Counter the kalam cosmological argument.

[Digitised]

Unless you are unfamiliar it is a popular argument used by the likes of William Lane Craig and other apologists, it states essentially that everything ultimately has a cause and therefore that cause must be 'insert god here', and is followed up typically with additional arguments supporting the historicity of that speakers preferred religious figures in an ad-hoc fashion to assert that they know who the 'inserted god' is.

The main angle used is that everything can be traced back to one point (assuming a very rigid structure of time not even supported by physicists) at which something must have either created the universe or made the necessary jolt to spark existence into being.

This argumet also sometimes asserts rather fallaciously that there was once 'nothing' hence the creation of energy or matter was necessary, completely ignoring the possibility of other unknown states or assuming nothing to be absolutely nothing.


My argument against this position does not actually deal with the above, it actually examines the terms of gods existence in relation to reality, using a few simple logical statements, which as far as i can so far see satisfy a strong conclusion.

Anyway here it is:

If God exists, he must be real.
He cannot exist and not be real,
nor can he be real without existing.

If existence is real, then it is, simply by being.
Existence itself may not be necessary,
but reality would judge it as non-existant.

Reality is independant of god,
It judges what is and what is not,
by what exists and what does not.

God cannot exist if existance is not real,
Existance can be real with or without god.
It is God who is contingent on existence.

Therefore God cannot be the author of existance,
God cannot judge what is real and what is not.
Any and all Gods are subject to these absolute limits.




In conclusion, assuming God is a first cause is absolutely fallacious since it fails to address how god can come into existence (by which i am not referring to a physical existence but an absolute existence) without existances initiation having been addressed.
All power is in the hands of natural or absolute laws which are not subject to the toying of supernatural forces or special pleading by those who claim God is their author. These laws do not require God/s, but God/s absolutely must depend on them for his/her/their existance and dominion.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

As far as I know the Kalam cosmological argument makes to many non sequiturs even to be taken seriously.
Firs we do not know that everything that began to exist had to have a cause, even assuming that everything that begin to exist had to have a cause that does not follow that this same cause had to be something else physically in the world instead of a condition for example.
Even disregarding the previous, it does not follow that such cause must be a magically human like being with pre-middle-age human characteristics, even if we were to assume that the cause had to be metaphysical it could as easy be caused by a metaphysical inanimate blob without an active decision at it. But they never address the metaphysical blob.

Andromedaswake has already address this argument and he poked a completely different hole by saying that there is no evidence that the universe ever began to exist and as far as we know it could as well be that the universe existed in some other form and it always did so.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Your argument seems to also relate to the Transcendental Argument, which basically states that there are non-contingent rules/laws/knowledge that don't depend on human existence, and therefore "God" made those rules/laws/knowledge. Problem is that if these rules are non-contingent then they don't need an author and don't prove anything, in the same way that claiming that things must have been created proves "God" until you point out that if "God" exists in any real sense then it is subject to the same need for a creator.

 

[Digitised]

What im trying to do is imply an order, or hierarchy of significance demonstrating where God can and cannot be.

I use the mechanisms of identification to assert that if god is real, he must exist. Which immediately stops theists from distorting the meanigs of 'reality' and 'existence' since those are the 2 goals they are trying to achieve in a debate to prove their God.
They want to successfully prove that God is real and exists, so i start the ball rolling by defining God by those very terms.

Im not trying to address kalams points, im trying to show how futile the whole argument is because it starts too late in the chain.
It assumes God can exist before anything else can, so im calling out the theists who claim this is possible with this series of statements.
Im well aware Kalam as a shambles, and i even vaguely stated most of what you both said in my opening, and yes i also saw AW on blogtv talking about kalam too, so im well aware of it.

Im hoping this argument however proves flexible enough to expand into debunking other aspects of Gods supposed handiwork, such as morality, physical and metaphysical constants, mathematics and anything where theists are assuming God came in first and forged the basis of.

