Beginning Of The Universe Evidence Of God's Existence

[R. S. Martin]

I found Christians who think they have evidence of God's existence and that this evidence is the beginning of the universe itself. But what if the universe had no beginning? I'm presenting them with this possibility and arguing that science does not know for sure. The thread is here.

 

I have no idea where this will end. We've gone through one round of arguments. The scientific position for an eternal universe is extremely weak and I don't accept purely philosophical arguments as proof of anything. So it might not go anywhere. All the same, the origins of life and the cosmos have not been scientifically determined.

 

I am thinking a man who wants to base the foundation of his religion on the beginning of the universe had better make sure the universe had a beginning. Or consider the implications if it is eternal. This man is none other than William Lane Craig himself.

 

The American William Lane Craig is said to be one of the world's leading evangelical apologists. Here are a few links on him in case anyone is interested:

• wikipedia article
  
• Craig's "Virtual Office" with links to other sites
  
• Reasonable Faith.org Website
  
• Reasonable Faith.org Forums
  

I've spent about two months on his forums. According to his people, Craig thinks faith is reasonable because it is built on reason. He thinks he has evidence that it is more reasonable to think God exists than it is to think he doesn't. His "evidence" is the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I was directed to his Defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

 

Here is a brief quote from his article:

 

The kalam cosmological argument is an exercise in positive apologetics aimed at proving that God exists. It may be formulated as follows: 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

 

2. The universe began to exist.

 

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

 

Conceptual analysis of what it is to be cause of the universe will recover several of the principal attributes of God, so that the cause takes on the character of a personal Creator of the universe.

 

To get the conversation started I add:

 

We do not know that the universe began to exist. Therefore we do not know that the universe has a cause. Therefore God does not necessarily exist.

 

We know that the universe has not always had its present shape. We know that it evolved over major periods of time. It may have evolved from pre-existing universes. There are many other possibilities, none of which require the Judeo-Christian God. It is impossible that God necessarily exists.

 

People got all kinds of crazy ideas as to what I am actually saying so I clarified in Post 31:

 

Originally Posted by

LNC

 

 

Science can only give us probabilistic answers to what happened in the past. At this point, the probability that the universe is past eternal is seen as being extremely low, while the probability that the universe (matter, space, and time) had a beginning is high. So, your holding to a view that the universe did not have a beginning is not a scientific conclusion, but a metaphysical conclusion based, most likely, on materialistic presuppositions.

 

I never said that the universe did not have a beginning.

 

 

You have to reject or deny the best science to hold your position, which is a weak faith position.

 

 

Since I don't have a position I don't have to hold it. Nor do I have to reject anything--scientific or otherwise.

 

One day, as I was contemplating the Big Questions Without Answers, a question occurred to me out of the blue: Would it be possible that the universe has always existed?

 

I thought about it for a year or two or however long it was. I began to find that I'm not the first human ever to have had such a thought. That was kinda nice. At least, if I'm crazy I'm not the only crazy person on earth. The thing is, the other people who have had this thought occur to them are not crazy.

 

Here's another thing to keep in mind: All new discoveries were at one time in the extreme minority position, and opposed to by the widely-held wisdom of the day. Just because the best science of today does not accept that the universe is eternal in no way disproves the possibility. Science has not proven that it had a beginning, either.

 

The Kalam Cosmological Argument depends on the universe having had a beginning for God's existence. Since we don't know

for sure

that the universe had a beginning, the Kalam Cosmological Argument is not as strong as it might seem. Therefore, God does not necessarily exist, even according to WLC's best philosophical arguments. I consider that to be a pretty strong blow at the foundation of religion. I bet he didn't think things through all the way before he proposed that argument.

 

My original title was "Implications of an Eternal Universe." I changed it because that might be too big a mouthful. But I think this is what it boils down to for Christians who base their belief for God's very existence on the beginning of the universe.

 

 

I just find it mind-boggling that anyone uses such a flimsy foundation for his religion. Maybe it's not as flimsy as I think. On the other hand, his using it this way will make the Christians balk this much more at having ID ousted from the public school curriculum. They will think god himself is ousted whereas before it was just one Origins version vs another. Now it's the evidence for god himself that we're talking about.

