Dr. Craig is a liar.

[SteveII]

That does not make the argument invalid. 

My understanding of assigning probability to an inductive argument is looking at the relationship of the probability of the premises and the conclusion. 

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause

Fallacy - Affirming the consequent.

What this premise does, is say there are 2 sets: 1 is the set of everything that begins to exist. The other is the set of everything that does not begin to exist. 

So Steve, how many members are in the set of everything that does not begin to exist, and what are they?

zero, 1, or any number.

[SteveII]

2. The universe began to exist

Fallacy - equivocation.

Uses a different definition of the phrase "began to exist" than in the first premise. 

The first premise is describing things we observe in the universe that are a rearrangement of existing matter/energy. THis is creation ex material.

While, in premise 2, you are describing creation ex nihilo.

From the "Objections so bad..." link I mentioned above...
Objection #7: The argument equivocates on “begins to exist.” In premise (1) it means to begin “from a previous material state,” but in premise (2) it means “not from a material state.”

Response to #7: In order to defeat the allegation of equivocation all one needs to do is provide a univocal meaning for the phrase in both its occurrences. That's easy to do. By “begins to exist” all I mean is “comes into being.” Everything that comes into begin has a cause, and the universe came into being. No equivocation here!

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/obj...z45k3DhOvd

[SteveII]

EDIT: Oh yeah. The argument also contains the fallacy of composition, since just because something is true of part of the universe, does not mean it is true for the universe itself.

From the same link: 

Objection #4: The first premise is based upon the fallacy of composition. It fallaciously infers that because everything in the universe has a cause, therefore the whole universe has a cause.

Response to #4: In order to understand this objection we need to understand the fallacy of composition. This is the fallacy of reasoning that because every part of a thing has a certain property, therefore the whole thing has that same property. While wholes do sometimes possess the properties of their parts (for example, a fence, every picket of which is green, is also green), this is not always the case. For example, every little part of an elephant may be light in weight, but that does not imply that the whole elephant is light in weight.

Now I have never argued that because every part of the universe has a cause, therefore the whole universe has a cause. That would be manifestly fallacious. Rather the reasons I have offered for thinking that everything that begins to exist has a cause are these:

1. Something cannot come from nothing. To claim that something can come into being out of nothing is worse than magic. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, at least you've got the magician, not to mention the hat! But if you deny premise (1) you've got to think that the whole universe just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatsoever. But nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.

2. If something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn't come into being from nothing. Think about it: why don't bicycles and Beethoven and root beer just pop into being from nothing? Why is it only universes that can pop into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can't be anything about nothingness that favors universes, for nothingness doesn't have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness, since there isn't anything to be constrained!

3. Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise (1). Premise (1) is constantly verified and never falsified. It is hard to understand how any atheist committed to modern science could deny that premise (1) is more plausibly true than false in light of the evidence.[7]

Note well that the third reason is an appeal to inductive reasoning, not reasoning by composition. It's drawing an inductive inference about all the members of a class of things based on a sample of the class. Inductive reasoning undergirds all of science and is not to be confused with reasoning by composition, which is a fallacy.

So this objection is aimed at a straw man of the objector's own construction.

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/obj...z45k4MaHiG

[SteveII]

Even if the argument was valid and sound, it only would support a first cause.

Which could in fact be, a phase change in the singularity. 

No gods required.

You phrased that as though the singularity was a thing. My understanding is that it is a mathematical idealization and not a real thing. It is a boundary, the metaphysical equivalent of nothing. Perhaps there was a phase change in the quantum field on the far side of the singularity. But then where did the quantum vacuum come from?

[SteveII]

Even if the argument was valid and sound, it only would support a first cause.

Which could in fact be, a phase change in the singularity. 

No gods required.

You phrased that as though the singularity was a thing. My understanding is that it is a mathematical idealization and not a real thing. It is a boundary, the metaphysical equivalent of nothing. Perhaps there was a phase change in the quantum field on the far side of the singularity. But then where did the quantum vacuum come from?

[Simon Moon]

Fallacy - equivocation.

Uses a different definition of the phrase "began to exist" than in the first premise. 

The first premise is describing things we observe in the universe that are a rearrangement of existing matter/energy. THis is creation ex material.

