Kalaam Cosmological Argument

childeye 2 · Mar 21, 2019

Silmarien said:
The term Χριστός (Christos) means "Anointed One" in Greek.

Unless you are speaking figuratively? I am very confused.

Christ=Messiah=anointed one=The True Image of God sent by God. Please read the bold below:

John 1 King James Version (KJV)
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.

8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

2 Corinthians 4:4
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

2 Corinthians 4:6
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

childeye 2 · Mar 21, 2019

Archaeopteryx said:
It doesn't make sense to say that naturalism, which entails atheism, constitutes an "image of God" at all. And yet that's what you seem to be saying, or at least it seems to follow from what you are saying.

That's because atheism views 'god' as a superstition. Hence if atheists had no imagery of God, they would have nothing to not be believing in.

Archaeopteryx · Mar 21, 2019

childeye 2 said:
That's because atheism views 'god' as a superstition. Hence if atheists had no imagery of God, they would have nothing to not be believing in.

Huh? Your reasoning is quite difficult to follow in this thread. At first, you seem to acknowledge that your view is compatible with many options, including pantheism and naturalism, which are quite at odds with traditional theism. You then call these options "images of God" even though at least some of them are explicitly or implicitly godless. That doesn't seem to make sense.

childeye 2 · Mar 21, 2019

Archaeopteryx said:
Huh? Your reasoning is quite difficult to follow in this thread. At first, you seem to acknowledge that your view is compatible with many options, including pantheism and naturalism, which are quite at odds with traditional theism. You then call these options "images of God" even though at least some of them are explicitly or implicitly godless. That doesn't seem to make sense.

I study semantics, particularly in how words function in the mind both in denotation and connotation. So I know this may be hard to follow, but I am making no mistake when I say that the term 'godless' is meaningless without a definition of 'god', even if it is implicit or explicit in thought. There's just no way around it, everybody whether knowingly or unknowingly has an image of god/God which defines their terms, even atheists.

In Christianity, where God is defined/imagined as the source of the energy of creation the term becomes an axiom/precept. While atheists believe that a god/God doesn't exist, still many can admit that it's possible that there is a source for the energy that formed the universe.

However, I did err when saying if atheists had no imagery of God they would have nothing to not believe in. I should have said, if they had no imagery of 'god' with the lower case g, since the atheist image of god is mythical in that an atheist imagines god as a myth. Subsequently if 'god' were defined as a mythical being, even 'God' would be an atheist. So yes it can be confusing.

durangodawood · Mar 22, 2019

Silmarien said:
Just keep in mind that you're going to have significant trouble distinguishing between things that are known and things that are unknown if you reject PSR. You can say that you know that gravity exists, but if you claim that it may exist for no reason, then it could just as easily have failed to exist, or to cease to exist at any moment. The continued existence of something with no possible explanation is as miraculous as the fact that it ever came to exist in the first place. Is there a point at which a chain of scientific explanation can terminate with no conceivable answer? Where we can say that physical regularities simply are, even though there is no cause behind them, no reason for them to come into being at all? As far as I can tell, that is effectively the definition of magic.

It is a very powerful, very controversial principle, it's true, but I think people need to take the price paid for denying it very seriously. And I also think there are interesting questions to be asked about what the success of empirical sciences has to say about the ability of our minds to match up to reality. It was a lot easier to be skeptical about that before we had reams of evidence backing up the idea that our conceptual tools are sufficient for some pretty wild stuff.

So is God proposed to be an exception to PSR?

Archaeopteryx · Mar 22, 2019

childeye 2 said:
I study semantics, particularly in how words function in the mind both in denotation and connotation. So I know this may be hard to follow, but I am making no mistake when I say that the term 'godless' is meaningless without a definition of 'god', even if it is implicit or explicit in thought. There's just no way around it, everybody whether knowingly or unknowingly has an image of god/God which defines their terms, even atheists.

In Christianity, where God is defined/imagined as the source of the energy of creation the term becomes an axiom/precept. While atheists believe that a god/God doesn't exist, still many can admit that it's possible that there is a source for the energy that formed the universe.

However, I did err when saying if atheists had no imagery of God they would have nothing to not believe in. I should have said, if they had no imagery of 'god' with the lower case g, since the atheist image of god is mythical in that an atheist imagines god as a myth. Subsequently if 'god' were defined as a mythical being, even 'God' would be an atheist. So yes it can be confusing.

