A simple challenge for atheists

[SteveII]

It is not established that everything needs a cause. It's just not something that can be stated so simply. It is also an amazingly overly simplistic way of trying to sum up amazingly complex quantum mechanics that even now we are only just getting a handle on.

Even if it was true, it's special pleading to exclude what you want to prove from your own rule. You have refuted yourself in doing so.

The argument fails hard, of course, because even if it works it gets you to "something". Not God. And even if it did get you to God, whatever the hell that is, it doesn't get you to "God in my favourite book". It's a terrible argument from start to finish.

My impression is that the consensus among cosmologists is that our universe is not infinite in the past so you must be saying that the universe (time and space) could have popped into existence uncaused?

There is no special pleading and nothing was excluded in the argument. Perhaps I should have spelled it out: Everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause.

I am not seeing the argument "failing hard". I agree, it only proves that something caused the universe.

[The Grand Nudger]

That would only be descriptive of the behavior of -this- universe -if it were true. There's no sense in extending that to "before this universe" or a time or place other than this universe -ala some creator "otherwhere/when" creating this where/when. Because of this, we can't trust the conclusions we get even if the premise and assumptions are true. Understand?

[Esquilax]

@Beccs Arguments like what caused God creates an infinite regression. Within the definition of God is the property of aseity. God just is or we would not be talking about God.

Which is very convenient for you, I'm sure, but it also means that you're now stuck right in the middle of the corollary of Beccs' argument: if you're just going to assert that god "just is," without evidence, then you have no reason at all not to accept the same argument in return to the "what caused the universe?" question, and we end up going nowhere. If you're willing to believe that god "just is," then your own beliefs allow for the existence of uncaused things, and the issue of the universe no longer poses the stunning, showstopper conundrum to atheism that theists often take it for.

Persisting with that question, now that god "just is," is effectively demanding that everyone else play by a set of rules you have no intention of following yourself, and that's not a game we need to play.

Regarding the initial topic, can someone give me an answer why the popular Kalam cosmological argument does not prevail--that the universe has a cause (leaving God out of if for now). Hawkings seems to need to change the definition of time and quantum theories all seem to have the same problem: quantum fields etc. are not "nothing" and therefore need a cause.

Well, with regard to the universe, Kalam fails for the reasons Davka stated earlier; spacetime is a condition within the universe, so there's no reason to think- and there are fairly good reasons to think otherwise- that a pre-big bang universe, in which the conditions were radically different, would follow a linear pattern of causation. Black holes already do weird things to time and space, and Kalam requires that we assume that an infinitely denser, weirder point of matter will just act like business as usual.

So there's a clear factual case against Kalam, but that's leaving aside the obvious flaws in argumentation too, like the fact that it relies on the sophistic "begins to exist" language, as though just asserting the existence of a category that doesn't play by the rules of the argument is sufficient justification, or the similar fiat assertion that the universe has a cause. The biggest problem with Kalam is that it's not even an argument, contrary to its name: it's just a set of petulant demands made with no evidence.

I don't understand why it's as popular as it is, in that regard.

[Cyberman]

It rather depends on how you're defining "universe". If you're going with the general scientific consensus, then the universe is the reality that emerged from the Big Bang and expanded into everything we observe. If however you're defining universe as the set of everything that can possibly exist, you're going to get different results. To conflate the two is misleading; to do it at will as and when necessary is dishonest. Be careful and be clear in your definitions.

[SteveII]

There is a subtlety to the Kalam proof most miss, there are two sets of rules, one for God, another for the natural world. In the natural world, all things are contingent, they must have a beginning and a creator. Bit God is a supernatural being that operates with separate rules. God is defined as not contingent.

Kalam type arguments assume there must be a basic foundation that all other things rely on for there contingent existence. But there is no reason that must be so, there may well be an infinite chain of contingency, cause and effect with no entity being eternal and foundational.

Its a case of argument by definition. There is no reason to accept theology's definitions as logically necessary nor proven. The Universe may well be the result of some basic material, and a few rules such as we see in Conway's Game of Life. See Stephan Wolfram et al for more.

There are other possible ways to approach things other than a supernatural God

There is no such thing as an infinite chain of anything.

The question whether the universe has a cause does not need theological definitions.

[Esquilax]

My impression is that the consensus among cosmologists is that our universe is not infinite in the past so you must be saying that the universe (time and space) could have popped into existence uncaused?

There's a subtlety to the finite universe positions that theists often miss, even in the theorems that creationists use as evidence for their position, which is why cosmologists don't think the universe was past infinite: at a certain point in those models our normative understanding of causation breaks down. Essentially, there's a point on the graph past which we're unable to accurately predict what goes on, and that is the point at which our linear understanding of time stops being a thing. This is why, even if you read the work of cosmologists who advocate for a past-finite universe, you'll see at least one passage detailing this, along with an admission of ignorance regarding what goes on beyond that point. It's not the "universe must have a cause," case that you think it is.

There is no special pleading and nothing was excluded in the argument. Perhaps I should have spelled it out: Everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause.

"Begins to exist" is the special pleading: you're asserting one category for everything else, and a special category exempt from the rules for your god, and providing no evidence for the existence of the latter category. In that way, it's also kind of begging the question.

[Esquilax]

There is no such thing as an infinite chain of anything.

How do you know?

[SteveII]

It rather depends on how you're defining "universe". If you're going with the general scientific consensus, then the universe is the reality that emerged from the Big Bang and expanded into everything we observe. If however you're defining universe as the set of everything that can possibly exist, you're going to get different results. To conflate the two is misleading; to do it at will as and when necessary is dishonest. Be careful and be clear in your definitions.

Okay, say if we allowed for M-theory and some sort of universe generator, then the argument would still stand (the answer being the universe generator is the cause). However, it just sets up the next question, what caused the universe generator. Or, did you have something else in mind?

[downbeatplumb]

Okay, say if we allowed for M-theory and some sort of universe generator, then the argument would still stand (the answer being the universe generator is the cause). However, it just sets up the next question, what caused the universe generator. Or, did you have something else in mind?

It's turtles all the way down.

The real answer is we don't know what caused universes, but then science does not have all the answers yet.

I think it's because you want to crowbar in the idea of the god you want to believe in.

Science ain't finished yet, religion is.

[SteveII]

There is no such thing as an infinite chain of anything.

How do you know?

An infinite number of anything is mathematically impossible. Any finite quantity plus one more will always be a finite quantity.