Hello, my question is about the beginning of the universe and the philosophy of time
because I really like the Kalam argument and the first and second premises are
about things that begin to exist need causes and the universe begins to exist.
But when I've done some research there seems to be a lot of scientists who are
saying the universe didn't really begin to exist. Because
temporal becoming is basically an illusion. And this seems to almost be a scientific
consensus and I don't really have any knowledge about science. I just wondered
whether this was the case whether we can say the universe began to exist? [Justin] Well you're talking to the man who knows
everything there is to know about the Kalam Cosmological Argument with Bill here.
So I think this might be a question that kind of...do you want me to repeat the question
a bit for you Bill? Or Jeff? [Dr Zweerink] Their is a kind of philosophical and scientific component
of that. One is, what scientists actually have to say about the beginning
of the universe? And then two, how does that play out in the Kalam Cosmological
Argument? What's the weight of that argument there? And I would
say this, that, over the last hundred years, you go back a hundred and twenty
years and scientists thought, given the data they had, which was very minimal,
that the universe was eternal. And over the last hundred years there have been
major scientific discoveries that have really pointed towards the conclusion
that the universe has a beginning. Now is that an established fact, no. There are
mechanisms which might lead to an eternal universe, possibly. But that
doesn't negate the fact that, of the evidence we have and of the research that's
out there, it all really does point to there being a beginning to the universe.
That it cannot be eternal into the past.
And so while we need to be careful about overstating that, it's also
important that we don't understate that the scientific data really does point to
the conclusion that the universe does have a beginning. [Justin] One interesting
thing, and then you might want to comment on this Bill, is that, as far as you're
concerned as far as I'm aware, the Kalam Cosmological Argument doesn't actually
stand or fall on the Big Bang. Because it stems from a philosophical argument
originally. That it's philosophically impossible for the universe to be
eternal in the past. [Dr Craig] The key premise in the argument is supported by
philosophical arguments which have been around from antiquity, having to deal
with whether or not it's possible to have an infinite regress of events into
the past. And I'm persuaded that these arguments are are good arguments. So
I view the scientific evidence as confirmation of a conclusion already
reached on the basis of philosophical argument. So we have philosophical
arguments against the infinity of the past and then we have these remarkable
scientific confirmations of that. And I think Jeff is right, we don't want to
overstate this, but perhaps sometimes the impression that one is overstating this
is simply due to the fact that one feels confident and one is rebutting
objections and things of that sort. But obviously whenever you're dealing with
matters of science it's always provisional and always tentative and
subject to whatever future discoveries might come but this is where the
evidence points.