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He's probably wrong about a lot more than that.

Did God create evil? Isaiah 45:7 is a lie. 7. There is God and there is a creation. The creation is the visible part of God we call light. Before God created the light He was darkness, through His creation He emerged from the darkness. The darkness back then was not evil because good did not exist, nothing existed other than God's thought by His Spirit. His desire was and is still today to become brighter still in all His Glory. Well you may ask is God not already omnipotent, yes He is but that does not stop Him in becoming greater still. There is no other God to compete with Him so there is no competition to become greater. He is becoming greater out of love for Himself who is His creation. Growth in the light stops decay, which is backsliding. The moment He created the first kindle image of Himself-the light-He at the same time became good. There was then the possibility of evil to exist which is backsliding back into the darkness. The moment God created the light which is good the possibility was there for the light to be switched off again which is the concept of evil. There is a tremendous gap between the darkness and the light and we who are the light have this constant tendency to want to know the darkness because we only know the light. God on the other hand knows both the darkness and the light. God never goes back into the darkness but we who are the light have the free will to choose if we want to be God's loyal subjects and continue in God's light or become evil and return to the darkness. Evil just means returning to the darkness. We can never return to the full extent of darkness because it will become too unbearable for us, which is hell. That does not stop us from trying but God knows we can never succeed, He allows the will of the light to experience evil so that the light can understand it can never succeed and therefore will continue in the light. The reason why we have free will is because we don't know God, we can only have faith in God, which means believing in God without fully knowing Him. How can we fully know God when we don't know the darkness nor do we know the full extent of God's brightness. Whatever brightness we may know God knows more. So because we don't know God we cannot blame God for the predestination caused by His omniscience. Faith in God does not prove God exists, it is just a belief without knowing the existence of God. This gives us “who are the light” the concept that we have a free will to choose between good or evil, continue in the infinite greatness of the light or return to the infinite depth of darkness. So just because we may believe in God does not give us the reason to blame Him for the choices we make, if or when we choose to pursue the darkness. We are God's creation “the Light” therefore we are the best part of God which excludes the darkness and for that reason also we have free will just like God has free will being a part of Him. It's a simple concept really, we are part of God's body let us not become cancerous, every cell has a free will to grow well for the benefit of the whole body or rebel and become cancerous to bring the body down where both cancer and body will burn in hell-the cancer will burn-be surgically removed-not God's body because God's body has immunity, it immerged from darkness. God has made thoughtful surgical provision for this by the way of hell. If we choose the darkness we create our own hell, God never created hell we create it if we choose to pursue it by backsliding. The prohibition to take the apple in the garden of Eden represented the darkness and we should never backslide to try to be like God. Only God has this knowledge of being the darkness. God was never evil even when He was alone in the darkness because the light did not exist then. He was just a thought in the darkness and He emerged from it, so God was never evil. Only we who are the light and who try to go back to darkness become evil because we lose faith in God and stop being God's loyal subjects by pursuing the darkness. We must let God give us the prohibited fruit not take it ourselves because we don't know how to digest it. Only God can present it to us in a fruitful way for the benefit of the greater light. This is why Abel was killed by his brother Cain. Abel did everything good for the light and Cain chose to pursue the darkness to the point that he killed his brother so that the light could be extinguished. However the light can never be extinguished, it can only be removed from where the pursuit of darkness is. Darkness is the absence of light, at any point those who have chosen to pursue the darkness can repent and turn towards the light again. The light may seem far just like when we look up in the night sky and see the stars far away. The light who is God's loyal subject can never be destroyed because they are who God wants them to be and have remained faithful to Him. So God has no part in evil those who where the light have chosen to become dark or evil not God. God made the light but the light can choose to be extinguished as far as they can bear. It will become very unbearable for them because light is life and darkness is an endless death in hell. We can be born again-meaning-we as the light can experience death by sinking into darkness but can be reborn by accepting God's light again. God the Father through His Spirit emerged from His darkness and became His Son who is the Light of the Universe, we all are THIS LIGHT if we choose to follow Him. So did God create evil? We who are the light and choose to backslide create evil and we who are part of God the Father are responsible for the evil we create. God the Father and His Spirit are not responsible for our backsliding simply because our faith in God cannot prove God exists. This is how God can allow us to believe in free will so that we can share in His creation, God remains anonymous by His Omniscience. God's desire is for the light to become like Him so that we can become fully aware that we are Him. God became man so that man may become God. Only a God can know God, which is what God wants. Then we will know for sure it was our will all along.

