Why the Kalam cosmological argument fails.

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Now I think you are being pedantic. Anybody who watches Craig argues must recognize that he does not focus on those closing premises, and that the premises he uses at that point are the least powerful ones he has. I am not going to say that a person is overly invalid if they phrase the basic logic and only vary on a minor point that is often glossed over in the presentation of the matter.


Wikipedia was sufficient as a source. Craig KNOWS that there is more to the argument, but it is not his focus. I think that if the heart of your objection is just that the OP used a conjunction invalidly when the matter is one where most arguers gloss over the matter, and where the issues are no longer cosmological, I will have to consider this not relevant to the discussion. Incomplete phrasings, poor phrasings, and all sorts of these other moves are valid intellectual moves in a relatively casual conversation. So long as the meaning of the OP is clear as is the intent, the logical nature of phrasing is not of the highest relevance at all.


Or you are unnecessarily pedantic. Not all speakers are required to uphold the standards of presentation that you think are necessary. I see your gap, I recognize it, I consider it irrelevant for purposes of presenting an idea. I don't see a person who skips over that gap when presenting the cosmological argument to be ignorant of dishonest if their focus was not on that section of the premise structure.

I think it is a failure of the reader, not of the writer, when the reader focuses on an irrelevant flaw in what is written. This is likely common in many people with AS, but people with AS also tend to have a weaker grasp on the workings of language in certain respects. (the more fluid notions of it)

This is not clearly written. What do you mean "he does not focus on those closing premises"? Craig does focus on them in the sense of providing justification for them. One premise is based on the Big Bang theory, the other is based on the law of efficient causality. He does not assume their truth, if that's what you mean.

I'm not taking issue with the premises in the OP. I'm taking issue with the inference that is made from them. The premises in the OP do not justify the conclusion The universe has a cause and we call it God. The only valid conclusion is that the universe was caused. The conclusion is a preparatory step toward establishing the existence of God. But the OP goes straight from the premises "Everything that has a beginning has a cause" and "The universe has a beginning" to the existence of God, which is invalid and not how the Kalam argument is presented. The OP is a travesty of the Kalam argument.



This contradicts your earlier statement. You said Craig usually presents the argument like the OP, but the Wikipedia article you linked to has Craig presenting it exactly as I described.

From the link (again):



He does not conclude that God exists from those two premises, only that the universe has a cause. Your claim that Craig presents the argument like the OP is contradicted by your own source.



This is nonsense. The argument in the OP is logically invalid. The premises do not justify the conclusion that the universe was caused by God. It is a non sequitur and it is not how the Kalam argument is presented in the philosophy of religion literature.



You see my gap? WTF does that mean?



The OP has set about demolishing a false version of a philosophical argument. You either don't grasp that (likely, given the confused nature of your replies), or you're trying to rationalize this guy's dishonesty.

OK. Exactly what difference does it make in the OP if I delete the clause 'and we call it god'? It is you who is creating a strawman from an irrelevant point in my argument.

I completely agree with your statement. Well... except I think the actual flaw is probably not a strawman, but rather just a favoring of style over substance. It is still a variant of red herring though.

Telekon, when I say "Craig doesn't focus on that", I mean that he will actually present an argument with those 3 starting frameworks, and then, less explicitly, he will use the other rationales to get to the conclusion. "Focus" should be a term with a meaning that has some degree of intuitive clarity. That's also what I tended to mean when I said that Craig presents this like the OP. I am not interested in doing a lot of research, when I think that I am discussing something outright ridiculous, such as your highlighting of something that isn't that important to the OP's concerns.

Your focus on whether the argument presented was technically valid... is a bit mistaken. The OP doesn't actually need a technically valid argument if he really was just focused on the first two premises and the conclusion. We can, for sake of interpretation, just drop the conjunction as we please. He could, for the sake of mockery, or any other desire he may have, make a conjunction that technically invalidates his argument. He could even ignorantly make that conjunction, and it still would be outright irrelevant if it does not change the nature of the argument presented, as the OP was focused on the nature of causality/the first cause, not the leap from a first cause to God.

By "I see your gap", I mean that I do understand the point you are getting at.

The OP's demolition is not focused on the parts of the argument that you claim were misrepresented. Thus, your point isn't relevant. I could present the Kalam like this:
1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore the universe has a cause.
4) There are infinite ducks in my brains.
5) Therefore the universe was invented by ducks.

And so long as I focus on premises 1-3, having absurdities in 4 and 5 is irrelevant to the position I would be making.

