In Dallas, Texas
How's it going guys.
Hey Josh
Hey, man. I love your show.
Thanks, so much.
Yeah, I'm a theist though. I just like I'm very open-minded, so I like looking at both sides
Okay
Okay, and my question to y'all would be over the cosmological argument.
Okay
I'm pretty sure you are very familiar with this as far as the premises go I can restate them
Well it depends on which version.
Cosmological is a category of arguments and then there are specific arguments that fit within that category
The most typical is the kalam which William Lane Craig is.
Yeah, that's the one.
That's the one I'm wanting to talk about is the Kalam cosmological argument
Sure
First premise is everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence
Exactly everything that had a beginning had a cause
Okay, that's slightly different wording, but everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence
So have you got it sitting in front of you?
I have the premises in front of me.
You don't have the conclusion?
Oh, yeah, I have 1, 2 and 3. Number 2 is that the universe had a beginning
Then the conclusion would be therefore the universe had a cause
Cool, therefore the universe has a cause is the conclusion for the Kalam Cosmological Argument
From the Kalam cosmological argument, what do we know about the cause?
So I first want to start with premise 1.
It doesn't matter we can go right to the conclusion the conclusion of the Kalam cosmological argument is...
...Therefore the universe had a cause for its existence. The argument is presented. It has premises
Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence. The universe began to exist therefore the universe has a cause for its existence
That argument does not include the word God at all
No, but -
So it's not an argument for the existence of God then, is it?
No, it can be. It is
No, it cannot be. It cannot be. And isn't.
You can't have an argument for something that does not contain the thing you're arguing. In any premise or the conclusion.
Matt, Matt. With the signs that today either something created the universe or nothing created the universe.
Okay, but now you're not talking about the Kalam Cosmological Argument.
You asked what I thought of the Kalam cosmological argument
And I'm telling you it's not an argument for the existence of God. Its conclusion is that therefore the universe has a cause
So, premise 2 says the universe has a beginning. Would you say that is correct?
So, first of all I reject premise 1 and possibly premise 2.
And I'd highly recommend that you watch the debate between Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig...
...Where Sean exposes the problems, or you can look at Theoretical Bullshit's YouTube video where he goes through this, but here's the thing.
Most modern physicists are rejecting the premises of this argument
But it doesn't matter because I can concede all of it and we get to the conclusion; therefore the universe had a cause for its existence.
That argument tells us nothing about the nature of the cause. Whether it's an agent, whether it's an entity.
Nothing at all. You have to add something to the kalam to get to a God. So I've given you my... What?
That would be, as far as later. So my argument is that -
There's a possibility either way. Either something created the universe or -
Josh. Josh! Are we going to talk about the Kalam cosmological argument or are we going to talk about something else?
The Kalam cosmological argument.
Okay. The conclusion of the Kalam is what?
Therefore the universe had a cause.
OK. Does that tell us anything at all about God?
Yes. Something -
No, it doesn't. How can it tell us anything about God when there's nothing in the argument about God?
You are inferring something and adding something to the argument. If I say all men are mortal. Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is mortal
And you say that this is proof that Pixies are what makes Socrates mortal
You are adding something to it.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument is not an argument for the existence of God, it is an argument that the universe had a cause for its existence.
It is potentially incorrect, and you can talk to physicists about this.
It is also dishonest in the sense that the original version of the Cosmological Argument had as its first premise; Everything has a cause.
And then when they said hey what about God then they make this post hoc rationalization that God didn't have a beginning
But it may be the case that we're playing games with words here.
That our local presentation of the universe, the local space-time, had a beginning that we identify with the Big Bang, which may not even be correct
But that is the current best scientific model. And that it may not make sense to talk about anything prior to the Big Bang if time came into being with Big Bang
And so you have this situation where our local presentation of space-time had what appears to be a beginning.
But that doesn't tell you anything at all about whether the cosmos, in which the universe exists, had a beginning it may or may not be eternal
This is something you can't investigate
But while all of that is interesting in speculation
The Kalam Cosmological Argument is not and cannot be an argument for the existence of God until you add something else
Right, so, I'm saying that space, time and matter had a beginning
Would you agree with that?
Local space, time and matter apparently has a beginning, but we cannot confirm that because we cannot go back and investigate prior to the Planck time
No, I. Yes, yes, that's true, but as far as the evidence that we do have today Stephen Hawking, Einstein...
