Kalam Cosmological Argument

[rikuoamero]

A certain user (who will go unnamed) has promised to discuss the Kalam Cosmological Argument, but has so far failed to do so. I thought I might as well introduce it, defeat the argument and so get it out of the way.
The original cosmological argument is thus
P1: Everything that exists must have a cause.
P2: If you follow the chain of events backwards through time, it cannot go back infinitely, so eventually you arrive at the first cause.
P3: This cause must, itself, be uncaused.
P4: But nothing can exist without a cause, except for God.
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

Sharp readers will notice that P3 and P4 contradict P1 (God, an uncaused cause, somehow exists despite the fact that P1 doesn't allow for such a thing), so William Lane Craig introduced the KCA.
Here is the KCA

P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause
P2: The universe began to exist
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause
and we are led to believe that that universe-causer is God.
William Lane Craig is famous for using the KCA, and in order to demonstrate the soundness of P2, he offers the following in defense

(2.1) An infinite temporal regress of events would constitute an actual infinite.
(2.2) An actual infinite cannot exist.
(2.3) Therefore an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.

Eagle eyed readers will spot a problem in 2.2. An actual infinite cannot exist? That right there refutes the notion of God, who is often described as being an infinite mystery.

Another way to defeat the argument is to show that the conclusion is in the premises. The Kalam arguer says that everything that begins to exist has a cause. So what about things that do not begin to exist? Oh they don't have causes, says the arguer.
Okay. Give me an example of a thing that does not have a cause.
The only thing the Kalam arguer will say is God. There is nothing else that does not have a cause.
So basically, there are two sets or two types of things, objects that begin to exist and objects that do not begin to exist. However, the ONLY example for the second group that the Kalam arguer will say is God, so the second group might as well simply be labelled God (why bother with the longer label?)

So if we plug that into the KCA
P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. Whatever does not begin to exist does not have a cause (this second sentence was implied in P1 of the original form of the KCA above)
P2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: The universe has a cause and that cause is God.

Now...
P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. God does not have a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist
Conclusion: The universe has a cause and that cause is God.

Wait what? Look what happened there. The conclusion is in the premise, thus making it an invalid logical argument, just like the Modal Ontological Argument, which had the god it was trying to prove exists as being unable to fail to exist in the preface to the argument (thus making it rigged).

[Willum]

[Replying to post 37 by jgh7]

There is no Biblical reason to believe God is uncaused.

The Bible does not suggest that God pre-existed the creation of the Earth by much.

Since the Earth is young, galactically, and very very young universally.

There is no reason to suspect this God is uncaused, uncreated, or anything really.

[Blastcat]

I want you guys to bring all of these so called objections and refutations to the official KCA thread (mines).

I prefer this unofficial one.. HERE. Atheists are waiting for a theist to prove the KCA in here. Doesn't seem to be happening so far.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 36 by Willum]

OK, I think we can do this:
Name one specific thing that begins to exist. I think this conversation will resolve issues to everyone's satisfaction.

My boredom begins to exist.

My one liner above began to exist but then is destroyed by this second line.

I begin to be silly.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 40 by For_The_Kingdom]

I am not under any obligation to satisfy your impatience regarding a thread that I maintain and continue to maintain that I will eventually post.

It's not that I'm impatient. I'm actually an incredibly patient person. It's that I was getting tired of you mentioning this future KCA thread of yours and what you planned to do with it. So I decided to get the KCA out of the way by creating the thread myself and objecting to the argument.

but I would rather deal with ONE argument at a time and once that heat from that argument suffices, move to the next one.

Fair enough. You are the only person I know of here on this site though who deals with strictly the one thread (at least that I've seen). I and my non-believer buddies seem to have no problem dealing with multiple threads.

Fine. All I ask is that my thread not be taken down/off because of this thread

That's something you'll want to discuss with the mods. I honestly don't know whether they'll insist on you staying on this one or not.

--------Response to historia-----

Why do you imagine that proponents of the kalam argument merely "assume" these things? Every one I've read provides philosophical and cosmological arguments to support the claim that the universe has a cause, and offers reasons for thinking God is that cause.

Hmm. Not the same as my experience then. Whenever I've come across the KCA, the proponents just toss in these assumptions. I think I saw WLC do this, and I'm not aware of him actually going into detail justifying this; however, I do have to say, I last watched WLC talking about it a few years back and time may have muddled my memory.

I'm afraid I still don't understand your objection here.

