Response to 7. Worst Objection to Kalam: Equivocating 'Begins to Exist'

[emailpobox666]

Dr Craig admitted that the Cosmological Argument is incoherent. Can anyone tell me why he still uses it

[JCrownwell]

@Textra1

When questioned about the notion of "imaginary time", Hawking refused to convert to real numbers for the Hartle-Hawking model, because doing so reestablishes the singularity. He didn't seem to be bothered by the fact that it renders the model essentially non-realistic.

In "The Nature of Space and Time" (2000), he states: "I take the positivist view point that a physical theory is just a mathematical model and that it is meaningless to ask whether it corresponds to reality."

[JCrownwell]

@Textra1

Note that the Hartle-Hawking model does not refute the earlier Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems. All it does is to give an alternative set of initial conditions with which to escape the theorem.

Moreover, Hawking was able to do so only by implementing numbers for the time variable that are a product of the square root of -1 ("imaginary numbers"). ie. It is dependent upon a mathematical artifice that is demonstrably of no real world validity.

[emailpobox666]

WLC Continued"The idea that God caused the universe is intuitively intelligible. A cause is, loosely speaking, something which produces something else and in terms of which the thing that is produced can be explained. This notion certainly applies to God's causing the universe. If God's causing the universe cannot be analyzed in terms of current philosophical definitions of causality, then so much the worse for those theories.Quentin Smith vs Craig 1996

[emailpobox666]

WLC "If the claim that God caused the Big Bang cannot be analyzed in terms of extant definitions of causality, then God cannot have caused the Big Bang. I see no reason to think that this premise is true. In general, arguments to the effect that some intuitively intelligible notion can't be analyzed in terms of certain philosophical theories should make us suspect the adequacy of those theories rather than reject the common sense notion.

[drcraigvideos]

It's "drcraigvideos" not "drcraigsvideos". Please, don't be like thunderf00t.

[Textra1]

Dr Craig also fails to understand that we have no idea about the state of the universe before 1 Planck unit after the singularity. The Big Bang theory does not say the universe began to exist some 13.7 billion years ago. It merely says that it began to resemble it's current state. What the universe looked like 'before' this time is completely unknown. [cont]

[Textra1]

@Textra1

[cont]

We have ZERO data on it, therefore we cannot say it either began to exist. We can say NOTHING about it's properties at that 'time'. So Craigs 2nd premise fails even before we get to the equivocation fallacy.

[JCrownwell]

@Textra1

"We have ZERO data on it, therefore we cannot say it either began to exist."

Spot the positivist.

[Textra1]

@JCrownwell

If you have a means to intuit the origins of the universe, a priori I'm all 'ears', so to speak. ;)

[JCrownwell]

@Textra1

If you intend to defend a positivistic position regarding metaphysical axioms, such as the causal principle, or Liebnizian ontology, I'm afraid you're setting yourself up for a world of hurt.

I recommend you do the following reading, before you commit to something which may end up becoming ugly for you.

Hanfling, Oswald (2003). "Logical Positivism". Routledge History of Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 193

[JCrownwell]

@Textra1

The causal principle, and key ontological beliefs, operate alongside the axioms of logic and mathematics. The form the epistemological framework for scientific rationalism, and as "properly basic beliefs" formalise the very framework of our critical analytical experience of the world, meaning that they are essentially unprovable, empirically.

For you to challenge premise one of the Kalam argument puts you at odds with the foundational basis of the scientific method. :)

[Textra1]

@JCrownwell

Right, except that I didn't challenge premise 1. I challenged premise 2. Perhaps you should re-read what I said. We have no reason to believe or claim to know that the universe "Began to exist", to say nothing of Craig's equivocation fallacy. Unless of course you have evidence to the contrary; a priori or a posteriori.

[JCrownwell]

@Textra1

"I challenged premise 2"

Oh dear. I'm afraid that puts you on even shakier ground. :)

Part of the defense of premise 2, which in itself is sufficient, is not upon the "big bang theory" per se, but an empirically-based deductive theorem that is now a consensus view in cosmology.

The only causal geodesic to which this theorem doesn't apply is for past-deflationary universes, but the latter are far too problematic to be taken seriously.

[JCrownwell]

@Textra1

The appropriate reference is: A Borde, A Guth and A Vilenkin (2003). "Inflationary space-times are incomplete in past directions". Phys. Rev. Lett. 90 (15): 151301

It concludes, on an empirico-deductive basis that: "... almost all causal geodesics, when extended to the past of an arbitrary point, reach the boundary of the inflating region of spacetime in a finite proper time."

This is a finding which is relevant even to naturalistic esoterica such as multiverse hypotheses.

[Textra1]

@JCrownwell

"I'm afraid that puts you on even shakier ground."

Afraid not. Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin’s theorum does not rule out Hawkings no-boundary proposal which suggests that when the universe was small enough to be governed by both general relativity and quantum theory, there were 4 dimensions of space and none of time, meaning there is no necessary creation or coming into existence event.(Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design pp. 134-135)

[JCrownwell]

@Textra1

"no-boundary proposal"

I'm afraid I missed this point.

"Although a uniform probability distribution in this measure would solve the flatness problem, it gives an ambiguous probability for inflation, since both the set of inflationary solutions and the set of noninflationary solutions have infinite measure."

Hawking, S. W. (1988). "How probable is inflation?". Nucl. Phys. B298 (4): 789

The model also encounters problems in converting time into a fourth spacial dimension.

[JCrownwell]

@Textra1

Given these concerns with the "no boundaries" model, you've yet to present a substantive argument against the validity of the Borde Guth Vilenkin theorem.

The only other point you've raised is a somewhat weak challenge to my appeal to scientific consensus. This is, of course, insufficient per se. Granted, the argument from consensus is only inductive, but at this stage, only those on the fringe attempt to "realistically" challenge the idea of a cosmic beginning

[DandAinTac]

@Textra1 Exactly. Craig makes sweeping claims about things he really knows nothing about at all. Even cosmologists don't know the answers. The only ones saying the Universe "came from nothing" and mean literally nothing are apologists like Craig. Scientists rarely say this, and when they do, they mean "nothing" in terms of the universe as we observe it with it's current composition and laws. Actually the Big Bang is totally different from the Biblical creation. 

[Schneboll]

Although insightful. If you want to see a lift in your view count. Start talking into a mic :)