The Kalam Cosmological Argument

[Thumpalumpacus]

Couple more steps, not much - but..yeah.  There are lots of systems that yield unintuitive results.  The arguments form was chosen by plantinga for exactly that operation.  It's not like he stumbled across it.  What if I'd introduced it to you another way, though?

What if I'd said that it was possible that there are two possible worlds that share no elements.  That if a maximally great being exists it would have to exist in all possible worlds.  That there was at least one possible world that did not contain a maximally great being.  Thus maximally great beings cannot exist.

Would it seem counterintuitive then - or does it just look fact-check true....?

I think that gets you to a maximally great being either existing in all possible worlds, or not existing in any of them. That's what I got from the Ontological Argument too, that it proves there must be a God or there must not be a God.

If this god is maximally great, there needs to be explained why this world he allegedly created is maximally mediocre.

[The Grand Nudger]

Maybe he's an underachiever.

[Paleophyte]

Plantinga doesn't get to redefine omnipotence.  Otherwise we could declare "inability to carry out any physical or mental action" as omnipotence and start worshipping a random rock.

How is that not an improvement? Most of the rocks in my collection can outwit your average apologist.

[Ivan Denisovich]

I think that gets you to a maximally great being either existing in all possible worlds, or not existing in any of them. That's what I got from the Ontological Argument too, that it proves there must be a God or there must not be a God.

If this god is maximally great, there needs to be explained why this world he allegedly created is maximally mediocre.

Don't be mean, I'm sure he did his best.

[Disagreeable]

Don't you understand?! It's part of God's perfect plan for things to be shitty. He's gonna fix it all later.

[Ivan Denisovich]

Don't you understand?! It's part of God's perfect plan for things to be shitty. He's gonna fix it all later.

This plan of his does not look so perfect:

[Thumpalumpacus]

If this god is maximally great, there needs to be explained why this world he allegedly created is maximally mediocre.

Don't be mean, I'm sure he did his best.  

“In a word, Cleanthes, a man who follows your hypothesis is able, perhaps, to assert or conjecture that the universe sometime arose from something like design: But beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance, and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. The world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: It is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity, and is the object of derision to his superiors: It is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him . . .

[Modern Atheism]

Quoting from Wikipedia: 'The most prominent form of the Kalam cosmological argument, as defended by William Lane Craig, is expressed as the following syllogism:

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.'

I find this argument laughable because it's supposed to be an argument for God but the conclusion is just that the universe has a cause.

William Lane Craig usually does elaborate on why this cause is God. He says that: 

a. Being the cause of spacetime, this cause must trascend space and time itself
b. All mechanical things are bound my cause and effect. Only a mind making a decision out of free will can bypass this cause and effect rule, so such decision could be uncaused.

Regarding (b), I am not sure that a mind making a decision can be said to be uncaused. A mind making a decision is usually caused by a previous mental state, not uncaused.

Craig also talks about an infinite series of past causes being impossible, because an actual infinite cannot exist. He claims that it leads to mathematical paradoxes and problems. I am not sure what to think of this.

Also, is the premise that everything that begins to exist has a cause reallly demonstrated? It seems true from our intuition but this is not the same as being formally proven.

Lastly, does the big bang theory really say that the universe as such began to exist, from a previous point of non-existing? Or does it just say that at some point all the matter and energy in the universe was together in the form of a singularity?

[Belacqua]

Quoting from Wikipedia: 'The most prominent form of the Kalam cosmological argument, as defended by William Lane Craig, is expressed as the following syllogism:

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.'

I find this argument laughable because it's supposed to be an argument for God but the conclusion is just that the universe has a cause.

William Lane Craig usually does elaborate on why this cause is God. He says that: 

a. Being the cause of spacetime, this cause must trascend space and time itself
b. All mechanical things are bound my cause and effect. Only a mind making a decision out of free will can bypass this cause and effect rule, so such decision could be uncaused.

It's a characteristic of all first cause arguments that they only get us to a first cause. Getting from there to the God of the Bible or of the Koran, or whatever, takes a number of separate steps. All the first cause arguments say that the cause must transcend space and time. 

You're right that Craig adds at least one step that's not included in the Kalam argument itself, by claiming that creation must be the result of a freely-willed decision. But still, that just leaves us with a decision-maker, and there's way more to prove before we get to Jehovah. 

Regarding (b), I am not sure that a mind making a decision can be said to be uncaused. A mind making a decision is usually caused by a previous mental state, not uncaused.

Craig also talks about an infinite series of past causes being impossible, because an actual infinite cannot exist. He claims that it leads to mathematical paradoxes and problems. I am not sure what to think of this.

Also, is the premise that everything that begins to exist has a cause reallly demonstrated? It seems true from our intuition but this is not the same as being formally proven.

Lastly, does the big bang theory really say that the universe as such began to exist, from a previous point of non-existing? Or does it just say that at some point all the matter and energy in the universe was together in the form of a singularity?

I don't think Craig has done us any favors by dusting off this old argument. He names it "Kalam" after a school of Aristotelian Muslim theologians who worked on the theory, but I don't know what they concluded about it, or how widespread it is among Muslims. 

The argument originally came from a Christian -- John Philoponus (490–570 AD). Christian theologians considered the argument and then almost all of them rejected it. Thomas Aquinas specifically points to its flaws when making his own first cause argument. And they rejected it in part because of the issues you raise. Thomas, in particular, thought that there was no empirical evidence that the universe had a beginning -- and he was right, according to what they knew at the time. He also knew of no logical argument why the universe had to have such a beginning. Therefore he thought the second premiss of Kalam was too weak. 

Sometimes on line I see people mixing up Craig's version of the Kalam argument with the Aristotelian/Thomist version. I think that Craig has not done a good job of clarifying the differences, and added unnecessary confusion to the issue. 

(To be fair, I have never read Craig's book. Perhaps what he wrote there is in fact better than the version of the argument that people offer on the Internet.)