Kalam Cosmological argument

So what discludes God from having the same kind of limitations that a normal human would have in creating a 'virtual world'?

Given effective unlimited processing power, infinite storage, and infinite patience I'm not sure what limitations we would have...I think it is more down to the nature of God...

I'm talking more about the necesssity interacting within the rule world. For that to happen, what is the difference between GOD and our world vs a programmar and his virtual world?In both cases do not GOD and the programmar need to be able to interact within their respective 'worlds'? And in both cases for any interactions to occur GOD must necessairly cause a change in his state or where his surroundings are located, and that the programmar to instigate a change in his virtual world must take input from our world to place into the 'virtual world'.Input being anything from energy, food, whatever...

The programmer might be omnipotent and omniscient over the virtual world he has created, yet be neither omnipotent nor omniscient in his own world.I'm not sure if that is what you were asking.

Not much. Both God and the programmer interact, not through the rules of the creation/virtual-world, but through the program structure itself. Think of the Matrix (don't groan) where Neo and co get back to their den after seeing the Oracle. Neo see the cat twice, and Trinity says "something's changed". That house was now different... walls where there once were doors, etc. The code had been tampered with. There was no breakdown of conservation of energy, it was as if the change had always been there. It was a change to the entire reality with just a little tweak of code. This is how I see miracles working. I just see him tinkering with the code as above. Or am I missing your meaning, as I am a little confused by what you said?

No you are right in saying that.But what i am saying is that when the creator either programmar or GOD does the tinkering, it converts some form of energy set from their reality into a possiblity in the virtual(programmer) or our reality(GOD).I.e. programmar codes, but he changes his energy state through his expending energy to generate the code and converts energy from our world into the virtual world embodiement of energy. I'm not sure how it would work GOD though but possibly something analgous?

Wel one of the premises that NJ started with is that GOD is seperate from our world... So in critiquing the Kalam stuff, does our current discussion demonstrate that the premiss of being 'seperate' and unchanging hold?

Ok, that's what I thought you were saying... and I dismissed it as nonsense EXCEPT you may have something There's no transfer as energy as what is energy in the virtual world? There may be no such concept. Energy is a physical phenomenon and as I expressed several posts ago, there is no necessary physical correlation between real and virtual worlds.BUT if we think of this in terms of information, then there is a "flow" of information from the programmer to the virtual world. We could describe this entropically, and there we would have your input... interesting.Sadly this would be unobservable from the POV of the inhabitants of the virtual world, i.e. us. But interesting all the same.

The problem is that NJ is not consistent in making that assumption. For if God is separate from our world, then nothing in our world could demonstrate the existence of God. Thus the Kalam argument is doomed before it starts.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

What are you talking about? Matter displaces space. So what is matter going to exist IN? For the sake of the argument, these are very difficult concepts to concieve of. Everything needs a medium to exist in. The law of the universe is something must exist in something else, and nothing contravenes this. All matter has mass and occupies space. Heck, even mass could be considered apart of space.Aside from al of this, something cannot be created from nothing. In the beginning there was nothing but God. Now, this is a belief out of lacking all other theories. But to think that matter could be separate from space, or space from time, doesn't coincide with anything. They all must exist to occur and for anything to make any sense. Again, these are difficult concepts because all we KNOW is energy, matter, space, time.

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Becasue time and space are conjoined.

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Uh, Hawking, Penrose, Feynneman, all seem to agree.Spacetime - Wikipedia The very fact that time began means that it must come to an end. If something begins at all then it was never infinite in the first place. It contradicts what infinity even means. But even supposing that time could began and still trek on for all eternity, the fact that it had a beginning is the most critical aspect of the argument. Because, again, everything that happens is merely a reaction of another action. So, how could nothing act upon something, if something didn't even exist? If it didn't "actually" begin then it didn't actually happen at all. The very fact that there was a singularity, a point in spacetime where there was nothing, then there was something, indicates that it had a beginning. The fact that the universe is measurably moving away from its original point means that it was not infinite. The only way you could get past the argument is to assume that this universe, the one that we live in, is the end of another universe that possibly had a completely different set of physical laws. There really would be no way of accounting for that, be it positive or negative.But as for the universe you live in now, with the laws of physics, nothing makes any sense other than purposeless intent ordained by a Sentient Being able to bring thought into a reality.

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“Always be ready to give a defense to
everyone who asks you a reason for the
hope that is in you.” -1st Peter 3:15

I'm not sure if you entirely grasped it, but you have helped extend what I am trying to get at.Taking it from the programmer level. We have the programmer he exists in our dimension or whatever. For him to generate code to create the virtual world, the programmar must expend energy formulating the rules and premises the virtual world must need, and then he codes those rules and premesis into the virtual world. Thus the programmar is acting as a conduit and changing energy 'calories, joules' into, i guess, (your definition) of information. (i'd ask you to clarify that one). So maybe what i'm trying to express is that there is a energy expenditure made by the programmer, and some information that is then put into the virtual world.thus follows:
programmer calories/joules our universe ideas/rules-> interpretive conversion of ideas/rules into programing language -> information/rules/premises of virtual worldFor GOD i think it would be much the same kind of thing. Except the GOD part would have differnt form of 'energy' for GOD's physical/incorporeal/whatever realm.The thing is that this flow necessitates an energy change/expenditure in the person of the GOD/Programmer. Programmer its calories, GOD its whatever. So the Kalam arguement of an unchanging Designer, is a faulty one.