I fully understand the necessity of evil. What I don't understand is sending souls to eternal hell, for a literal moment of stupidity (this life), to suffer far beyond any pain they could ever even hope to inflict here. I'm praying constantly for an answer why this is just. Why create souls in the first place, if 97% will end this way?

Ephesians 4:25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. Hey he told the truth Lynn Shumway.

Old story. WLC debated the late philosopher Quentin Smith before and together they wrote books about it. The key mistake is that WLC makes a big assumption of what the universe is, while "the universe" is fantastically deeper than WLC can ever hope to penetrate. WLC is semantically fucked up and that is all there to his fallacious argument.

Lol 90 comments

The ruthless strawmanning of the Kalam is something that always impresses me. WLC wrote a whole book on it and has explained it in simple terms multiple times. Complaints about the second premise are just so... Weird. Craig actually gives a reason as to why it is true but people assume he just asserted "big Bang therefore God".

These comments are agonizing lol

Great video! You deserve to get on pints with aquinas asap!

The Problem of Evil is absolutely not the best argument against theism. It only works against a specific type, like YHWH. It doesn't work at all against eg the Greek Pantheon or hinduism. For the best arguments against theism read Herman Philipse's God in the Age of Science. He turns Thomas of Aquino's arguments into mincemeat.

God isn't evil or good. This is told in the garden story.

In a fallen world you should expect bad things to happen. However, God provides to those who seek Him and repent. I went to jail on a false charge. But in jail I found God. After I did, I was let out and found a good life waiting outside.

MY WAYS ARE NOT YOUR WAYS SAYS THE LORD, OUR GOD 1- The One and Only God of Israel, of all Truth and Love , who from out of the super abundance of His love iand goodness created mankind of flesh and bones and not just spiritual beings like the angels ,nor automatons to fellowship with , fully knowing that love and true friendship can not be forced or bought if it is to be the real thing. . 2- But the only thing even an omnipotent God like Ours can't do is to create another being ALMIGHTY, OMNIPRESENT AND OMNISCIENT AS HE IS, since God isn't a created being. Jesus, God incarnate isn't created but begotten of God the Father like the Credo affirms. 3- Also it isn't God who is about doing evil but men the ones SEEn in the news daily for their own selfish motives and reasons. 4- And death entered the fallen world by Adam and Eve choosing to do things THEIR way ( rolling the die a la SINatra in ''From here to Eternity'' to lose in the end ) after being warned by God to only see thei rown son Cain murder his own brother Abel, as that sounds. 5- But still out of the over abundance of love fin His heart for US , for ALL of humanity , after a life of loving ALL and doing good till his rXcruciating death , talking the talk but walkingt the walk, and an extra mile as well. with arms wide open offering humanity an eternal embrace of love from God The Father and a second chance in an even better garden ''EDEN 2.0 HEAVEN'' for those willing to take His narrow path to salvation. 6- None the paradox as Epicurus thought after all and No eXcuses LEFT. to insist in doing evil or complaining to God hanging from a cross as the lot He chose for His own life, while being heaven minded though.. 7-And that's the rest of the story (The Greatest story ever told, mind you) . Good night!...Shema!!!

Great video

The problem of evil is only an issue for Theist, because we are the only ones that believe evil exist objectively. Once you submit to Christ you are ready to read the revelation of God and thereby begin to understand more clearly.

Most ridiculous thing ive ever heard.

Subbed. Great explanation.

I really hope you are a comedian. As such you might have a great future.

There is no EVIL existing as an entity.