 

What's the world coming to???

[Andy]

I'm often willing to give in and say sure, the universe had a creator. Because they still can't link this creator to the bible in any way. It's kind of a lazy argument, but it works.

[Antlerman]

Though I can appreciate the effort, there is a problem with your premise. The steady state theory of the universe idea has been pretty much dashed by the weight of evidence. Where the strongest argument against these people's theory is that of "infinte regression". Who created the Creator?" Plato proposed a "prime mover" as the solution, and these folks are lazily borrowing that idea. But the real arguement is that in every single thing that we are able to examine, a natural cause is always, without exception, found to be behind it. No supernatural, transnatural causes are ever the ultimate conclusion.

 

Their's is a weak faith. It's a "faith" that for some reason needs evidence to validate it. But if it is validated, then it is not "faith". Is it?

 

I'd abandon the Steady State argument, and focus on the weakness of their faith. If they need evidence, then whatever they claim to offer in the way of a faith-based approached to life, must be little different, or transcendant, than a naturalist one. In which case, why not just be secualar???

[Legion]

Ruby I think this is an interesting and unusual direction that you’ve taken. I find it intriguing.

 

I know we are supposed to listen to the scientists, especially physicists. But I just don’t know. I am no longer prepared to simply take their word that the big bang was/is a reality. In fact I am beginning to doubt the whole notion that physics is THE science among the sciences.

 

We still do not have a satisfactory physics of thermodynamically open systems. To my mind this points to a glaring shortcoming of contemporary physics. And when it comes to living systems increasingly they strike me as being incompetent. They might say, “This is not our domain; this belongs to the biologists.” Yet organisms are physical systems.

 

Some of them might hold that there are no new physics to be learned from the study of life. Yet a giant among them, Erwin Schrodinger, suggested differently more than 50 years ago. All I know is that my faith, if you will, in physicists will only begin to be restored when they begin to increasingly turn their attention towards life. They can’t explain or predict organisms yet they presume to explain the universe.

[Ouroboros]

The only kind of God the Kalam argument can lead to is a God who, himself, has to have been created, otherwise he can not exist. It's a recursive argument. To claim that God did not need a Creator, is special pleading, meaning that the logic would end up this way instead:

 

p1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. -- Except God

p2. The universe began to exist.

c. Therefore, the universe has a cause. -- And that cause is God

 

Without the "God" part, the argument is valid, and one theory for what caused the Big Bang is a quantum fluctuation in the hot/dense/pre-universe state made it go unstable.

[Legion]

p1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. -- Except God

I think they would merely counter by saying God did not begin to exist.

[Ouroboros]

p1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. -- Except God

I think they would merely counter by saying God did not begin to exist.

 

That's exactly what I said. God has to be made as an exception for the first premise for the syllogism to hold true, and that is special pleading. It's not a counter to my statement, since that is what my statement is saying. Look, I made my premise very short, but here's a longer version: p1) Everything that begins to exists (exception is God, because he is supposed to exist without beginning) has a cause

 

One problem with premise one is that it contains several conditions at once. A good premise should only contain A->B, and not a combination of conditions or assumptions.

 

Think about it.

 

"Everything..." - meaning everything that exists? or just everything of a certain set of things?

"...that begins..." - aha, everything of the set of things that have a beginning, not the things without a beginning.

"...to Exists..." - ok, only the set of things that have a beginning and come into existence, in other words, not Everything and not Everything with a beginning. Does "Exists" include integers? Does it include 1 as the beginning of the existence of natural numbers? It doesn't say, only assumes.

 

Or like this:

 

Premise 1 states:

Set A is: all things/objects/entites/beings that exists, which would include God

Set B is: subset of A where the things/objects/entities/beings had a beginning, and it is assumed that God is not part of this set, and the Universe is.

Then it finally posits: Elements of Set B always has a Cause

 

But see the problem is that Set B is assumed to exclude God, but include the Universe, and a potential multiverse, and any 11 dimensions, and braided universe, and ... That is called special pleading, or you could call it a non-explicit assumption.

 

No one has really set up a proof that God can not be an element of Set B, while the Universe must be an element of set B.

