What is wrong with the Kalam Cosmological Argument?

[blü 2]

I am not move by the goal post.just answer which alternative do you think is the best ? (According to the evidence that we have to date)

You have my views on that already. In terms of your OP, you could regard them as a fourth option.

 

[LuisDantas]

In my experience atheists tend to dance around the KCA but they usually don't explain with clear words their point of disagreement.

It is a matter of economy of effort, in my case. Voicing the argument, even to contest it, suggests that it might be worth of attention, which it is not.

(...)

So what is wrong with the KCA? Do you agree with premise 1? Do you agree with premise 2? Does the conclusion follows from the premises?

The first premise (that everything has a cause) is indeed false, and only shows how difficult it is to avoid extrapolating from everyday human (neurologically-dictated) expectations into entirely unfitting scopes.

It also has the serious flaw of failing to address what would constitute a "cause".

The second premise (that the universe had a beginning) is also dogmatic expectation and can't sustain any argument.

There are only 3 alternatives

Not really.

1 the universe (the physical/ natural world) came from nothing (literally nothing)

2 the universe has always existed, it is eternal

3 the universe has a cause (which by definition would have to be a supernatural cause)

So which one of these 3 alternatives do you pick? Or perhaps there is a fourth option that I haven't thought about.

4. Causes and linear time are to some extent human perceptions and we can never be certain of whether it even makes sense to talk about a start of the universe.

 

[leroy]

A couple of problems right off the bat:

- if we take "the universe" to mean, as you say, "all physical reality (including time)," then the statement "the universe began to exist" is nonsensical.

- "all physical reality (including time)" would include everything that's ever existed. If your cause for the universe is God - which I think is what you're hinting at - then you've defined God out of existence.

No, all physical reality would include "all physical reality" it would not include absolutely everything, God if he excists would not be part of the physical world.

 

[leroy]

You are conflating two posts.

And the best that we can say is that the universe as we know it had a beginning. That is neither evidence nor evidence against a god, and you missed the special pleading fallacy of the Kalam.

What people try to do is to redefine God, so i guess we have an equivocation error as well, and then claim that the beginning of the universe needs a cause and that cause is god. By that standard the god would need a first cause as well.

Again,
If God is eternal he wouldn't require a cause, this is not special pleading.

Traditionally the universe has also been considered eternal (in which case it would not require a cause) .... The problem is that in the last 100 years the evidence for a beginning was discovered.

If you show that God also requires a begining he would also require a cause, and theism would fail in light of the KCA.

Are you going to admit your mistake and stop claiming "special pleading"

 

[leroy]

This is the special pleading.
Either everything that exists needs a Cause, or not.

Claiming that the universe must have a beginning, but God doesn't need a beginning, is special pleading.
Tom

The claim is not that everything requires a cause

The claim is that everything that begins to excist require a cause.

If you whant to argue that God requires a cause, you would have to show that God begun to excist......

 

[leroy]

It is a matter of economy of effort, in my case. Voicing the argument, even to contest it, suggests that it might be worth of attention, which it is not.



The first premise (that everything has a cause) is indeed false, and only shows how difficult it is to avoid extrapolating from everyday human (neurologically-dictated) expectations into entirely unfitting scopes.

It also has the serious flaw of failing to address what would constitute a "cause".

The second premise (that the universe had a beginning) is also dogmatic expectation and can't sustain any argument.



Not really.



4. Causes and linear time are to some extent human perceptions and we can never be certain of whether it even makes sense to talk about a start of the universe.

Ok let's go by steps.

Why do you think premise 1 is false? Do you have any evidence that suggests that the premise is false?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Again,
If God is eternal he wouldn't require a cause, this is not special pleading.

Wrong again since the same claim applies to the universe. That is why it is special pleading. And even if the universe had a beginning it is still special pleading. Think about it.

Traditionally the universe has also been considered eternal (in which case it would not require a cause) .... The problem is that in the last 100 years the evidence for a beginning was discovered.

If you show that God also requires a begining he would also require a cause, and theism would fail in light of the KCA.

Are you going to admit your mistake and stop claiming "special pleading"

Once again special pleading fallacy. The universe does not need to be eternal to have always existed. I doubt if you will get it.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

No, all physical reality would include "all physical reality" it would not include absolutely everything, God if he excists would not be part of the physical world.

I think you'll need to be clearer about what you mean, then.

I take "physical reality" to mean "all things that exist physically"... i.e. all real things with substance, as opposed to things that exist in non-physical ways, like "existing as an idea."

I would consider anything that can have physical effects on physical objects to be part of "the physical world." If you're proposing some quasi-physical realm that somehow doesn't count as "physical" for the purposes of your argument, then you're going to need to define your terms more precisely... and defend all the premises that emerge as you do that.