EVIL ISNT REAL IN THE SAME WAY GOOD IS… EVIL IS A PRIVATION OF THE GOOD (JUST LIKE THE CHIP ON THE PLATE) IT CANT EXIST UNLESS THERE IS SOME GOOD TO PARASITE OFF OF AND ITS FUNDAMENTALLY JUST AN ABSENCE OF SOME GOOD THAT SHOULD BE THERE. -Thomas Cahill

❤

The idea that evil is simply a privation of good seems to render the "evil is necessary" argument moot. Cold is the absence of heat. If I am a perfect being capable of maximizing heat, it would be very curious if I needed cold to accomplish this... If I am a perfect being, it would also be curious if I needed to make plates with chips in them to reach the perfect plate. In this case I might be able to imagine a scenario of learning to make plates, and making imperfect plates on the way to attaining a perfect one, but this is God we're talking about... and a being that can make a plate in a single shot is more perfect than one that messes things up before he gets it right. The other problem with this resolution to evil, is that is claims that we can know nothing at all about the moral fabric of the world we live in. If we can be mistaken about evil, and fail to see the good behind it, our ability to act as moral agents in the world completely falls apart. A serial killer could kill as many people as possible and we could do nothing but say "wow, imagine all the hidden good this is doing, I can't personally see it, but that's just because I'm a human and I don't know any better". This treatment of evil is unfalsifiable. There's no amount of evil in the world you couldn't explain away with the promise of some future good that's just around the corner.

I would like a video on the problem of divine hiddenness please. Ive really been struggling to believe in God lately and it brings me much suffering

Aquina's response rests on the premisse that all existing evils are useful for the creation of the maximum good. In fact, I'd argue that it entails that evil really doesn't exist because all are instrumental in the achievent of a maximally good state. And so, the only evil act would be to disrupt the natural order that includes evils so that it would stop the maximum good from happening. But then this would be impossible as well, because we, as created beings would have no power to actually stop god's plans. So it follows that we are capable of no evil, all actions and events will necessarily lead to the final maximally good state. If we take the view that evil is the absence of good, we arrive at a contradiction. If all absence of good is conducive to a greater abundance of good, then in the absence of good there is good, so no absence of good can exist. And if evil is some sort of parasitic phenomenon to good, it's also a contradiction, because if a phenomenon becomes more conducive to good when evil is added than without, than the actual evil thing would be the purely good version of the phenomenon, which then would make what we call evil, not evil, and what we call good, not good and so all these concepts would just be all confused with each other.

Great video ! You adressed quite brillantly the logical problem of evil, please make a video of adressing the evidential problem of evil, i also think that you should go deeper in topics in the future and opt for longer video , thanks again for your work

2:23 quite controversial (depending on how each of god's attributes are defined, of course). 3:00 how do you know? sometimes i stub my toe on purpose. 3:18 what about hick, irenaeus (however his name is spelt), plantinga, etc.? 3:53 i guess aquinas' response is a sort of generalised version of hick, irenaeus, and plantinga, but it seems aquinas hasn't really answered the objection unlike the men i have previously mentioned (although you may disagree). 5:03 i understand that you are responding to the logical version, but when the title is called '... to the problem of evil', it would be like me saying 'the cosmological argument fails because per se causation is flawed' - this is an extreme example but maybe my point is that barely any philosophers (that i know of) defend the logical problem, although i know new atheists may do. so maybe a more apt analogy is me saying 'the cosmological argument fails because if everything had a cause, then what caused god?' - again this is exaggerated, but little people (and i hope no-one) would defend the non-existent 'the cosmological argument', as very few should defend the logical problem of evil. and it would be unfair for me to make it seem as if i have destroyed all cosmological arguments by saying 'what caused god'. 6:43 i may've said this before, but would this not entail that a possible world barren of everything is as 'evil' as a possible world wherein billions of people continuously and infinitely break spaghetti in half? this just seems wrong to me 7:09 dunno about that one u really ought to have more subscribers, your channel is amazing, please do keep up this work and challenge people's brains

Asserting everything needs a beginning and then asserting your god is that beginning is not proving your god is the beginning of anything. Terrible argument with an illogical conclusion That is based on feelings more than anything else.

Hey, the question answers itself. What is, is god. this is what the ultimate truth of Hinduism is.

Look at all those books!! He must be so smart!!!1111!11!1!!

Low-bar Bill is full of bullcrap and fallacies. In the latest interview with Alex O'Connor he defended his god genocide. This is how the religious mind works. Genocides are fine as long as my god did it.