[Neon Genesis]

Their's is a weak faith. It's a "faith" that for some reason needs evidence to validate it. But if it is validated, then it is not "faith". Is it?

 

I'd abandon the Steady State argument, and focus on the weakness of their faith. If they need evidence, then whatever they claim to offer in the way of a faith-based approached to life, must be little different, or transcendant, than a naturalist one. In which case, why not just be secualar???

Even the bible says that faith is the evidence of things not seen. It doesn't say that pseudo-philosophical arguments or science is the evidence of god. It says that faith is the evidence, so if they're believing in god with something other than faith, then they're not really believing. But then if they can only believe with faith, then other people's faiths and ways of life are just as likely to be true as theirs.

 

I think they would merely counter by saying God did not begin to exist.

That's a double standard to their argument and only proves their hypocrisy. Christians will try to use laws of logic to prove the existence of god, but then when you try to disprove their claims, they suddenly respond by saying god exists outside the universe, so the laws of logic don't apply to him even though they were just trying to use laws of logic to prove the existence of god. If the laws of logic do indeed not apply to god because it exists outside the universe, then you can't use the laws of logic to either prove or disprove its existence because then god is something ambiguous and undefinable. It'd be like saying you can't disprove the existence of ywaleix because the laws of logic doesn't apply to ywaleix. But if the laws of logic don't apply to ywaleix, then ywaleix is just a meaningless word that can't be proven or disproved. However, if laws of logic can be used to prove god, then laws of logic can be used to disprove it, too. Christians can't have their cake and eat it, too. They have to make a choice. Another way of looking at it is that saying the laws of logic don't work on god because god is outside the universe is like me asking how do you know invisible pink unicorns exist if they are invisible and someone responding by saying "it's because they're pink!" The response is meaningless and doesn't answer anything. Actually, the existence of invisible pink unicorns is better than god because the invisible pink unicorn is based on both faith and logic! Logically, we know we can't see her because she's invisible. But we have faith that she's pink!

[R. S. Martin]

Thanks everyone for your contributions. Hans, I was especially interested in your ideas, given some of our off-line discussions. Thanks a lot.

 

The Christians just know--hands down without further investigation--that the case wins in their favour because of the overwhelming scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning and that it makes so much more sense to think God exists than to think otherwise. (The fact that they consistently fail to produce this overwhelming evidence for God's existence in quantities large enough to satisfy their resident atheists kinda speaks for itself but that's not the point at the moment.) The atheists over there tend to be more scientific minded than philosophical. I may have to direct the Christians over here to see the philosophical arguments that were raised here.

 

Not that they are going to admit that "stupid atheists" actually know something because we haven't got the Holy Spirit. But on some level they've got to recognize intelligence when they see it--that's just the way the human brain works. Well, unless it has been seared with a hot iron, as Paul so aptly puts it, in which case I suppose anything can be expected.

[R. S. Martin]

Changed my mind--at least for the moment--about sending the Christians directly to this thread. There's this one person who says my thinking is "logically flawed," when the only logical reason for such a charge that I can see is that it disagrees irreconcilably with his beliefs.

[chefranden]

What if the bang that led to us was a weapon? Perhaps there was a war between the Gods and the big bang was a nuke in that war, or maybe just a grenade. It's hard to tell with gods. We are the shrapnel of the gods. That would make a good sci-fi plot.

 

Or perhaps God is building a new dam in heaven and the big bang was just a stick of dynamite used in the construction. While it is true the explosions are used in the construction process, it is not true that the goal of a construction project is an explosion unless you are constructing a weapon. If the bang were set off by a god, and there is no way to know which god, we are a mere side effect and not the object of the explosion.

[Heavenslaughing]

Neon Genesis and Hans have both interpreted Premise 1 of the argument in a way that leads to its inherent and self-evident silliness, while Legion has responded in a way that interprets the premise in the way I believe it is intended.

 

To be halfway meaningful, P1 is not

Everything (and everything has a beginning (except god)) has a cause.

 

P1 is

(Everything with a beginning) has a cause.

 

An eternal god does not fall within the category of things which P1 states to have a cause.