 

[shunyadragon]

And... according to the authors of the bgv theorem multiverses and cyclic universes can't be past eternal.

BTW, do you have any evidence for a past eternal universe?

The question is not whether our universe has a beginning, but whether our physical existence has a beginning in a multiverse existence described by Vilenkin, and no there is no evidence either way whether our physical existence has a beginning. Based on the bgv theorem the beginning of the universe is a singularity within a multiverse,

No proposal here for an absolute beginning of anything. .

There are hypothesis for cyclic universes that are eternal, which are supported by science. Note bold

From: THE CYCLIC UNIVERSE: PAUL STEINHARDT | Edge.org

THE CYCLIC UNIVERSE: PAUL STEINHARDT

[PAUL STEINHARDT:] I am theoretical cosmologist, so I am addressing the issue from that point of view. If you were to ask most cosmologists to give a summary of where we stand right now in the field, they would tell you that we live in a very special period in human history where, thanks to a whole host of advances in technology, we can suddenly view the very distant and very early universe in ways that we haven't been able to do ever before. For example, we can get a snapshot of what the universe looked like in its infancy, when the first atoms were forming. We can get a snapshot of what the universe looked like in its adolescence, when the first stars and galaxies were forming. And we are now getting a full detail, three-dimensional image of what the local universe looks like today. When you put together this different information, which we're getting for the first time in human history, you obtain a very tight series of constraints on any model of cosmic evolution. If you go back to the different theories of cosmic evolution in the early 1990's, the data we've gathered in the last decade has eliminated all of them—save one, a model that you might think of today as the consensus model. This model involves a combination of the Big Bang model as developed in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s; the Inflationary Theory, which Alan Guth proposed in the 1980s; and a recent amendment that I will discuss shortly. This consensus theory matches the observations we have of the universe today in exquisite detail. For this reason, many cosmologists conclude that we have finally determined the basic cosmic history of the universe.

But I have a rather different point of view, a view that has been stimulated by two events. The first is the recent amendment to which I referred earlier. I want to argue that the recent amendment is not simply an amendment, but a real shock to our whole notion of time and cosmic history. And secondly, in the last year I've been involved in the development of an alternative theory that turns the cosmic history topsy-turvy. All the events that created the important features of our universe occur in a different order, by different physics, at different times, over different time scales—and yet this model seems capable of reproducing all of the successful predictions of the consensus picture with the same exquisite detail.

The key difference between this picture and the consensus picture comes down to the nature of time. The standard model, or consensus model, assumes that time has a beginning that we normally refer to as the Big Bang. According to this model, for reasons we don't quite understand, the universe sprang from nothingness into somethingness, full of matter and energy, and has been expanding and cooling for the past 15 billion years. In the alternative model the universe is endless. Time is endless in the sense that it goes on forever in the past and forever in the future, and, in some sense, space is endless. Indeed, our three spatial dimensions remain infinite throughout the evolution of the universe.

More specifically, this model proposes a universe in which the evolution of the universe is cyclic. That is to say, the universe goes through periods of evolution from hot to cold, from dense to under-dense, from hot radiation to the structure we see today, and eventually to an empty universe. Then, a sequence of events occurs that cause the cycle to begin again. The empty universe is reinjected with energy, creating a new period of expansion and cooling. This process repeats periodically forever. What we're witnessing now is simply the latest cycle.

The notion of a cyclic universe is not new. People have considered this idea as far back as recorded history. The ancient Hindus, for example, had a very elaborate and detailed cosmology based on a cyclic universe. They predicted the duration of each cycle to be 8.64 billion years—a prediction with three-digit accuracy. This is very impressive, especially since they had no quantum mechanics and no string theory! It disagrees with the number that I'm going suggest, which is trillions of years rather than billions.

The cyclic notion has also been a recurrent theme in Western thought. Edgar Allan Poe and Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, each had cyclic models of the universe, and in the early days of relativistic cosmology, Albert Einstein, Alexandr Friedman, Georges Lemaître, and Richard Tolman were interested in the cyclic idea. I think it is clear why so many have found the cyclic idea to be appealing: If you have a universe with a beginning, you have the challenge of explaining why it began and the conditions under which it began. If you have a universe, which is cyclic, it is eternal, so you don't have to explain the beginning.

 

[leroy]

Wrong again since the same claim applies to the universe. That is why it is special pleading. And even if the universe had a beginning it is still special pleading. Think about it.



Once again special pleading fallacy. The universe does not need to be eternal to have always existed. I doubt if you will get it.

Irrelevant, this is not special pleading, because I am not making an arbitrary exception with God.

The universe (I would argue) has a charactistic that is absent in God (beginning to exist) this is why the universe requires a cause and God doesn't.

