All right, so she’s not a child any more, but she’ll always be my baby girl … and she doesn’t seem to think highly of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Does anyone?
(Yeah, she’s probably going to beat me up tonight for calling her a child. “So silly a mature 17 year old can see through it” just isn’t as punchy.)
I know just how you feel. My daughter is 22, has a 1st degree in biology, is half way through her PhD, and I still think she is 8 years old! I think all dads stick at that age with their daughters. Yes, I know it’s silly.
“she doesn’t seem to think highly of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Does anyone?”
Absolutley. It wouldn’t keep comming up if no one thought well of it. Think about it PZ: Your opponents keep scoring at least temporary victories in science education and public/social policy. There must be some arguments that some people think very highly of that you don’t.
Brian
yeah, that argument (which is also in Aquinas’ “Proofs” for god) has annoyed me since I first encountered it in a (Christian) philosophy class, since I’m very comfortable with the concept of infinity: the universe is infinite. In any case, isn’t “the cause of the universe is eternal” the same as accepting infinity? If you believe in god, god’s [love/wrath] is infinite…so the argument fails on many, many levels.
P.S. sorry for the shameless self-promotion, but I’m glad this annoys other people, too
Odd that the fundies that love this argument are never able to argue, using such impeccable logic, exactly why the necessarily existing god(s) also happen to want us to cover our heads in temples, avoid menstruating women, hate pigs, hate Syrians, not work on ~52 arbitrary days of the year, not carve statues, avoid certain mood altering organic molecules, use certain mood altering organic molecules, burn herbs, burn candles, burn incense, burn animals, burn people, bow our heads, talk to the gods, wish each other peace, kill each other, eat tiny wafers, drink a little wine, drink no wine, get married, get married to multiple people, don’t get married at all, put holes in ourselves, don’t put holes in ourselves, mark our foreheads, don’t get tattoos, put fruit in little cubbyholes, etc. (A more ehxaustive list, though by no means complete, can be found here.)
Great. So you think you’ve proved (a) god(s) exist. Prove yours do(es).
I get the feeling I’m going to kick myself for asking, but what is this one a reference to?
I love how P2 flatly contradicts P5, right there in the argument. The very path of reasoning would better serve as a proof of the *impossibility* of god. (If it didn’t have absurd axioms.)
I thought P3 (“Everything which has a beginning must have been caused by something”) had been disproven by quantum mechanics. What causes an alpha particle to come into being during alpha decay? There is no causitive event; it is a statistical process.
“The cause of the universe must be personal.”
Once again, my belief that the universe was designed for worms is solidly reaffirmed.
Humans are just an overly-elaborate way of improving diversity in the food supply.
PZ – In light of this post, and your recent complaint about Hop on Pop: are you trying to tell us something? Are you losing control of the she-creature you so cavalierly spawned? Should we be calling on Adult Protective Services to begin an investigation?
The Kalam is a failure of imagination: I can’t imagine how the universe can start from nothing. Therefore it must have been God.
But physicists know that particles spontaneously appear and annihilate one another all the time. When we take into account the universe’s zero net energy, we’re almost there… tantalisingly close, just not quite.
Of course, even if true the formulation only proves a Deistic God, as Brownian says.
Brian, when people desperately WANT something to be true, they will hold onto whatever the best argument they have for it being at least not completely ridiculous. That’s nothing like and inference to best argument.
In a debate on this point once I showed my opponent that while there is an infinite series of intergers, and an infinite number of prime numbers, the primes are a subset and the interval between any two primes could be analogous to our universe’s timespan. I don’t pretend to understand higher maths, but if I get a little of set theory, there are “different sized infinities,” with Aleph 1, 2, and 3. Please, someone who knows this stuff correct me or elucidate. Point is, I can’t believe someone as clever as Craig actually advances such a dubious argument.
Except that I think he is like a man who owes the loanshark a great deal of money and so comes up with many convincing proofs that the lottery ticket he bought just HAS to have the winning numbers.
“there must be some arguments that some people think of very highly that you don’t.”
How many people voted for W twice? The fact that a lot of people think highly of something doesn’t make it correct, true, or intelligent.
The fact that I ate dim sum yesterday.
I was going from Abrahamic traditions (most relevant to Kalam arguments) to religious traditions in general. It takes a special kind of pigheadedness to read a list of religious traditions with yours included, and say to yourself, “Yup, that sounds about right. All those other things are just stupid, though.”
Actually, I sort of like the argument. Indeed, it is the only thing that keeps me from considering myself fully atheist. But I don’t think it proves anything more than what Brownian seems to concede it might prove. Forget menstruation, pig-hatred and cubbyholed fruit. The “god” that the cosmological argument (to my mind) proves is one about which nothing sensible can be said other than that it (whatever it is) exists.
Now, perhaps this god is, in some way, “personal” or “intelligent” or “omniscient” or what have you. (Who knows, perhaps it even listens to prayers; though it certainly doesn’t seem to answer them.) But even if is, we have no way of knowing that; I’m not sure the questions are even meaningful. And absent any real ability to say anything about this god, it would seem wiser to follow Wittgenstein’s famous aphorism. Indeed, Wittgenstein didn’t go far enough. Not only is there no point in talking about this god; even if you decide on the basis of the cosmological argument that it must exist, there’s no point even in thinking about it any farther. It’s just not very interesting.
But as for all the things in Brownian’s parade of horribles, of course they can’t be proven by the cosmological (or any other) argument. They’re not god (or gods, or even God); they’re just religion. And religion — all of it: the frequent horrors, the many, many sillinesses, and even the occasional nice bits — is simply a human invention.