AronRa The Kalam oncological argument. 🤣😂🤣😂

No, and I don't even need to listen. You can't prove an intelligent creative force and even if you could, you can't prove it is the biblical god. And the biblical god is highly unlikely a creator god since Yahweh started as a tribal storm god, like every tribe and nation had it's own gods back then.

Great video quality!!!

The first premisse can be interpreted as something cannot come from nothing, but according to eg Kant causality is not a part of the noumenal world (Das ding an Sich, in philosophical terms) but the way our conscious experience works. Without the possibility to interpret events with causal relations, nothing would make sense, so according to Kant it is just the only way the universe can ‘present’ itself to us, the true nature of the universe is according to his reasoning principally unknowable. That doesn’t has to lead to the conclusion that there isn’t a explanation for the existence of the universe, but that we can’t get there by reason, like Craig pretends.

- First premise is utterly broken. Nothing above the quantum level is "coming into existence" inside the universe (except maybe for emergent properties) and on said quantum level, things come into existence from seemingly absolute nothing. Also Craig never really defines nothing. Also "magic" is a bad answer as to how something comes from a badly defined nothing. - Second premise is also broken. We don't know the universe came into existence. We can't measure back to the actual beginning of the expansion and don't know what was before. - Infinite past is just Craig being ignorant. Not really worth an answer beyond that. - "The universe is all space, time, matter and energy." Just an assertion, we don't know what lies beyond. - Timeless and immaterial are badly defined. A "timeless" god can't change state from "not creating" to "creating". A t"timeless" god can't think or feel or act in any way. - "The only immaterial things that have causal power are minds." Just an assertion. For all we know, minds are not immaterial. - "This allows us to say that this cause must be itself uncaused." Just an assertion and not how logic works. You don't get to define that this cause is uncaused. - Being purely actual is a bullshit term. Being infinite seems to be incompatible with minds. Being unchanging IS incopatible with minds. Divinte simplicity is just bad, period. Thus, the conclusion does not follow IN ANY WAY. That's not "philosophical", it's sophistry.

No. Next.

Why exactly is god wearing a pink dress??????

First of all WLC is wrong that everything has a cause, unless he (or you) can tell use what causes 1. Quantum tunnelling; 2. Electron-positron pair production; 3. The exact moment a specific radioactive atom decays. You'll be in for a Nobel Price physics. Modern physics asserts that these phenomenona are not causal but probabilistic. The big problem though is: why should the First Cause be a supernatural entity like a creator god iso something naturalistic?

-"So you really mean that everything that exists must have a cause of its existence?" -"Yes of course" -"So your god have not always existed then?" -"Well i didnt mean it like that!"

1) everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence WRONG. Causality for everything was thrown out by Bertrand Russell in 1912, and an example of something with no cause is with pair production, where an atemporal photon 'disappears' and and electron/positron pair appear. From the photon frame of reference there is no causal relationship. 2:40 Intuition is unreliable, and has *no part* to play in determining whether an hypothesis is true. It is a useful servant in hypothesis forming, but a dangerous master in creating a theory. 3:10 It is so intuitively obvious that Bertrand Russell and most physicists disagree with the wild speculation. 3:39 Why is the idea that something can come from absolutely nothing absurd? Please define absurd; if it includes 'intuition' I reject the basis of the argument. 5:04 The Big bang describes what happened at a stage we can currently analyse. It does not say that there was a beginning to everything. Thermodynamics is a physical theory, which has a domain of applicability. It does not apply at the quantum mechanical level. 5:08 "A beginning in time" assumes the existence of time, yet the various interpretations of the Big Bang require that time itself began at that instant - so there was no time before the Big Bang, so it had no beginning. 5:14 "Science is always changing". NO! NO! NO! This is a misunderstanding of the domain of applicability: scientific theories are created to provide predictions based on observations, and probed to test the domain in which that theory applies. When the domain limits are reached (as observed by evidence) the theory must be modified to be applicable in the new domain, or a separate theory developed with a hope of later unification. For example - Newtonian physics is extremely accurate within its domain of applicability, but does not work with the extremes of our solar system, or the universe in general; but general relativity does.Newton still works within its domain, its just that GR has a larger domain. I agree that logic is unchanging, but *philosophy changes all the time* , depending on who the authority is, otherwise why would Russell and Craig/Kregg disagree about cause? NOW: up until this point I was happy to pull my punches, but when somebody thinks that philosophy is more reliable that empirical science I have to take my jacket off. If observations differ from logic then there is something wrong not with logic, but with the application of logical reasoning. There are many examples (e.g. Zeno's dichotomy paradox). Philosophy is at the bottom of the hierarchy of reliability: 1a) Observation/measurement (reality) 1b) Logic 3) Application of logic to produce predictions (science) m) knitting n) Philosophy/mental masturbation. 11:04 Philosophy has not shown that the universe had to have a beginning, so everything following your "If ... " must be abandoned,. 11:34 *Prove* that minds are immaterial. 12:05 Shove Aristotle up your aristotle (you need to know cockney rhyming slang to understand that). 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause. UNPROVEN 2) The universe began to exist. UNPROVEN 3) _ergo_ the universe has a cause UNPROVEN