I'm still not following, sorry. How is a naturalist committed to some "image of God" when she says that, in her view, the "cause" identified in the KCA is likely to be naturalistic?

childeye 2 · Mar 22, 2019

Archaeopteryx said:
I'm still not following, sorry. How is a naturalist committed to some "image of God" when she says that, in her view, the "cause" identified in the KCA is likely to be naturalistic?

Even though the naturalist is proposing an alternative image of the cause as being a thing, still in the mind of the naturalist she/he recognizes that a thing is not a person. The mind therefore subconsciously acknowledges God as a person in the negative even while consciously accepting the cause as a thing in the positive.

Silmarien · Mar 22, 2019

durangodawood said:
So is God proposed to be an exception to PSR?

That depends on the formulation of the argument, though I would not set it up in such a way. The point of PSR is not to propose exceptions to its own principle through special pleading, but to show that there must exist something that is for all intents and purposes its own explanation in order for all of contingent reality to be explicable.

Here is the underlying issue in cosmological arguments: if an infinite regress of explanations is impossible, then it must terminate somewhere. Variations of "what caused God?" are not a very good response to this claim, since they miss the genuine thrust of the argument--the infinite regress is being ruled out as a possibility, ergo there must exist something that is in fact uncaused or all of contingent reality becomes absurd. One property of the classical conception of God is that he is this uncaused "being," but one could attempt to conceptualize this sort of First Cause in non-theistic terms.

Most if not all theistic arguments require PSR, but it's better to think of it as the first step rather than a full argument for the existence of God. My preference right now would probably be to pair it with an ontological argument--the really interesting question presented by PSR is what it would mean for something to be its own explanation, what necessary existence would actually look like, and I'm not sure cosmological arguments are fully equipped to deal with that question. (At least not the ones that are actually accessible.)

My journey has kind of been atheist -> pantheist -> panentheist -> agnostic -> classical theist -> idealist -> classical theist, so... I don't know. I have many thoughts about apologetics, and most of them are not flattering to either side. I think the burden that theists have these days is to actually explain what they're talking about and why it's not crazy, rather than to try to jump down someone's throat with an overly ambitious proof.

durangodawood · Mar 22, 2019

Silmarien said:
....something that is for all intents and purposes its own explanation....

I think this departs from apologetics and enters zen koan territory.

This is a good thing!

Dave Ellis · Mar 24, 2019

childeye 2 said:
I don’t think it’s any secret that Christians define God as the source of the energy of creation. I indicated this in post #134 : I would think that if God created everything when He spoke, then everything in the universe including the physics of the Universe would be applicable to theology. If necessary this can be attested to in Psalms 33:9 or John 1:3.

WOW, I must agree with your analysis. Likewise scripture does not portray God as a thing.

While the term God infers a source of the energy of Creation, Christians view whatever form the energy takes as an expression of thought. Hence the laws of nature would accomplish whatever God had conceived or devised before He spoke.

You know Sir, as a student of semantics I see most people either conflate the term god with religion or with a superstition. I must say that I am currently marveling at your being able to understand what I have said on this thread. You may count god as a useless label, but at least you’re one of a handful of Atheists I have met that wasn’t so biased by their subjective view of the term, that it utterly compromised their objectivity.

Thanks for the compliment.

However, I'd say the vast majority of Christians believe god is more than a simple source of matter and energy. The bible portrays him as a conscious agent with will, desire, and intent. He wants people to live by his rules, and if they don't they are punished.

That's a lot more than the basic laws of nature, or a nebulous source of matter and energy.

the iconoclast · Dec 16, 2019

46AND2 said:
1. I don't make the claim that there is no god.

Hey hey Friend

I have just been unbanned. We had quite a conversation lined up. Wanna continue here or somewhere else?

FireDragon76 · Dec 16, 2019

Silmarien said:
I would contest that (3) implies that God is the cause of the universe. The only thing the argument, if successful, would actually demonstrate is that there is something which exists uncaused and cannot be identified with the universe. This need not have any other traditional property of God, and could just as easily be conceived of as something like a quantum vacuum.