Good refutation. She’s sharp.
The biggest problem, as I posted over there, is that the Kalaam argument rests on a lot of unwarranted assumptions that aren’t immediately obvious. It assumes that the “creator” was intelligent and created this universe purposefully when for all anyone knows, it could have been a giant extra-dimensional space squid that bumped into something one day and bang, there we were. Since we can make no arguments about the existence of this “creator”, we certainly can make none about the characteristics thereof.
I’ve always thought it to be a flimsy line of reasoning. If you were to follow this line of reasoning, and you can assume that whatever-ambiguous-entity is eternal, why couldn’t you make the same assumption about the universe itself and remove the unnecessary addition?
In any case, isn’t “the cause of the universe is eternal” the same as accepting infinity?
“Eternal” in this context means “outside of time”…
I’ve heard the “no infinite time” argument before but I can never quite make sense of it. As far as I can tell, it goes something like this: “Suppose there are two events, A and B, separated by an infinite time. And suppose that you’re immortal, and alive to see event A. On the next day, you’re still an infinite time away from event B, and the same for every day after that. No matter how long you live, you’ll never get any closer to event B, which means that event B can never happen”.
The flaw in the argument is that it assumes that “infinity” is just a number like any other. But saying “time is infinite” doesn’t mean that there can be two events separated by an infinite time; it just means that for every event B, there’s a later event C.
I remember reading various philosophy arguments back in college similar to that one. They always lost me when they jump to “and therefore God exists Q.E.D.”. It’s sort of like the marketing strategy of the Underpants Gnomes, both are full of holes that are obvious to anyone but themselves.
Craig can’t conceive of an infinite collection? Maybe he should take a course in set theory. I managed to get my head around some of that stuff back when I was an undergrad taking Philosophy of Math as an elective — what’s his problem?
Yes, it’s pretty mind-bending — but no more so (and I would say, less) than traditional doctrines like the Trinity, the Incarnation and the whole omni* thing.
It seems to me that an entity that can act as the cause of the universe does not a priori need to be all that complex. All it really has to be able to do is make a singularity expand.
One could postulate that said entity could evolve and become more complex as the universe evolved and became more complex, but that would have nothing to do with any understanding of god by any religion that I am aware of (and admittedly I am not familiar with them all.)
My (very relevant) Random Quote:
“Quantum events have a way of just happening, without any cause, as when a radioactive atom decays at a random time. Even the quantum vacuum is not an inert void, but is boiling with quantum fluctuations. In our macroscopic world, we are used to energy conservation, but in the quantum realm this holds only on average. Energy fluctuations out of nothing create short-lived particle-antiparticle pairs, which is why the vacuum is not emptiness but a sea of transient particles. An uncaused beginning, even out of nothing, for spacetime is no great leap of the imagination.
Taner Edis, Is Anybody Out There?”
No, the assumption that all opinions are based on arguments is clearly false.
(cross-posted to Skatje’s blog)
By P5, the cause of the universe is eternal.
Therefore, said cause must exist for an infinite length of time.
By P6, said cause occasionally chooses to cause events.
If a being exists for an infinite length of time, and occasionally causes events, then in that infinite length of time it must cause an infinite number of events.
By P2, this is absurd and impossible. :)
Greg Peterson:
The set of all integers, the set of all positive integers and the set of all primes have the same cardinality, aleph 0. You can put the positive integers and the primes into a 1-to-1 correspondence:
1 — 2
2 — 3
3 — 5
4 — 7
5 — 11
6 — 13
7 — 17
. . . and so forth. This is just what we do when we say “the first prime number”, “the second prime number” and so forth. With a little shuffling, we can also map the full set of integers onto the primes:
0 — 2
1 — 3
-1 — 5
2 — 7
-2 — 11
3 — 13
. . . and so on. The set of all real numbers, however, is larger than these, as Cantor showed with his diagonalization argument.
Mrs.Tilton, I am curious. What exactly do you like about it? Doesn’t it leave the what caused God question just as unanswered and you still in the exact same position?
Just asking.
I think if she’s still living at home, you get to call her “child”. At least every now and then, and certainly when you’re bragging about her.
What causes an alpha particle to come into being during alpha decay? There is no causitive event; it is a statistical process.
Observation? To me the most freaky implication of quantum theory as regards to cosmology is that while it does not say anything about a creator it, in many models, strongly implies that there must have been an observer in order for the universe to occur.
But hell, unlike this facile little piece of so-called logic I don’t expect the universe as a whole (or God for that matter) to conform to my observational biases.
Harp:
“How many people voted for W twice? The fact that a lot of people think highly of something doesn’t make it correct, true, or intelligent.”
Couldn’t agree more. That wasn’t the initial question or my point. I don’t think much of the cosmological argument myself. I recognize that many do, and this is why the debate can rage.
brtkrbzhnv: “No, the assumption that all opinions are based on arguments is clearly false.”
Interesting point. I would say that theisits, and yes even creationisits, are often convinced by their own arguments. I, and I think most of us, think they are bad, oft debunked arguments, but they keep comming back like a trick candle.
Someone thinks well of the cosmological and other arguments. Again, if no one did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Brian
Sorry, Brian – I imputed meaning to your comment that you didn’t intend.
#24:
See #18. “Eternal”, in this context, does not mean “existing for an an infinite length of time”. It means “existing outside of time” or “not subject to the passage of time”. If the universe is a film, frame after frame happening in temporal sequence, eternity is the film can.
