03:30 "We can't really tell if the Kalam is in fact sound." Err... yes we can, and it isn't. It fails at the first premise: "Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence." That is unsound for two reasons, one philosophical and one empirical: 1) Philosophically, we can't accept the 'everything' statement in Premise 1 because we haven't observed 'everything' - not even close - and if we accept it, we run into the Black Swan problem. In fact, the amount of 'everything' that we have observed is minuscule. Hypothetically, it could be true (although see my second point below), but we still could never accept it because we could never demonstrate that we _should_ accept it. 2) Empirically, we have never yet observed _anything_ 'begin to exist', let alone 'everything'. We have only ever observed changes of state in things that already existed. This alone kills the Kalam. [Edit: this is the point you get to at around 04:00] Perhaps an alternative to the Kalam could be salvaged, with a first premise along the lines of "Every change of state has a cause", which would really just be describing the general principle of cause and effect. It still wouldn't get you anywhere near to a god, or any other kind of supernatural cause, but at least it would allow you to get past the first premise. Also, how the fuck did William Lane Craig get not only a doctorate but also an entire career out of an argument this transparently dreadful?
my bigger question is this: even if you accept this argument, how does this help theists at all? How do you go from "universe has a cause" to "there is a god that answers prayers, creates an afterlife, etc..."
In the words of Mel Brooks: "Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit. Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit." I may have omitted or added a couple, but that's how.
@Joe D "his sneaking in of the, strangely enough, Christian God (why not Allah?)" They are the same. Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God, they just argue about who is doing it right.
Theology - the art of debating the existence of a thing that can never be proven or disproven because the characteristics of the thing are never properly classified. Leaves plenty of room to constantly adapt. If you keep changing the meaning of ‘begin’, ‘exist’, ‘cause’ etc. You can make it last forever…
@@bobmiller5009 "there necessarily HAD to be something before the universe" ... "my ancient cosmic horror does not have this same requirement". it's just unfalsifiable junk and honestly I haven't heard anyone outside AIG even humor this argument in maybe since WLC, like a decade ago
@@digipoke12345 No, he's an idiot. When you spend all of your time talking to the grossly gullible, of course you're going to be respected. That doesn't mean it's earned.
@@digipoke12345 Craig's defense of god is so much filled with fallacies and intelectual dishonesty that I admit my predisposition to just throw him entirely on the garbage that being said, I've never come into contact with his other works outside the realm of apologetics, so I could be wrong and would be willing to review my opinion of him (regarding non-religious topics, of course)
@@digipoke12345 Well respected by thiests mainly. Don't get me wrong, he obviously has a sharp mind and speaks very well. However he is on record as saying that if all evidence pointed to Christianity being false (confirmation that Jesus did not rise etc) that he would still remain steadfast in his Christian faith because of his experience with the holy spirit. How can you respect someone that thinks like that?
The Kalam Cosmological Argument plays with the idea of "things" without taking into account that most of whatever exists is waves of energy, not "normal" matter (protons, electrons, and neutrons). And most of what exists is loosely called "dark energy" and "dark matter", two entities that we don't even know if they should be called "energy" and "matter". It is mighty arrogant to say that "things" that we cannot even point at are so clearly understood that we know that they have "a cause".
@@freddan6fly Exactly. At that time it is not even clear if the existence of air was known. It looks very intuitive, but it cannot even survive the double slit experiment, where any simple definition of cause and effect falls flat on its face.
@@freddan6fly I'd say it was obsolete since the beginning of thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Thus, how can the universe be said to have a "beginning" when the energy that (at least partially) makes it up cannot be created? Of course, that's an assumption that the inside of the universe, where the energy currently exists, is extendable to the boundary of the universe, where things might be different. But, we don't know what the physics of the boundary conditions of the universe are, so we can't say whether or not energy could be created in such a condition. So rather than presume to claim that "it must have a cause," better to simply say, "we don't know."
