Credible/Honest Apologetics?

[R00tKiT]

Kalam is a fallacious argument. It is invalid in form,

You are a joke. Professional philosophers write about this argument for a living, and they know how to make an argument that is valid in form. The Kalam is obviously valid, in the sense that if the premises are true, the conclusion is necessarily true. If you don't see that, I will go as far as saying you have comprehension issues.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you're confusing validity and soundness, because soundness is the central issue, not validity. Otherwise, you don't know what you're talking about.

Not to mention, even if it were valid and sound, it still would not demonstrate a god exists.

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause.

God does not appear in either premise, nor the conclusion.

Therefore, Kalam is not an argument for the existence of a god, it is an argument for the existence of a cause for the universe.

There is of course the additional work of showing that the cause of the universe is identical to the God of classical theism, and the Kalam is a very important step towards this conclusion. And so it merits full consideration.

To be clear, I am a gnostic atheist regarding a God who is both omniscient and omnipotent, as I believe those attributes contradict each other and any God that is supposed to have them is a married bachelor. An omnipotent being can do anything, an omniscient being can only do what it always knew it was going to do. 

The statement " can only do what it always knew it was going to do" is not problematic, and doesn't entail a contradiction with omnipotence, because God doesn't change His intention (because he's omniscient, we only change our mind when we are presented with new information/see the information from a new perspective, but God always has full information and knows all possible perspectives, so he never needs to change his decisions).

[The Grand Nudger]

If someone's looking for credible and honest apologetics - and you whip out your kalam....calling them a joke when they tell you they'd already heard it and didn't find it credible or honest...might be a bad approach.

I do think it's great that you're arguing for a pagan god, as a muslim, ofc. However..just because you think that your kalam is a crucial step in arguing for your god - doesn't mean that it deserves "full consideration"..whatever the fuck that is, nor should you be so hasty to assume that a person who just told you they considered it hasn't given it "full consideration". In fact..if your kalam actually is crucial to proving whatever god you believe in..and it's wrong..then that's the whole ballgame. There's nothing left, nothing further to discuss and give our "full consideration".

[R00tKiT]

If someone's looking for credible and honest apologetics - and you whip out your kalam....calling them a joke when they tell you they'd already heard it and didn't find it credible or honest...might be a bad approach.

First of all, Simon M didn't say he didn't find it "credible" -whatever this is supposed to mean-, he said that the cosmological argument is structurally invalid. Secondly, the kalam is an extremely short syllogism and the conclusion follows from the preimses, that's the definition of validity.

Validity is a very low bar, the following argument is perfectly valid, even if it's ridiculous:

Premise 1: Peanut butter is awesome.
Premise 2: If peanut butter is awesome, aliens exist.

Conclusion : aliens exist.

If anyone who reads this doesn't understand why it's valid, they should spend some time studying logic and syllogisms.

So atheists can rest assured that they're not doing us a favor by granting that the kalam is valid, but if they don't grant us even that, then yeah, they are a joke.

I do think it's great that you're arguing for a pagan god, as a muslim, ofc.  However..just because you think that your kalam is a crucial step in arguing for your god - doesn't mean that it deserves "full consideration"..whatever the fuck that is, nor should you be so hasty to assume that a person who just told you they considered it hasn't given it "full consideration".  In fact..if your kalam actually is crucial to proving whatever god you believe in..and it's wrong..then that's the whole ballgame.  There's nothing left, nothing further to discuss and give our "full consideration".

Whether the premises of the Kalam are true is a very complicated issue, it involves modern cosmology, causality, and even quantum mechanics, just to name a few. I doubt anyone here really knows everything there is to know to make an informed decision about this argument. In particular, the Kalam rests on the principle of sufficient reason, which is applied routinely in science and everyday issues, so suspending judgment on it or rejecting it when it comes to the Kalam makes one guilty of double standards.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, that's the ticket, suddenly, no one can know these things.

Look, I don't think that anyone can know that big mo wasn't running off to his cave to meet a boyfriend, and since no one can know that, I think you should suspend judgement on it, lest you want to be guilty of double standards.

Kinda disappointed you're giving up on your knowable pagan god so quick, tbh.