Of course this begs the question of how a timeless entity can choose to cause anything.
Why are people trying to prove their god’s existence anyway? Isn’t blind faith supposed to be more blessed? (Doubting Thomas and all that)
John Marley: Maybe. I like Douglas Adams’ Babel Fish response to that one. ;) I know it’s meant in snarky sarcasm, but I still like it.
Brian
Blake, that is very helpful. Thanks so much.
sarcastro, as I understand QM, observation does not bring anything “into existence”, it merely resolves it into a particular quantum state. “existence” and “non-existence” are not valid quantum states. And even then, “observation” does not necessarily imply a conscious observer. Simply some physical interaction that forces the state to assume a definite value.
I also do not “grok” the distinction between an infinite time and “eternal”. “Outside of time” is too vague.
I dunno who Kalam is but Kalam couldn’t possibly know any of that.
Why does Kalam treat god like a math problem or something? It’s the god of the frakin universe for crying out loud. :P Kalam couldn’t possibly know if any of that stuff is absurd.
I’m with ya SteveM, I’m not saying (or, rather, I am badly misstating) that observation causes existence, but that for the pre-big bang singularity to collapse into the quantum state of the big bang requires an outside influence of some sort according to some models (Copenhagen model? I can’t remember) of QM.
It has been suggested that the wave-form collapse itself might qualify as an “observer” and it has been proposed that the whole idea is irrelevant without a time-space continuum in which the quantum event can take place… but it’s still a fascinating line of inquiry with a whole bunch more real science behind it than Aquinistic apologetics like this tripe.
Picture a map of Mars. There are lines of latitude and longitude on that map that make sense in the context of the map, but they’re irrelevant to your location, since you’re not on Mars.
Now imagine a four-dimensional space-time diagram depicting the entire history of the universe, from the Big Bang onward. (Ignore two of the spatial dimensions if that helps.) Grid lines on that diagram mark off the spatial dimension(s) and the time dimension. But that’s irrelevant to some entity standing outside the diagram. In particular, the time dimension that applies within the universe need not apply to anything outside it. That’s the eternity we’re talking about.
Gregory (@39): Yes, I have that image but what I don’t “grok” is the idea of something existing in that “eternal” and acting at some point in that eternal to bring time into existence. Like the fecetious “time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happenig all at once”, if there is an eternal where time does not exist, wouldn’t everything happen all at once? That is, without time how do you distinguish the point at which this being chooses to create the universe?
Is that what passes for philosophy ? Pure, unadulterated silliness is all I see.
Anyway this is much, much weaker than the Argument from Feline Perfection, which I have (intelligently) designed. It goes like this:
P1 : Man is an imperfect creature
(proof : well, just look around you. Or in a mirror)
P2 : The cat is a perfect creature
(proof : what proof do you need? Don’t you have eyes? Anyway if you still don’t understand, it’s just more proof of P1)
C1 : Therefore, mankind was created in order to serve the cats
C2 : Therefore, the deity who created this universe is Bastet
I can’t imagine any possible theology that would be better than this.
Jim @26,
Doesn’t it leave the what caused God question just as unanswered
No, not really. If you accept the argument, that isn’t a question at all; the first cause (which we will call “god” here, for convenience more than anything else) doesn’t have a cause. SFAIK Aristotle was the first to make this argument. Unlike Aquinas, who dashed some holy water on Aristotle’s τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά and called it Christian, he could not have cared less about infinite regression in time, as he thought the universe eternal, with neither beginning nor end. Rather, he found offensive and impossible the idea of infinite regression of causation. Like Aquinas (but for very different reasons), I believe there is no infinite regression of time. But I think I do agree with Aristotle on the idea of infinite regression of causation.
Over the past couple of years, I have found myself (without even quite realising it until I had finished) embarked on the project of trying to figure out what is the minimum necessary to believe about God (or perhaps the maximum one can supportably believe about God, which amounts to the same thing). And for me, the answer is something like Aristotle’s unmoved mover. YMMV, obviously; and as I said upthread, even if I am right, there isn’t much one can say about this “god” and it isn’t very interesting to think about in any case.
I don’t even like the term “deism” to describe my beliefs because, as I think I have said before in comments on this site, the deist god is still far too anthropomorphic for my taste. My god isn’t a person, it’s a verb or perhaps a principle. It’s also, as I’ve said, not anything to waste time thinking about outside the context of the cosmological argument. But I do think that, if there is to be existence at all, there needs to be an uncaused first cause wrapped around it; and that is why I cannot in honesty stick one of those attractive big red As on my website. (Don’t think I don’t regret the fact!)
It is sometimes said that no ontological argument has ever convinced anyone except its inventor. This one may have surpassed that by a small margin, but only a small margin.
Still, there are bits of the logic that are impressive. A free act in the sense intended appears to be a contradiction, and it would be a contradiction for an eternal being in the sense intended by the argument to bring anything into existence at a particular time, so it shows a certain kind of pseudo-consistency to connect freedom to creation in the way the argument does (pseudo rather than actual consistency because, of course, contradiction=inconsistency).
I love how people use the phrase “outside time” as if it had any logical meaning. Time is what allows us to measure change states. Something was one way, but now is another. There used to be a time when god existed but the Universe did not, then god decided to act and make the Universe. Oh, and time, too. Which of course couldn’t have been passing before it existed, which means god wouldn’t have been able to change states, since there was no time to act in.