 

[Demojen]

If God exists, he must be real.
He cannot exist and not be real,
nor can he be real without existing.

If existence is real, then it is, simply by being.
Existence itself may not be necessary,
but reality would judge it as non-existant.

Reality is independant of god,
It judges what is and what is not,
by what exists and what does not.

God cannot exist if existance is not real,
Existance can be real with or without god.
It is God who is contingent on existence.

Therefore God cannot be the author of existance,
God cannot judge what is real and what is not.
Any and all Gods are subject to these absolute limits.

Before I respond, I will state I am not a theist. I am a humanist. That said, I found fault in your logic argument.
It appears you're creating a tautological fallacy by making ascertions before logic.

If existence is real, then it is, simply by being.
Existence itself may not be necessary, <----These two statements seem to contradict.

Reality is independant of god,<---Based on?

Any and all Gods are subject to these absolute limits.<----Based on?

You've made alot of ascertions without supporting arguments.

 

[Digitised]

Im happy to elaborate.


Existence: If existence is something that is (opposed to nothingness), then it would have the property of being real and existing.
Existance may however not be necessary, there may not have to be anything at all. In which case the property of non-existence is real.
So either way there can be something or nothing, whatever there is or isn't is subject to the properties of reality.

Reality: This is a property of whether something is real in essence or not real.

so -
If god is real, then he really is.
If unicorns arent real, then they aren't.

meaning-
God cannot make a unicorn and have the unicorn not be real.
Being real is a property God cannot alter. Something is, or is not.

Gods based on limits: Basically if nothing exists (physical, metaphysical, supernatural etc), then God would not exist in any form and neither would any forces capable of summoning existence into being. If God has the property of not being real, then he by definition is not real. You cannot exist and not be real, or not be real and exist.

God/s is/are contingent on being real and existence being real in order for their existence to be possible.


I hope this makes sense, im not making blind assertions im relying on logical statements which i admit are limited to what we best know. But as long as 1 can never be 2, and 1 always equals 1 (or 0.99999.... for the mathematicians ) then there is little to dispute here.
I am not suggesting this is an absolute answer, but i feel based on what we know to be solid and constant it agrees with well.

 

[Demojen]

"Existence: If existence is something that is (opposed to nothingness), then it would have the property of being real and existing."

Existing, yes. Real? Not necessarily.
Non-Existence is an absence of existence. That is a concept and not a thing. The concept is real. The thing is not. If it were a thing, it would be no-thing and thus it would not be a thing. It contradicts it's very existence.

Essentially, all *things* exist. There is no *thing* that does not exist.

You're not talking about God. You're talking about existentialism.
If A is A, then A can not -not- be A.

"Basically if nothing exists (physical, metaphysical, supernatural etc), then God would not exist in any form and neither would any forces capable of summoning existence into being."

I truly hope this statement isn't alluding to the idea that forces can not exist without God.

"If God has the property of not being real, then he by definition is not real. You cannot exist and not be real, or not be real and exist."

Concepts exist.
Do you exist? How could you argue you do?
"I think therefore I am" is a concept based on empiracle evidence but there is nothing beyond sensory data to support the claim, so it remains a concept at it's root. Therefor concepts exist as much as things exist.

"God/s is/are contingent on being real and existence being real in order for their existence to be possible."

You're blurring the lines between subjective and objective reality here.
Again, concepts exist.

 

[Nogre]

I think you're going through a lot of work that you don't really need to do. At the point where you say everything requires a cause, yet that god is the "uncaused cause" then there's an inherent contradiction. If everything requires a cause, you don't need god; you need infinity. At the point where there can be an uncaused cause, why can't the universe be that uncaused cause instead of god? It's one less step, and just as feasible.

Though I admit that your line of logic certainly is interesting...

 

[mandangalo18]

asking for an example of something that "began to exist" usually shuts down kalam

 

[Pouya]

I think there's a misunderstanding of the argument here.