Ok, something caused the universe, but why is there this obsession with anthropomorphising it and worshipping it? The kalam argument is just nonsense. Your argument that science is unreliable because it keeps changing, but philospophy is more reliable because it never changes is specious, dogmatic nonsense. People who understand science are happy to admit that they don't know everything and things they know may change if new evidence is discovered. The fact you do not understand this makes everything you subsequently say as literally having no sense, i.e. nonsense.

whats your opinion on scotus?

11:01, how would this work for eternal things? maybe some parts of the universe are eternal so are 'infinite' with no beginning

6:41 maybe a better way of putting it is that a potential infinite is a process tending towards infinite but never gets there, as under your defintion, i would be potentially infinite as i have an infninte number of potentials (although someone like trent horn would disagree).

i think joe schmid presents some of wes moristons arguments against craigs various arguments for p1 quite well

Great presentation. Except god is just jammed into the kalam to make it prove god. Special pleading. If you have problems with infinities then how old is God? If you think god could just exist without a beginning then why couldn't the quantum realm do the same thing and the singularity just came from there? I would accept the first 3 points of the kalam but everything after that is just wishful thinking, IMHO.

Part 3 Next, we will look at this notion of "beginning to exist". This is a strange inclusion into the syllogism, and screams ulterior motive. It seems like an amendment from a much more natural premise that would read "everything that exists must have a cause for it's existence". Why put this redundant qualifier "begins" at all? Does anything not "begin" to exist? Of course we know the answer to this, the word begins is placed here to leave room for God. The only thing that can possibly fit the criteria for not having a beginning. And what is meant by "begins to exist". In one sense, I began to exist, but the matter that constitutes me has existed in some form since the beginning of the universe. When we talk about the universe beginning to exist, we aren't talking about this type of changing matter and energy from one form to another, we are necessarily talking about matter coming into being. This comes from the Craig's own admission that the cause of the universe must be timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. Immaterial causes cannot have pre existing matter with which to fashion new objects. So it is clear, that the universe beginning to exist, which can be defined as matter and energy coming into existence, is unlike every other thing in the universe beginning to exist, which is simply a rearrangement of matter and energy. This means that the supposed intuition that Craig says we have, for things with beginnings having causes is false. There has only been one thing that fits this criteria, namely, the universe. In light of this, we can truncate the first premise from "everything that begins to exist has a cause" to "the universe has a cause", which makes the conclusion of the argument a simple restatement of one of its premises. There is one caveat to this, and it takes the form of virtual particles, which can in essence pop into and out of existence in a way where we can't really say it comes from existing matter or energy. The incredible irony here, is that Craig is opposed to this argument because the virtual particles don't really come from nothing. After the countless analogies we've heard of tigers popping into rooms and horses magically appearing, Craig finally decides to solidify the definition of true nothingness. He argues that because the virtual particles comes from a quantum vacuum, that's not really nothing. The motivation for Craig's new found philosophical rigor for the concept of nothingness is obvious. If particles can comes from nothing, uncaused, this leaves the door open for universes as well, and a naturalistic explanation for the origin of the universe. But he can't have it both ways. By noting that a quantum vacuum is not really nothing, the problem of why everyday objects like bicycles and tigers don't pop into existence on their own completely dissolves away, given that any possible place for them to pop into existence in our