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Author | Topic: The Kalam cosmological argument | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: It is certainly true. You KNOW that the Kalam argument says that there was no time before our universe existed. Therefore according to the Kalam argument our universe has always existed in precisely the sense I used. You say that that means that the Kalam argument is wrong and I agree.
quote: Analysing an argument and finding flaws in it is not a misconstrual.
quote: In other words you are denying that the Kalam argument claims that there was no time prior to our universe on the grounds that that would contradict your version of Premise 2 of the argument.. However, since we know that the Kalam argument DOES make that claim then the real answer is that my point is correct. The argument is taking a dubious concept of "begin to exist" which does include things which have never failed to exist.
quote: However, from your statements above it seems quite clear that in reality you agree with my assessment and think that the Kalam argument has misapplied Premise 1, by assuming a situation where the universe did not "begin to exist" as you would conceive it.
quote: However you also stated that in this case the universe did not REQUIRE a cause. In your words the universe would "require neither a cause nor an explanation of its existence on the Kalam argument"
quote: This is simply false. I clearly state that on YOUR view the universe does not REQUIRE a cause, which is certainly different from asserting that the universe CANNOT have a cause. I don't think that attacking my alleged "assumptions" and "views" (which you made up) is very relevant when I'm simply agreeing with one of YOUR claims ! The point is that you have stated that given that there is no prior time, our universe did not begin to exist. From that it follows that the Kalam argument must be using a different idea of "begin to exist" - and you didn't even know it !
quote: Whether it is a standard view or not, both you and the Kalam argument reject it - for different reasons. You because you believe that it does not apply to anything that exists at T=0, the Kalam argument because it would apply to EVERYTHING that exists (including God, if God existed).
quote: I'm afraid that it does follow. According to your later definition all that is required is that a thing exists at a time, T and at no prior point in time. If a thing exists at T=0 it clearly fulfils the first condition, and there is no prior time at which it could possibly exist, so it must also meets the second. Therefore it "begins to exist" and must have a cause by the Kalam argument.
quote: Of course, I'm not claiming that it is self refuting. I claim that it has serious problems and that on analysis it is not even a very good argument. And the problems you are running into - where you take points of view that clearly DO contradict the Kalam argument - illustrates that point. And of course it may be the case that we are having this discussion because you place a huge amount of faith in the Kalam argument, so much so that you have great difficulty seeing its flaws even when they have been made obvious. Which indeed seems to be the case.
quote: How does it lend itself to special pleading regarding our universe ?
quote: How could this possibly be true ?
quote: Well that's a blatant falsehood. It says no such thing. It would however deny that anything which did exist without time had a beginning - where your definition would insist otherwise - so it would seem to be theologically preferable to your definition - at least to most believers in the Kalam argument !
quote: Unless you rest your argument on the unstated assumption that anything that does not have a beginning does not exist, I cannot see how you can honestly make these claims. In fact it seems to me that you are reduced to inventing excuses to reject my definition solely because it is problematic to the Kalam argument - despite the fact that it is better than your definition even by your own standards.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 306 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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As to your assertion that the premiss is equivocal, I disagree. The first premiss does not commit the fallacy of equivocation since begins to exist may be defined univocally in the following manner; X begins to exist at T, if and only if X exists at T, and X does not exist at any time prior to T. I think there is some equivocation, though it is subtle. Roughly speaking: * You wish to say that a thing x began to have property P iff P(x) at time t, and there is no time t' < t at which P(x). * Paul wishes to say that a thing x began to have property P iff P(x) at time t, and there is a time t' < t at which ~P(x). I could formalize that better, but that'll do for now. Now, the trouble is that the claim that "everything that begins to exist has a cause" is supposed to be empirical. But all the data we have relate only to things that begin to exist in Paul's sense --- we have no data on anything that began to exist in your sense but not in Paul's. So there seems to be some equivocation here. Our only reason for taking (1) as a premise is exclusively as a result of observing Paulesque beginnings of things. But then you want to use this to draw conclusions about non-Paulesque beginnings of things. But I don't see that we have any warrant to do so given that none of our data is about "beginnings" in this sense. --- Suppose one man defines an equid as a member of the genus Equus, while another defines it as any horse-shaped animal, with whatever evolutionary history, living on any planet. The first man is entitled to say that all known equids can digest cellulose, and is empirically on good ground if he wants to deduce that as-yet undiscovered equids (if there are any) will also have this property. The second man can also say that all known equids can digest cellulose, but he is on much shakier ground if he wants to derive the same conclusion about equids in his sense, since all the equids forming his data set are equids in the first and narrower sense. Does he really have warrant to draw the conclusion that all equids (in the second sense) can digest cellulose, based on data exclusively about equids in the first sense? Both men are reasoning from a data set consisting of all the equids (in their respective senses) that anyone has ever been able to study, and yet the second man is much less well-justified in his deduction. This is not a perfect analogy, with time I might come up with a better one, but I think it illustrates the sort of problem you're running into.