The argument for a first cause is provoked by the problem of an infinite regress. How did we arrive "here" if there was an infinite amount of steps required in getting here!

There are only two comprihensive solutions to this problem.. One of them is that there was a first cause, a begining, such that there wasn't an infinite number of steps from that begining to here and now. The other more rarely used solution is that we arrive here at finite intervals.. the "loop" solution as it were.

But the first cause need not be a personal entity with intention.. it could very well be a natural phenomena that lawfully takes place in empty universes. It could also be what happens at the end of a loop, when universes become empty once more.. the phenomena sets things in motion all over again.

The only option not allowed is to think we arrived here by taking an infinite number of steps on the way!

Tthe cosmological argument fails, true, but not for the reasons some people have sighted here.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I think there's a misunderstanding of the argument here.

The argument for a first cause is provoked by the problem of an infinite regress. How did we arrive "here" if there was an infinite amount of steps required in getting here!

There are only two comprihensive solutions to this problem.. One of them is that there was a first cause, a begining, such that there wasn't an infinite number of steps from that begining to here and now. The other more rarely used solution is that we arrive here at finite intervals.. the "loop" solution as it were.

But the first cause need not be a personal entity with intention.. it could very well be a natural phenomena that lawfully takes place in empty universes. It could also be what happens at the end of a loop, when universes become empty once more.. the phenomena sets things in motion all over again.

The only option not allowed is to think we arrived here by taking an infinite number of steps on the way!

Tthe cosmological argument fails, true, but not for the reasons some people have sighted here.

The "first cause" doesn't even work in the formulation used in Kalam, because it runs into the exact same "infinite regress" problem, and once they claim that it is a "personal entity with intent" it becomes even more problematic.

Of course, I think this thread was started more to show a general argument against "God" and not necessarily an argument against Kalam specifically. I'm not sure what good that does, because it seems that it concedes the rest of the argument in order to refute the specific conclusion. In reality, Kalam fails from the beginning, and we shouldn't even allow anyone to go past the first premise of the argument.

 

[ExeFBM]

I never understood why time being infinite is written off so easily.

The argument is usually "If time was infinite, then we'd never reach now, because there would be an infinite amount of time before it". Isn't this basically arguing that no events could ever occur in an infinite amount of time. Isn't that patently false?

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I never understood why time being infinite is written off so easily.

The argument is usually "If time was infinite, then we'd never reach now, because there would be an infinite amount of time before it". Isn't this basically arguing that no events could ever occur in an infinite amount of time. Isn't that patently false?

Well, yeah... the same way that an infinitely long reel of film would still consist of finite existent frames of film, infinite time does not mean that individual moments cannot exist. The claim simply doesn't match reality.

At the same time, theists who make those sorts of claims are debunking the version of "God" that they invent to circumvent the problem of infinite regress. An "infinite, timeless God" of the sort they propose could, by their own reasoning, never arrive at the point where it created the universe. Also, when you add in omniscience, you are forced to arrive at the conclusion that this "God" would never create anything, because knowing ahead of time every possible outcome takes away any motivation to do anything at all.

 

[Pouya]

I never understood why time being infinite is written off so easily.

The argument is usually "If time was infinite, then we'd never reach now, because there would be an infinite amount of time before it". Isn't this basically arguing that no events could ever occur in an infinite amount of time. Isn't that patently false?

Your mistake in this case is thinking of it as "time". Think of it as steps... No destination can ever be reached if you are required to take an infinite number of steps to get there.

It's not so much "time" that's a problem.. it's the causal chain.

If we did assume infinite time the first cause concept would no longer work, but the loop notion would. That's why the clever theists often say God exists outside of time and that he created time along with everything else.

After all, in all of eternity why did the first cause, cause something when he did, and not earlier! what changed? and then you need to exxplain what caused THAT and the cause of the cause and so on....

In a loop there could be infinite time, and we would still arrive here at finite intervals thereby avoiding any infinite regress... despite infinite time.