Which would imply what Christians call "God" isn't really God at all in the traditional sense. It would be like seeing a man-shaped tree in the woods and assuming that the tree must have personality, thoughts, feelings, and desires... and we'ld better sacrifice something to it or it might cause bad things to happen to us.

zippy2006 said:
I suppose it implies a causal entity beyond the universe itself. In our society that would often be identified as God, even if it is possible that the entity in question be devoid of intellect and will. It seems to depend a great deal on what is meant by "the universe."

Yes, my point exactly.

Tree of Life said:
Or another approach...

Did you begin to exist or has your person always existed? Have you ever seen a childbirth? Does a child begin to exist at some point or have they always existed as such?

What if a child doesn't have an absolute reality in the manner that they just pop into existence from nothing? I mean, that seems to be the most obvious.

Silmarien · Dec 16, 2019

FireDragon76 said:
Which would imply what Christians call "God" isn't really God at all in the traditional sense. It would be like seeing a man-shaped tree in the woods and assuming that the tree must have personality, thoughts, feelings, and desires... and we'ld better sacrifice something to it or it might cause bad things to happen to us.

Yeah, I'm not sure you can get much further than that working specifically with the Kalam.

Halbhh · Dec 16, 2019

Silmarien said:
I don't think we do. 21st century "natural" assumptions are more likely to run in a mechanistic, materialistic direction, and failing that, in a kind of pantheistic one. The sort of underlying assumptions necessary for people to connect the dots here don't necessarily exist in a post-Christian world.

Uncaused is a valid conclusion, but I think additional argumentation is necessary to get to immaterial and non-physical. There's a difference between claiming that our universe had a beginning on empirical grounds, and claiming that the material cannot be eternal even in principle. That's one of the major places where I think serious argumentation is required here.

The first cause as personal is more interesting, though I don't think we can rule out the possibility of a creative impersonal force that is at the heart of an eternal multiverse. I think you need a better reason to get to personal than the Kalam has to offer.

As long as these arguments are actually spelled out, I'm not going to scream bloody murder, but I think the lack of more sustained justification is problematic. There isn't anything here that's going to be compelling to anyone who doesn't already lean towards theism.

I am pulling the polemical classical theist card. I think everything about this style of argument is completely backwards. And I got tired of defending Craig against all of his detractors around here, because I honestly think he's surprisingly sloppy for a professional philosopher.

No, it's the syllogism that I think is terrible. I would have less problems with a more rigorously defended Kalam, but I'm going to throw a fit over any argument that isn't tightly devised and argued. My problem is form rather than content.

I dislike the Kalam, because I think you'd need a separate argument to defend the immateriality of the First Cause, and whatever argument you end up with is going to be stronger than the Kalam, so why bother with it in the first place? (Actually, I think this is the other side of your complaint with it. It encourages people to see God as possessing existence because it by itself doesn't have the tools to stress what immateriality really means.)

It's highly speculative, but one can wonder if a Being from another universe could initiate this one. I don't think of that as a theory of God (too speculative, whereas I have some definite knowns, and having definite knowns is always going to appeal to someone like me), but rather as a mental exercise to help put 'naturalism' into perspective. I think of 'naturalism' as being the notion where God would be assumed (usually without even awareness of the assumption) to be only another being under or in Nature -- this Universe -- subject to the same laws of Nature, physics (meaning of course this particular physics of our Universe). Many will assume something like that I notice in discussions. (not you though -- I don't think you'd assume or insist that is the only possibility).

Silmarien · Dec 16, 2019

Halbhh said:
It's highly speculative, but one can wonder if a Being from another universe could initiate this one. I don't think of that as a theory of God (too speculative, whereas I have some definite knowns, and having definite knowns is always going to appeal to someone like me), but rather as a mental exercise to help put 'naturalism' into perspective. I think of 'naturalism' as being the notion where God would be assumed (usually without even awareness of the assumption) to be only another being under or in Nature -- this Universe -- subject to the same laws of Nature, physics (meaning of course this particular physics of our Universe). Many will assume something like that I notice in discussions. (not you though -- I don't think you'd assume or insist that is the only possibility).

Yeah, I think you're right. That's probably the origins of the "what caused God?" type of objection--a lot of people are still thinking in terms of a concrete being which has to be operating under some sort of preexisting set of laws. It's hard to get around thinking of laws themselves as what is fundamental about reality. I think that God being a being from another universe would still fall under the label of naturalism, though, since that other universe and the laws that govern it are more fundamental than beings that emerge from it.

