Dr. Craig is a liar.

[Time Traveler]

I'm fairly certain that the KCA is not a logically sound argument.  Anyone with more experience in that arena care to weight in?  I'll have to go take another look at it myself.  

Steve, how does a being exist timelessly?  And secondly, how can a being have a conscious, temporal thought while in a timeless state?  Can you please be more specific in regards to your proposed mechanism?  And, as always, don't forget to provide supporting evidence for your assumptions.  

God existed timelessly and changeless causally prior to the universe. Atemporal. There was no stream of consciousness or successive chains of thoughts. He knew all truths intrinsically. Really, what would an entity that knew all truths think about? 

Depending on your preference between A and B theories of time, you can view God's temporality and the creation of the universe in one of two ways: On the A theory, once God created space-time, God underwent an extrinsic change with the new relationship to his creation and in doing so became temporal. On the B theory, you could conclude that God did not undergo any temporal change (either intrinsic nor extrinsic) and exists outside the block of time.

Steve, this is exactly what you said on page 35 of this thread, which I thoroughly deconstructed and then explicitly demonstrated your own blatant contradictions (p 42) - after which, you whine that just because someone trips up an unprepared Christian (clearly talking about yourself), we shouldn't read anything into it (p 42). But if you can't even defend your own hypothesis without making contradictory remarks, you should quit parroting the same bullshit over and over as if it means something.

Furthermore, you keep trying to dodge the actual question by attempting to answer a question that isn't even being posed. You parrot WLC's "logic" about how God, AFTER he created the universe, could undergo an "extrinsic change," trying to justify your answer based upon an A or B-theory of time, blah, blah, blah... but the assertion you are being asked to defend - again - is your ridiculous notion that "God existed timelessly and changeless causally prior to [BEFORE] the universe." So quite trying to redirect the question, go back and re-read your own ridiculous ad hoc contradictions, and just admit you have absolutely no clue how to logically reconcile this absurd notion that your God existed timelessly and changelessly prior to suddenly creating the universe. Just repeating an absurd premise over and over again may make you believe it, but that doesn't make your proposal remotely true or even coherent.

[SteveII]

God existed timelessly and changeless causally prior to the universe. Atemporal. There was no stream of consciousness or successive chains of thoughts. He knew all truths intrinsically. Really, what would an entity that knew all truths think about? 

Depending on your preference between A and B theories of time, you can view God's temporality and the creation of the universe in one of two ways: On the A theory, once God created space-time, God underwent an extrinsic change with the new relationship to his creation and in doing so became temporal. On the B theory, you could conclude that God did not undergo any temporal change (either intrinsic nor extrinsic) and exists outside the block of time.

Steve, this is exactly what you said on page 35 of this thread, which I thoroughly deconstructed and then explicitly demonstrated your own blatant contradictions (p 42) - after which, you whine that just because someone trips up an unprepared Christian (clearly talking about yourself), we shouldn't read anything into it (p 42). But if you can't even defend your own hypothesis without making contradictory remarks, you should quit parroting the same bullshit over and over as if it means something.

Furthermore, you keep trying to dodge the actual question by attempting to answer a question that isn't even being posed. You parrot WLC's "logic" about how God, AFTER he created the universe, could undergo an "extrinsic change," trying to justify your answer based upon an A or B-theory of time, blah, blah, blah... but the assertion you are being asked to defend - again - is your ridiculous notion that "God existed timelessly and changeless causally prior to [BEFORE] the universe." So quite trying to redirect the question, go back and re-read your own ridiculous ad hoc contradictions, and just admit you have absolutely no clue how to logically reconcile this absurd notion that your God existed timelessly and changelessly prior to suddenly creating the universe. Just repeating an absurd premise over and over again may make you believe it, but that doesn't make your proposal remotely true or even coherent.

By contradictory remarks, you mean you caught me using the terms before and after when referring to the creation of the universe in another post...

