I’m amazed, time and again, that William Lane Craig is as eminently respected in the world as he is. Certainly, he’s a polished debater, and would likely mop the floor with me in any sort of live debate (given especially that live debates do not lend well to matters of fact over opinion). But his ideas and arguments are easily refuted by anyone given any appreciable time to chew on.
Theoretical Bullshit asked that we do what we can to spread the word that William Lane Craig isn’t taking him as seriously as he deserves. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is nonsense, depending as it does on the premise that all things that begin to exist must be caused to exist, given that we’ve never seen the creation or elimination of matter from this universe (potential white holes notwithstanding, given that they could just be rearranging matter from one part of the universe to another). Who says the universe was “created” at all? Who says that, prior to the big bang if “prior” makes any sense whatsoever, that stuff wasn’t just always there? Or that it didn’t come from some other universe? Or that it didn’t come from some natural process possible only during the hairy physics that exists at the extreme ends of time itself?
While it’s true that things that are arranged into forms must be caused by mechanistic methods — sperm must meet egg to create a human fetus, unless we evolve parthenogenesis — this is the rearranging of existing matter. None of the matter that makes up you was “created” (in the same sense as the KCA uses) by your parents. Not even a newborn — it’s highly unlikely that, once born, the atoms that comprised the sperm and egg are incorporated into your being any more. You’re a collection of matter that’s self-arranged, built out of the constituent components from your environment. WLC’s “have I existed eternally” is a dodge, a strawman. The sub-atomic particles that make up WLC existed eternally, as far as we know, but they haven’t always been WLC, nor will they continue to be WLC indefinitely. By that token, the bits of carbon that constitute your being could very well been in any number of your predecessors, or other life forms — especially if you, as I do, have a habit of consuming biomass at breakfast, dinner and supper.
If you can prove that the universe did not or could not exist in some other state prior to the initial “creation event”, then I’ll accept the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Since you can’t presently falsify the postulate that the matter was always here, despite the fact that the postulate is perfectly falsifiable, then the KCA rests on a conflation of “creation” where matter is poofed into being ex nihilo, and “creation” where existing matter is rearranged into new and transient forms. The former is unproven and untenable in the face of the laws of thermodynamics, and the second is self-evident in every analogy used by every creationist ever to try to imply a “designer” for reality. A watch implies a watchmaker because watches don’t self-arrange in nature by any process in the laws of physics that don’t involve a sentient life form. Everything else implied by these incurious theists — the stars, the planet, mountains, rivers, and life itself — can.
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Daniel M.
June 5, 2011 at 5:02 am CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am a strong admirer of Dr. Craig as his work is very respectable and it might do everyone well who reads this blog to at least buy one of his substantial books (sometimes internet debates and articles aren’t enough).
Be that as it may, I understand your position here. There may seem to be a “hole” in the argument whereby we assume that nothing was there before something. But, I believe that is precisely what Dr. Craig is arguing, although any defeat of the KCA won’t have any detrimental affects to the Christian faith. Our religion simply isn’t contingent on the nuances and nature of the cosmos – whether it be how they were ordered or how they came into being (in particular); we of course believe that God did indeed create everything, both in our space/time and in anything else that we can’t particularly describe.
But, I still think he has a strong argument from a causality stand point. I think someone asked him a question about this in particular on his website and answers. It might of been from the Krauss debate he recently had:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=q_and_a
Cheers!
jthibeault
June 5, 2011 at 12:04 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What you’re saying by this, Daniel, is that regardless of how this universe was created, Christians know it must needs have been created by God. What I’M saying, however, is that there’s no evidence that this universe was even created, and that the materials that comprise it may have been in existence eternally.
If I’m right, there’s no need for the very causality into which you shoehorn God. The universe itself is the uncaused cause, not your deity. If it can be claimed of an entity for whom there’s no positive evidence, then it certainly can be claimed for an entity for which there is.
You’re definitely right about the defeat of the KCA being no huge blow to conventional Christianity though. The vast majority of Christians don’t even attempt to make such nuanced, logical arguments as Craig does.
Though this isn’t what physicists are claiming — they rather claim that “nothing” is an unstable state, and that the very laws that exist in this reality are what “created” the matter to start off with. I suspect that the math behind this is better evidenced than my eternal universe postulate, but even that is better evidenced than the personal deity postulate. You have to make several leaps between “one or more divine beings sparked this universe” to “it was definitely Yahweh and Jesus was his son / him and everything in the Bible account of Creation is historically accurate”. And every one of those leaps is too far.