Halbhh · Dec 16, 2019

Silmarien said:
Yeah, I think you're right. That's probably the origins of the "what caused God?" type of objection--a lot of people are still thinking in terms of a concrete being which has to be operating under some sort of preexisting set of laws. It's hard to get around thinking of laws themselves as what is fundamental about reality. I think that God being a being from another universe would still fall under the label of naturalism, though, since that other universe and the laws that govern it are more fundamental than beings that emerge from it.

Yep. That possibility would not address the OP idea.

Brings to mind again another way I've thought about all of this from back in time. And one which happens I learned later to fit scriptures, very interestingly, to realize or learn that God is our "ground of being" so to speak. He is existence itself, in a sense of wording.

FireDragon76 · Dec 16, 2019

What if the quantum vacuum instead is analogous to the potentiality/creativity of the primordial nature of God in Process thought? Or a realm of ideas/thought? That makes alot more sense to me than trying to fit in the Kalam argument somewhere and make God completely outside the universe.

Silmarien · Dec 16, 2019

FireDragon76 said:
What if the quantum vacuum instead is analogous to the potentiality/creativity of the primordial nature of God in Process thought? Or a realm of ideas/thought? That makes alot more sense to me than trying to fit in the Kalam argument somewhere and make God completely outside the universe.

I think that could be interesting, especially if you drew from Palamism and the essence/energies distinction and saw the quantum vacuum as a sort of physical manifestation of God's energies. (Assuming it's correct to interpret anything in modern physics as being primarily physical in nature. And assuming the quantum vacuum is real and not just a fiction of our current models, for that matter.) I'd be pretty comfortable with a pseudo-Palamist collapse into panentheism, though. Might actually prefer it to the alternatives.

I would view God primarily as the "principle" that makes things real rather than abstract and potential. But I go with the Actualizer of Thomism, not with the First Cause of the Kalam, so everything is a little different.

Mark Quayle · Dec 16, 2019

Tree of Life said:
While this argument is not universally persuasive, I do believe that it is an effective argument for God's existence. This is to say that the premises and conclusions are more plausible than their negations. Let's take a look at this argument in this thread and hash it out. Here is a simple form of the argument:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore the universe has a cause.

The argument looks sound and valid to me. Conclusion (3) would imply that God is the cause of the universe. Perhaps you would deny or challenge one or more of the premises. Perhaps you would challenge the validity of the argument. Perhaps you would accept the argument but deny that God is the cause of the universe.

Discuss.

I can see no reason for existence except by First Cause, and that with Intent --Purpose. Thus, God. If God is not First Cause, he is not God, but some perhaps superhuman or mind concept.

When people want to argue me about what's better about "your god" as opposed to some other god, I take them there --First Cause.

But let me try to trim up your statements a bit:
1> logic demands cause and effect.
2> there is existence, as best as science can argue
3> therefore, existence is caused.

The problem with my number 3 is that it could be applied to God too, showing the ludicrousness of an effect that caused itself, or was not God after all, but a simple link in the cause-effect chain. So also, your number 2 is a claim, not a logical step between your 1 and 3. IF you can demonstrate that the universe had a beginning (not referring to big bang, but the universe beyond it that caused it, or any of the other semi-philosophical universes proposed under speculative fingertip math (not well grasped), then you've got something.

--And there is, in the end, logical proof that other sources for existence are not possible, through simple rules of logic: Infinite regression is illogical, as is the power of Chance. And the favorite of the suddenly humble atheist, "I don't know", as if that is more intellectually honest than, "So far, First Cause is the only thing that makes sense to me." The universe did indeed have a beginning, and the caused universe does not encompass or include God.

Mark Quayle · Dec 16, 2019

Moral Orel said:
I've never seen anything begin to exist, I've only seen things change from one thing to another thing. Have you ever seen anything come into existence? I don't think anyone has. Why would anyone think that anything began to exist at all if no one has ever seen anything of the sort?

Because existence responds to laws and principles, co-emergent with them or not, and so is an effect --not purely and simply cause.

Existence did not invent or design these principles, unless existence has purpose, either as itself was designed, or as itself First Cause. Yet First Cause does not cause itself, as that is a logical contradiction. Therefore neither can I imagine that first cause would add permanent laws to which it is subject. First Cause can only be what it is.

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