Much of your objection to my statement seems to come from your belief that the B Theory of Time is correct. Let me study this an I will attempt a reply in your Timeless thread.

[wiploc]

Okay, I'm gonna practice my (barely) rudimentary logic skills for a moment.

1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence.

(I reject this premise until someone can demonstrate with evidence that it's likely to be true, but for the sake of argument, let's continue.)

P1 has problems:

• We don't know that it's true; it's an arbitrary assumption.
  
• Physics (quantum mechanics) rejects P1 as false.  Very tiny things do not seem to have causes, and the beginning of the big bang would have been very tiny. To claim otherwise is to renounce science, or to proclaim that one is smarter and more authoritative than science.
  
• P1 is arbitrary and self serving.  If, instead of an unbegun god, you worshiped a blue god, P1 would read, "Everything that isn't blue has a cause of its existence."  And, thus modified, the argument would be exactly as strong as it is in Craig's version.
  
• There is no sense of the word "beginning" for which gods do not begin but the rest of the world does.  The first cause argument surreptitiously two-steps between two incompatable definitions of "beginning."  If we hold them to either definition, the argument has no appeal at all.  
  

(2) The universe has a beginning of its existence.
Therefore:

It is entirely possible that physicists believe the universe began, but I don't know of any reason to think they do.  Asimov said the big bang was the beginning, but then he immediately hedged by saying something like, "At least we can call that the beginning, because we don't know what happened before that."  

Hawking made the same move in A Brief History of Time.

I went onto a university campus with the intent of finding out what cosmologists actually think about this issue.  I found one, put the question to him, and he said, "Nobody knows what happened before the big bang.  Nobody knows what happened before the big bang.  Nobody knows what happened before the big bang."  

My tentative conclusion is that nobody knows what happened before the big bang.  I will of course abandon this belief if I am shown that there is some other scientific consensus.  But, after years of watching discussions such as this one, I feel confident that there is no such consensus.  If there was, the theists would be pointing it out all the time.  

(3) The universe has a cause of its existence.

The universe is everything that exists, by definition.  So it can't have a cause, because there is nothing to cause it.  Unless you want to allow for self-cause, or for causes that do not precede their effects, which is hardly what we mean by the word cause. 

Does a bullet hole cause a gun to go off?  No, because the gun goes off first.  If we didn't require causes to precede effects, then bullet holes would count as causes because the correlation between the holes and the discharges is so strong.  

So, either we abandon the normal meaning of "cause," or we accept that the universe can't have a cause.  

Now, there are also other meanings of "universe."  But if we want to look for the ultimate cause of the ultimate beginning, that is, if we are engaged in cosmology, then there is no point in restricting our investigation to some things rather than all things.  

If we define the universe as everything but god, then we are aren't looking for the first cause, but only the second.  And if theists wave away the suggestion that their logic should apply to their own god, then they aren't looking for the first cause either.  They are looking only for an excuse, an excuse to believe in their god.

...
I honestly don't understand how the KCA is supposed to prove anything...

The KCA's job is just to masquerade as an argument.  It can't convince anyone to be a theist, but it can suffice to comfort theists by letting them believe that their religion is logically justified.  But if you aren't a motivated believer, if you don't need to believe that theism is justified, then the KCA will have no appeal. [/quote]

[Simon Moon]

Okay, I'm gonna practice my (barely) rudimentary logic skills for a moment.

1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence.

(I reject this premise until someone can demonstrate with evidence that it's likely to be true, but for the sake of argument, let's continue.)

P1 has problems:

• We don't know that it's true; it's an arbitrary assumption.
  
• Physics (quantum mechanics) rejects P1 as false.  Very tiny things do not seem to have causes, and the beginning of the big bang would have been very tiny. To claim otherwise is to renounce science, or to proclaim that one is smarter and more authoritative than science.
  