Back in the days of the ancients when time was considered eternal, it was possible to conceive of an eternal god who existed within time. That’s what the bible says. The Alpha and the Omega. From the beginning of time to the end of time. But since Einstein formulated the concept of space-time and it became obvious that time wasn’t eternal, that it was nonsense to talk about a “time” before the Universe existed…well, that when all this metaphysical gibberish about existing outside time began to take hold. It makes no sense, and it really isn’t meant to. It’s just a bit of misdirection theists use to preserve a very poor (but pathetically one of their best) arguments for god’s existence.
It was the strongest argument I had ever seen.
For the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
When they have proved that each of those “premises” is actually true, then they have a valid argument. Good luck because I think 5 of them are spurious at best.
Sorry but we have long had a phrase for this. Garbage in, garbage out.
Precisely.
As I mentioned on Skatje’s blog, the most embarrassing thing a philosopher can do is to stumble into the domain of science and blithely assuming they can still philosophize freely. It’s a recipe for taking as axioms assumptions that look logical but are in fact wrong.
That’s it. Consider this a Molly nomination.
To deny this would be to deny the existence of stupidity. And that would be stupid. :-)
Precisely.
As I mentioned on Skatje’s blog, the most embarrassing thing a philosopher can do is to stumble into the domain of science and blithely assuming they can still philosophize freely. It’s a recipe for taking as axioms assumptions that look logical but are in fact wrong.
That’s it. Consider this a Molly nomination.
To deny this would be to deny the existence of stupidity. And that would be stupid. :-)
Mrs Tilton:
Are you familiar with Nick Bostrom and his theory of simulated reality? It’s along the same lines as this Kalam Cosmological Argument, but is atheist in its phrasing (well, if you distinguish between anonymous super-intelligent aliens and God, that is). I’m just curious; it seems to me that if the cosmological argument carries weight, the simulated reality argument should be equally attractive (and better framed) for people who aren’t looking for an excuse to Believe In God.
Bostrom has a better conclusion too: either a simulated universe is impossible, uninteresting, or we’re probably in one. The write-ups I’ve seen focus on the last point of course, it makes a better headline. I haven’t read any of Bostrom’s work myself so I don’t know how much weight he puts on the probability that we’re in a simulated universe. “Probably” is too strong for my liking, but I think I could agree to “non-zero”.
For my own part these are not problems I worry about. What good is a theory that says our universe looks just like it occurred naturally, but in fact it didn’t?
Here’s my half-arse attempt at attacking this Aquinas type logic:
http://philosophicalneuron.blogspot.com/2008/01/five-ways-to-logic.html
If she’s going to punch you anyway, you might as well call her your “CUTE little DARLING.” ‘Cos, you know, what’s she going to do, punch you twice?
0 = -1 + 1
Hey look! TWO somethings from nothing!
There is zero net change, so wouldn’t such a system comply with thermodynamics?
Why not just a quantum fluctuation, for example?
(I’m an apathetic agnostic, too, but simply because the existence of an ineffable deity isn’t falsifiable and because we don’t really know if parsimony applies to this kind of thing.)
Didn’t Aquinas or Augustine or someone say that God could have created an eternal universe because he’s 1) outside time and 2) omnipotent anyway?
Why not just a quantum fluctuation, for example?
(I’m an apathetic agnostic, too, but simply because the existence of an ineffable deity isn’t falsifiable and because we don’t really know if parsimony applies to this kind of thing.)
Didn’t Aquinas or Augustine or someone say that God could have created an eternal universe because he’s 1) outside time and 2) omnipotent anyway?
Quantify the probability of “uninteresting”. Good luck.
The same as the “God is an omnipotent liar” theory, aka YEC: it simply isn’t falsifiable. Off it goes into the trash can.
As mentioned in comment 22, it not only does comply, it is happening all the time. The presence of virtual particles has been repeatedly measured — for example look up the Casimir effect.
Quantify the probability of “uninteresting”. Good luck.
The same as the “God is an omnipotent liar” theory, aka YEC: it simply isn’t falsifiable. Off it goes into the trash can.
As mentioned in comment 22, it not only does comply, it is happening all the time. The presence of virtual particles has been repeatedly measured — for example look up the Casimir effect.
So if God “is outside of time” is what is meant by “eternal,” the if God wants to smite me for saying he doesn’t exist, how does he manage to get the lightning bolt to strike on the right day?
To put it another way, if somebody asks me if I think other universes exist, I say I really can’t know, since if I can see it, it must be part of this universe. If God is outside the universe, how could he interact with something in the universe?
You just gotta love the way God apologists assert screwy things (pick any of the propositions in that argument) without justification and then act as if they were obviously true.
AIB @48,
no, I am not; or at least, I hadn’t been till you called him, and it, to my attention. Thanks!
David Marjanović said:
I would be very surprised to learn if either of them had used the phrase “outside time.” While they pondered eternity (endless time) often enough, I just don’t think the Medieval mindset would have cause of conceive of something being “outside” time. However, such phrasing can increasingly found in modern interpretations of Aquinas’ first cause argument.
But even if either of them had said it, it’s still metaphysical gibberish without any intelligible meaning.
David Marjanović:
To play devils advocate … Isn’t the nature of matter itself a necessary precondition for virtual particles to exist? Statistically they obey the conservation laws, for instance, did those laws exist in some platonic state before the matter that would follow them came into being?
If the regularities in nature that we observe and call laws are simply descriptions, then what makes nature behave in such a way that those observations are valid? To put it more simply; how did nature acquire its nature?