universe, is also not really nothing. Another thing to note, is by now making this distinction between nothingness, and quantum vacuums, he seems to be saying he's not surprised that things can pop into existence from... almost nothing. Aside from this being completely contradictory to his previous claims, it doesn't really make sense in the context of causality (which we will go into more detail later). If we imagine a quantum vacuum, or a room full of air, in what sense can we say that the vacuum or the air "caused" a particle to come into existence? It seems like we would have to be able to differentiate between a vacuum that didn't create a particle and one that did. Why, for instance did the vacuum "decide" to create a particle now instead of two seconds ago, or a year from now? It seems that even if we grant that virtual particles don't really come from nothing, the causal implications of this should still make Craig a little queasy. Before we move on to causality, we will spend a little time talking about infinity. Craig's premise that everything that begins to exist must have a cause, has a possible naturalistic candidate, if we allow for things having always existed. If the universe has existed forever, it never began to exist, and therefore doesn't require a cause. Craig eliminates this type of explanation by elucidating the issues with what he calls actual infinities. Actual infinities represent, as the name indicates, infinitesimal that are actually instantiated in the real world, such as an infinite number of things, or an infinite timeline. He differentiates this from potential infinities, an example of which would be the number of points on a line. We can imagine cutting a finite line into infinitely small sections, but only potentially so. The motivation for this differentiation of infinities comes from the realization that we can in fact traverse a potential infinity. Infinite series can be summed, and Zenu's paradox played out in the real world will see Achilles catching the turtle. Again, this differentiation seems post hoc, much like the addition of "begins to exist" in the first premise, but I will give Craig the benefit of the doubt and deal with actual infinites only, even if it appears to be a distinction without a difference. So what can we say about actual infinites? What would the consequences be of living in an infinitely large universe containing an infinite number of things, or a universe with an infinite past? To answer this, Craig explains the absurdity of infinity. He gives the example of Hilbert's hotel, in which an infinite number of customers occupy an infinite number of rooms. It is possible in Hilbert's hotel, to make room for another customer, or even an infinite number of customers, despite it being fully occupied. Craig sites this paradox as reason enough to exclude actual infinites from reality. Firstly, it's not clear that absurdity should be grounds for dismissing theories of reality. I can imagine similar absurdities being constructed for superposition and other quantum strangeness, yet here we are. But even if we admit this absurdity, we have to understand why it's absurd. There are certain assumptions about Hibert's hotel that must be true in order for us to arrive at these absurdities. Namely, information must travel instantaneously, and we must be able to complete tasks in zero time. These assumptions are taken for granted in a thought experiment, but cannot be when talking about the real world. In order for us to move a customer into Hibert's hotel, for example, we must move every person into the next room. If we perform this action in anything but zero time, it will take an infinitely long time to complete, and we never reach this paradox. Furthermore, if we were to take Craig's implicit assumptions about speed of events and communication, we can create paradoxes in our own universe which as far as we know is not infinite. Just imagine a light switch being flicked at a certain time interval that is halved at each flick. If we allow events to occur arbitrarily fast, we can perform an infinite number of clicks in a finite time and reach a point where the switch has been turned off and on an actual infinite number of times. We can reach a conclusion about the state of the switch, that it is both off and on, which is clearly an absurdity on par with Hilbert's hotel. There is more to say about causality, but this post is already gigantic