• P1 is arbitrary and self serving.  If, instead of an unbegun god, you worshiped a blue god, P1 would read, "Everything that isn't blue has a cause of its existence."  And, thus modified, the argument would be exactly as strong as it is in Craig's version.
  
• There is no sense of the word "beginning" for which gods do not begin but the rest of the world does.  The first cause argument surreptitiously two-steps between two incompatable definitions of "beginning."  If we hold them to either definition, the argument has no appeal at all.  
  

(2) The universe has a beginning of its existence.
Therefore:

It is entirely possible that physicists believe the universe began, but I don't know of any reason to think they do.  Asimov said the big bang was the beginning, but then he immediately hedged by saying something like, "At least we can call that the beginning, because we don't know what happened before that."  

Hawking made the same move in A Brief History of Time.

I went onto a university campus with the intent of finding out what cosmologists actually think about this issue.  I found one, put the question to him, and he said, "Nobody knows what happened before the big bang.  Nobody knows what happened before the big bang.  Nobody knows what happened before the big bang."  

My tentative conclusion is that nobody knows what happened before the big bang.  I will of course abandon this belief if I am shown that there is some other scientific consensus.  But, after years of watching discussions such as this one, I feel confident that there is no such consensus.  If there was, the theists would be pointing it out all the time.  

(3) The universe has a cause of its existence.

The universe is everything that exists, by definition.  So it can't have a cause, because there is nothing to cause it.  Unless you want to allow for self-cause, or for causes that do not precede their effects, which is hardly what we mean by the word cause. 

Does a bullet hole cause a gun to go off?  No, because the gun goes off first.  If we didn't require causes to precede effects, then bullet holes would count as causes because the correlation between the holes and the discharges is so strong.  

So, either we abandon the normal meaning of "cause," or we accept that the universe can't have a cause.  

Now, there are also other meanings of "universe."  But if we want to look for the ultimate cause of the ultimate beginning, that is, if we are engaged in cosmology, then there is no point in restricting our investigation to some things rather than all things.  

If we define the universe as everything but god, then we are aren't looking for the first cause, but only the second.  And if theists wave away the suggestion that their logic should apply to their own god, then they aren't looking for the first cause either.  They are looking only for an excuse, an excuse to believe in their god.

...
I honestly don't understand how the KCA is supposed to prove anything...

The KCA's job is just to masquerade as an argument.  It can't convince anyone to be a theist, but it can suffice to comfort theists by letting them believe that their religion is logically justified.  But if you aren't a motivated believer, if you don't need to believe that theism is justified, then the KCA will have no appeal.

[/quote]



The biggest problem P1 has, as far as logic goes, is that it is guilty of the fallacy of affirming the consequent. 

To break it down:

The statement, "Everything that begins to exist", is another way of saying, there are 2 sets: one set contains everything that  begins to exist, the other set contains everything that does not begin to exist. 

The theist making the argument only believes that one thing, their god, is a member of the set of all things that do not begin to exist.

So, their god is inserted into the first premise, and is also the conclusion of the argument. 

Without even getting into the soundness of the premises, the modus ponens of the argument is flawed.

[Time Traveler]

---

Steve, this is exactly what you said on page 35 of this thread, which I thoroughly deconstructed and then explicitly demonstrated your own blatant contradictions (p 42) - after which, you whine that just because someone trips up an unprepared Christian (clearly talking about yourself), we shouldn't read anything into it (p 42). But if you can't even defend your own hypothesis without making contradictory remarks, you should quit parroting the same bullshit over and over as if it means something.

Furthermore, you keep trying to dodge the actual question by attempting to answer a question that isn't even being posed. You parrot WLC's "logic" about how God, AFTER he created the universe, could undergo an "extrinsic change," trying to justify your answer based upon an A or B-theory of time, blah, blah, blah... but the assertion you are being asked to defend - again - is your ridiculous notion that "God existed timelessly and changeless causally prior to [BEFORE] the universe." So quite trying to redirect the question, go back and re-read your own ridiculous ad hoc contradictions, and just admit you have absolutely no clue how to logically reconcile this absurd notion that your God existed timelessly and changelessly prior to suddenly creating the universe. Just repeating an absurd premise over and over again may make you believe it, but that doesn't make your proposal remotely true or even coherent.