If you whant You can argue that the universe didn't begin to excist and avoid the necessity of a cause,

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Irrelevant, this is not special pleading, because I am not making an arbitrary exception with God.

The universe (I would argue) has a charactistic that is absent in God (beginning to exist) this is why the universe requires a cause and God doesn't.

If you whant You can argue that the universe didn't begin to excist and avoid the necessity of a cause,

How on Earth could you possibly know that God did not begin to exist?

It strikes me as a sort of begging the question to assume characteristics of God before you've even demonstrated that God exists at all (since I assume a proof of God is what you're going for with Kalaam plus all the extra baggage you added to it in the OP).

 

[Polymath257]

I am just asking which of these 3 posibities do you find more plausible given the evidence that we have to date

1 the universe came in to existance without a cause

2 the universe has always existed

3 the universe has a cause.

But for some reason 90% of atheist won't answer clearly and unabigously

I reject all three. Instead, I would modify 1 and say

4> The universe exists and is uncaused.

Notice the difference? There is no 'coming into existence'. There is simply 'existence'. and the existence of the universe is uncaused because causes are *within* the universe. Causality makes no sense outside of the universe.

 

[Polymath257]

Yes whether if the universe had a beginning or not is unknown in the sense that "we don't know with 100 certainty"

But the evidence that we have to date strongly suggests that the universe had a beginning. Agree? Yes or no.

Cyclic universes and multiverse models are not past eternal as has been proven by the bgv theorem.

No, the evidence we have so far *suggests* that time is finite into the past and that therefore the universe has not existed for an infinite amount of time.

That is different than 'coming into existence', which implies a time before the universe existed. That is what is likely to be false based on our evidence.

But, as has been pointed out, the evidence is inconclusive because the known physical laws simply don't apply past a certain point (we don't have a quantum theory of gravity that has been tested).

 

[shunyadragon]

The claim is not that everything requires a cause

The claim is that everything that begins to excist require a cause.

If you whant to argue that God requires a cause, you would have to show that God begun to excist......

. . . and it is not resolved in science that our physical existence had a beginning. As far as our particular universe, the scientist propose and present evidence that our universe BEGAN as a singularity in a multiverse by NATURAL (Vilenkin) causes, or is cyclic and eternal by NATURAL causes with no beginning by Steinhardt,

 

[LuisDantas]

Ok let's go by steps.

Why do you think premise 1 is false? Do you have any evidence that suggests that the premise is false?

I just told you why. Because it is an arbitrary, unsupported premise that only seems to make sense due to a very anthropocentric bias shaped by our neurology and psychology.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Irrelevant, this is not special pleading, because I am not making an arbitrary exception with God.

The universe (I would argue) has a charactistic that is absent in God (beginning to exist) this is why the universe requires a cause and God doesn't.

If you whant You can argue that the universe didn't begin to excist and avoid the necessity of a cause,

Nope, still special pleading. And you still have not come up with the answer of how the universe may have always existed and yet have a beginning.


You should look into the various hypotheses on how the universe began as we know it. And your error is similar to that in your ID arguments.

 

[leroy]

Nope, still special pleading. And you still have not come up with the answer of how the universe may have always existed and yet have a beginning.


You should look into the various hypotheses on how the universe began as we know it. And your error is similar to that in your ID arguments.

Well justify your asertion

What is special pleading and why am I doing it?

have not come up with the answer of how the universe may have always existed and yet have a beginning.

What am I suppose to answer ?

And your error is similar to that in your ID arguments.

Yes my error (once again) is expecting clear and direct answers from you.

 

[leroy]

I just told you why. Because it is an arbitrary, unsupported premise that only seems to make sense due to a very anthropocentric bias shaped by our neurology and psychology.

No say that something can begin to exist without a cause is logically absurd, not to mention counter intuitive and inconsistent to every single observation.

Deep inside you don't believe that things can come in to existance without a cause, do you?

 

[leroy]

. . . and it is not resolved in science that our physical existence had a beginning. As far as our particular universe, the scientist propose and present evidence that our universe BEGAN as a singularity in a multiverse by NATURAL (Vilenkin) causes, or is cyclic and eternal by NATURAL causes with no beginning by Steinhardt,

Steinhardt model even if successfull fails to eliminate the necessity of a beginning, not to mention that it is highly especulative , not testable and inconsistent with observations.

Will you ever provide evidence for an past eternal universe?

 

[shunyadragon]

No say that something can begin to exist without a cause is logically absurd, not to mention counter intuitive and inconsistent to every single observation.

Deep inside you don't believe that things can come in to existence without a cause, do you?

The present knowledge of science has determined that everything observed that has a definable beginning so far in our physical existence has a Natural cause. We have no evidence that our physical existence has a beginning.