Why the Kalam cosmological argument fails.

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The Kalam cosmological argument is an attempt to logically prove the existence of god. The reasoning is as follows

Let's first analyze the definition of terms in P2):
The word "beginning" has two relevant meanings:
A) There exists a time t when the entry under question (the universe) doesn't exist, and the universe only exists some time later;
B) The universe has a finite past i.e. there exists a finite amount of time before this moment when the universe exists.

Observe that definition A is stronger than B.

Since time is contingent to the universe, it is clear that A is false for the universe. Only B is true. Note that god also has a beginning in the sense of B because 13.7 billion year is ALL the time that exists in the past (just like it cannot be true that I kill a person at the overlap of US and British territory - there is no such place).

Then we look at the terms in P1):
In order for an entry X to be a cause of Y, X must exists at some time before the existence of Y. Therefore in order for P1) to be true, it is necessary for the definition of beginning in P1) to satisfy A).

To conclude, the proof really means:
P1) Everything that has a beginning-A has a cause
P2) The universe has a beginning-B
C) Therefore the universe has a cause, and we call it god
and it is clear that the argument is not valid.

^^^^

Is your criticism that in the Kalam Cosmological Argument there needs to be a point in time before the cause for cause to proceed effect? So you are concluding that since cause cannot proceed effect, therefor the Kalam fails?

I would just like to clarify so I have a handle on what you are stating.

Yes. Unless you use some obscure definition of cause and effect.

I can see that as working. If you distinguish between the kinds of beginning, and argue that while we have evidence of 1, we do not have any meaningful evidence of the other, therefore we do not have grounds to meaningfully speak on the matter, then this makes sense. I've always thought cosmology was too speculative. The only way to counter this is to get into issues of the principle of sufficient reason, and unless another argument for the existence of God succeeds, there is no reason to choose between a universe with an arbitrary beginning, or a God that just exists out there. And well.... if another argument for the existence of God succeeds, then invocation of the cosmological argument is pointless.

Its a silly argument, along the lines of:

There is a causal chain, with infinite regression. That's dumb. Lets add one more more cause to that chain, and call it "God" as opposed to "duck" or "42".

Its a non argument.

I can not even prove the existence of myself. Sorry, Descartes, but I am not convinced you exist, and how can you if you could be a figment of my imagination and I do not exist?

Even if all sides accepted all the premises [highly improbable] and all sides agreed on the meaning of al the terms [possibly impossible, at least highly unlikely from all I have seen], I do not believe any logical proof of God can work.

If I am close to correct, the divine entity is outside the system, not in the technical sense comprehensible. We have access at best to the phenomena of our space-time environment.

It took me a bit of development in my career to realize that "I do not know" is a reasonable conclusion, that in science "I strongly suspect but cannot at least as yet prove it" is reasonable and much more common than Eureka.

If there is not a proverb that says "When the theologian proves God ecists, the Devil laughs", there ought to be.

Thanks for the claification. I just wanted to know exactly what you were asking before I responded.

There are two halves to this question, in my view. The first is the issue is state/state causation and the other Simaltaneous Causation.

Cause and Effect

State/State causation

When a piece of wood is floating on water, it could do so eternally with a simultaneous cause and effect. The wood does not float on the water due to some temporal cause, but due to it's state. In philosophy this is called state/state causation.

Simaltaneous Causation

From this let's discuss simultaneous causation. If you imagine a ball sitting on a pillow eternally with no beginning point. The indentation the ball causes in the pillow occurs simultaneously with the ball having been there. Therefor cause and effect can occur at the same time. This is called event/event causation.

From this it can be concluded that cause and effect can occur simultaneously.

Dr. Craig has answered a similar question on this here
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=7935

First, I have to say I'm uncomfortable with the assumption that time is attached to the universe by definition. It is just as valid to assume time is attached to God or something else. In fact, since the creation of the universe is an event in time, a point on a continuum with at least one infinite end, I have trouble not assuming the other end is infinite.