@@dhwyll Agree, because cause effect is the creative and destructive force of nature,no first or last cause can be, things can't appear like magic. Nothing in nature turns to nothing, it's ingredients or form just change over time, everything is impermanent but nothing can truly disappear.
It always amuses / annoys me how god is given special exemption from the "everything must" clauses when those same exemptions could just be granted to the universe.
Bruh “god” is literally a label for the first cause. That’s what they mean by god: if something caused god, then by definition it’s not god. Good lord I’m not even a theist and I know not to be that dishonest
I don't see how it's dishonest. If god doesn't require a cause then the claim everything requires a cause is already false. If things can happen without a cause I don't see what prevents a natural universe being one such thing. Unless that makes such a universe itself god. Everything has a cause + god has no cause seems more like an argument god doesn't excist than it dose.
Yes, I agree. I know many theists will try to argue "well we can't have infinite regress that would make no sense"....blah blah blah and actually, I get that, in fairness to them, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say this but like you said, why should the god they believe in be the exemption that stops infinite regress? After all, if we accepted this "uncaused infinite being" idea, we would still have to get our minds around the very concept that something has just....uh...SOMEHOW always existed and never had a beginning. It's the same problem that would defy our normal intellectual reasoning whichever way we look at it. OK, having said all of that, what are we left with? Well, all we are left with are those words that I guess we all hate but it is the most honest thing to acknowledge, namely, we just don't know. I'm certainly uncomfortable saying that too but as Matt Dillahunty has often expounded, it's better to say that than PRETEND to have an explanation or in the case of theists, have an '"explanation" that would, in fact, be no more of an explanation than to just say the answer is magic 🤣
Dude at least try to correctly read the argument. No one says that everything has a cause, it's that everything *that starts to exist* has a cause. Stop hitting strawmen
I am always a bit uncomfortable whenever anyone starts talking about time. Sean Carroll has suggested that time is "what clocks measure." I kind of like this definition because it tells us that we really have no idea what time is. I used to teach a unit on Special Relativity to my physics students. Special Relativity is more than sufficient to blow away intuitive notions about both time and space. So, anytime I am presented with arguments that presuppose an authoritative understanding of time, I become very skeptical.
I wish I was better at special and general relativity. I always have hang ups on the B theory of time. It's clearly accepted as correct and I understand it and even can accept that if relativity of simultaneity is correct. Its relativity of simultaneity I have problems with. However even with the examples I never have gotten to a satisfactory level with the relativity of simultaneity. I always am left with unanswered questions about how we can justify saying one event must have happened first when we didn't measure the round trip time since the one way speed of light is unknowable. Or Why we don't have a standard reference frame (deep space at 0 relative to the CMB) for determining event order. Especially given we can transition from our reference frame to any other. Things like if I set up two timers to cause a simultaneous event then accelerate my frame so I do not observe it as simultaneous why I should accept there non simultinaity as reality when I know I set them to be. The hardest one because it technically breaks physics to do it but if I observed two events as non simultaneous then teleported to each event thru some form of FTL to confirm the age of the event, I would have to time travel during teleportation to get the same observation as from my distance accelerated frame. Yet a stationary observer would not have to. So does that mean the direction of motion thru space makes you time travel when using any form of FTL travel. Does stopping somehow change this.
@@nocare When I taught Special Relativity I tackled the question "How can A see B's clock run more slowly and B can see A's clock run more slowly" head on by doing a detailed example. The apparent contradiction never actually arises when you do the detailed calculations. Everyone arrives at the same answers regardless of their point of view. It's really very cool how it all fits together.
most arguments are word games. My favorite is "creation needs a creator" and my answer "does the big bang needs a big banger?" or any other word that doesn't work
@@oldschoolsaint Dude, wiser people than you have tried their very best, throughout history to cash in claims like that, and so far they have all failed. Why do you feel up to the task?