Mrs.Tilton,
I just don’t see the unmoved mover being realistic as an argument option if it entails any complexity as to have just ‘popped’ into existence or always been. The simplistic seems more probable IMHO.
They’re not god (or gods, or even God); they’re just religion. And religion — all of it: the frequent horrors, the many, many sillinesses, and even the occasional nice bits — is simply a human invention.
Ri-i-i-i-i-ight.
Today I had to respond to “It’s just a theory, not fact” and “Separation of church and state isn’t in the Constitution” — so Kalam’s argument seems like a diamond of logic compared to those.
The girls of this generation are going to make us proud. It’s always cool when a child can think outside the box – it’s even cooler when they can express themselves in a way that displays confidence. Good work, Skatje!
I just saw Sean Carroll’s talk at the Beyond Belief II conference, and it was the best refutation I’ve seen to this so-called “argument”. Not that it doesn’t completely break down right after the first “premise” as put by your daughter, but Carroll’s explanation of how General Relativity can’t predict accurately that there ever was an event that started the Big Bang, because it fundamentally breaks down at those energies/distances was a great fresh way of looking at it.
Since the Big Bang theory was reached indeed by means of GR, it is very possible that the universe didn’t actually have a beginning. His talk was great, and he put forth other enlightening examples and analogies. That’s what I got from it anyway, it was 3:00 AM.
Is that a challenge? :P
Does Kalam ever tell us what caused the first cause?
Kalam is Malak backwards!!!!!
That has to be telling.
#64,
He answered a help wanted ad in a local weekly.
Quentin Smith has some interesting arguments for a self-caused universe that attempts to account for the universe without reference to a transcendent designer. See his “The Reason the Universe Exists Is That It Caused Itself to Exist” in
Philosophy, Vol. 74, No. 290. (Oct., 1999), pp. 579-586.
Interesting stuff.
I just suggested that your daughter ask you to refer to her as “My Dear Young Lady.”
I trust that my suggestion won’t cause any problems.
Oh my.
I’ve been studying the Kalam Argument and Craig’s defenses of it for almost thirty years now since Craig published it in 1977. I must say, between ignorant appeals to quantum mechanics, to the quick and dirty dismissal of certain premises, I have to admit that most people here are simply making straw men of the argument and not fully understanding the force of it.
Don’t you dare claim that Craig is ignorant of physics or mathematics. Anyone who says this has not read his:
“Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity” (with Quentin Smith(!); “Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration;” “The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz;” “Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (also with Quentin Smith); or his back-to-back defenses of the A-Theory of Time in: “The Tenseless Theory of Time” and “The Tensed Theory of Time”.
I’ve been studying this guy for a LONG time; he’s a very, very intelligent and top-rate philosopher and thinker. He’s gained respect from some very prestigious and scientifically -literate atheists and defenders of naturalism: Adolf Grunbaum, Quentin Smith, Owen Flanagen, Micheal Tooley, Nicholas Everitt, Michael Martin, Philip Kitcher, Austin Dacey, Theodore Drange, J. L. Pollock, Paul Kurtz, Yuri Balashov, Edwin Curley, Jack Smart, Howard J. Sobel, E.J. Lowe, and many other highly reputable scholars.
This is not an argument for the validity or soundness of any of his arguments, but simply that those who oppose his arguments have given him respect in the field. Rightly so.
Don’t underestimate William L. Craig, folks. He is certainly smarter than most everyone here and more scientifically literate when it comes to physics than nearly everyone who trolls this board…
Now, I think there are conclusive refutations of this argument. But they are much more complex than any of the hand-waving you’ll find on this blog. Confer with Quentin Smith’s writings (of whom I think Craig has one-upped on many occasions), or those of Adolf Grunbaum’s, and not those of a teenager.
To be honest, his project of incorporating a Neo-Lorentzian inerpretation of Special Relativity in order to make it acceptable to the A-Theory of Time is very, very ambitious and worthy of a great deal of scholarly and intellectual merit. Shame he wastes his time with mind-numbing “Christian Philosophy,” apologetics, and Jesus-Is-Lord arguments…
Oh, and dismissing the causal premise of the argument is a particularly desperate and incredibly costly move–one that shows a particular ignorance of contemporary physics and of causation in general. Saying something akin to “Quantum mechanics shows that there are uncaused causes” or “there are causeless effects” is particularly shortsighted. Denying the Principle of Sufficient Reason; “From Nothing, Nothing Comes,” invites many claims of supernaturalism and a myriad of contradictions (cf. “The Principle of Explosion” in logic).
Tisk tisk, Naturalists, tisk indeed. *Don’t* cut your head off and deny *causal closure*!!! (Google that); you’ve basically refuted yourself if you do. It shows a great deal of illiteracy and short-sightedness when one evokes Quantum Mechanics to allow for “uncaused effects.”
Fools: Go learn something about causation before you undermine and willfully abandon one of the principles of reasoning, science, and metaphysical naturalism. Your ignorance and illiteracy are doing yourselves and many others sympathetic to atheism, freethought, and secularism an incredible disservice.
Don’t get me wrong, folks: I’ve seen, read, and listened to nearly all of his debates, watched many of his videos, and read lots of his books. He is an apologist through-and-through; much of his claims are the most pernicious, sophistical, and inane I’ve heard. He does research for purposes of conversion, not scholarship. Read his “Reasonable Faith” sometime; you’ll see that he openly denounces any evidence that contradicts his inner, infallible “witness of the Holy Spirit” confirming his beliefs.