Time is just a measuring stick, in any case.

From a modern pantheistic perspective, it is easy to see the creation of the universe, and the beginning of God as simultaneous. If God and the universe are the same identity, then God created us precisely the same way we created the skin on our arms, our hair, or our hearts, or our thoughts or dreams - though I am not prepared to assume He does this as carelessly as we do.

And who or what caused the cause. It is Turtles All The Way Down.

ruveyn

It gets even more interesting that that IMO. We live in a universe where past, present, and future are as fixed and linear as they could possibly be, aside from our limited faculties there really is no such things as a probability or 'odds' of anything.
That said it sets up another possibility for the origin of the universe. When you think of stories like Harry Potter or Lord Of The Rings, these characters exist also in timelines where you could likely progress infinitely and they're timelines that have no connection to our reality aside from say authorship, printing costs, and value added to some industries. I'm not suggesting that writing books creates sentient universes but it points at a dynamic possibility of how a timeline or experiencable universe can be brought into being but where you'd find no great explanation simply by tracing time backward. That's not to say that I don't think we can't find a lot of interesting things out by further examining the big bang, just that what we have around us likely provides just as many and perhaps even less speculative cues. An unmoved mover, sentient or or nonsentient, IMO, would need to be exotic to our timeline not to be part of a causal chain that we would see.


Lol, that's *exactly* what the hypothesis above explains .

Time as a Pantheistic Construct


Actually, time is a function of God.

Time is simply a measurement of the pulses of God (the Universe). Time does not exist in the absence of what it measures. It measures change, motion, rhythm, growth, decay. The motions of stars, the burning sun, falling rocks, living trees, decaying leaves, your breath, the firing of neurons, and the length of your life. Time is not a sterile line passing through the universe. Time only exists in the presence of change. Time comes from change, not the other way round.

We have agreed that time should be a standard, a changing number on a device that measures the decay of a caesium atom. But it's still just a measure of the rhythm in one of God's parts. And it's only an agreement among some of us.

For example, many of us measure time in birthdays, or in the decay of our bodies, or in the decay of our minds, or against the lives of our children, or pets. Some measure it against history, or with the investments, statues, or named buildings we leave behind.

But all these definitions of time still measure some change in the universe, and all these measures exist as temporary concepts in our minds. In fact, there is only one measure of time in the end, and that is the measure you, as an individual component of God, impose.

Time is as infinite as God. Time has existed, and will exist, only as long as He does but, if He ever stops, so will we. His mind, and ours will stop, and our mind's clocks will stop, and there will be Eternity.

Many people see Eternity as synonymous with an infinite timeline. In fact, it has nothing to do with infinity. Eternity means Changlessness. When the mind stops perceiving time - when thoughts no longer pass, changes are no longer sensed, and the heart no longer beats - we are trapped permanently in the moment.

Since time is simply the comparison between one instance and another, we cannot progress through time without both instances. Without the tock, we cannot move on from the tick. And we can't get to the tock until the tick has finished. When the boulder smashes your noggin, there isn't a slow (or fast) transition from perception to darkness. There is simply a tick that never ends. And so, no tock. For the witness of this sad event, there is an obvious ending. For the victim, the tick just never ends. He no longer has any device to measure the next second so, from his perspective, this second never ends. (The perception of having died requires a part of his brain he no longer possesses.) For him, there is no death. Just one moment selected out of his life that will never end.

(This, by the way, is called Judgement Day. Please be prepared to be very kind to yourself at any moment)

So the theory is true. Time is exceedingly relative to who's measuring it. And how they measure it. And why, for whom, with what, and to what purpose they measure it. Time is the comparison of two events in God's mechanics - being measured by the people who live in the Machine - using only the tools and perceptions we find within the Machine. And each of those measurements is as different as we are from each other. And as different as what we become is from what we were.

All of these differences and changes are the pulse beats of God. As long as changes continue to follow changes, the universe, and God, is alive.

I have changed from a lunchtime me to a hungry me. According to my clock, it's time for dinner.