Part 2 It is here that Craig begins to flesh out a version of God that fits into the Kalam and prepares to defend creation ex nihilo, or creation from nothing. He states that if God had a beginning, or existed for an infinite number of hours or any other unit of time, that he would indeed succumb to the same causal requirement as the universe. But a God that is without creation and timeless, would not. Craig summarizes this position by saying "I would argue that God exists timelessly without creation and in time subsequent to creation". Mackie describes this timeless quality as "mysterious" in his rebuttal, to which Craig responds that he agrees if what he means by mysterious is awe inspiring and wonderful. This is quite a positive spin on a word that was clearly meant as synonymous with poorly defined and non explanatory, but Craig's interpretation of the word mysterious is not surprising given the religious baggage that comes with the word. Craig goes on to say that this timeless God is in no way unintelligible, which is true, but it's an interesting thing to say given his previous dismissal of things popping into existence, and that they should not be taken seriously just because they are conceivable. He gives the example: "Just because I can imagine an object, say a horse, coming into existence from nothing, that in no way proves that a horse really could come into existence that way" I would argue that the exact same thing is true of a timeless God, and I would add that a horse appearing from nothing is actually easier to imagine than a timeless God. At least the parameters of former occurrence are well defined, unlike the concept "timeless", or God for that matter. So what exactly does Craig mean by timeless? He often uses terms like timeless, spaceless, and immaterial to talk about things outside of the universe that could act as it's cause. The argument is, if the universe contains time, space, and material, its cause must not be of this universe, and therefore it must be timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. The difficulty here, is that this sounds suspiciously like non existence. If you take everything there is, the negation of this is simply nothing. This clearly isn't what Craig intends, as there would be no place for God, or any casual entity to reside in this null state. If we allow some supernatural realm to remain upon the subtraction of space, time, and material, the question becomes, what properties does it possess, and how could we possibly investigate these properties to make coherent arguments about what is possible. Also, what is stopping us from putting all of reality including this supernatural realm into a set, and describing something outside of that? Perhaps it's supernatural realms all the way down. We enter dangerous territory entertaining these realms, especially if we enter into this philosophical investigation with a priori beliefs that lead us in one direction or another ( and it's hard to see what the motivation for inventing a completely non investigable realm would be without a supernatural belief). Poorly defined supernatural realms can easily become a playground where we can pick and chose the properties we want, and discard the ones that are troublesome to our arguments. Things with beginnings need causes? No problem, we'll create an entity without a beginning that has existed forever. Now we have a problem with infinite regress? Again, no problem, we'll just say the realm is timeless and nullify the regress. How can anything in a timeless realm act to create a universe? We'll insert a mind with free will to remedy this. It's not hard to see how this type of property selection a la carte can act as a get out of jail free card for having to play by the rules of logical discourse. We see evidence of this in the introduction of this timeless God. Craig evades God's beginning, as well as the problem of infinite regress in one fell swoop by stating that God is timeless. An obvious question to Craig would be, how can a timeless God do anything at all, given that time is necessary for events to occur? He solves this by stating that God is changeless and timeless sans creation, and in time with creation. When I first heard this definition of God, it was in a debate, and giving Craig the benefit of the doubt, I assumed that in the supporting documentation for this definition, a coherent well thought out argument would be found, that was simply being omitted due to time and attention constraints of the debate format. But to my complete lack of surprise, when you remove the fluff, it was like most of Craig's arguments, supported only by logical possibility and conceivability, something he becries for spontaneous horse generation, but not for a time bending God. This concept of God, with its post hoc logical consequence dodging properties, is completely anathema to my own way of finding truth, so I want to spend a little time talking about why this difference in truth seeking methods is important, lest I be putting out fires set by Craig indefinitely. As a computer scientist, I'm in intimate relation with the harshest critic of my ideas; the compiler. It doesn't matter how great my idea is, how elegant the code is, or the fact that it working is not logically impossible, if it's wrong, the compiler will spit it out unapologetically. It is a sanity checker for ideas. The same goes for the scientific method. It doesn't matter how beautiful or elegant your hypothesis is, if it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. I see no such sanity checking measures in place for the philosophical meanderings that leads Craig to a timeless God. There are no double blind experiments that can be done, or observations that could falsify such an idea. This is not an attack on Craig by the way, it's an understanding that if we start with a belief, and actively look for philosophical arguments to support it, without any way of tethering us to reality, we will surely find these arguments, but we will succumb to our biases in the process, and end up with an explanation that is indeed conceivable, but one that is so detached from reality that we have no reason to believe it's true. Our ability to find pathways through philosophical arguments to back almost any starting point is in my eyes a bug, and not a feature. This was a bit of a tangent, but I feel it is necessary. I don't want to fall into the trap that most people arguing for naturalism fall into while arguing against Craig; that essentially, the arguments that come from Craig's philosophy are of the same quality and rigor as the ones that come from science, because they absolutely are not.