 

Posit another cause with a beginning, and you'll need to come up with a cause for that. It's all just more universe. So, continues the argument, to find an ultimate beginning, you'd have to have something that has no beginning. Ostensibly, only god qualifies.

 

First, not only god qualifies. The laws which govern the way the universe works are eternal. They have no cause. Strictly speaking, they don't "cause" other things, but they enable all causation to take place. The arguments that the eternal can only take the form of a personalized god are the silly ones. Second, why are we searching for an ultimate beginning? Why do we believe that such exists? Before the universe, we can simply have a universe in a vastly different form, and something else before that. And something else after. Why the fear from these Christians of eternal dynamism? My final response is not so much to refute the answer as to deem the question an idle one.

[Ouroboros]

Seems like we're saying the same thing, but you didn't realize it.

[R. S. Martin]

Re the first premise (everything that exists). On one occasion I summarized the Kalam for someone who wasn't familiar with it and unwittingly said the Kalam holds that "Everything that exists has a cause." I was corrected and informed that it states "Everything that exists on earth..." Let's see, I'm not sure if the qualifier was "on earth" or something else, but it was some qualifier that differentiated between the Creator and the created.

 

I had to sleep on it a few days before I could see any sense in the post. When I first saw it, it was just a batch of disjointed thoughts on the screen for all I could make out so I didn't respond to it. Several days later I found it again and I realized the importance of what I had done; I had implicated that God--whom these people think is eternal--is equal to everything else that exists (which these people think is perishable). That had been totally unintentional on my part and I apologized. The apology was accepted.

 

Just thought to share this bit of info on how important that clause is to the working of the Kalam argument for the Christians. My grasp of the technicalities of philosophical arguments is very weak so I don't know how this info impacts the arguments being made here.

[wonderer1]

Though I can appreciate the effort, there is a problem with your premise. The steady state theory of the universe idea has been pretty much dashed by the weight of evidence.

 

I agree with this. The evidence for the big bang initiating the existance of the universe as we know it, is overwhelming and the big bang theory successfully predicted the existence of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

 

At the same time though, for all I know, the universe as we know it is simply the result of a natural occurrence in a meta-universe which perhaps is utterly beyond human comprehension. I simply don't know how we can even meaningfully discuss existence outside of spacetime as we know it. Considering the big bang theory proposes that our time dimension came into existence with our space dimensions, I'm not sure what meaning the word "cause" could even have from a hypothesized perspective outside our space-time continuum.

 

But the real arguement is that in every single thing that we are able to examine, a natural cause is always, without exception, found to be behind it.

 

One problem here, is that this is an inductive argument, and therefore relatively weak. We simply haven't examined everything that might be examined and therefore can't reasonably claim it is proven that all effects have causes.

 

Second and perhaps more important, radioactive decay occurs on what appears to be a random basis, and we can't track a causal chain back beyond a certain point for any individual radioactive decay event. So it seems far from clear, that even all phenomenon we know of have a natural cause.

 

It seem to me that the place to attack the Kalaam argument is at premise 1, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause."

 

I'd ask, "What have we seen begin to exist?"

 

Considering matter/energy equivalence and conservation of mass/energy, we don't really have examples of anything beginning to exist. We simply have examples of matter and energy moving into different configurations. So how can we even inductively make a claim about whether things that begin to exist have a cause? From a materialist perspective, we only have one isolated example of something beginning to exist, and that is the universe as we know it. That isolated incident is certainly no basis for inductive reasoning.

 

I don't have time to go on now, but kick this way of looking at things around.

[Jeff H]

Re the first premise (everything that exists). On one occasion I summarized the Kalam for someone who wasn't familiar with it and unwittingly said the Kalam holds that "Everything that exists has a cause." I was corrected and informed that it states "Everything that exists on earth..." Let's see, I'm not sure if the qualifier was "on earth" or something else, but it was some qualifier that differentiated between the Creator and the created.

I've never heard it phrased that way, but doesn't that just destroy the whole argument anyway? The universe isn't something that exists on earth, so therefore adding in that phrase simply removes the entire universe from the discussion...

 

 

It seem to me that the place to attack the Kalaam argument is at premise 1, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause."

 

I'd ask, "What have we seen begin to exist?"