He could argue a circle around most people here. It takes much more to attack his arguments than what is presented. Do your research. All of the claims here he has responded to in some venue or journal article or in some way; many of them are very articulate and powerful.
I’m no Craig apologist, folks: I oppose a great body of his arguments though the years, but I just want everyone to be honest and not mob-caricature him.
Please excuse the grammar and spelling errors above. The post was written with haste!
I have. To the best of my recollection, they varied from unremarkable to dreadful. Not that it matters, particularly. . . .
Also, not that there’s much to be added to Blake Stacey’s reply, but what is with people reminding us of how smart someone is in order to take their silly arguments seriously? Of course, if that person is indeed very smart and has proven it (Newton is probably the epitome of that personality) we’ll probably listen with more attention, but that doesn’t make any of his alchemy love any more valid than if some crackpot had said it.
And another thing, it seems to me that the people who claim to have an argument for god are the ones that assume unknown stuff. People who counter-argue saying that quantum mechanics does allow for this or that are not saying that it did happen that way, only that it could have, thus breaking the initial argument for god pretty easily.
Aaron. Is that an argument from impressive publication list? Or an argument from he knows a lot of people?
Just kidding. :P
An argument that makes use of self-declared knowledge of quantum mechanics is, of course, uncertain.
Just like some other arguments that are uncertain, except to a noticeably lesser degree. Such as explanations of life that do not entail purposeful intervention.
The distinction seems apparent and it seems so from both sides of the argument (astonishing but true!) and adherents on both sides appear locked in an endless battle that always devolves to a single question that no one is presently qualified to answer: “How do you account for the beginning of life?” As trite as the question may be I think (I do not, repeat NOT believe) that life is the baggage checked in when this universe got on a flight from there to here. I have no evidence, no witnesses with credible evidence and no original work to show for my thinking but I assure you, I certainly don’t believe all the things that I think! That is, to say, “I don’t know,” don’t bother me none!
At any rate, evolutionary theory, if it ever had anything to say about the “origin” of life, did so after hours, over a couple cold ones while letting its dedicated focus on a single notion fade for a few hours. To accommodate contemplation like the body contemplates a nice, long stretch that makes all its limbs relax. In this way they can enjoy being human again for a moment before forging ahead once more.
Of course humankind was created to serve cats. But it was Ceiling Cat who did it. :-)
Ceiling Cat is actually a lady. QED.
Aaron, prefacing an argument by emphasising how long you’ve been studying it as an immediate five or ten points on the Crackpot Index. If the argument is valid, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been looking at it for two seconds. If it isn’t valid, which is clearly the case as it contains a selfcontradiction, then it doesn’t matter if you’ve been looking at it for two thousand years. Ergo, fail.
Oh, and more crackpot points for claiming that a thought experiment (philosophical ideas about nothing coming from nothing) supercedes empirical observation.
If everything needs a cause, then the universe’s cause needs a cause. If some things don’t need causes, then why does the universe need one?
Heh. Is it just me, or does aaron at #69 read like the courtier’s reply?
And we’re supposed to give respect to such a person because . . . ?
Sorry, but by your logic we should take Lynn Margulis’s 9/11 conspiracy theories seriously because her work on the origin of mitochondria was groundbreakingly good.
Expertise in one field does not automatically bar someone from making a fool of themselves when straying onto another, especially when they do so for ideological reasons.
Erm, why? Particularly when whichever side of the fence you come down on the possibility of uncaused effects punctures a huge hole in the God Hypothesis (if everything does need a cause, what caused God? And if everything does not need a cause then why do we need this God bloke to understand the Universe anyway?).
If modern physics doesn’t have interesting things to say about the God hypothesis as above, why should we ignore them just because they make you feel uncomfortable?
Oops – not sure what happened to my blockquote there – the first paragraph of my post above is supposed to be in quotes.
Herein we need not waste our time and intelligence on something so obviously flawed that any honest and sincere thinker with requisite skills can see it as fallacious within minutes. We can have some fun and share some thoughts.
But we can not ignore the fact that deceiving oneself and/or the general public by spinning elaborate, eloquent, intentionally puzzling, and emotionally appealing arguments has been the job of theologians and religion deluded intellectuals who turn apologists for millenniums. They are well practiced and artful, and not dummies.
Thus I agree with Aaron’s point (if I understood his meaning correctly) that we should not engage such intellectuals unless we are armed, trained and physically, emotionally, and skillfully up for a world-class fight. This blog is not a debate so one can use some economy of words necessary to call bullshit bullshit. But Aaron I think is warning us to not publicly engage an intellectual (especially a deluded one)untrained for the specific fight and without the other skills necessary to win a public debate.
ConcernedJoe:
But the best argument should win, not the best arguer… that’s the whole point of science ain’t it?
The Kalam thingy is interesting, but fails on various levels. Philosophers take their logic too seriously. Some things work at the scales – temporal and spatial – that we live, and we want, by ‘common sense’, that this should be true at the quantum scale. Add to that extra dimensions, and our apprehension of what ’cause and effect’ really means may not be applicable always, which is why there is always a contradiction in the First Cause arguments (cf Lilly de Lure, #79). Wrapping Kalam in increasing levels of sophistry isn’t good enough to prove God.
If as Aaron says we are not the intellectual equals of Craig, more fool Craig for using his considerable talents “not in a disinterested search for the truth, but in order to prove conclusions that are acceptable to him.”
The version of Kalam Skatje quotes is a particularly stupid one. Even if we grant everything up to C2, the remainder of the argument essentially reads “let’s assume the cause is God. Yay God!”