I have an argument: 1) Everything we have ever observed to exist, exists in our universe and obeys the laws of the universe. 2) God has not been observed and does not obey the laws of the universe. 3) Therefore God cannot be said to exist.
i think it has the same problems as the kalam, but i like it, because it's a good answer for anyone using the kalam... to refute your argument, they would have to think hard enough to refute their own!
@@legionleschyzophrene4929 the first point is that everything we have ever observed obeys the physical laws of the universe so that's covered. Theists are very prone to saying thst God exists outside of time and space. This is just a counter to that.
@@Dantalismanno it is not. A being outside of physics can’t be observed therefore you have to look from different angles . When you limit yourself to observation=existence you are making a presumption and it still comes down to philosophy with causality. And the presumption you are making is worse than the one you are making an objection to made by theists. In other words it is a Hypocrisy. That’s the first part. Secondlywe HAVE observed stuff where physics DOES break down that being the Singularities and the Big Bang. Which makes the OG comment beyond stupid and contradictory in its own nature.
The KC argument (in WLC form) is inductive one, disguised as a deduction and wrapped with a fallacy of composition. The undisguised first premise should read: "So far, Everything that begins to exist, in this universe, has a cause." And then the argument is a non sequitur.
As far as we have observed, we haven't seen anything begin to exist. So let's just leave out observation and hope no one notices we've made an entirely baseless assertion.
@@uninspired3583 Don't agree. It would be a fallacy of composition to assert that, because its parts didn't begin to exist with the entity, then nothing begins to exist. In this universe, there are entities that didn't exist before, even when the material and/or efficient causes already existed, and we can observe that.
Even if what you claim is true, that Craig doesn't do philosophy, the Kalam is a philosophical argument, and, I assume, Craig does the same with other arguments.
As a firm atheist, you’re just wrong. He’s a fantastic philosopher and I respect him highly. He is without a doubt the best Christian philosopher there is in my opinion.
@@OfficialMiniFridgeI think that online atheists fall into two camps, the fools who are blind to their side's sophistry, the fools who believe that the Puddle and Spaghetti Monster arguments are good arguments, and the ones who know most atheists aren't that smart and will swallow such nonsense. Dillahunty repeats a lot of very bad arguments, but all ones with YT channels do it. Some are much worse than others, like Aron Ra.
Hitchens used to say that he always wanted to know how apologists thought they were in on a secret about god and the universe and why that secret was denied to him. I think that brilliantly fits this.
@@jimmynolet3752 “ he has access to the Bible.” That is just one of many holy books. We will need evidence, separate independent evidence, that that was the right holy book. Before we gave it any weight at all.
Let's see, the creator of the universe... ...created time, so it must be timeless. ...created space, so it must spaceless. ...created matter, so it must be immaterial. ...and created minds, so it must be mindless, right?
Strawman. A mind must create another mind. The whole point of God being timeless, immaterial, personal, powerful, and intelligent is to prove that he is the uncaused first cause. You can say that is special pleading or ect. But being timeless, means he is outside of time. In other words, time doesn't exsist but yet he still does.
@@proofmarygold922 Can you demonstrate "A mind must create another mind" Can you also demonstrate: "But being timeless, means he is outside of time" If not, then the argument has no weight or evidence behind it and be dismissed without any extra thoughts.
@@proofmarygold922It seems you've arbitrarily picked which attributes must come from the same and which must not come from the same. In reality, it seems that material only comes from material, but minds come from non-minds. So you have it backwards.
@@proofmarygold922 the cause for the universe just needs to be smart enough to be a mechanism for pumping out universes. Theres no reason to believe it is personal or even self aware and can just as easily defined as immarerial timeless...
What a fantastic breakdown of the Kalam, and of the problems with it at each step of the way. The equivocation between things changing state and things actually beginning to exist, the flat out misunderstandings of the Big Bang, the leap from cause to God, and the leap to a specific God from there. Definitely gonna be watching this quite a few times, possibly saving it to show people later
Do you know the difference between material and efficient causes? Kalam most definitely does not commit the fallacy of equivocation. It references both causes within the universe and the cause of the universe itself in terms of efficient, not material causation.
