What is wrong with the Kalam Cosmological Argument?

[9-10ths_Penguin]

And I told you that with simultaneous i mean that there is not a gap of time between the cause and the effect, the definition explicitly removes the necessity of time.

No gap of time... as in they happen at the same time? I hope you can see my issue.

Really that’s an “objection” well feel free to reformulate premise 1

Everything that begins to exist has ether 1 cause or many causes

... which turns the conclusion into "therefore, the universe had some number of causes."

Not exactly useful for monotheism unless you can come up with an argument for why the universe must not have more than one cause.

 

[Milton Platt]

I personally don’t believe that numbers nor moral values are abstract objects, implying that they are not “mind independent” but some philosophers hold that view, I was just pointing the fact that “timelessness” is not exclusively a “theistic thing”


But the burden proof is on your side, if you what to say that timeless objects are impossible then you have to provide some justification.

no, I don’t. I only have to reject your undemonstrated claim that they do exist.Until You support your claim, there is no readon to believe it.

But that doesn’t matter, now that you have clarified your position. Thanks.

 

[viole]

Yes that is my point, nothing lasts forever under my view, and SR by itself does not force you to reach this conclusion.

Some observers are observing a world without extinct T Rex and some are observing a world with living T Rexes. We might don’t know who is making the correct observation but one of them is objectively wrong and the other objectively correct.

My best guess would be that a clock with “zero motion” would report the correct simultaneity of events, clocks in motion would make a “wrong observation of simultaneous events”

I really don’t have anything else to add with respect to relativity and A theory

Well, I am afraid that Sr does exactly that.
But of course we can overcomplicate any theory until it becomes totally unintellegible when we have some a priori assumptions that we desperately need to safeguard. Like those guys who postulated mega complicated planets orbits so that the earth could still be at the center of the universe.

Boy, ai am happy I don’t have those metaphysical handicaps.

So, now that we undermined the concept of beginning, let us revert our attention to the second pillar: causality.

I claim that causality, in order to make any sense at all, requires a well defined direction of time. Something that defines a before and an after.

Do you agree?

Ciao

- viole

 

[leroy]

Well, I am afraid that Sr does exactly that.
But of course we can overcomplicate any theory until it becomes totally unintellegible when we have some a priori assumptions that we desperately need to safeguard. Like those guys who postulated mega complicated planets orbits so that the earth could still be at the center of the universe.

Boy, ai am happy I don’t have those metaphysical handicaps.

So, now that we undermined the concept of beginning, let us revert our attention to the second pillar: causality.

I claim that causality, in order to make any sense at all, requires a well defined direction of time. Something that defines a before and an after.

Do you agree?

Ciao

- viole

Well you as a B theorist are also obligated to overcomplicate quantum mechanics,(just like I have to over complicate relativity) you are forced to accept a deterministic interpretation of QM, this interpretations tend to be more complex and less parsimonious that random interpretations, but I wouldn’t see that as a big deal, after all parsimony is not the only nor even the most important criteria to determine which interpretation is the best.

I disagree, causation doesn’t require a time flow, you don’t need a gap of time between the cause and the effect. For example the baker is the cause of the cake, (without the baker the cake wouldn’t exist) this would be true even if the baker and the cake have always excised.

The cake requires the existence of the baker in order to exist, this is true regardless if you are an A theorist or a B theorist.

 

[leroy]

No gap of time... as in they happen at the same time? I hope you can see my issue.


... which turns the conclusion into "therefore, the universe had some number of causes."

Not exactly useful for monotheism unless you can come up with an argument for why the universe must not have more than one cause.

Yes and that moment of time would be T = 0 there was no preexisting time when time was created, there was not a “before time” (which would be logically contradictory)

No, the conclusion would be, therefore the universe has ether one or many causes. There would still be room for monotheism.

 

[viole]

Well you as a B theorist are also obligated to overcomplicate quantum mechanics,(just like I have to over complicate relativity) you are forced to accept a deterministic interpretation of QM, this interpretations tend to be more complex and less parsimonious that random interpretations, but I wouldn’t see that as a big deal, after all parsimony is not the only nor even the most important criteria to determine which interpretation is the best.