Again, perhaps I'm not explaining myself fully. The theist looks at the universe and says "The universe has a cause and that cause is a First Cause, an uncaused cause (otherwise we'd have an infinite regress) and that cause is God". They say it MUST have a cause and say that that cause is uncaused. However, this is (hypocritical? best word I can think to use here). Atheists like myself demand an explanation for God, which they refuse, by saying God is uncaused; the exact same response they reject for those people who say the universe is uncaused.
Remember, the point of the KCA, the goal of it, is to prove God (ignore for now that the theist doing this is not using evidence, but is seeking to prove something in the real world through pure logic alone).
Look at P1. "Everything that begins to exist has a cause". This is worded such to get God 'off the hook', so to speak, from the problem of the original cosmological argument where it stated that everything that exists has a cause. P1 implies the second sentence "Everything that does not begin to exist does not have a cause". However, if we imagine these two things as sets, Set 1 (Objects that begin to exist) and Set 2 (Objects that do not begin to exist), the second set would need more than one object in order to avoid being a mask for God. However, the theist who proposes KCA will say that only God is uncaused, and un-beginning.
This is an entirely unwarranted assumption on the theist's part, that God is uncaused. Where they won't allow the universe to be uncaused, they move it back one step and allow for God to be uncaused, and it seems to be a wholly arbitrary choice on their part.

[rikuoamero]

The following questions must be answered by theists for people such as myself to take Kalam seriously. I took the following from Dan Barker
http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_ ... amity.html

In order for the Kalam Cosmological Argument to be salvaged, theists must answer these questions, at least:

*Is God the only object accommodated by the set of things that do not begin to exist?
If yes, then why is the cosmological argument not begging the question?
If no, then what are the other candidates for the cause of the universe, and how have they been eliminated?

*Does the logic of Kalam apply only to temporal antecedents in the real world?
If yes, this assumes the existence of nontemporal antecedents in the real world, so why is this not begging the question?
If no, then why doesn't the impossibility of an actual infinity disprove the existence of an actually infinite God?

*Is the universe (cosmos) a member of itself?
If not, then how can its "beginning" be compared with other beginnings?

[Willum]

[Replying to Blastcat]

Your boredom begins to exist.
Therefor you have demonstrated, you are the god of boredom.

See, this line of reasoning is highly productive...
next?

[historia]

P1: Everything that exists must have a cause.

We then must ask what caused the "first" cause.

As I mentioned above, proponents of the cosmological argument have historically never argued that everything must have a cause. That is a popular mis-presentation of the argument, which you're most likely to see on counter-apologetics websites. It is a straw man.

The original CA DOES say that. It's in my OP, it's premise 1. Everything that exists must have a cause.

Let's be more precise here, Rikuoamero.

First, there is no single, "original" cosmological argument. Rather, various philosophers and theologians over the millenia -- including Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibnitz, Swinburne, and others -- have developed a family of arguments that have come to be known collectively as the cosmological argument.

Second, what you have in the OP is a summary of that argument. But that summary was not taken directly from any of the authors mentioned above. Rather, you copied it from a website, probably Iron Chariots or another atheist advocacy site.

What we have in the OP, then, is not the cosmological argument as it has been historically articulated by philosophers and theologians, but rather what an anonymous opponent of the argument thinks these authors were saying.

This is a critical distinction, since the objection that you and Joey have raised turns on the exact wording of the first premise: If "everything" has a cause, you argued, then why doesn't God (who is presumably part of "everything") have a cause?

But Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibnitz, and Swinburne never said that "everything" has a cause. That is simply the word the anonymous author you cited chose to use. And so, in refuting it, I'm afraid you've only knocked down a straw man argument.

Now if you meant to say the Kalam cosmological argument, then yes, you're right. Just be more careful in what you say. There is that difference between the original argument and Kalam.

Believe me, I try to be very careful in my choice of words. A single word can lead people down rabbit holes, as we've just seen.

You are right that there is a difference between the various versions of the cosmological argument, but it is not this distinction between "everything has a cause" and "everything that begins to exist has a cause", as you've argued. The former is a straw man argument, and has no basis in the history of this argument.

Rather, the difference between the versions is that the traditional (= Thomistic) version is not, strictly speaking, dependent on time. Whereas the kalam version is expressly about the temporal ordering of causes.

[Donray]

I found this interesting paper on the Cosmological Argument.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmo ... -argument/

I don't understand why Christians cannot state from what material God created the universe. Likewise they should be able to state and prove what material God is made of and how its mind operates.

[For_The_Kingdom]

Fair enough. You are the only person I know of here on this site though who deals with strictly the one thread (at least that I've seen). I and my non-believer buddies seem to have no problem dealing with multiple threads.

That is because there isn't that much disagreement among you and your comrades, and there aren't many Christian apologists (or otherwise) on here engaging with you you guys...so therefore, your average posts consists of short interactions among fellow disbelievers. There are no long, drawn-out posts that are a mile long of quotes and responses to quotes, like the posts that I respond to, which makes my posts even longer.

When you are responding to at least 5-6 people where you have to respond to a mile long post, it becomes mentally draining.

So it is easy to be active on multiple posts when the average post consists of a paragraph or less...but that isn't the case with me.

[Inigo Montoya]

[Replying to historia]

Would you mind then laying out the various versions you find persuasive?

Or do you not find any version persuasive?