Part 1 We'll begin by stating the premises of the Kalam, and go through each one to see if they hold up to scrutiny. Premise 1) everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence Premise 2) the universe began to exist Premise 3) the universe had a cause for its existence This is what Craig has to say about the first premise - "Premise (1) seems obviously true-at the least, more so than its negation. First and foremost, it’s rooted in the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come into being from nothing" he goes on to say "if things really could come into being uncaused out of nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything and everything do not come into existence uncaused from nothing" This, at first doesn't seem too unreasonable. In everyday life we do see things as having causes, and indeed things don't come into existence out of nothing. But we have to be careful here, and realize what type of argument we're making. The Kalam claims to be an argument for God that uses deep philosophical concepts, so it's very suspect to use terms like "obvious", and "intuition". In philosophy, any ground gained, has to be fought for and argued, and not simply assumed by appealing to what the average Joe would consider reasonable. As we will see, Craig has a habit of appealing to cold philosophical reasoning when propping up his own ideas, and appealing to common sense when rebutting an idea from the other side. I feel this preface is necessary, so that if I refuse to accept propositions which seem obvious and intuitive like "things don't pop into existence from nothing", you'll see it as my doing the due diligence that a deep philosophical discussion deserves, and not me simply arguing for the sake of arguing, which incidentally is the charge that Craig launches at people that deny his first premise. So what can we make of Craig's statements? Well, he states that we have a metaphysical intuition that something cannot come from nothing. The first thing to note, is the use of the word nothing here. As we will see, Craig goes to great pains to differentiate between things that masquerade as nothing, such as empty space and quantum vacuums, and true philosophical nothingness. But here, we hear him saying that we have an intuition for nothingness, namely that something can't come out of it. But how can this be? Since the beginning of the universe, there has never been nothing. To put it another way, every experience we have ever had, has been an experience containing something, even if that something is empty space. I would agree if Craig had said something like "we have an intuition that things don't come into existence from empty space", but he specifically says nothing. This may seem like nitpicking, but remember we are doing philosophy here, and Craig gives no mercy to philosophical arguments he sees as weak, and so neither shall we. Craig also says, is that if it were possible that something could come from nothing, why don't we see things coming into existence from nothing all the time? Again, we see him conflating the idea of true philosophical nothingness with things that aren't nothing, like empty space. It's completely logical to say that something could come from nothing, yet not from empty space. It's not obvious or intuitive, or even something I'd argue for, this is just a reminder that we're doing philosophy here, and we must be thorough and precise about our definitions. This failure to solidify definitions, seeps into many of Craig's rebuttals where we can see him creating caricatures of arguments, in order to dismiss them via ridicule, instead of through careful philosophical reasoning. A good example of this is the following response to J.L. Mackie. "Does Mackie sincerely believe that things can pop into existence uncaused, out of nothing? Does anyone in his right mind really believe that, say, a raging tiger could suddenly come into existence uncaused, out of nothing, in this room right now?" I feel as though I'm repeating myself at this point, but Craig repeats this idea of "popping into existence out of nothing" yet again, and adds even more extravagance. We've already dealt with his confusion about what constitutes nothingness, and he seems to be pushing this to the limits by saying that a room now falls into that category, and that tigers are analogous to a fundamental substrate that might be argued as the universe's initial condition. More importantly, I hope that its clear to everyone that this is no way to have a philosophical discussion. He is creating a caricature, appealing to what an average person would think of this mischaracterization, and mocking ideas that should be at least entertained until they are properly fleshed out, as opposed to dismissing them off hand. He doesn't seem to appreciate how things look from the other side, and how easy it would be for me, or any of his interlocutors to say something like "Does Craig really believe that a disembodied mind can exist, as a matter of brute fact? If such minds could exist, why don't we see them popping up all over the place?" How useful would this statement be, in the context of a philosophical discussion? If both sides acted in this way, they would instantly find themselves in a stalemate trying to refute their mutual incredulous stares. After Craig discards the absurdity of assuming things can pop into existence out of nothing, he sites another rebuttal by Mackie: "It makes more sense to believe that the universe came into being uncaused out of nothing than to believe that God created the universe out of nothing"

I'll stick with Aquinas on this one. I believe the 5 ways are better overall