Daniel M.
June 5, 2011 at 1:44 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I admit that there is a possibility of a “god-of-the-gaps” argument here. I believe both sides of this spectrum simply don’t know enough yet to make any concrete claims, which is why Craig is making a philosophical one with some contemporary science to possibly back up those claims.
Here is what I don’t want—I don’t want to stop searching or stop investigating this. Some Christians may feel it unnecessary to even postulate how the Universe started because, indeed, “we already know…” but that would be a travesty in and of itself to stop the growth of science and discovery because we’re arrogant enough to think we have all the answers in a tight little sealed can, ready for anyone who asks.
I don’t know how the universe started exactly or how it came into form. I do know that God is the ultimate creator and this is without all the scientific evidence anyone can bring me…
“By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” Hebrews 11:3
Contrary to other ancient near east creation accounts, God is transcendent—greater than the “powers of the world” (sun, moon, stars, the whole cosmos)—because He created it. This is in stark opposition to the other ANE creation accounts where the moon god fought the sun god and the ocean god didn’t agree…etc….
Anyway, I see your point, but ultimately, for me, God is creator over all and the primacy of my faith depends on His nature in this way.
Dan J
June 5, 2011 at 9:05 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hi Daniel! Haven’t chatted here with you in a while. Hope all is going well.
That’s the problem in a nutshell, I think. Theists are performing science backward. They start with the answer they want (God created everything.) and work backward to try to find evidence and theories to support the answer they require.
Are you saying that no evidence could convince you that theistic creation as you currently understand it is not valid? I just want to be sure I understood the second sentence in the blockquote above.
Daniel M.
June 6, 2011 at 1:25 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No. I am saying that I believe this automatically — it is an “a priori” belief for me.
In terms of there being evidence that refutes my claim to theistic creation, I’m not sure what that would look like, much the same way evidence that God exists in the positive would look like.
I think we all start from the presupposition that makes a distinction between what is “natural” and “supernatural.” This causes to expect something prior to finding it. We want, for example, God to “show up” for us. Well, what would that even look like? Sure, we have ideas. Maybe its some illuminated mist that moves around or maybe He shows up as an old man with a beard. The problem is that we assume we know what the evidence will look like or what God will look like.
This is part of the problem with Behe’s theory — it could very well be that we don’t fully understand the flagellum and in the future we will at some point have more detail as to how that amazing biological mechanism works. As a result, we won’t be so quick to say…”Its impossible for it to have happened by chance.”
But that brings me to another point. In the ancient days, such as when Genesis was written to the people, they didn’t make this distinction between natural and supernatural. God was a part of every function.
It doesn’t matter that we can look at something and explain its physical properties and how they work together – that doesn’t destroy its meaning as a function in the world and it doesn’t take away the fact that God exists.
Both sides have been guilty of looking at all of this from the wrong perspective.
Daniel M.
June 6, 2011 at 1:28 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And this Morning, William L. Craig responds to this video….
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=q_and_a
jthibeault
June 6, 2011 at 7:21 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And his reply suffers from the exact same conflation of “creation” with “creation” I mentioned in the post above. His only example to counter the “we have not observed things to begin to exist ex nihilo” was “you began to exist”. I mean, Jesus H. Santos. It’s like he doesn’t have a rebuttal. All he can do is call the argument “a joke”, a “mare’s nest”, and so bad he should include it in his top-ten bad arguments.
This is a legitimate flaw in his argument. He will not address it. And he’s the guy most theists look up to? Seriously?
jthibeault
June 6, 2011 at 8:08 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Okay, given a bit of time to chew this over, I think he’s taking all too seriously the “this proves God does not exist” argument, when I strongly suspect Theoretical Bullshit was using it to illustrate how utterly useless the Kalam argument is. If you boil away all the unproven assertions in the premises in both arguments, the whole conversation amounts to “God did it” / “Nuh-uh”. Or, alternately, per my own interpretation of the counterargument, “did what exactly?”.
Daniel M.
