosmological Argument premises in terms of how plausible is the NEGATION of those premises.

And have you, perhaps, considered the possibility that there are more answers there than "Every premise of the cosmological argument is correct," and "if you disagree, then every premise is wrong, and you are bound to believe the complete opposite."?

Evaluating the comsological argument by the efficacy of its negation is ridiculous, because we aren't obligated to consider every premise on strict correct/incorrect lines.