Mmh, nope, again, Quantum gravity, for instance, seems to be pretty B. It all boils down to the vanishing of the hamiltonian, which defines the dependency of time by acting on the state function.

Since energy in the universe sees to sum to zero, the hamiltonian might be zero, which would make the rate of change of the universe state function vanish. Timeless, again.

And that is why most quantum gravity theorists are B, with the possible exception of Lee Smolin.

I disagree, causation doesn’t require a time flow, you don’t need a gap of time between the cause and the effect. For example the baker is the cause of the cake, (without the baker the cake wouldn’t exist) this would be true even if the baker and the cake have always excised.

The cake requires the existence of the baker in order to exist, this is true regardless if you are an A theorist or a B theorist.

Can you imagine a situation where the baker caused the cake without a existing before the cake? If yes, Do you have empirical evidence of such causal relationships?

Ciao

- viol

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Yes and that moment of time would be T = 0 there was no preexisting time when time was created, there was not a “before time” (which would be logically contradictory)

"T=0" refers to a point in time. "When time was created" also refers to a point in time. I agree that "before time" is logically contradictory, which is why I'm dismissing your definitions - which imply a "before time" or "time outside of time" - as logically contradictory.

No, the conclusion would be, therefore the universe has ether one or many causes. There would still be room for monotheism.

"Some number of causes" or "one or many causes" are two ways to express the exact same idea. I like "some number" better because "one or many" might suggest leaving out the possibility of "a few" causes. "Some number" can still be - but isn't necessarily - 1.

And I wasn't talking about leaving room for monotheism; I was talking about establishing monotheism. You do want to use Kalaam as the first step toward arguing that the Christian God exists, right?

My point was that there's an even wider gap to bridge from "the universe had some number of causes" (or, if you prefer, "one or many causes") to "the Christian God exists" than there is from "the universe had a single cause" to "the Christian God exists."

You've already run into serious problems arguing that the universe is caused. If you're going to also try to argue that the universe didn't have more than one cause, all I can say is: good luck.

 

[leroy]

Mmh, nope, again, Quantum gravity, for instance, seems to be pretty B. It all boils down to the vanishing of the hamiltonian, which defines the dependency of time by acting on the state function.

Since energy in the universe sees to sum to zero, the hamiltonian might be zero, which would make the rate of change of the universe state function vanish. Timeless, again.

And that is why most quantum gravity theorists are B, with the possible exception of Lee Smolin.



Can you imagine a situation where the baker caused the cake without a existing before the cake? If yes, Do you have empirical evidence of such causal relationships?

Ciao

- viol

Aren’t you suppose to believe that the cake and baker exist simultaneously? But still the cake was caused by the baker right?

Examples of simultaneous causation are also easy to imagine under an “A theory” point of view, for example 2 hemispheres are caused in the moment in which one cuts a sphere in to two halves. There is not a gap of time between the moment in which you end up cutting the sphere and the moment in which the hemispheres come in to existence.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Examples of simultaneous causation are also easy to imagine under an “A theory” point of view, for example 2 hemispheres are caused in the moment in which one cuts a sphere in to two halves. There is not a gap of time between the moment in which you end up cutting the sphere and the moment in which the hemispheres come in to existence.

There isn't a gap of time because you're just describing the same event in two different ways. You're playing a semantic game.

 

[viole]

Aren’t you suppose to believe that the cake and baker exist simultaneously? But still the cake was caused by the baker right?

Examples of simultaneous causation are also easy to imagine under an “A theory” point of view, for example 2 hemispheres are caused in the moment in which one cuts a sphere in to two halves. There is not a gap of time between the moment in which you end up cutting the sphere and the moment in which the hemispheres come in to existence.

I assume A theory here, to make it interesting. Just to see if Kalam has at least a chance when I play with one hand.

How do you know that the it was not the two half spheres that caused the full sphere?

Ciao

- viole

 

[shunyadragon]

Yeah... I've only been paying slight attention to what @shunyadragon has been saying in this thread.