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Pressie Member Posts: 2103 From: Pretoria, SA Joined: |
quote:Therefore, any god postulated must also have a cause for it's existence, another greater god, maybe? In the end its turtles, all the way down. Unless you want to employ special pleading.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
2. The universe is a being which began to exist That implies a point in time where the universe did not exist... but we ain't got one of those.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
quote:Therefore, any god postulated must also have a cause for it's existence, another greater god, maybe? In the end its turtles, all the way down. Unless you want to employ special pleading. You could postulate a god that always existed and therefore did not begin to exist. Just sayin'.
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Evlreala Member (Idle past 3097 days) Posts: 88 From: Portland, OR United States of America Joined: |
Catholic Scientist writes: You could postulate a god that always existed and therefore did not begin to exist. Just sayin'. You could apply Occam's razer, postulate a universe that always existed and therefore did not begin to exist or require a creator to create it, as well.
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2153 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
quote:Yes, people have done this for centuries. It became much more difficult after Penzias and Wilson found observational evidence that the universe had a beginning. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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Pressie Member Posts: 2103 From: Pretoria, SA Joined:
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catholic scientist writes: Special pleading again. Everything, except a god.... You could postulate a god that always existed and therefore did not begin to exist. Just sayin'. However, you could postulate that matter and energy always existed. We have evidence for the existence of matter and energy. Nothing for the existence of a god.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
If Penzias and Wilson proved that there was a time BEFORE the universe existed it's news to me. Are you going to tell Shimbabwe that the Kalam argument is wrong on that point ?
Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
quote:Therefore, any god postulated must also have a cause for it's existence, another greater god, maybe? In the end its turtles, all the way down. Unless you want to employ special pleading. However, you could postulate that matter and energy always existed. We have evidence for the existence of matter and energy. Nothing for the existence of a god. Well sure, but you were the one who brought up god. I was responding specifically to this claim:
quote: That's just not true, for the reason I offered.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Catholic Scientist writes:
You could apply Occam's razer, postulate a universe that always existed and therefore did not begin to exist or require a creator to create it, as well. You could postulate a god that always existed and therefore did not begin to exist. Just sayin'. So? That's beside the point that there are gods that can be postulated that didn't begin to exist.
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2153 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
quote:??? I wrote that "Penzias and Wilson found observational evidence that the universe had a beginning." I did NOT write that "Penzias and Wilson proved that there was a time BEFORE the universe existed.""Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: No, you wrote that it was harder to argue that the universe had always existed after Penzias and Wilson. Therefore you are, at the least, implying that Penzias and Wilson's work supports the idea that there was a time before the universe existed, contrary to the Kalam argument.
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2153 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
quote:False. I have repeated my words twice. Please go back and re-read them. (My comments regard Evlreala's conclusion "and therefore did not begin to exist", i.e. ONLY whether or not the universe had a beginning, not whether or not the universe has always existed.) Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given."Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: I have reread your words and it seems quite clear that what I said is a perfectly sensible reading.
quote: Which assumes that it is sensible to say that something that has always existed began to exist. That is far from obvious (in fact Shimbabwe rejected it as absurd and he supports the Kalam argument). Indeed, as I have already pointed out, everything must begin to exist if you allow existing at T=0 to be "beginning to exist".
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