Shattering the Illusion: Kalam Cosmological Argument Debunked
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- Опубликовано: 27 июл 2024
- Shattering the Illusion: Kalam Cosmological Argument Debunked. In this video, I present the biggest problems with the Kalam Cosmological Argument and aim to debunk it as a proof of God. William Lane Craig is most famous for using this argument, however, I think it doesn't work at all. Here, I shatter the illusion of the argument by debunking both premises and that the conclusion leads to a God.
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0:00 Intro
0:14 The Argument
1:15 History of the Kalam
3:14 Premise 1
4:38 Cause and Effect
5:27 Fallacy of Composition
6:34 Premise 2
8:04 Temporality
9:08 A Defence
9:58 A Response
11:12 Conclusion
12:59 Infinite Regress
13:48 The Nature of God
14:33 Challenge to Theists
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There's also a fallacy of equivocation going on here. Things that we observe to "begin to exist" are just rearrangement of previously existing material. The argument uses examples of this kind of "beginning to exist (from pre-existing material)" having a cause, and then claims that the universe began to exist (from nothing) and must have a cause. The argument is equivocating between two different kinds of beginning to exist.
Secondly, what are some examples of things that exist but did not begin to exist? If god is the only example for this, then the argument is circular. Because then the first premise is equivalent to "Whatever is not god has a cause", which puts god, the thing we're trying to prove, in the premises.
Excellent points!
@ethanbenson False.
There is no fallacy of equivocation in this argument. Aristotle recognized thst causes have multiple components - material, formal, efficient, and final. The universe coming into being means material came into existence ex nihilo, which as you point out, is not consistent with causes we're more familiar with which involve existing material.
But of course, the material components of causes is not the only component. They're also must be an "efficient' cause - or an agent. A wooden table would have wood as the material cause, but the carpenter is the efficient cause - the one who built it.
Similarly, the universe requires an EFFICIENT cause. Whether the material exists or not, something must have been the efficient cause.... the cause. If you wish to assert atheism, then you're left with no explanation for the material cause or the efficient cause.
As for your question about other necessarily existing entities- platonists would argue the number 1 necessarily exists in all worlds. So that would be an example.... but even if God is the only necessary being which exists timelessly, that wouldn't mean the argument is circular.
My refutation (which always upsets creationists):
Every “cause”:we have come to understand has been as a result of natural forces. Not once have we found a divine or supernatural cause for anything, ever. These facts would seem to make naturalism the logical default for the things we don’t yet understand until some evidence for an act of divine creation is found.
I guess by definition, when we discover something, it becomes natural
@@ethanbenson I would think that if a supernatural being was making things in the natural world there would be evidence that we could observe.
@@rickdelatour5355 particularly if that supernatural being commanded praise on pain of death.
But my point was more that when we discover something new, it becomes a new part of our understanding of nature. So, if we are to discover a supernatural being, we instantly make it no longer supernatural on a definitional level
@@ethanbenson I mostly agree, but our creationist friends insist that their creator is outside of space and time.
@@rickdelatour5355 The argument the video is discussing IS evidence we can and do observe. That's why there's a video discussing the evidence.
This is a category mistake. God, as a necessary, timeless, and immaterial being, fundamentally differs from the contingent, temporal, and material nature of the universe. Therefore, the premise that the existence of God without a beginning implies the universe could also exist without a beginning does not hold, given their different natures and the evidence we have about the universe's temporal origin.
I think it's a good breakdown of the Kalam argument with some very valid points. I'd add one thing that you didn't go into. The idea that God as a first cause is timeless and spaceless (or outside of time and space) is a strange one, and I think it can be questioned whether something/someone can exist like that. We only have experience of things and beings existing within time and space, and it's hard to fully imagine the implications of existing outside of those. Can there fx be any processes (like having a thought) without time? WLC has often argued against the concept of infinity as an absurdity, but maybe there's something absurd about existence outside of time and space as well. I haven't done a full analysis or anything like that, but it seems to me that the idea that God is outside of space and time isn't just something you can slap on the table without explaining how that sort of existence would work and even be conceivable.
The way people make this claim reminds me of how some say that God is immaterial when we have no experience of anything being immaterial (made of matter or the result of something made of matter). They might say God is made of spirit, but what is spirit then? And how do we know that exists?