---

By contradictory remarks, you mean you caught me using the terms before and after when referring to the creation of the universe in another post...

Much of your objection to my statement seems to come from your belief that the B Theory of Time is correct. Let me study this an I will attempt a reply in your Timeless thread.

Steve, no. I think you are addressing the wrong thing again. Your contradictions have nothing the do with the A or B Theory of time since the universe began. They have to do with how you imagine a timeless, unchanging entity could do anything before the creation of the universe. Here are your words...

Even a series of mental events is enough to form a before and after (therefore some measure of "time").

Which directly contradicts...

There was no stream of consciousness or successive chains of thoughts.

Contradiction: You cannot have "a series of mental events" and also assert, "there was no stream of consciousness or successive chains of thoughts."
Contradiction: You cannot "form a before and after (therefore some measure of "time")" in a truly timeless state. Timeless, by definition, would have no "before and after."

Again, because I have to state this emphatically so you don't go off trying to slay straw men, I am ONLY talking about what your timeless God supposedly did before the creation of the universe... not your God's imagined relationship to time after the creation.

[SteveII]

The biggest problem P1 has, as far as logic goes, is that it is guilty of the fallacy of affirming the consequent. 

To break it down:

The statement, "Everything that begins to exist", is another way of saying, there are 2 sets: one set contains everything that  begins to exist, the other set contains everything that does not begin to exist. 

The theist making the argument only believes that one thing, their god, is a member of the set of all things that do not begin to exist.

So, their god is inserted into the first premise, and is also the conclusion of the argument. 

Without even getting into the soundness of the premises, the modus ponens of the argument is flawed.

I don't think it is affirming the consequent. That fallacy is 

1. If P, then Q.
   
   
2. Q.
   
   
3. Therefore, P.
   

Perhaps you think it Question Begging? – providing what is essentially the conclusion of the argument as a premise.

If that is the case, that has been addressed:


Objection #2: The kalam cosmological argument is question-begging. For the truth of the first premise presupposes the truth of the conclusion. Therefore the argument is an example of reasoning in a circle.

Response to #2: All the objector has done is describe the nature of a deductive argument. In a deductive argument, the conclusion is implicit in the premises, waiting to be derived by the logical rules of inference. A classic illustration of a deductive argument is:

1. All men are mortal.

2. Socrates is a man.

3. Therefore, Socrates is moral.

This argument has the same logical form as the kalam cosmological argument.[5] In fact, this form of the argument even has a name. It is called modus ponens. Symbolically, it looks like this:


This is one of the most basic and important logically valid argument forms. Incredibly, I have actually seen claims by Internet critics that this argument about Socrates being mortal is also question-begging!

This raises the question of what it means for an argument to be question-begging. Technically, arguments don't beg the question; people do. One is guilty of begging the question if one's only reason for believing in a premise is that one already believes in the conclusion. For example, suppose you were to present the following argument for the existence of God:

1. Either God exists or the moon is made of green cheese.

2. The moon is not made of green cheese.

3. Therefore, God exists.

This is a sound argument for God's existence: its premises are both true, and the conclusion follows from the premises by the rules of logic (specifically, disjunctive syllogism). Nevertheless, the argument is not any good because your only reason for believing the first premise to be true is that you already believe that God exists (a disjunction like premise (1) is true if one of the disjuncts is true). But the belief that God exists is the conclusion of the argument! Therefore, in putting forward this argument you are reasoning in a circle or begging the question. The only reason you believe (1) is because you already believe (3).

