God exists as per the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA)

I see that yet again, you completely ignore my complete destruction of the KCA. You can ignore what I write, but it is in plain view of everyone else We can but try again... 1. Complete nonsense.We have yet to experience anything that "begins to exist" so to claim that all things A such that A "begins to exist", implies A "has a cause for its existence" is simply making propositions about fairies' wings.Everything we have ever thought of as a "begins to exist" is merely a change or shifting of form, whether at the level of mineral, chemical, atomic, sub-atomic, or field. This includes the much mentioned virtual-particles/pair-creation. The only thing that "begins to exist" is our terminology for the new form.The only possibility we have seen for something having a semblance of "begins to exist" is in the cosmological space-times of General Relativity (and related and expanded theories), of which a subset form the basis of Big Bang cosmology. These fall into two sets: those that have no-prior cause, and those that do. Those that do explicity break proposition 2.The KCA simply reveals an immense ignorance of modern physics - not surprising given that the KCA belongs to an age long ago... Probably a wise choice for you Simple - that "prior cause" is the infinitely extended time dimension back towards T=-inifnity. These space-times never "begin to exist".Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

I never said that either of us had. What we have in common is that we are both theoretical physicists and have a little bit more knowledge of this subject than your amateur musings It is not our fault that you are only aware of the layman/popular science accounts of Big Bang Cosmology. If you have a genuine interest, perhaps you could enrole in a cosmology department somewhere?Now, go back and answer my refutation of the KCA

Rueh writes; Hello RCH,Rev Cross Hugger writes ; Good morning to ya' rueh

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While physics may be a favored past time of mine, I am no expert. So I must differ to some of our expert posters in this field. I believe at this time there are many unexplained aspects of the quantum world. However I agree with the idea that, they do have a cause, which may be merely unknown at this point.

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Thanks for the input Rueh your posts are kind even when you do not agree with me, I appreciate that. It demonstrates what this forum could be, professional and intellectually open. I would like to say that the atmosphere has improved dramatically, which makes good debate possible, thanks to everyone.

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I disagree; I believe it strengthens the argument. It may destroy the ability to inject a supernatural cause for the answer. However considering that all past arguments for natural processes, once favored God/s as the answer. Those were shown to be incorrect. I believe that this will eventually be the case for this very same argument. The problem is that the answer ends up with either.

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I am not saying that the cause can not be a natural event. What I meant by destroying the KCA I meant it would destroy the KCA as a cosmological argument for the existence of God. It simply would be another theory of origins and not a cosmological argument. Perhaps the case could be made, and it would be ridiculed, that even God is a natural cause. God (as per Arthur C. Clarke) for example could be an advanced universe creating immortal race.

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1. The argument having to apply to the cause. i.e. if God is the cause, then what caused God? Or as Huntard says*, turtles all the way down. Or,

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*Huntard was quoting (see notes).You may not of read my prior posts! If the cause is eternal which deductive reasoning tells us it must be, then infinite regression stops with God/ the cause. This is because the cause that caused the universe to begin to exist, existed before the Big Bang (as the popular press would phrase it) or more correctly outside time. And time as science tells us was created in the big bang. Therefore the cause has to be eternal and or atemporal. Cavediver attempts to muddle the waters but may not be incorrect (I have yet to read his specific answer) it does not apply here.

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2. Special pleading, on the unknowns of a supernatural entity. You have to inject unknowns on the ability of an unknown entity. Which if we were to be totally honest, we could just apply to the conditions of the universe, and that would be a valid answer to the argument as well.

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Special pleading is not necessary. Let me know if I explained why infinite regression stops with the cause that caused the universe to begin to exist. I.e. God. This is not an easy concept to grasp. I think the reason so many members are opposed to it are two fold. One it injects a god like being into the universe via a logical argument. Second some of them do not fully understand it, and that is my fault. There are novel length books that describe the KCA. So its very very difficult to describe it here. Also English is my second language. So I am at a disadvantage.

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These are the only two answers I continue to come up with, to the outcome of the argument. However if we insert that there may be valid natural causes to the beginning of the universe. Then the answer is. We simply do not know what caused the universe to unfold.

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I like your style! However we are attempting to come up with some rational answers via the cosmological argument to why the universe began to exist. Science is attempting to come up with a scientific answer and I hope they find one. Maybe then I can rest peacefully and go back to my mountain top church and get off the debate thing! If I were more science prone than philosophically inclined I would be in Geneva trying to get the LHC (large hadron collider) in CREN back in action. Why? Because if the Higgs Boson is found it may vindicate string theory and give multi-universes empirical evidence for their existence. Now that would be a deadly serious challenge to the KCA abd first cause arguments!

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.The problem I see with this. Is that the KCA does not naturally point to a supernatural entity. That is merely your favored answer to the argument. However, with that answer you run into the problems that I brought up earlier.

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As I said we have just scratched the surface of the KCA. The rest of it gives an valid logical reason to assume the cause is personal in nature. I would be happy to direct you to a site that has popular as well as advanced articles on this. Start here; Defending Biblical Christianity | Reasonable Faith .You have a fine open mind. If you have a look at the site with the same open mind that you respond to me with you may like it. If you don’t well it could be used for ammo against the likes of me! Thanks so much for your kindness and interesting objections to the KCA.; }>PS Huntard got the turtles all the way down from this ;Turtles all they way down
"But it's turtles all the way down." Well, it isn't turtles all the way down. In a phrase, "A people acquire and retain well being in proportion to the ...
http://www.the-funneled-web.com/Hawking.htm

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God is Dead - Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead-God"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein

You're once again not using the message specific reply button. It's the little button between "edit" and "peek", at the bottom of each individual message. Using such button is useful for tracking the message chain. One can get to and look at the replied to message without having to do a search. NO REPLIES TO THIS MODERATION MESSAGE - DOING SUCH CAN TRIGGER A SUSPENSION (Forum guideline 1: "Follow all moderator requests.").Adminnemooseusps: Use "peek" on any message, if you wish to see how any coding was done. Note how closing code MUST be in the opposite order of the opening code.