...Everybody is saying that the universe had a beginning from nothing.
Actually these things are changing and when they say the universe had a beginning or the universe sprang from nothing
These are physics models that are talking about the local presentation of space-time in our universe
They are not a claim about the cosmos or whether there's a multiverse that is producing infinite universes or anything like that
So if all you can talk about is the universe that we inhabit, because that's what we can explore
and when we speculate on what happened outside of the universe we don't have any grounds for that
But none of this has anything to do with whether or not the Kalam demonstrates that a God exists
Thank you your time, I really appreciate it.
Okay, thanks.
If you want to actually call in with an argument for the existence of God first thing you should understand is how to make an argument.
And the Kalam Cosmological argument is valid, I think it's unsound, you should know the difference between validity and soundness, it is valid in structure
But the problem is, if you have an argument that has major and minor premises, and at no point in that argument is God one of them
it's not an argument for the existence of God. It's not an argument that relates to God at all
If the conclusion is; therefore the universe had a cause, the next question becomes, okay, what could be the cause for that universe?
Those are the next questions, assuming we agreed with that, which we don't necessarily
And that's where you start having an argument for why you think there is a God
And then you can have an argument for why you think that God should be considered as the cause that the Kalam points to
Right, and yeah, it's like I guess somebody had asked at one point.
Do you think an argument can be used as evidence for a God?
And I said well, I can't think of a single argument I've heard that could be used as, like, "evidence" for a God. An argument is an argument
This is the Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and whether or not you could have an epistemologically sound
I think that you could construct an argument provided that the premises tied to something empirical
Right, yeah.
And like you said, assuming we accept the Kalam Cosmological Argument as valid and sound, which there's questions about that
You're right, we get to the point where we have to start talking about what is this cause and if you're asserting that, okay, it's this thing that you're calling a God
You still have to have evidence that says, first of all, that this cause that you're positing exists, you know, in the form that you're describing.
And if you want to say it's a God, okay, what are the characteristics of this God? The argument tells us nothing about that.
You could reformat the argument you could change... So here's one way that you can try to assess an argument to see what it is or isn't telling you.
Let's re-do this with the Kalam
Premise 1: Every existing human being had parents
premise 2: Matt is an existing human being
Conclusion; Matt had parents.
Now that's valid, and I would argue that's actually sound.
If you present that as an argument for why Mark is my dad. You're wrong
Jen: Exactly
Mark's not included in that argument. You're actually factually wrong
So what you're saying the cause is, or who you're saying my parents are is a completely separate issue
This is why the Kalam... This is the tap-dance that William Lane Craig does by the way, is he'll present the Kalam
And then he will say, let's talk about the kind of thing that could be the cause of the universe
Assuming you accept the Kalam, which seems reasonable to people who aren't, you know, cosmologists and don't have objections to certain things, let's talk about things good
So he has additional arguments that he uses after the fact basically saying hey the universe had a cause what kind of cause could it be
boom boom boom boom, this gets us to God, and then he has additional arguments that gets him to Jesus
Go back through some of Bill's debates, and see how many times those extra arguments are actually presented rather than just...
...Hey, we have extra arguments that get us to the God specifically, but this debate is just about whether or not there is a God, and so I'm just going to focus on this
You didn't even need the Kalam at all to do that you could walked in and said...
... Hey we have some explanation for why things are the way they are let's have that discussion, and why I think it's God. He doesn't do that
But you know
What do I know? I don't have a terminal degree in the relevant fields, which is why Bill Craig won't debate me
Which is, and I would recommend, as I did with Richard Dawkins when we were in Vancouver
That all of our friends who are Godless Heathens who have terminal degrees
PhDs or whatever in relevant scientific fields. If Craig wants to debate you on something that's in your field you should just decline...
...using his own criteria noting that he doesn't have a terminal degree in Physics
Or biology or anything except Theology.
What on Earth makes him think that he should be on the playing field with one of the World's pre-eminent Biologist's
To argue about biology when he won't debate people, it's pretentious silliness.
That's enough of the Craig rant
By the way, I like your analogy with the parents.
Thank you. It just it came to me as if it was a coincidental gift from a God
There must be a God
Must be a God, because I can't come up with this stuff without help from, you know, a Divine Being.