 

Considering matter/energy equivalence and conservation of mass/energy, we don't really have examples of anything beginning to exist. We simply have examples of matter and energy moving into different configurations. So how can we even inductively make a claim about whether things that begin to exist have a cause? From a materialist perspective, we only have one isolated example of something beginning to exist, and that is the universe as we know it. That isolated incident is certainly no basis for inductive reasoning.

 

I don't have time to go on now, but kick this way of looking at things around.

I like that way of looking at it. What we see coming into existence is merely a transformation of form. Therefore, our only source of knowledge about things "beginning to exist" is, indeed, the beginning of the universe, and we can't use that or it would make the argument circular.

 

The other way of looking at the argument is to see that there is really an inductive argument hidden inside this seemingly deductive argument. Premise 1 says that everything that begins to exist has a cause. But this should really be phrased, "Everything that we have seen begin to exist has a cause." Therefore, it is perfectly plausible to say that, although all prior experiences have shown that things beginning to exist have a cause, this does not necessitate that the rule holds 100% of the time. And when talking about the beginning of the universe - all physical matter and energy as we know it, this is certainly an exceptional circumstance that may well prove the exception to the rule. So even if we accept that we have other evidence of things beginning to exist, premise 1 really turns the argument into an inductive one, which greatly decreases its strength.

[Antlerman]

What if the bang that led to us was a weapon? Perhaps there was a war between the Gods and the big bang was a nuke in that war, or maybe just a grenade. It's hard to tell with gods. We are the shrapnel of the gods. That would make a good sci-fi plot.

 

Or perhaps God is building a new dam in heaven and the big bang was just a stick of dynamite used in the construction. While it is true the explosions are used in the construction process, it is not true that the goal of a construction project is an explosion unless you are constructing a weapon. If the bang were set off by a god, and there is no way to know which god, we are a mere side effect and not the object of the explosion.

I would normally run with this, but I'm feeling literalistic tonight. The Big "Bang" is a misnomer. It was really more a Big Inflation. No explosions going on. So, in this vein I like to imagine this Universe being a grand soap bubble from the baby Jesus in heaven playing with his new Cosmic Soap Wand. One day, it will burst and we shall then see him "face to face", all covered in universe film.

 

 

First, not only god qualifies. The laws which govern the way the universe works are eternal. They have no cause.

In what way are they eternal? The laws of this universe don't necessarily exist outside it. Aren't they properties of the matter that was created following the Big Bang?

 

The arguments that the eternal can only take the form of a personalized god are the silly ones.

Playing the gods' advocate here for argument sake, if personality exists in this universe, as we are part of the universe, is it unreasonable to extrapolate that personality, thought, etc could exist in the nature of the first cause?

 

Second, why are we searching for an ultimate beginning?

Easy. Culture. Our mindset comes from the Christian West. We're programmed to think that way. It's all about thinking beyond our programming.

 

Why the fear from these Christians of eternal dynamism?

The answer to that is because it leaves no room for their understanding of a deity. However, for argument's sake, I don't see why they don't just modify the myth some and have their god be the god of this "eternal" existence of multiverses, ours being but one of an endless series. Frankly, it's an even grander view of a god to see things like that. The real problem is that they're insisting on mythologies to inform them about the natural universe. Their fear is having to look for new understanding, preferring the illusion that they are secure in understanding the god they claim to believe in. Basically, it threatens their religion, and betrays they don't have faith, only religion.

[R. S. Martin]

Re the first premise (everything that exists). On one occasion I summarized the Kalam for someone who wasn't familiar with it and unwittingly said the Kalam holds that "Everything that exists has a cause." I was corrected and informed that it states "Everything that exists on earth..." Let's see, I'm not sure if the qualifier was "on earth" or something else, but it was some qualifier that differentiated between the Creator and the created.

I've never heard it phrased that way, but doesn't that just destroy the whole argument anyway? The universe isn't something that exists on earth, so therefore adding in that phrase simply removes the entire universe from the discussion...