June 10, 2011 at 1:57 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So what is the flaw exactly? That the premises are assumptive? He does parts of his published work that dive into the details. He offers the most basic form of the argument, but if you get his book “Reasonable Faith” you can see the details.
jthibeault
June 19, 2011 at 1:15 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, sorry Daniel, didn’t realize you’d replied here again. It’s been… crazy lately. To say the least.
I haven’t read his book, nor do I intend to, unless someone gives it to me at no cost. Reviews of it seem to indicate that it is not much more detailed than his debating tactics on the topic, though, so I’m not sure I’d glean anything new from it.
As I’ve said before, Craig is a talented debater, and he even knows a good deal more of the terms of the field of philosophy than I care to learn. My major problem with his dismissive handling of TheoreticalBullshit’s argument is that it again depends on a conflation of “creation ex nihilo” and “creation via rearranging of matter”, for which I’m sure there are philosophical terms better suited to the argument. His premise that creation can only happen caused, refers to mechanistic creation where existing matter is rearranged. We have never observed creation ex nihilo, and have no reason to believe it can occur at all. The theistic “God created the universe” is creation ex nihilo. One cannot call his first premise correct where it conflates definitions like that.
I don’t believe the Kalam argument against God posed by Theoretical Bullshit necessarily works, mostly for the same reason I don’t believe Craig’s argument FOR God works — because they presume part of the argument, e.g. how the universe was created. We don’t know how the universe was created — we don’t know if it existed in a form different from what we know, but with all the matter available to be rearranged, before it was “created” in the form we know now via the Big Bang. We also don’t know if there are mechanisms (e.g. branes of reality colliding) by which it could be “created” in the sense of being rearranged naturally — like, the collisions of the branes caused the spark of the bang. All of these ideas are presumptive. They are the realm of theoretical physics, until the math gets worked out and we have a scenario that fits all the math and all the evidence parsimoniously. Throwing a deity into the equation is premature and unnecessary multiplicity, violating Occam’s Razor.
Rich Wilson
June 21, 2011 at 9:29 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Not to derail, but did you know that guy is a daytime soap actor?
http://friendlyatheist.com/2011/06/21/atheist-wins-daytime-emmy-award/
jthibeault
June 21, 2011 at 9:53 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Holy shit. I had no idea. What’s worse is, at my workplace the lunch room TV is often tuned to soaps. I might theoretically have seen him and had a “holy shit” moment in public.
Well then. Thank you for sparing me that kind of embarassment.
B9
March 13, 2013 at 8:11 am CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sorry to rehash a two-year-old topic, but I just came across this and had a few thoughts.
You said:
[Craig's] only example to counter the “we have not observed things to begin to exist ex nihilo” was “you began to exist”. I mean, Jesus H. Santos. It’s like he doesn’t have a rebuttal.
I think you will find that WLC has given a rebuttal here, and a strong one at that. When he says “you” began to exist, he is speaking about more than just your body, he is also speaking about your mind, or your “self.” While you may personally reject metaphysical dualism, it is not an unreasonable position. In a nutshell, to accept it is to say the mind is something different from the stuff which makes up the body. The mind itself is not reconfigurable bits of matter (even if the brain is); it is in fact something that has come into being in an entirely different way that a table made by a carpenter (which is arguably just a rearrangement of matter). To say that your mind has always existed is contrary to your experience, and it is a position which is difficult to justify. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to conclude that “you” have not always existed (even if the matter you are composed of has).
The mind/body distinction is only one way in which you can understand Craig’s argument that things do come into existence/being. You can also apply the reasoning to things which do not have such a mind/body split, say a plant. The argument would be that the plant is actually a new thing, despite the matter which makes it up having existed since the beginning of (or almost at the beginning of), the universe. You might look into Plato or Aristotle’s conceptions of forms. Despite their different understandings of forms, the principle as applied to a plant would be to say that when the matter was reconfigured in such a way as to make a plant, a new thing is actually created. That is, the existence of the thing is more than just its matter; the matter has either given rise to a new form or has come to an approximation of an existing form. Of course, these philosophies require that one thinks of forms as real things. But the point is, again, that such a position is reasonable, and it lends itself to the argument that things do come into and out of existence all the time.
To say WLC has not responded to your arguments is to say that his pointed response escaped you. While you may not agree with mind/body dualism or the real existence of forms, they are not unreasonable positions and they do require a serious response.