My take: if there's a human soul it likely exits time in a non-linear manner. Either that, or, heaven if on a parallel construct would be predestined as well. What God's intent is in creating this mechanism ends up being isn't fully known, I would have to venture my own guess is that he wishes to spawn intellects that are complex and diverse enough to truly hold their own as friends and keep him company in the universe, and these things that we're dropped into, these filters - ie. the human body and human experience - IMO are just that. We don't have choices, we don't have any possible way of breaching our path because every motivation we receive seems to come from genetics, upbringing, genetics, senses, if a person walks into a Casino and throws lucky sevens you can rewind that scene as many times as you like - it will be a carbon copy. That tells me that if we have souls our purpose is to learn and experience, likely learn what evil is and why we don't want it, or learn what being as frail as we are really means and what we could go through (evolutionary psychology's needs, frailty of the genome, frailty of the will against impulses toward abuse of power or cut throat competition based on our need to procreate and gain the best mate - its the desire to fight that which separates us from animals, little else). Likely in a perfect place - heaven - he technically can't give us experience with evil, let alone evil via structural necessity, and can't give us the school of hard knocks like what we have here. Knowledge of before and after for that sake had to be clipped. Therefore he created this timeline, in some cultures he's written a monistic dialog, in others he's created a hand puppet for which he's supposedly treating as an equal in some wager over who can win more souls when really, its all him, every text ever written, every person every born, every action taken, every thought ever thought, is entirely by his pen. He's pretty much being a ballbreaker of a dad but realizes that when we realize what this experience was worth in an eternal sense that we will appreciate him for it.

Admittedly though, this is my impression of what 'it' is if there is a theistic reality underpinning our experience. I tend to believe this way but I also realize that for all I know it could also likely be that when I die my brain shuts off, consciousness ends up being only a neurochemical phenomenon, and at that point I no longer exist. I tend to find that counter-intuitive in many ways but - just like I can't prove that we aren't brains in vats I can't prove that there isn't a possibility that materialist atheists are right.

All the same though, I have a strong intuition that the universe and matter as we know it is something that was coded all at once, from beginning to end, and that matter is coding on a larger structure much like ink typewrite is coding on paper in a book. One on the outside could easily skip from page 1 to page 255, back to 83, and to the last page, then to chapter 2 simply because its a fixed story and it can be written in a supposedly infinite subject plane but the story can have a finite beginning and end - it doesn't necessarily need to account for the possibility of eternal regress and progress because that's simply looking in the wrong place.

I think one of strengths of the Kalam argument is that the argument shows that the universe cannot be eternal or without beginning, since each event cannot have an infinite number of causes. I think the phrase "that has a beginning" may be the key to the argument. God is self-existent by definition, which is to say that God has neither beginning nor ending; and that He has always existed in Himself and in the present since before time was made: "even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God" (Psalm 90:2).

Many of those good people who believe in atheistic evolution believe that the universe came into being from a big bang, which came from a little thing called "singularity," which came from nothing and occupied space that did not exist. But if a big bang came from singularity, which came from nothing, then where did nothing come from in the first place?

And so I believe that positing God as the creator is valid, since we have no known exception to it. I think it's quite logical to posit an omnipotent immaterial Being as the self-existent uncaused cause because an omnipotent immaterial Being logically explains how a material universe could have come into existence without having to place our faith in the unsound belief that nothing made it all.

I've always viewed god as outside time, aka god being at the beginning end or anywhere in between makes no sense to me because then he would be part of his creation.

EDIT: That is too say him being before the big bang makes no sense to me.

I've always wondered what it's like to be outside of time.

How can one make any act when time had not yet been created?

The problem with the argument is that it presumes that the universe is like an everyday object. We already know that under extreme conditions, our concepts of normal no longer function. Given that the origin of the unvierse is the ultimate extreme condition, it's difficult to apply concepts that relate to the world of apples and wagons with any degree of confidence that the comparison is appropriate.