Would you honestly stop misreading what is being said. Nwr has not claimed a beginning at all. And from my reading of his post a singularity does not mean there was 'nothing' at all. You are saying that a singularity means 'nothing' was there. In fact he points out that To my understanding is that at the virtual zero/"beginning" (that is not really a beginning) the math just becomes to complicated and theres a problem that arises (it could be a 'nothing' but at the same time it could be a 'something' that was the purpose of the quote from Nwr) as the math gets closer and closer to the virtual time zero. So it now becomes flawed to say that there was a 'beginning' to the universe because there could or there could not have been one.(also you may want to see my posts in the thread pointing out the difficulties with the premiss of an specifically changeless, spaceless, timeless, and immaterial changeless for one reason, and i'll call spaceless, timeless and immaterial the second reason all summed up as 'seperated' from our universe)

Matter is observed to displace space. But if matter exists without space, clearly it wouldn't displace space. Your argument shows nothing.If you want to make an empirical argument for the existence of God, then go to it. We can all get out our microscopes and other instruments to see if you have provided the empirical evidence. But that's not what the argument is claiming. Rather, it claims to be a conceptual argument. Therefore you need to show what it is about the concept of matter that requires space. You have not done that. When challenged, you merely repeat the same bare assertion but provide no new evidence. Which specific law is this? Another bare assertion. And that is where you assume what you are claiming to prove. That makes your argument circular. Are you presenting a conceptual proof, or a proof by appeal to experts? It wouldn't surprise me if Hawking, Penrose and Feynman are/were all atheists, so appealing to them is not going to help your case. You are assuming what is in dispute. Again, this is circular. That's an excellent way of stating what you would need to demonstrate, in order to support your argument. But simply restating it does not in any way demonstrate it. And there is the crux of your argument. You are unable to conceive of a universe without a creator. You therefore conclude that there must be a creator.I suppose we could call it the "proof from lack of imagination." But it is really just the old proof from ignorance. That is to say, it is no argument at all.You really should look at my "note on logic" toward the end of Message 52. These ontological arguments for God claim to use logic to do what logic cannot do. Such arguments are intellectual scams. Anybody presenting such an argument is a flim flam man. The reason nobody should be a fundamentalist Christian, is that fundamentalist Christianity is fundamentally dishonest. It relies on these intellectual scams to beguile the gullible into joining the cult.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

That's not a fact though, it isn't even a theory, it's a plain misunderstanding of a vaguely educational misrepresentation of the wrong end of some good solid math.Einstein gave us General Relativity, that's math that helps us describe observed phenomena like acceleration and gravitation in terms of the expansion and contraction of space. Hubbard provided doppler data of impossible proportions that stongly implied that space in general, the observable universe, was expanding rather than contracting, at a steady rate.The next obvious step was to work that rate backwards and see what it could tell us about the early universe. Let's skip that sideshow for a second though and just keep working it back and see where we would have to stop. Turns out, duh, we have to stop just a smidgen short of zero volume for our mass, or else we end up with "infinite" density. Density being mass divided by volume, and "infinite" being x/0.That doesn't mean that's where it starts though! It just means we can't start talking sense about it until one instant thereafterward, when it's just near-infinite density. Get it? The observable universe isn't the whole shebang, the main point is that you can take the observable universe and unknown quantities further and stick it in a teacup, in a teaspoon, in a teeny tiny shape of an atom, and still have unknowable amounts more big shebang left for it to do its trick in.But for convenience sake maybe we actually should stop short of infinite density? Hawking says No, infinity density probably actually happens a lot in a weird chaotic universe like ours. And assuming it does, these are the effects we would see. And black holes are quickly observed by means of the predicted phenomena. Black holes have infinite density, their mass has not even one smidgen between it and itself. And as a result they collapse spacetime nearby, and this isn't any sort of amazing philosophical headgame, actual infinities and zeros can be measured indirectly, they just can't be experienced by us because they collapse spacetime.This not only didn't help, it hurt a little. Obviously we now definitely have to stop short of the infinite density, because we can't imagine getting out of one of those. The whole point with singularities is their inescapability. Like Hawking said for the longest time, nothing gets out of a black hole. So basically we couldn't have shot out of the black hole entirely, we would have to have been something like the Hawking radiation that we see escaping from matter as it gets sucked into the hole.And yeah, that would be a whole lot of infinite density to make such a large explosion as to be the universe, it's quite out of scale with what we actually observe from the holes we can see. A whole shebang of its own would have had to collapsed into itself, to produce enough stuff escaping just before the horizon to be a little observable universe like ours is. Hence the whole Big Bang-Big Crunch scenario, you've actually covered that part yourself But lately Hawking changed his mind. Lost a bet doing so, too, so it's a pretty sure thing. Now he says yeah stuff could someday come out, just nothing like the stuff that ever went in.Doesn't really matter though. Never really was about the beginning, it was always about what the exercise could tell us about the early universe. Turns out one of the things that it does definitely tell us is that, at some point not quite that infinite density x/0 long ago, with all the mass-energy so close together but engaged in flying apart, every single quantum equation we can imagine ought to have been firing off all at once in the same locality. One of those possible fields, now dubbed the "inflaton" happens to be scalar, and so it supercedes all the others that are just additive or geometric or exponential without any trouble and expands space quietly and near-timelessly to a manageable scale where we can resort back to GR to figure things out.Ergo, there was no "early universe", problem solved.Anyway, notice how something never comes from nothing in this story? Finite measurable observable stuff comes from some unknowable larger background. Later, we improve our knowledge. We know more about the unknowable every day.We used to not be able to do math with our infinities at all, just had to stop there. Cantor made math for us, it works great. In conjunction with observable quantum phenomena it clearly defines the physics that makes probability work. Weird things happen for a reason, infinities are dividing together all the time and producing quasi-unpredictable but easily mapped finite results. When you flip a coin, when you roll the dice, infinity / zero is happening right in front of you.

