R&I – FS
Arguments, Vol. 1
“The Kalam Cosmological argument”
The standard syllogism of the Kalam cosmological argument brought to us by William Lane Craig smashed together (he usually presents it in two parts):
P1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
P2. The universe began to exist.
C & P4. The universe had a cause.
P5. If the universe had a cause, then and uncaused personal creator of the universe exists who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.
C. A personal agent caused the universe to begin to exist (insert all kinds of unsupported attributes to this cause here)
Premise 1) The first thing that jumps out is the careful wording of “whatever begins to exist”. God did not “begin” to exist, I’m told, and so needs no cause. It’s making allowances for God before we’ve even glimpsed that conclusion.
“whatever begins to exist”… I don’t like to waste space on this, but after a few recent discussions it is apparently necessary to spell out the terms we’re discussing. “Begins to exist” obviously must “begin”, mere existence isn’t good enough because that would include God and cause logical problems that don’t fit into a logical syllogism. So, I think It’s worth pointing out that your table didn’t “begin” to exist, it was put together from wood which came from a tree etc… A child didn’t “begin” to exist, even life didn’t begin in this sense, since viable sperm and eggs are also alive. The point being that everything that I can think of that exists, exists in a current form from a previous form which isn’t “beginning to exist”… and this leads to the first problem with premise 1, that seems pretty logical at first glance.
Can anyone offer an example of something they’ve seen begin to exist? For the core premise to be presented as a ridiculously obvious common sense, wouldn’t it have to be something that happens often? In reading a few arguments in favor of premise one, it’s often bullied through with, “duh idiot, cause and effect, obviously”(in essence, not literally). But everything we have an example of, started its current form as a rearrangement of matter and energy from a previous form. So really the argument is asserting a law, a logical imperative even, from one “possible” example and we don’t even know that for sure… that simply isn’t how it works. If you want to present it as common sense logic, it has to come from something that is… you know… common.
If we were to extrapolate our actual observations and common sense, out to the entire observed universe, then wouldn’t we have to conclude that the Universe as we know it began to exist as a rearrangement of matter and energy from a previous form, whatever the hell that might have been?
From the peanut gallery – “but but infinite regression”… meh, someone I can’t remember said:
“The Infinite Regress Problem is not a problem, but rather an argument offered by someone bent on remaining obstinately unconvinced by a position or conclusion that rubs them the wrong way. These arguments are no different from Slippery Slope arguments and terminate at the point in where you locate a proposition that is not contingent on another. This issue no longer concerns epistemologists and should be of no concern to any student of philosophy.”
I’m not forgetting about quantum particles that appear to pop in and out of existence at random, which is an interesting phenomenon. They aren’t really coming into existence from nothing, but they don’t seem to have a cause either which is counter to premise one.
Premise 2) “The universe Began to exist”. I know that the adherents of this argument tend to misclassify the “universe” as all of reality. But we have no way of knowing if all of reality began to exist, ie. time, space, matter and energy. They conflate two pieces of information here, the universe and all of existence. The current state of the expanding universe began at some point, an expanding “current state of the universe” can’t be eternally expanding as far as we know. But that’s literally all we can say… that the current state started back when.
In a logical syllogism, if one premise fails then the entire thing falls apart and we can’t have a logical conclusion. In other words, we’re done with this argument and the conclusion fails as a logical argument. If it’s correct it is only by accident.
P5. This part is jumping the shark, you got to season 5 and left all semblance of continuity behind. Even if we accept that the universe had a cause, which isn’t unreasonable. We are not even close to showing that it’s a logical imperative that this cause must be all of the things listed above. We simply haven’t shown that the one thing that may have began to exist must have had this specific cause. This is the God of the gaps part, the correct answer is “I don’t know” and as soon as I say that, TH3 raises his hand and says “I do”.
As a side note. In showing that this argument is illogical, the illogical among us will insist that we must provide the correct answer in its place. I don’t need to know what happened in order to know that you arrived at your conclusion illogically, and in point of fact I don’t know what happened. No one does. But I do know that the Cosmological argument fails as a logical syllogism.
Can we stop pretending/can we stop putting up with – the argument that Science supports the God hypothesis? This is one of the biggest reasons they say it, and it doesn’t hold up.
What the hell is up with the discussions about “nothing”? Why is it so problematic to admit the obvious? No one on planet Earth has ever seen nothing, we simply can’t know anything about it, or obviously if it’s even possible. Why is that so hard to admit? Any time I say as much I’m met with derision – “obviously you’d say that, you have ulterior motives because you’re a skeptic atheist.” I don’t understand how that’s a sneaky statement, it’s the simple truth.
Can theists admit that, while there certainly might be a god, this argument is not a good reason to think so?
It’s hard to tell before you post it, is this too much of a text wall? I apologize if it is, I actually left out a lot, but that’s the basics.
Silent