[Jehanne]

This website documents the Kalam argument:

Rational Wiki -- William Lane Craig

Judge for yourself.

[Simon Moon]

If someone's looking for credible and honest apologetics - and you whip out your kalam....calling them a joke when they tell you they'd already heard it and didn't find it credible or honest...might be a bad approach.

First of all, Simon M didn't say he didn't find it "credible" -whatever this is supposed to mean-, he said that the cosmological argument is structurally invalid. Secondly, the kalam is an extremely short syllogism and the conclusion follows from the preimses, that's the definition of validity.

Validity is a very low bar, the following argument is perfectly valid, even if it's ridiculous:

Premise 1: Peanut butter is awesome.
Premise 2: If peanut butter is awesome, aliens exist.

Conclusion : aliens exist.

If anyone who reads this doesn't understand why it's valid, they should spend some time studying logic and syllogisms.

So atheists can rest assured that they're not doing us a favor by granting that the kalam is valid, but if they don't grant us even that, then yeah, they are a joke.

Kalan contains an equivocation fallacy, thus making it invalid.

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Premise 1 is referring to the things we observe in the universe, beginning to exist from other stuff that already exists; trees, chairs, animals, cars, etc. This is creation ex materia.

Premise 2 is referring to the universe beginning to exist ex nihilo (unless you are claiming that your god needed other, already existing stuff to create the universe?)

This is an equivocation fallacy, using the same word(s), "begins to exist", to mean 2 different things; ex materia in one premise, ex nihilo in another premise.

So, if we use the first definition of "begins to exist", ex materia, that means the conclusion would be, that a god would be creating the universe out of already existing stuff. I don't think that's what theists mean when they claim a god created the universe. Which also leads to another major problem, "who" created the already existing stuff the god used to create the universe?

If we use the second definition of "begins to exist", creation ex nihilo, then that means that all the stuff we observe in the universe (trees, animals, chairs, etc) began to exist from nothing.

Kalam also contains the fallacy of composition.

Just because parts of the universe begin to exist, does not mean the universe itself began to exist.

Which leads to the main contentious premise. How do we know the universe began to exist? It is quite possible, that the universe always existed, but just in another form.

[Mister Agenda]

To be clear, I am a gnostic atheist regarding a God who is both omniscient and omnipotent, as I believe those attributes contradict each other and any God that is supposed to have them is a married bachelor. An omnipotent being can do anything, an omniscient being can only do what it always knew it was going to do. 

The statement " can only do what it always knew it was going to do" is not problematic, and doesn't entail a contradiction with omnipotence, because God doesn't change His intention (because he's omniscient, we only change our mind when we are presented with new information/see the information from a new perspective, but God always has full information and knows all possible perspectives, so he never needs to change his decisions).

I can see why you consider that a good counter, but a fully omniscient being can't even change its mind about which finger to wiggle, that is, it can't even change its mind just to see if it can change its mind. It can't, not even for the most trivial of actions for which information makes no difference. It may not need to change its decisions, but it also can't change its decisions.

[The Grand Nudger]

Comprehensive foreknowledge is effectually equivalent to fatalism. Doesn't even matter if it's god or the housecats. Fuck I hope it isn't housecats....

Anywho, if we wanted to talk about valid arguments for gods, rather than arguments for gods that a given nut is just deeply attached to for whatever reason - and ontological arguments, even - Plantingas modal ontological is always there. I've seen it, agree it's a valid argument, and find it utterly unconvincing as an argument while completely irrelevant to the issue of whether or not, and how, gods exist, in fact.

[Angrboda]

The statement " can only do what it always knew it was going to do" is not problematic, and doesn't entail a contradiction with omnipotence, because God doesn't change His intention (because he's omniscient, we only change our mind when we are presented with new information/see the information from a new perspective, but God always has full information and knows all possible perspectives, so he never needs to change his decisions).

I can see why you consider that a good counter, but a fully omniscient being can't even change its mind about which finger to wiggle, that is, it can't even change its mind just to see if it can change its mind. It can't, not even for the most trivial of actions for which information makes no difference. It may not need to change its decisions, but it also can't change its decisions.