Excellent point. I think the big thing is that even of we do grant there can be some sort of timeless cause for the universe, it’s a massive leap to then say this must be a conscious being of some sort. As you say, even explaining how something like that could possibly work seems very difficult
I agree. I think something that is timeless, spaceless, and immaterial is simply nothingness
In "reality" ("hologramisticly") there are many "times" and many "spaces" nestled within one another like a Russian Doll or the multi-dimensional model of the "Tree of Life". i.e. each sephirot contains its own "tree". As above, so below. The system would appear to us to function like the Mandelbrot Set. Therefore the "cause" of intelligent design çan feasibly reside outside one universe and have its "effect" manifest in another. In Quantum Physics this is the observable phenomenon of "something out of nothing" which is closely related to Quantum entanglement, or, as Einstein termed it, "spooky action".
Could be something our 3-dimensional minds are incapable of grasping. But by the same token we therefore wouldn't have it as a goto when answering cosmology problems.
@@richardhunter132 Ah yes: god is something that's made of nothing and it exists nowhere and never. Checkmate, atheists!
A good effort at demolishing this ‘clever’ argument for a god. I dislike all these ‘theoretical’ arguments for a god- I want a god that interacts with us, like in the Old days, talking burning bushes, splitting the moon in two etc.
That’s certainly a very popular argument for atheism - the hiddenness argument
@@ethanbenson You are so dumb that you do not even know that you are dumb.
Yeah when you think about it the Bible is the same as all other myths, they get to see gods, signs and wonders, you get to hear about it twentieth-hand.
Craig has tried to defend against criticism of "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" against the observation that virtual particles have no cause we can find by saying that virtual particles don't begin to exist, since there is already a universe with physical laws in existence when the virtual particle appears, so it is just a fluctuation to something that already exists.
So yeah...
Under that argument it looks like the only thing he claims really "begins to exist" as he defines it is the universe itself, and this is very circular.
Of course, that is totally inconsistent with other accounts he has given of things beginning to exist.
The actual answer is that this is not a real belief, it's just an apologetic.
This Ethan Benson is so dumb that he does not even know how badly wrong are his criticisms. For something serious try something like the paper "Why the Big Bang Singularity Does Not Help the Kalām Cosmological Argument for Theism".
Virtual particles are mathematical concepts not physical entities.
@@TBOTSS No, they are theoretical physical entities.
As WC cannot prove P1 or P2 we must take them as axiomatic, and as axioms constrain the domain of discourse the argument necessarily cannot cover the whole cosmos or our universe.
Thanks for the video enjoyed it.
Glad you liked it!
One of (there are several) criticisms of Craig's Kalam argument is that it commits multiple fallacies of unwarranted assumption - the most obvious being that "something created the universe, therefore it is God." There are others however:
- He states that the uncaused cause (God) is timeless as it had to exist "before time" but goes on to claim that God must be eternal. These are NOT the same thing and there is nothing to suggest one does, or even can follow the other. Even if we grant him that a "timeless God" did consciously create the universe, there is nothing to suggest it would then be capable of surviving _inside_ a universe bound by time because it is no longer timeless.
- He states the same thing regarding _space_ . "God was spaceless" then translates into God is omnipresent. Nope, that is a giant unwarranted assumption. In fact, if we look at Craig's claim that "God was spaceless" then I believe we could rightfully re-state that as "God was nowhere" because there wasn't anywhere for him to exist. But it certainly doesn't automatically follow that because a creator was spaceless that it can now be "everywhere"
- And lastly, he argues that the Uncaused Cause is intelligent because we, as humans, assume that creating a universe is difficult. But creating a universe might be a really easy thing to do, if you know how. In fact, the Kalam argument cannot even prove that the universe was created _on purpose_ - maybe a God did create it out of nothing but he didn't mean to - judging by the emptiness of the universe that's a far more logical assumption to make in my book!
Am the only one who thinks this man argument are weak
Why do you think this?
The kalam is weak as hell they should call it kamal instead lol
1, There’s no evidence things begin to exist or even can begin to exist, if X begin to exist therefore Y begin to exist but the problem is there’s no evidence X begin to exist or that it’s even possible, therefore it falls apart.
2. Even if we had evidence things can ( begin ) to exist therefore the universe had a beginning is composition fallacy, ( one assumes that what is true for the
parts must also be true for the whole. )
3, even if we have prove the universe began to exist it’s not evidence for god rather it’s evidence that the universe had beginning
4, you want more kamal? Lol
Hahaha I like that. Good points as well. Particularly the first one. I think a major problem of the kalam which I didn’t go into properly is that it assumes that materials themselves behave the same way as composite materials. It’s just an extension of the existing composition fallacy critique, but I think an interesting one regardless.