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RCH writes

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The cause being independent of time ie atemoral or eternal if you wish did not begin to exist so solves the problem of infinite regression.

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lyx2no writes ;

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How do you not see that the above reasoning also relieves the the problem of cause?

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No because the cause is required due to the deductive reasoning of the KCA. The universe has to have a cause if the premises are valid. Or if this wasn’t what you meant please expand.; {>

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God is Dead - Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead-God"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein

testing.Edited by RevCrossHugger, : No reason given.

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God is Dead - Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead-God"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein

I wish to heck it worked! It does not!!! Do you think its easy to write all that extra stuff? I use the little reply button it does not help. I have tried everything. My system was hacked several times and in this forum the tags do not work correctly. Please advise. Would my computer running in safe mode make any difference?I have no problem in any other forum. I am at my wits end unless the members want to donate and get me a new computer? I use only one computer for the net,my other one is for art and photos etc.; {>I don't know how else to get the message across. If I did not reply to the message I could get suspended because you would think I wasn't following your recommendations. If I do reply I get suspended? How can this be resolved? Trust me its not intentional ! I have done everything possible at this end.If you have to delete my account.; {>Edited by RevCrossHugger, : No reason given.Edited by RevCrossHugger, : No reason given.

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God is Dead - Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead-God"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein

Find a *single* post that you want to reply to. Press the reply button, respond, and post. Rinse, and repeat. It is really that simple.Don't reply to the Admin message, simply comply as it requests. Seriously, he can figure out if you are following his request, he figured out when you were not.You were asked not to reply to the message, and yet you did it twice. I would suggest being less concerned with God and more concerned with being unable to comply with simple requests.

External and atemporal do not indicate a god. Occam's Razor suggests that it would simply indicate something that is atemporal and/or external. In order to suggest the existence of a god you have a lot further to go, and one would suspect you are highly biased at this point. You accuse him of trying to confuse the issue, but not necessarily being wrong, and regardless simply not applying to the topic. However, you do this without actually reading his reply. That is... tricky, considering our knowledge of how things work. Of course you may psychically dismiss this reply as well... So you think our criticism of the concept comes from us disliking logic and not understanding the concept. And you think your lack of English skill puts you at a disadvantage... We don't like the concept because it is basically pure imagination, without any indication that it relates to reality.

Hi Rev,Let me try to explain again.There are two types of "reply" button.The first type is for general replies. It's a relatively big button, one near the top of the page and another near the bottom, that says in big letters, "Gen Reply". It's for responding to the thread in general rather than to a specific message.The second type of reply button is for replies to a specific message, and one can be found beneath each message. To find it, look at the bottom of any message. Don't look at the bottom of the page. Look at the bottom of the message. You'll see a row of buttons. The buttons say things like "profile", "mail", "edit", "reply" and "peek".When replying to a specific message, the little "reply" button at the bottom of the message is the one you want. When you use this button then the message you reply to has your message appended to the list of messages under the heading "Replies to this message" at the bottom of his message (but above the row of little buttons). And your message gets a "This message is a reply to" link back to the message you replied to.If you instead use the "Gen Reply" button when replying to a specific message, unless you begin with a salutation to someone specific, no one will know who you're replying to. Everyone knows immediately when you've used the "Gen Reply" button because your message has no annotation about which message it is a reply to.Hope this helps.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Thanks I was doing exactly that. Using the small reply button. When it didn't work I had to use the large button to navigate away from the page.The small reply did not change pages, and the window went blank each time I used the small reply button. I used the big gen reply button to get the page to transition etc. I manually typed in the extra font as Rev writes etc. for clarity because the small reply button was not working. I have ran a full virus scan as well as a system restore and changed browsers. I hope that fixes the problem. Thanks for your patience.
; {>The only other thing I can think of if the virus scan and system restore or a even a system recovery does not work is to re register if its that big of an issue. Edited by RevCrossHugger, : No reason given.Edited by RevCrossHugger, : No reason given.

Hi cat, So as far as you are concerned the only thing covered by the anything of the statement "1...Anything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence" is the universe. Is that correct?The KCA statement only states that the Universe began to exist.The universe is one thing of the any thing.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

And.....?Are we supposed to assume that eternal entities "external to time" exist as some sort of solution to this "problem"? Why?I still fail to see how one can conclude that uncaused beginnings are impossible, based on lack of observation of such things, whilst simultaneously advocating eternal entities that are equally unobserved as a logical alternative.It is inconsistent and selective.

Your expectation of what is supposed to happen is getting in your way of seeing what is happening. You're expecting to see the post you are responding to to appear in the reply box. It doesn't. You get an empty reply box just as you do when you press the Gen Reply button. If you scroll down the screen you will see the post that you are replying to from which you can drag and drop the relevant quotes. This method avoids the clutter from lazy people who automatically copy the entire post until there are a score of nested replies.Good observational skills are crucial to discovery.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.

The point is whether the universe ever "began to exist." If all the matter & energy was there prior to the big bang then how does the universe begin to exist. We cannot say whether it began or not since we cannot see anything prior to the big bang.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008