Not sure if this is relevant given just a glance, but it may be:

Two types of incompatibilism

Plantinga's defense presupposes incompatibilism. Incompatibilists, however, disagree over what we might call the Principle of Alternate Possibilities:
PAP. S is free with respect to A only if S has it within his power to do otherwise.

Of course, compatibilists like to understand the power to do otherwise in such a way that one has it even though there is no possible world in which one does other than what one did, given the distant past and the laws of nature. Incompatibilists, however, tend to deny this. As one prominent incompatibility likes to put the point: if someone is free with respect to an action when deciding whether to do it, they are "in a situation strongly analogous to that of someone who is hesitating between forks in a road."

To say that one has free will is to say that when one decides among forks in the road of time (or, more prosaically, when one decides what to do), one is at least sometimes able to take more than one of the forks has free will if sometimes more than one of are "open" to one. One lacks free will if on must make a decision only one of the fork be the fork one in fact takes - is open to one.

On this picture of freedom, the power to do "forks" in the road of time, not merely that there seem to be such "forks".

Some incompatibilists reject PAP and the picture of a forking road that comes with it. They replace it with something like the Principle of Ultimate Causes:
PUC. S is free with respect to A only if the ultimate cause of A is S's own will and cognitive faculties.

Incompatibilists who replace PAP with PUC say that it is possible for one to act freely even if there are no alternatives "open" to one. But, they say, it does not follow that it is possible for one to act freely if one's action is determined by the distant past and the laws of nature since, in that case, the ultimate cause of one's action is not one's own will and cognitive faculties. Thus, they say, their view remains resolutely incompatibility.

“Transworld Sanctity and Plantinga’s Free Will Defense.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 44, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1–21

[R00tKiT]

Premise 1 is referring to the things we observe in the universe, beginning to exist from other stuff that already exists; trees, chairs, animals, cars, etc. This is creation ex materia.

That's not what Premise 1 refers to, that's your personal interpretation of it. Both premises refer to creation ex nihilo, not ex materia. It's a mundane fact that things like cars didn't begin to exist the moment they are assembled, "cars" are assembled items that are useful to us, and these items obviously existed before, it's the meaning of the term "car" that began to exist once we figured out how to make them.

 As you can see "creation ex materia" is just wordplay, there is no creation, just cobbling stuff together. 

This is an equivocation fallacy, using the same word(s), "begins to exist", to mean 2 different things; ex materia in one premise, ex nihilo in another premise.

As I clarified above, there is only one meaning of "begins to exist" that is interesting in this argument, and that is creation ex nihilo -no need to double down on the word creation since it begs the existence of a creator, I am just using it for the lack of a better word-

Kalam also contains the fallacy of composition.

Just because parts of the universe begin to exist, does not mean the universe itself began to exist.

I am not sure there is a fallacy of composition in this particular case. It's like saying: just because your body parts are made of flesh and blood, does not mean you are not made of flesh and blood. If the word "you" is exactly identical to the sum of your body parts, then I don't think it's a fallacy to conclude that you are in fact flesh and blood, from the observation that each of your body parts/organs is flesh and blood.

Same with the universe, what else does the word "universe" mean if not the sum of its parts, let's denote the content of the whole universe U (its energy, for example) and its different parts P_i. Then:

U=P_1 + P_2 + ... + P_n.

Since the universe is finite in size, there will be finite terms in the sum above, so there is no paradox or confusion about the possibility of infinite terms. Now how can we formalize the idea that each P_i began to exist in the simple formula above? well let's add the subscript t to denote time, U_t is simply the total energy of the universe at the moment t, so:

U_t = P_1,t + P_2,t + ... P_n,t

Now you don't need to use more than one brain cell to see that if each term of the sum above is 0 when t=0, U_0 must also be equal to 0

Which leads to the main contentious premise. How do we know the universe began to exist? It is quite possible, that the universe always existed, but just in another form.

There is only one compelling argument that I know of trying to establish that the universe began to exist. Assume the universe is indeed past infinite, now in order to get to the present moment, you have to exhaust infinitely many moments in the past, in other words, it took an infinitely long period of time for the present moment to happen, obviously this is a contradiction.