While, in premise 2, you are describing creation ex nihilo.

From the "Objections so bad..." link I mentioned above...
Objection #7: The argument equivocates on “begins to exist.” In premise (1) it means to begin “from a previous material state,” but in premise (2) it means “not from a material state.”

Response to #7: In order to defeat the allegation of equivocation all one needs to do is provide a univocal meaning for the phrase in both its occurrences. That's easy to do. By “begins to exist” all I mean is “comes into being.” Everything that comes into begin has a cause, and the universe came into being. No equivocation here!

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/obj...z45k3DhOvd

That doesn't help the premise.

The premises are still trying to compare things that come into being in different manners.

Renaming it does not save the premis.

[Simon Moon]

EDIT: Oh yeah. The argument also contains the fallacy of composition, since just because something is true of part of the universe, does not mean it is true for the universe itself.

From the same link: 

Objection #4: The first premise is based upon the fallacy of composition. It fallaciously infers that because everything in the universe has a cause, therefore the whole universe has a cause.

Response to #4: In order to understand this objection we need to understand the fallacy of composition. This is the fallacy of reasoning that because every part of a thing has a certain property, therefore the whole thing has that same property. While wholes do sometimes possess the properties of their parts (for example, a fence, every picket of which is green, is also green), this is not always the case. For example, every little part of an elephant may be light in weight, but that does not imply that the whole elephant is light in weight.

Now I have never argued that because every part of the universe has a cause, therefore the whole universe has a cause. That would be manifestly fallacious. Rather the reasons I have offered for thinking that everything that begins to exist has a cause are these:

1. Something cannot come from nothing. To claim that something can come into being out of nothing is worse than magic. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, at least you've got the magician, not to mention the hat! But if you deny premise (1) you've got to think that the whole universe just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatsoever. But nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.

The error he is making here, is that he is not using the physicist's meaning of the term "nothing". Which tends to be different than he way theists define the term. 

Nothing, to physicists is not complete nonexistence. 

2. If something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn't come into being from nothing. Think about it: why don't bicycles and Beethoven and root beer just pop into being from nothing? Why is it only universes that can pop into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can't be anything about nothingness that favors universes, for nothingness doesn't have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness, since there isn't anything to be constrained!

This is quite laughable. 

He is trying to refute the accusation of the fallacy of composition, with the fallacy of division.

If the universe popped into existence from nothing (the physicist's definition, not Craig's), doesn't mean we would expect bicycles, root beer or Beethoven to also pop into existence within the universe. 

Seriously Craig?! 

3. Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise (1). Premise (1) is constantly verified and never falsified. It is hard to understand how any atheist committed to modern science could deny that premise (1) is more plausibly true than false in light of the evidence.[7]

The truth of premise 1 is only confirmed within the universe. When it comes to the universe itself, we don't know if there was a cause or not, no matter how much "common experience" tells us.

[Jehanne]

Fallacy - Affirming the consequent.

What this premise does, is say there are 2 sets: 1 is the set of everything that begins to exist. The other is the set of everything that does not begin to exist. 

So Steve, how many members are in the set of everything that does not begin to exist, and what are they?

zero, 1, or any number.

You should listen to Craig's debate with Professor Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the prestigious California Institute of Technology:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0qKZqPy9T8

Craig does not understand general relativity nor quantum cosmology nor has he ever published any paper in any physics journal.  I invite you to show me otherwise.  Craig is a rank less amateur, a pure spectator who pontificates on topics for which he has only a limited understanding.  I asked you in an earlier post to describe how any observer in a lab who is motionless with respect to a test charge in the lab would observe no magnetic field, and yet, another observer who was passing through the lab would observe a magnetic field.  How can it be that one observer would observe no magnetic field and another observer would observe a magnetic field?  Is a magnetic field both present and absent at the same time?

[Jehanne]

And, Steve, I would invite you to read this paper:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.03580

It was published yesterday, April 12, 2016.

P.S. They reference the work by Alexander Vilenkin.

[robvalue]

This all just shows the difference between a scientist, and a bad philosopher.

You can't just bullshit your way around the scientific method. Nor can you pick up bits of science and just make up your own extra conclusions.