 

 

In response to your question. I guess my qualifier must be wrong because they are more astute than all that but I know there was a qualifier to differentiate between Creator and created. I should look up the post but I don't know where to look for it. It was just an aside in another thread. I think a new atheist joined the conversation and didn't know what Kalam was. I don't remember which thread it was and many of those threads go on for a couple hundred posts. I don't relish looking for needles in haystacks. If I find it while this convo is still going on I'll post it.

[wonderer1]

It seem to me that the place to attack the Kalaam argument is at premise 1, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause."

 

I'd ask, "What have we seen begin to exist?"

 

Considering matter/energy equivalence and conservation of mass/energy, we don't really have examples of anything beginning to exist. We simply have examples of matter and energy moving into different configurations. So how can we even inductively make a claim about whether things that begin to exist have a cause? From a materialist perspective, we only have one isolated example of something beginning to exist, and that is the universe as we know it. That isolated incident is certainly no basis for inductive reasoning.

 

I don't have time to go on now, but kick this way of looking at things around.

 

I like that way of looking at it. What we see coming into existence is merely a transformation of form. Therefore, our only source of knowledge about things "beginning to exist" is, indeed, the beginning of the universe, and we can't use that or it would make the argument circular.

 

Thinking further along those lines... Can we even claim that that which constitutes the universe as we know it began to exist at the big bang, or merely transitioned from some other form to the form we observe?

 

Perhaps some relevant question are...

 

What is in a black hole?

 

Did that which is in a black hole cease to exist when it entered the black hole? (The answer is clearly no, or there would be no black hole manifested in our universe.)

 

Supposing it possible for a conscious being of some sort to evolve within whatever state of things is within a black hole... Would the supernova that occurred within our universe and resulted in the formation of the black hole, mark the beginning of the universe to that conscious being inside the black hole?

 

Did that which is within the black hole begin to exist when it entered the black hole? (Perhaps from the perspective of a conscious entity within the black hole. But in the bigger picture we can see, that that which is in the black hole certainly didn't begin to exist at the time of formation of the black hole.)

 

The other way of looking at the argument is to see that there is really an inductive argument hidden inside this seemingly deductive argument. Premise 1 says that everything that begins to exist has a cause. But this should really be phrased, "Everything that we have seen begin to exist has a cause." Therefore, it is perfectly plausible to say that, although all prior experiences have shown that things beginning to exist have a cause, this does not necessitate that the rule holds 100% of the time. And when talking about the beginning of the universe - all physical matter and energy as we know it, this is certainly an exceptional circumstance that may well prove the exception to the rule. So even if we accept that we have other evidence of things beginning to exist, premise 1 really turns the argument into an inductive one, which greatly decreases its strength.

 

Right. Even if we take a less purely materialistic view and admit the concept of things beginning to exist within our universe, any beginning of existence within* the universe as we know it, is a completely different sort of phenomena than beginning of existence of the universe itself. Causality within our universe is at best an analogy to causality of our universe. I don't see any particular reason to think it is a valid analogy.

 

*Edit: Changed "of" to "within".

[Ouroboros]

Thinking further along those lines... Can we even claim that that which constitutes the universe as we know it began to exist at the big bang, or merely transitioned from some other form to the form we observe?

 

Perhaps some relevant question are...

 

What is in a black hole?

 

Did that which is in a black hole cease to exist when it entered the black hole? (The answer is clearly no, or there would be no black hole manifested in our universe.)

The problem with the word "began" is that it is depending on time. In a black hole, and also in the hot and chaotic 'blob' that existed before our universe--time doesn't and didn't exist. Time for us is measured through the processes of nature, and is dependent on the laws of nature. None of these laws existed before the Big Bang. And in a black hole, the processes slows down so that time is increasingly stretches towards infinity. It's a bit like the paradox with the arrow that never reaches the target: first it has to travel half of the distance, then half of that half, and then half of that half, and so on, which makes it to never arrive. That's kind of what happens in a black hole. Fortunately the paradox doesn't apply for normal physics, and Planck time and space make sure the arrow gets there eventually. One interesting thing is that even if the black hole captures matter and locks it in, quarks can escape through quantum tunneling, in other words, they can defy--actually have to defy--the gravity of the black hole.