 

[ExeFBM]

Your mistake in this case is thinking of it as "time". Think of it as steps... No destination can ever be reached if you are required to take an infinite number of steps to get there.

It's not so much "time" that's a problem.. it's the causal chain.

I think the misleading point of this argument is treating 'now' as the destination, instead of just another set of steps along the way. In an infinite time, there can be no destination, only a continuing journey. If you take our perspective of 'now' away from the model, we could occur anywhere along an infinite line. Causality will still occur, at any point along the line. Any of those causal steps could be an action or reaction to us and what we experience. I see us, as a "mid-point" in the line, instead of the destination.

A destination cannot be reached by taking an infinite number of steps, but there are an infinite number of roadside attractions along that journey. We're one of them.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Your mistake in this case is thinking of it as "time". Think of it as steps... No destination can ever be reached if you are required to take an infinite number of steps to get there.

Yes, maybe... but YOU are not required to take an infinite number of steps to get from one second to the next. Time is NOT a series of steps, it is a chain of moments, and while the chain may or may not go on forever, there's no reason why you can't get from one link of the chain to the next, because there aren't an infinite number of steps between the links.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Also... it is interesting that this conversation is probably more in-depth as to the issue of infinity and time than has been engaged in by anyone calling themselves apologists.

 

[Pouya]

I think the misleading point of this argument is treating 'now' as the destination, instead of just another set of steps along the way. In an infinite time, there can be no destination, only a continuing journey. If you take our perspective of 'now' away from the model, we could occur anywhere along an infinite line.

You're missing the point. It's not about time at all.. it's about the sequence of events. the causal chain. It dosn't matter if there is an infinite sequence of events ahead of us, that is not the problem, so whether we view this as a "pit stop" or a "destination" is irrelevant.

You cannot arrive "here" regardless of how you wish to view "here" if it reqired an infinite number of steps to get here! Yes events can occur in an infinite chain, but only if it had a begining.

If i were immortal I could count forever, so long as I start with 1, and went to 2 and 3 and so forth.. But I could not ever arrive at "infinity".

If you postulate an infinte chain without a begining than you are effectivly saying that in order to reach any ring in that chain (whether it be now or yesterday or a billion trillion years ago), you'd have to count to infinity first... which happens to be impossible.

Clearly this notion is nonsensical...

Yes, maybe... but YOU are not required to take an infinite number of steps to get from one second to the next. Time is NOT a series of steps, it is a chain of moments, and while the chain may or may not go on forever, there's no reason why you can't get from one link of the chain to the next, because there aren't an infinite number of steps between the links.

Time is not an object.. it's a messure of movement (or change, whatever floats your boat). Units of time are based on one movement or another and are therefor not equable nor relavent. So again, the mistake is to think of an infinite regress in terms of "time". Of course we can get from one moment to another, so long as the distence between them is not infinite! But given that there was an infinite distence required we would never arrive!

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Time is not an object.. it's a messure of movement (or change, whatever floats your boat). Units of time are based on one movement or another and are therefor not equable nor relavent. So again, the mistake is to think of an infinite regress in terms of "time". Of course we can get from one moment to another, so long as the distence between them is not infinite! But given that there was an infinite distence required we would never arrive!

Time isn't movement or a distance, but even looking at it that way it is nonsensical for you to claim that no individual moment would ever happen if there are an infinite number of them. The idea that there might have been an infinite number of yesterdays has no bearing on the existence of what we call "today".

Anyway, it doesn't matter, because this has nothing much to do with Kalam.

 

[Pouya]

Time isn't movement or a distance, but even looking at it that way it is nonsensical for you to claim that no individual moment would ever happen if there are an infinite number of them. The idea that there might have been an infinite number of yesterdays has no bearing on the existence of what we call "today".

Sigh!

You didn't get a single thing right! Ordinarily I would try to explain it to you in a different way.. but somehow I don't think you'd care.

Oh well.