In terms of it being weak, whilst I do agree it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, it’s one of the better arguments I’ve seen. Stands above most ontological and teleological arguments in my mind at least
@@ethanbenson The base argument, sure, though I don't know if we can talk about what "caused" the universe since we can't currently figure that out. It's more honest to say collectively we don't know yet until we can figure that out, if that is a possible action we can take. Proposing a god seems like an illogical leap for no reason. Also, it's hard to define causality when the universe is the start of causality within our universe.
@@TheGamingLegendsOfficial I agree. I am an agnostic (although act as if and would generally refer to myself as an atheist)
@@ethanbenson With lack of evidence for the proposition, acting as though the proposition is false until provided evidence that it is true seems pretty reasonable to me.
The issue with your argument started with your discussion on the first premise. You restated the argument to include “within the known universe” but that phrase is not in the argument. You missed the point of the premise.
The argument is: “everything that begins to exist” has a cause. The premise is NOT: “everything in the observable universe that begins to exist has a cause”.
So the premise and argument only address things that had a beginning, or in other words, only applies to things that both existed for a time and also did not exist for a time.
The theist argument is that God has existed always and there never was a time where God didnt exist. That what Aristotle called the “unmoved mover”, or the “unbegan, beginner”.
I do that because if we don’t say that, we’re talking about things external to the universe and the premise becomes less clearly true. I do it to be charitable to the argument
@@ethanbenson But the whole point of the argument (or at least the theistic conclusion) is that an uncaused entity created the universe and so is necessarily outside of it. Limiting the refutation to only things in the universe seems to miss the point of the original argument.
@@bdpgarage no, my entire point is that we know causality to be a principle of that which is within the universe, the universe itself is not within the universe and so perhaps the universe itself is not caused. My point is that assuming this means God caused the universe is not necessarily true, as if we say the universe must have a cause, we are then applying a principle of that which is within the universe to the universe itself and that may or may not be the case.
@@ethanbenson I think I get what your saying. Restating: Because we humans can only confirm the law of causality within our own universe, we cannot confirm causaility outside of the universe. Therefore things outside the universe could exist eternally? (Assuming you’re not arguing that universe could cause itself)
I would restate the conclusion to be that we should be agnostic as to if the universe has a cause. Supposing it does have a cause, we also should be agnostic about what that cause is. To put it plainly, I don’t think we can know anything about things which are not within the universe.
Alex O'Connor?
He’s certainly someone I admire and take inspiration from, although I think a lot of the overlap between our views has more to do with having similar inspirations growing up. Both of us were brought into philosophy by way of the new atheists, with particularly Hitchens being a primary inspiration. I think though that our key difference is that my interests are more towards metaphysics whilst Alex is more interested in ethics from my understanding. I also have a huge interest in political philosophy and discuss politics more openly than Alex (which is probably wise on his part)
I stopped listening as soon as you suggested that there is circular reasoning. Nonsense. Oh and then you dig a deeper irrational hole by claiming there is a fallacy of composition. You would not last a minute up against Craig.
Can you explain where I went wrong in saying these things?
Also, I have no doubt I wouldn’t last a minute against Craig. He’s been a professional philosopher for quite a long time and I’m just a student at this point. This is just my attempt at discussing his argument, I think any good philosopher would not be insulted by someone discussing their work, even if that means it is criticised.
Saying that something "exists outside of time and space" is incoherent gibberish. To say that something is outside of time and space is merely stating that it does not exist. To exist is to be somewhere in time and space. If you describe something as existing in no place and no time, you are simply proclaiming its non-existence. If applied to a "god," then it's merely a statement of atheism.
That presupposes that you know immaterial and timeless things can’t exist. You also used physical existence which doesn’t apply to God
We could consider here something like the question of if numbers exist. If so, do they exist physically or non physically? If they don’t exist physically in a place, do they exist in time?
There are certainly various views here, some of which will claim that numbers do not exist as independent things and are merely human constructs of the mind (and so exist within the mind whilst the mind exists), but my point is that it does seem plausible that we could conceive of something which exists outside of space and time, so I’m not sure this is the strongest objection.
@@CorneliusCorndogJr Ah, the old Get Out of Jail Free Card. . . So if you presuppose that something logically impossible and incoherent is the property of something undefinable, undescribable and unknowable, then you can make any logically impossible or incoherent, self-contradictory claim about anything. Everything just becomes a gigantic short circuit. All you are saying is "MAGIC!!! TAHDAAAH!!!!" If there's magic, you can claim anything. If there's magic, you can claim that the universe exists because an enchanted mushroom makes 2+2=5 and Richard Simmons wrote all of Shakespeare's plays. This is not reasoning. It isn't even thinking. It's just schizophrenic hallucination.