 

But the Universe "Banged" from something, it was not nothing, and that something did "do" something, in the sense of something happened. And the cause was a quantum event, which is something in our world we know (or at least currently) define as self caused (i.e. without first cause). Basically, the Kalam argument is correct, a "first cause" caused the Universe, but it wasn't a "God", and it wasn't (and isn't) alone (because it's still happening), and whatever hot plasma ball it happened it, might have come from a different state before that, which means it wasn't really the "first". But it was definitely the first for our Universe existence.

 

Supposing it possible for a conscious being of some sort to evolve within whatever state of things is within a black hole... Would the supernova that occurred within our universe and resulted in the formation of the black hole, mark the beginning of the universe to that conscious being inside the black hole?

 

Did that which is within the black hole begin to exist when it entered the black hole? (Perhaps from the perspective of a conscious entity within the black hole. But in the bigger picture we can see, that that which is in the black hole certainly didn't begin to exist at the time of formation of the black hole.)

Maybe, maybe not.

 

One theory is that new universes spawn out of black holes. The new particle collider they're powering up right now, might be able to create miniature black holes... maybe that will cause a universe into existence, and the scientists are the Gods?

 

 

The other way of looking at the argument is to see that there is really an inductive argument hidden inside this seemingly deductive argument. Premise 1 says that everything that begins to exist has a cause. But this should really be phrased, "Everything that we have seen begin to exist has a cause." Therefore, it is perfectly plausible to say that, although all prior experiences have shown that things beginning to exist have a cause, this does not necessitate that the rule holds 100% of the time. And when talking about the beginning of the universe - all physical matter and energy as we know it, this is certainly an exceptional circumstance that may well prove the exception to the rule. So even if we accept that we have other evidence of things beginning to exist, premise 1 really turns the argument into an inductive one, which greatly decreases its strength.

 

Right. Even if we take a less purely materialistic view and admit the concept of things beginning to exist within our universe, any beginning of existence of the universe as we know it, is a completely different sort of phenomena than beginning of existence of the universe itself. Causality within our universe is at best an analogy to causality of our universe. I don't see any particular reason to think it is a valid analogy.

Quantum Events are said to be without first causes, i.e. self-caused. That makes every quark a God. Every particle in our body consists of at least one or two quarks, which means we're full of trillions and trillions of gods.

[Ouroboros]

I would normally run with this, but I'm feeling literalistic tonight. The Big "Bang" is a misnomer. It was really more a Big Inflation. No explosions going on. So, in this vein I like to imagine this Universe being a grand soap bubble from the baby Jesus in heaven playing with his new Cosmic Soap Wand. One day, it will burst and we shall then see him "face to face", all covered in universe film.

I'm quoting you because I think it's important to remind everyone about it.

 

The original Big Bang theory doesn't really exist anymore, it was replaced by the inflation theory. But the name Big Bang was so cool, and it stuck in people's head, so when we're talking about the Big Bang theory, we're actually talking about Big Bang Theory version # 2 (or later edition) and not the first explosion version.

 

The Big Bang inflated to about 70% (IIRC) to the current size of the Universe, within the first second after the event. Which means, if it was a BANG, the matter must have moved many times faster than the speed of light, which it can't, so what really happened was that the fabric of space itself expanded and stretched out, and there's no laws against that moving faster than light, since the light speed is measured in how fast light can travel IN space.

[Heavenslaughing]

Seems like we're saying the same thing, but you didn't realize it.

 

I know this wasn't your intent, but telling someone he's saying the same thing as you but just doesn't know it can come across as condescending, especially if it's simply left at that. We're in agreement about the ultimate fate of the logic of the argument, but we're not in agreement that the argument as phrased requires an exception or special pleading, so we're not saying quite the same thing. I tend to parse these arguments in the way that they make the most sense, which isn't always the same sense in which they are sometimes repeated in fractured form. As a result, we're having a rather fun quibble over where bad logic goes bad.

 

I don't believe the issue lies with an unmade proof that God must belong to the category of things that have no beginning. God enters into the logical argument later. The problem lies with the assumption that phenomena must have ultimate causes, which leads to the supposition that some end to the regress of causes must exist: a causeless cause. Turning to the contrapositive, if it has no cause, it has no beginning. Whatever lies at the end of the causal regress must be an infinite entity back through time. The logic then proceeds (badly) to prove why this entity should be considered an anthropomorphized God. I can't think of any proof for the necessity of ultimate causation which doesn't prove circular, however, so the proof begins with a baseless premise.

