I'm just trying to illustrate the logical absurdity of saying the beginning of time has a cause. For there to be a cause of time the cause has to precede time which is totally nonsensical.
How is the concept of a timelessly existing cause of the universe creating the universe nonsensical?
You have either one of two options:
1. A timelessly existing cause of the universe creates the universe
or
2. The universe pops into being without a cause from nothing, by nothing, for nothing.
It seems indefensible to me for you to claim that nothing can create something. Talk about nonsensical!!!
I am arguing that something created spacetime and you are arguing that nothing created spacetime!
How is your position preferable to mine again?
Because it becomes undefinable as a cause if the cause and effect occupy the same instant in time. Cause precedes effect. Always. That is causality by definition. Saying the cause of the beginning of time and time beginning occurred simultaneously is just as absurd as saying cause came after effect.
If you place a ball on a cushion, an indentation will appear where the ball is resting on the cushion. The indentation occurs simultaneously the moment the ball touches the cushion.
This is one of numerous examples of an instantaneous or simultaneous cause effect relation.
Seems to me, you're only recourse is to maintain that the universe is eternal and that it never came into being and if that is the case, then your misgiving is with premise 2, not premise 1.
I'm not saying the universe came from nothing without cause. I'm thinking outside the box of your dichotomy of the universe either began with or without a cause. I am saying that the very notion of cause becomes undefinable at the beginning of the universe. We have to come up with a radically different concept to causality to even begin to explain it.
Why is it undefinable?
Saying it is so by definition is not a good argument.
Seeming obvious does not make it true particularly if we are discussing the singularity of the beginning of the universe.
But you agree that nothing comes from nothing.
Think about this. Lets rewind to t=0. The very beginning, the singularity.
Let me stop you right there because you're wrong. T=0 is not the beginning. T=1 is the beginning of time.
The moment of the beginning of time,
Is t=1, not t=0. Zero is zero.
I could rightly describe this moment
the word moment implies time.
as both instantaneous and eternal, but it is neither. No time, no dimensions, no matter or energy.
You just contradicted yourself. You spoke of a moment, you then speak of this moment as "no time".
I can call it both nothing and something,
This is where you are violating one of the fundamental laws of logic. Nothing cannot be something.
I could say it both exists and it doesn't exist.
Another violation of a fundamental law of logic. It is either or, not both and.
Non of those things would be wrong strictly,
Sure they would. Unless you don't count being illogical as wrong. If that is the case, the least of your worries is the Kalam.
but it's also not any of those things. It's an entirely different reality to the one we experience and base our reasoning. Everything we know and believe about the universe does not exist there. Cause and effect are undefinable.
If that were the case, you would not know it. Your position is self-stultifying. It is like saying we cannot know anything about the earliest moments of the universe or how it came to be. If we can't know anything about these things, you would not know that nothing can be known. Thus the statement is self-refuting and necessarily false.
So unless some physicist cracks the singularity or we gain access to some divine realm, we cannot understand the beginning of the universe. Our minds are constrained to the reality within which they are contained.
Self refuting statements are necessarily false and logic cannot be set aside just because we are talking about cosmic beginnings.
You earlier alluded to something as a "logical implication of my views", you then set aside logic to defend your own view. Logic is not something we pick up and put down when it suits us.