Now neither the argument for Socrates' mortality nor the kalam argument is like this. In both cases reasons are given for believing the first premise which are quite independent of the argument's conclusion. Biological and medical evidence may be marshaled on behalf of the premise that all men are mortal, and I have presented arguments (which I'll review shortly) for the truth of the premise that everything that begins to exist has a cause. Therefore, I have not begging the question. The objector has made an elementary mistake of confusing a deductive argument with a question-begging argument.

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/obj...z48C7JPnyn

[LadyForCamus]

Steve, this is exactly what you said on page 35 of this thread, which I thoroughly deconstructed and then explicitly demonstrated your own blatant contradictions (p 42) - after which, you whine that just because someone trips up an unprepared Christian (clearly talking about yourself), we shouldn't read anything into it (p 42). But if you can't even defend your own hypothesis without making contradictory remarks, you should quit parroting the same bullshit over and over as if it means something.

Furthermore, you keep trying to dodge the actual question by attempting to answer a question that isn't even being posed. You parrot WLC's "logic" about how God, AFTER he created the universe, could undergo an "extrinsic change," trying to justify your answer based upon an A or B-theory of time, blah, blah, blah... but the assertion you are being asked to defend - again - is your ridiculous notion that "God existed timelessly and changeless causally prior to [BEFORE] the universe." So quite trying to redirect the question, go back and re-read your own ridiculous ad hoc contradictions, and just admit you have absolutely no clue how to logically reconcile this absurd notion that your God existed timelessly and changelessly prior to suddenly creating the universe. Just repeating an absurd premise over and over again may make you believe it, but that doesn't make your proposal remotely true or even coherent.

By contradictory remarks, you mean you caught me using the terms before and after when referring to the creation of the universe in another post...

Much of your objection to my statement seems to come from your belief that the B Theory of Time is correct. Let me study this an I will attempt a reply in your Timeless thread.

Why don't you respond to it here for ease of reference since you have several of us participating in this particular discussion, and your answer is relevant to the questions some of us have been asking you.

Some questions regarding god's "intrinsic knowledge":

Since (according to you) God had no stream of conscious thought "before" (I cringe) the beginning of the universe, how was he able to "know" information? How does one know anything; how does one DO anything; without consciousness? How did God have knowledge and information before he had a conscious ability to process it? What caused his stream of conscious thought to begin? Where did his mind come from? Ya know...since everything that begins to exist needs a cause.

[LadyForCamus]

I'm fairly certain that the KCA is not a logically sound argument.  Anyone with more experience in that arena care to weight in?  I'll have to go take another look at it myself.  

Steve, how does a being exist timelessly?  And secondly, how can a being have a conscious, temporal thought while in a timeless state?  Can you please be more specific in regards to your proposed mechanism?  And, as always, don't forget to provide supporting evidence for your assumptions.  

The KCA is simply a restatement of the first three arguments of the Quinque Viae (First Mover, First or Uncaused Cause and Necessary Being) of Aquinas to try and get around the fact that Aquinas in none of these arguments was able to show how god was both real, and be able to simultaneously evade the necessary requirements set by Aquinas to qualify for reality (namely everything that initiates change must itself have had something initiate its original change and everything that exists must have a pre-existing cause). As the KCA is simply a word-salady restatement of Aquinas (who took a lot of his arguments from Aristotle, which also influence the original Kalam school (which is actually where Aquinas got the original Aristotlean philosophising from), and has failed to address, never mind defeat, the problems in Aquinas' formations, it can be debunked in exactly the same fashion as Aquinas has been debunked. There are plenty of sites which tear the Aquinas argument apart, such as here, or here. They're not all that hard to find.

Thanks Constable for the summary and references! I didn't realize the KCA was a play off of Aquina's five ways stuff. Except...now that we've said his name, I fear we will inevitably draw Wooters; like a moth to a flame. [emoji50][emoji56]

[LadyForCamus]

P1 has problems:

• We don't know that it's true; it's an arbitrary assumption.
  