 

I'm quite tickled with the turn of the argument into an indication of trillions and trillions of quarky gods. Incidentally, even with every tenet of the above logic accepted, I don't see any reason to suppose that a thing with no cause cannot have an end. These arguments for god don't preclude deism. Or, if you're feeling prankish, you could accept the logic and then insist that God died somewhere down the line. Or, if we take the argument in the form you suggested, we could argue that Jesus ceased to be God as soon as he had a beginning--if we're believing this resurrection story, he had two of them! Sometimes it is more fun to mess around inside bad logic than to disprove it for the umpteenth time.

[Ouroboros]

Sorry if it sounded condescending, that was not my intention. Too much to say, to little time...

 

The First Cause as being the First Cause is no problem for me.

 

However, the addition that God, as an object, is THAT First Cause, while the Universe is NOT, or that something else cannot be a First Cause, and to do so without proper justification, is special pleading. I have no issue with the Kalam from the perspective of A (the indefinite article) First Cause to the Universe, while to claim that God is THE First Cause, is unjustified. Because if they were equated, then the argument should be as follows:

 

p1) everything that exists with a beginning, was made by a Creator

p2) the universe began to exist

c) The universe has a creator

 

And we can see the first premise does not hold. And notice, I'm talking about the culturally traditional definition of God (Judeo-Christian as a Creator with will, consciousness, awareness, past and infinite history and thought... etc). The problem I have with that is that a Christian God, by tradition, planned the creation. In other words, were those thoughts caused by God? Well, then those thoughts would go back in "God Time" all the way to a First Cause of God's thoughts about Creating the Universe. So which God created the Universe? The God without thoughts, or the God with the thoughts and ideas about a universe? It would be the latter, I think, which means, the cause of the Universe is not the same God as the real First Cause GOd! Or maybe we should maintain the thought that the First Cause God--who created the Universe--did it without thoughts, ideas, or purpose? Or was it purpose without the process of thinking about the purpose? It boils down to if thought exist non-temporal and non-causal.

[R. S. Martin]

No time to read all the posts at the moment. Just want to add the link I found to the wikipedia article on William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument. It explains a few things for me and it sounds like what his people are saying, so it might serve as a good reference for anyone here who is unfamiliar with it.

[R. S. Martin]

I read the posts now. The concepts go pretty deep, esp. HanSolo's idea about the God before the thought of "let's create the world." On the Christian forum we're up to a hundred posts and the Christians haven't begun to produce convincing evidence for their side. They think they have but there's just nothing to show for their efforts. Three atheists, beside myself, took them on. Wonderer, thanks for coming over.

 

I'd been gone from their forum for a day or two and in my absence someone had given them a really good match from the scientific perspective--my extreme weak area. There's this one Christian, presumably a young man, who seems to have all the answers and for some reason all the answers come from one set of authors. He also thinks The Answers come from Science. He's asking for atheist scientists--he presented it as a challenge, as though there were no atheist scientists for us to provide even if we wanted to.

 

I'm thinking Crap! What's the MATTER with you? If you want to read atheist scientists just go online or into any library and read them! Since they think that I--a professed non-scientist--should list a batch of science sources, I posted the link to Talk Origins. And I told this Christian that if he needs to be told the obvious, Charles Darwin is on that site. So as not to come across as a total laughing stock I did a little "professor talk" (like my professors often did) and said this was only a way to find more names of authors and titles of books for more sophisticated literature for those who were serious.

 

[Lewistheman, feel free to copy this post onto William Lane Craig's forums. For those of you who don't know, Lewistheman is my little alter ego whose sole purpose in life it is (so it appears) to copy bits and pieces of my posts from other forums onto William Lane Craig's forums in misrepresented and distorted contexts. He posted here on exC for a short time a few years ago as Rumpelstiltskin, or some such name, but got booted off. I'm thinking life as a Christian must be one of the most miserable existences possible if this is what they have to do to make it worth living.]