I can't empirically prove the existence of God. No one can. Anyone that claims they can is in for a headache. You will never catch me saying that I can "prove" the existence of God. Now, that isn't to say that there aren't good arguments to support the necessity of a Creator. But assigning what the Creator "is" is an impossible task. Since there is no instance where space doesn't surround matter, the burden of proof remains with you to solve the insoluble. Seriously, how can there be matter if there is not space that it is inside of? If you can give me one instance where matter exists apart from space, then I will gladly concede. It isn't any one law, but the conglomerate of all the laws of physics.

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Aside from all of this, something cannot be created from nothing.

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Being that nothing has ever spanwed from nothing, then, again, the burden of proof lies with you to solve the insoluble.How can you say that I'm making bare assertions, when your argument is thus far tantamount to, "why?" "Why not?" "You don't know that for sure." That isn't an argument and you've neglected to answer my questions. You just answer my questions with more questions of your own. Right after I said that, I said that it was a belief of mine for a lack of any other theorem. You haven't given me a theorum that doesn't consist of the pre-existence of energy/matter/space/time. And I understand that you can't without breaking the rules of physics. That's what makes the Kalam argument so appealing. Hawking begrugingly believes in a Creator, but he takes a Diest position. He makes referrences to God all the time in his books, but I believe that his statements concerning God is his way of assigning the embodiment of reason within nature. I don't know what Richard or Roger believe in. But I suspect that you can understand that because you are a strict naturalist, you are bound by naturalism and its applicable laws. Composing a compelling theory is very difficult for strict naturalists without making no sense.I'll throw you a bone here. I propose that you plead the fifth with my alternative theory, which is, the beginning of this universe could have been the end of another that had the creative power to create this universe. That way you don't neccesarily have to break any laws of physics in this universe, but you can't disprove it either. Its a very safe position for an atheist. Its not circular! Time can't exist without space. Matter can't exist without space. Its a very, very simple concept. That isn't circular. And if you say it is, then you are at odds with the vast preponderance of astrophysicists. I have repeated it several times to you, both using physics and philosophy. I already explained to you that a singularity was necessary. This is becoming annoying. If I'm unable to live in a universe without a Creator, then you are incapable of even considering it as a possible answer. You've ruled out the Creator as a priori. I'm not saying that a Creator is an undeniable scientific axiom. What I'm saying is that a wholly naturalistic explanation for the origin of life and the universe is impossible. Impossible. Again, the only way you can get around it is to assume that another universe existed prior to the one you exist in. There is no accounting for the rules of the previous universe even if it is incapable of assigning the First Cause, but its as proveable improvable as an Intelligent design theory. I can imagine a universe that's topsy-turvy and one that defies all the laws we know today, but it exists only in my mind. The fact is, the universe we live in is bound by rules that I didn't make up or have any control over. It is what it is. And its demonstrable. They are so reliable that they decided to call it a "law." Its never ever been proven to be broken. Your position is very precarious. Intellectual scam? You've provided NO theorem whatsoever. All you've done is ask me why the Laws of physics exist and we you aren't allowed to break the rules. The Kalam argument is impenetrable aside from the alternate universe theory. Your lack to grasp the concepts isn't a failure on my part or Dr. Craig's or Kalam himself. I mean, I don't know what else I can say to you that's going to make a difference. You seem dead-set in your ways and those are your rights. Exercise them. But if you are gonna call me gullible, a cultist, fundamentally dishonest, only because you have NO argument whatsoever, then the discussion is over. There's nothing more I can say.

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“Always be ready to give a defense to
everyone who asks you a reason for the
hope that is in you.” -1st Peter 3:15