Now, Telekon, I do recognize what I am talking about, but the problem is that there is a range of thought process in interpreting arguments and writings. You're pedantic, you are very focused on technical consistency. I'm probably a lot more intuitive, and more focused on substance. Your claims are not impacting the substance of the argument, therefore they are irrelevant. Craig's position in its substance, focuses a lot more on the causality of the universe in his argument, and this can be seen on his actual freaking website:
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html

If you note, he only presents 1-3. It is implicitly the case though that the conjunction "therefore God exists" is there, as Craig isn't going to present an argument on an apologetics website that does not implicitly suggest that God exists. You're being pedantic, as your issue does not impact the OP's major argument.

I am not being dishonest. I am not ill-informed. You're just either dishonest, or incapable of recognizing that informal discussion does not focus on proper formal presentation. I think the latter in this circumstance.

Well if it is logically inconsistent; which is what is described in the incompleteness then it cannot be an actually existing abstract object; unless it exists within a mind. The only place something where logically inconsistent abstract object can exist is within a mind. If mathematics are necessarily existing but logically inconsistent and they exist at the moment of the cause of the universe: then they must exist within a mind that can exist at the point of the creation of all things (this is my own work on abstract objects).

If they cannot exist within a mind then they cannot exist as they are presented by Godel in his theory and must be taken as not separately existing apart from their role as concepts within our own mind. So you are either essentially proving God, or you cannot conclude that they can exist separately.



My definition of a causal chain is irrelevant. This is a discussion of the KCA; though my definition would probably look a good deal like the KCA's first premises.

Intuition does not have to be correct. All that must be correct is the first premise and that has more than just intuition to back it up. If you reject the first premise, you need to do more than simply describe it as intuition, otherwise you are arguing against a straw man. Arguing against intuition alone kind of indicates that you are only interacting with the popular literature on the subject rather than with the academic.



Telekon is correct. The Kalam as Dr. Craig published it does not argue this. If Dr. Craig were focusing on it then he would have put this in the argument itself.



The KCA as published by Dr. Craig does not have a fourth and fifth premises.

In his published work on the subject he builds upon his KCA through a process of elimination.

1) Therefor you cannot invalidate Dr. Craig's KCA by pointing out what you see as a flaw in the discussing that occurs after the argument. Even if all of the supporting discussion after the third premises was rubbish, the argument would still stand.

2) The ducks example would not be supported by the process of elimination. This however, has zero bearing on the argument's validity.



I think AG has mistaken the KCA as it is put forward by Islamic Theologians (on the wiki at the top) with the KCA as it is put forward by Dr. Craig, which lacks premises 4 and 5.

That is just your idea of so call abstract objects. It is you who claim that it is impossible for numbers not exist as they are. I proved the otherwise. Then you say they exists within a mind if they turn out to be inconsistent? I don't really understand what the paragraph is about.



It is you who have the bundle of proof. Since you are not giving the definition of causal chains or any supporting arguments, I can only assume it is your intuition.

I don't believe that numbers have to be logically consistent abstract objects (my Argument for God from Abstract Objects allows for them to be either, I only engaged in the discussion because I find necessary objects interesting). So using Godel Inconsistency Theorem to refute this is a waste of time since it has no bearing on their status as necessarily existing. Discussing necessary objects is a waste of time in relation to the KCA, they are discussed only in passing during the argument. The KCA does not require God to be necessarily or contingently existing.



Nope, its not, if you want to give a fail to the KCA then you can do your own research. The discussion of the first premises cites a number of reasons for thinking that it is true. The fact that it seems more true than its opposite simply assists the argument. Discussing only intuition is a highly flawed method of attacking the argument.

More gibberish from 91...

Exactly what 91 believes about numbers? It is even more funny to note that he tries to talk about proof of god from abstract object after his description of abstract objects being completely demolished.

And then





So he first seems to provide a standalone proof for a necessarily existing god, then he says it is irrelevant.

And I have evidence that at least WLC does not have anything FOR causal chains other than intuition, based on AG's article
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html

In the article, his only argument FOR causal chain is what he called 'metaphysical intuition'. He simply don't think there is any opposition. The rest of the section is refuting alternative proposals. On the other hand, my OP shows that the intuition is wrong at least regarding to temporal, physical causation, and however the apologists put it, the idea of 'come from' presupposes time.

Likewise, his argument AGAINST the possibility of infinite causal chains is just Zeno's paradox. (For example, we can say the existence of a rock at 1:00 pm is caused by its existence at 12:30 pm, its existence at 12:30 pm is caused by its existence at 12:15 pm and so on).