Based on what I've been able to glean from his posts, he seems to be making plenty of assumptions that I don't accept, but my interactions with him in the past have been such that:

- I expect that interacting with him wouldn't be something I'd enjoy, and
- I have no hope that he'd be able to explain or justify his positions to my satisfaction.

... so I haven't engaged with him here.

Now... one thing that I've noticed is that you and he seem to be arguing about a fair number of things (again, I haven't been paying attention to the details), so I wouldn't have assumed that anything he says necessarily reflects any position that you hold.

I acknowledge we have differences concerning religious issues, but that should not effect the differences concerning science.

I have a problem with this response, since my view here is pretty much standard contemporary physics and cosmology, particularly in my responses to @leroy that argues a bazzaro non-scientific Christian argument trying to justify the Kalam argument.

I would gladly answer your specific questions concerning scientific issues only in this thread.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I acknowledge we have differences concerning religious issues, but that should not effect the differences concerning science.

I have a problem with this response, since my view here is pretty much standard contemporary physics and cosmology, particularly in my responses to @leroy that argues a bazzaro non-scientific Christian argument trying to justify the Kalam argument.

I would gladly answer your specific questions concerning scientific issues only in this thread.

I'd rather not engage with you again, thanks.

 

[Koldo]

Yes and that moment of time would be T = 0 there was no preexisting time when time was created, there was not a “before time” (which would be logically contradictory)

No, the conclusion would be, therefore the universe has ether one or many causes. There would still be room for monotheism.

@9-10ths_Penguin has a good point here, but let me approach the issue in other way:

If you are not proposing an infinite past then God ( and the universe ) began to exist at T=0. I am using your terminology here by the way.
If whatever begins to exist needs to have a cause then God needs a cause too. How do you solve this problem ?

 

[shunyadragon]

Aren’t you suppose to believe that the cake and baker exist simultaneously? But still the cake was caused by the baker right?

Actually no, the cake was primarily caused by the Laws of Nature that the baker utilized to make the cake. The baker also was caused by a chain of cause and effect events that were caused by the Laws of Nature, and the baker learned how to bake based on the laws of nature.,

 

[leroy]

I assume A theory here, to make it interesting. Just to see if Kalam has at least a chance when I play with one hand.

How do you know that the it was not the two half spheres that caused the full sphere?

Ciao

- viole

I don't understand the relevance of your question. I am not claiming that the sphere caused the half spheres I said that the act of fully cutting a sphsere is the cause.

So do you agree that under a b theory, the baker would be the cause of the cake (and not the other was arround?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I don't understand the relevance of your question. I am not claiming that the sphere caused the half spderes, I said that the act of fully cutting a sphsere is the cause.

In terms of Aristotelian causes - which I think is what you've been using in this thread - the original sphere would be the material cause of the two hemispheres.

Edit: but that's separate from what @viole was asking about, which I think was more about the arrow of time and whether causality can flow in the other direction.

 

[leroy]

In terms of Aristotelian causes - which I think is what you've been using in this thread - the original sphere would be the material cause of the two hemispheres.

Edit: but that's separate from what @viole was asking about, which I think was more about the arrow of time and whether causality can flow in the other direction.

In terms of Aristotelian causes - which I think is what you've been using in this thread - the original sphere would be the material cause of the two hemispheres.

Edit: but that's separate from what @viole was asking about, which I think was more about the arrow of time and whether causality can flow in the other direction.

I am talking about eficieffi causes not material causes.....

I am not saying causality can flow I'm the other direction

 

[leroy]

@9-10ths_Penguin has a good point here, but let me approach the issue in other way:

If you are not proposing an infinite past then God ( and the universe ) began to exist at T=0. I am using your terminology here by the way.
If whatever begins to exist needs to have a cause then God needs a cause too. How do you solve this problem ?

No, god is timeless , he excists independently of time, he caused time at T=0

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

No, god is timeless , he excists independently of time, he caused time at T=0

You still don't see the contradiction in saying that God caused time at a moment in time?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I am talking about eficieffi causes not material causes.....

All you said was "cause."

I am not saying causality can flow I'm the other direction

I know. I think @viole is asking you how you know causality can't flow in the other direction.