Brilliant. But of course, this isn’t the only way we can go. We could propose instead that this Universe was caused by an event in another Universe. Does this lead to an infinite regress? Only if one assumes that every cause must in some sense precede its effect. But that is precisely the type of causality that QM precludes, aaron’s blathering notwithstanding. Absent that assumption, we can invoke a closed loop of causation, with Universe A causing Universe B, and Universe B causing Universe A. The entertaining part is that this is actually permitted by the rules of GR, and indeed there exist cosmological models which do just that.
Not everything that has a beginning has a cause. Numerical sequences don’t. *Numbers* arguably are “discovered” out of Platonic space – for example, 2 wasn’t caused or invented, but is abstract and (dare I say) “transcendent”. An iterative mathematical formula, say: x->x+1, is similarly an abstract “thing”. But then so is a computer program, and indeed the rules the computer uses for determining the next state of its memory banks.
The upshot of this is that the universe, IF it is computable at all (and all indications are that it IS), could in principle be reduced to an equation, where x[t] is the state of the universe at any given point t, and x[t+1]=f(x[t]), where f() is a function that we don’t quite know yet.
But if x “exists” as a number, and f() “exists” as a function, then our universe can’t be said to “exist” as anything other than a mathematical abstraction, although it will seem perfectly real to us (since we’re implemented within the mathematical structure).
With me so far?
No?
Oh crap – here – read this paper by Max Tegmark – he’s a clever physicist chappie, and his Mathematical Universe Hypothesis is great. Essentially, you do not need any gods, and the universe could “start” at any arbitrary point. There isn’t even any need for a t=0 – just kick off your equation with any arbitrary value of x.
It would solve a lot of problems in physics, but it does kinda mean that it is entirely possible that our universe could have “started” at some point well after the Big Bang.
Enjoy :-) No gods required, and Kalam goes down the toilet (with many of William Lane Craig’s equally vacuous arguments).
By means of omnipotence. It’s called a miracle, duh.
That’s an interesting question, but nobody knows yet if it’s a wrong question.
Sounds interesting, but isn’t that just another case of philosophers blithely traipsing into the domain of science without noticing it?
That’s an ad hominem argument. Being smart is no protection against ignorance.
Look. He says every event has a cause (premise 3). He’s wrong. Without premise 3, his entire argument vanishes in a puff of logic. If I were any good at math, I’d love to see his reformulation of the theory of general relativity, but being a genius is no protection against big glaring mistakes or even stupidity. Newton’s alchemy has been mentioned, let me add Newton’s theological “studies” on the apocalypse, or Einstein’s resistance to Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation, or Darwin’s lamarckistic theory of heredity.
The first ghit for “causal closure” is this, which doesn’t help here at all. For crying out loud, it’s a metaphysical theory. It goes into metaphysical speculations about psychology, as also explained by the second ghit. It ignores physics. It ignores Heisenberg instead of even just trying to prove him wrong. It’s an argument from ignorance, pure and simple.
Then what does cause the decay of a radioactive nucleus, other than the fact that the laws of physics allow it to decay and delimit the probability that it will do so within any given timespan? Put up or shut up.
It’s not just you at any rate…
I bet you made a typo.
Blsdokcqouteblockqutoablokcquoteblcokquotebökcquoteblckowoueblockqutoelbockquoteblcokqutoeblkquoteblckquoteblkoqutoeblockquote is an incredibly hard word to type, probably because it forces you to change hands so often on a QWERTY (or, in my case, QWERTZ) keyboard.By means of omnipotence. It’s called a miracle, duh.
That’s an interesting question, but nobody knows yet if it’s a wrong question.
Sounds interesting, but isn’t that just another case of philosophers blithely traipsing into the domain of science without noticing it?
That’s an ad hominem argument. Being smart is no protection against ignorance.
Look. He says every event has a cause (premise 3). He’s wrong. Without premise 3, his entire argument vanishes in a puff of logic. If I were any good at math, I’d love to see his reformulation of the theory of general relativity, but being a genius is no protection against big glaring mistakes or even stupidity. Newton’s alchemy has been mentioned, let me add Newton’s theological “studies” on the apocalypse, or Einstein’s resistance to Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation, or Darwin’s lamarckistic theory of heredity.
The first ghit for “causal closure” is this, which doesn’t help here at all. For crying out loud, it’s a metaphysical theory. It goes into metaphysical speculations about psychology, as also explained by the second ghit. It ignores physics. It ignores Heisenberg instead of even just trying to prove him wrong. It’s an argument from ignorance, pure and simple.
Then what does cause the decay of a radioactive nucleus, other than the fact that the laws of physics allow it to decay and delimit the probability that it will do so within any given timespan? Put up or shut up.
It’s not just you at any rate…
I bet you made a typo.
Blsdokcqouteblockqutoablokcquoteblcokquotebökcquoteblckowoueblockqutoelbockquoteblcokqutoeblkquoteblckquoteblkoqutoeblockquote is an incredibly hard word to type, probably because it forces you to change hands so often on a QWERTY (or, in my case, QWERTZ) keyboard.H, Humbert,
I don’t think you’re giving them enough credit. Aquinas’s answer to the question of what God did before creation was that time was part of creation, there was no such thing as “before” until that moment of creation, and God exists independently from His creation.
SeanH@86
Is the implication then that God created himself at the same time as the universe? If that’s not circular!
Or am I just betraying that this is all way over my head?