• Physics (quantum mechanics) rejects P1 as false.  Very tiny things do not seem to have causes, and the beginning of the big bang would have been very tiny. To claim otherwise is to renounce science, or to proclaim that one is smarter and more authoritative than science.
  
  
  
• P1 is arbitrary and self serving.  If, instead of an unbegun god, you worshiped a blue god, P1 would read, "Everything that isn't blue has a cause of its existence."  And, thus modified, the argument would be exactly as strong as it is in WLC's version

Ah, yes. This reminds me a bit of that "maximally great being" (ontological?) argument, where we can substitute "maximally great" with "maximally smelly", or whatever suites your fancy, and it works out exactly the same. Perhaps we have a maximally smelly, blue, uncaused God! Thanks for your insight.

[LadyForCamus]

P1 has problems:

• We don't know that it's true; it's an arbitrary assumption.
  
• Physics (quantum mechanics) rejects P1 as false.  Very tiny things do not seem to have causes, and the beginning of the big bang would have been very tiny. To claim otherwise is to renounce science, or to proclaim that one is smarter and more authoritative than science.
  
• P1 is arbitrary and self serving.  If, instead of an unbegun god, you worshiped a blue god, P1 would read, "Everything that isn't blue has a cause of its existence."  And, thus modified, the argument would be exactly as strong as it is in Craig's version.
  
• There is no sense of the word "beginning" for which gods do not begin but the rest of the world does.  The first cause argument surreptitiously two-steps between two incompatable definitions of "beginning."  If we hold them to either definition, the argument has no appeal at all.  
  

It is entirely possible that physicists believe the universe began, but I don't know of any reason to think they do.  Asimov said the big bang was the beginning, but then he immediately hedged by saying something like, "At least we can call that the beginning, because we don't know what happened before that."  

Hawking made the same move in A Brief History of Time.

I went onto a university campus with the intent of finding out what cosmologists actually think about this issue.  I found one, put the question to him, and he said, "Nobody knows what happened before the big bang.  Nobody knows what happened before the big bang.  Nobody knows what happened before the big bang."  

My tentative conclusion is that nobody knows what happened before the big bang.  I will of course abandon this belief if I am shown that there is some other scientific consensus.  But, after years of watching discussions such as this one, I feel confident that there is no such consensus.  If there was, the theists would be pointing it out all the time.  




The universe is everything that exists, by definition.  So it can't have a cause, because there is nothing to cause it.  Unless you want to allow for self-cause, or for causes that do not precede their effects, which is hardly what we mean by the word cause. 

Does a bullet hole cause a gun to go off?  No, because the gun goes off first.  If we didn't require causes to precede effects, then bullet holes would count as causes because the correlation between the holes and the discharges is so strong.  

So, either we abandon the normal meaning of "cause," or we accept that the universe can't have a cause.  

Now, there are also other meanings of "universe."  But if we want to look for the ultimate cause of the ultimate beginning, that is, if we are engaged in cosmology, then there is no point in restricting our investigation to some things rather than all things.  

If we define the universe as everything but god, then we are aren't looking for the first cause, but only the second.  And if theists wave away the suggestion that their logic should apply to their own god, then they aren't looking for the first cause either.  They are looking only for an excuse, an excuse to believe in their god.



The KCA's job is just to masquerade as an argument.  It can't convince anyone to be a theist, but it can suffice to comfort theists by letting them believe that their religion is logically justified.  But if you aren't a motivated believer, if you don't need to believe that theism is justified, then the KCA will have no appeal.

The biggest problem P1 has, as far as logic goes, is that it is guilty of the fallacy of affirming the consequent. 

To break it down:

The statement, "Everything that begins to exist", is another way of saying, there are 2 sets: one set contains everything that  begins to exist, the other set contains everything that does not begin to exist. 

The theist making the argument only believes that one thing, their god, is a member of the set of all things that do not begin to exist.

Special pleading! I got it this time, right?

(PTSD from "Objective Morality" triggering as we speak)