Peter
Peter,
He was saying that time’s part of God’s creation and that He’s not bound by time the way we are. Imagine you’re God. You create a universe that looks like a globe and the lines of longitude running north to south represent the dimension of time. North is the past and south is the future, so your universe begins from a single point in time at the north pole, expands as time passes south to the equator, and then contracts to single point in time at the south pole and ends.
The question of what God did before the creation is like people in your globe universe asking, “What did Peter do north of the north pole?” Augustine’s answer is that north-and-south is a property of Peter’s creation, there’s no such thing as north of the north pole, and Peter’s not bound by His creation the way globe-people are.
Just realized as I typed that last that it was Augustine’s answer way back in the 300s or so and not Aquinas.
I know it was touched on above, but: the postulate that every event has a cause should never have survived the discovery of radioactive decay (let alone the discovery of the theory of QM that explains it.)
So much for creating Man in His own image!
In any case, it seems clear that the Christian god is bound by time — at least the god of Bible interacts with people (and thus is “in time”) and causes events, and seems to be bound by the linear nature of time (notions like “promises” and “covenants” and “later” make no sense if there is no linear time). To the exent that god interacts with the world, it interacts with time.
God must see “events”, and thus god participates in time.
But an act of creation is fundamentally subject to time. First something isn’t, then it is. That’s kind of the definition of the word.
Just a quickie – there *is* a difference between an explanation and a post-hoc rationalisation. Notions such as “god is outside of time” are classic PHRs, and NOT explanations. The question of what god was doing “outside of time” is a perfectly valid one – otherwise our universe (time-bound as it is INTERNALLY) is nonetheless EXTERNALLY as timeless as the god itself, and therefore in no sense could the god have been said to have created it – they would be part of the same eternal structure.
So not only is god an *unnecessary* postulate, it starts to look like a completely ridiculous one.
I’m not trying to support the argument or anything, I was just pointing out that educated Medieval Europeans would have been very comfortable with the notion of something existing before creation being “outside of time” because it had already been around for about 1000 years. I personally think the concepts of something “outside of time” and God are meaningless nonsense.
RE#84: The universe was created after you started reading this sentence.
Isn’t there something intuitively offensive about an apologetic that relies on sophistic arcana, the way it implicitly bars the person of average intelligence from faith, and thus, from heaven? It says, “The god I am presenting accepts two kinds of people, namely, a special breed of genius who understands things hidden to normal minds; and the ignorant person, easily gulled, who because he is prevented from understanding great proofs must be seduced with children’s stories and shiny objects.” God, are you there? It’s me, Margaret. I don’t have 30 years to study Craig’s work or to learn all the intricacies of advanced, and the world is full of baubles and yarns. So if you ARE there, show yourself. It’s just an insult to the whole notion of divinity that it hides behind obscure constants like Oz behind that curtain. Any being with such a warped system for approval–only prodigies and puddingheads need apply–is not worth our notice, much less our affection.
Yeahbut Greg, that god will send you to HELL unless you study Craig for 30 years and/or get a lobotomy.
LOL #95, but yes, that is correct :-)
As far as Craig is concerned, he, like Plantinga, McGrath and others, is a poseur. He likes to use big words and philosophical language to bamboozle the little guy, but when you re-express what he’s saying in conventional English (which is not that difficult to do, so one wonders why he doesn’t do it himself – or, rather, it’s perfectly obvious why he doesn’t do it himself), there’s bugger all to it.
Much of his waffle is trying to turn the “There is no evidence for gods” statement into a “We can prove god does not exist” statement, which is trivially easy to disprove, but is essentially a straw man.
My advice: don’t be scared by these twits. Their arguments are crap, and you can take crap, sprinkle it with glitter, etch intricate designs onto its surface, adorn it with spangly accessories, but crap it remains.
Skatje is 17 and already a sophomore in college? She’s an impressive girl.
I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million times, PZ, but how do you pronounce “Skatje”?
“Scott-ya”.
I found this site quite by accident and have spent the last hour reading each post. I just prayed for each of you and would like you to consider Pascal’s wager. You have nothing to lose and everthing to gain.
Dad,
And a hearty “fuck you” right back atcha!
Meanwhile, I warn you that the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn’t mind atheists, but he can’t stand Christians. If you don’t repent and apologies to him, you will spend eternity being smothered in hot bolognaise sauce, and slurped.
Hey Dad, I refute Pascal’s Wager and hope you are a poe
http://kelosophy.blogspot.com/2008/08/regarding-that-damn-wager.html
Oh and on the topic of praying for us
http://kelosophy.blogspot.com/2008/09/ill-pray-for-you.html
“Dad” #102,
Pretend to believe in a god (which one?) as an insurance policy? Any god worth his salt would have a special hell for burning such cynical cowards.
“Kel” #104,
I claim no moral high ground. Mentioning the fact that I had prayed for you was to make YOU aware that a complete stranger cares about you, period.
“Emmet” #105,
Pascal’s wager should not be an insurance policy but a starting point. From what I have read, the majority of the people in this forum appear to be educated. If this is the case, how many of them came to believe in all this science without studying it first? If Pascal’s wager encouraged just one person to dig a little deeper then it is worth all the paper it has ever been printed on.
“Nick” #103,
I like bolognaise sauce. How hot are we talking?
Mentioning the fact that I had prayed for you was to make YOU aware that a complete stranger cares about you, period. – Dad
Liar. It was a deliberate insult. Hence my response.
“Nick” #107,
If I insulted you with my remarks, I sincerely apologize.