@@oldschoolsaint “the efficient cause is the thing or agent which actually brings it about.” How would you define ‘brings it about’ in this situation? What does it mean for something to be ‘brought about’?
WLC and cosmic skeptic actually have a lengthy discussion on several of the topics here. From memory, the question of when something begins to exist and why the cause requires personal agency. Side note: they also use a different word from “before time” to get around the implication of time in the word “before”. I would encourage anyone who enjoyed this video to check that out as well. It was a respectful conversation
Yeah people should watch that instead of this video because you’re not gonna learn anything in fact this video just gonna make people more ignorant of the argument and make them dumber.
Too many ppl forget/aren't aware that the original argument didn't use "begins to exist" That phrasing was adopted to get around special pleading and yet it doesn't.
@@uninspired3583 it takes out their god of need to to have a cause, so the change makes it better for their view. My choice of words was was certainly wrong.
@@diaboloavocado I'm composed entirely of material that existed before, so no I didn't begin to exist in an ontological sense. I didn't pop into existence out of nothing, I'm a rearrangement of pre existing components. Since the argument arrives at the conclusion of the universe beginning in an ontological sense, it commits a category error.
It's the philosophical equivalent of pseudoscience. With pseudo-philosophy you can appear to have a solid logical foundation for your position to the general public. And let's be real, for a lot of these people it's more about convincing others rather than being accurate and/or honest. And to be fair I understand why. The truth carries far less weight amongst religious people than belief. And if you can convince your entire church of a belief then it can be just as, if not more motivating, than an actual truth. The problem is that when the truth and belief are unlinked then you can literally believe anything. Including things that can lead to some very dark places for humanity.
Saying "well...god didn't begin to exist therefore he's exempt from this argument" isn't the get out of jail free card people think it is. God still needs to be explained, and the argument states that he must have a cause.
Tell it to anything at all. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, so we've never once seen anything begin to exist. We've seen matter changed into new forms or configurations and start applying different names to it, such as tree, lumber, chair, but it always existed.
Well, to be fair, there is a "cause" to them in the sense that there is a description of a physical process that has virtual particles as an output. It is also possible to do the quantum math without resorting to virtual particles, so it could be said that they don't even exist. But if we are using them, then they are a consequence of real things that happen: A force between two objects might have an exchange of virtual particles and it is the interaction via the force that "causes" the virtual particles.
@@dhwyll But, given superposition, did the “cause” actually precede the “effect” of particle manifestation? Because we cannot definitively answer that question, the very model of cause-and-effect may not even be applicable to the most basic (and earliest) manifestations of our local universe.
The Kalam reminds me of the South Park episode with the underpants thief’s (gnomes I think). They had a plan: 1) Steal underpants 2) ??? 3) Profit! Theists use the Kalam in a similar way: 1) The universe had a cause 2) ??? 3) God!
@@vishaldive3777 but a god that has no cause or reason for its existence is plausible? That's even more ludicrous. The singularity at least have some evidence to it. Magical sky daddies, however, don't.
Thanks Matt ! That was a great explanation of what I thought was always a terrible argument anyways, but it shed some new light on it. You're absolutely right too. Craig has built a career on absolutely nothing.
@@uninspired3583 Of course ,nobody has ever seen something as a human like advanced machine encoded at every level come out of nothing ,code is science and science comes out of higher intelligence , easy life makes one ignorant of stringent surviving requirements of life here on earth , entropy is a filter for evolution of life here on earth and it is also known to evolve or change .
@@obiecanobie919 I was making a pun. The original post said Craig has made a career out of nothing. "Out of nothing comes nothing" is something that Craig often says, to point to the absurdity of a universe beginning to exist without a cause. I'm connecting his own words to the idea that he's made a career out of absolutely nothing, to state that his work has no value.
The set of "things that did not begin to exists" is: [god]. So the set of "things that begin to exist" includes everything except god. Therefore, the statement "everything that begins to exist" can be re-written as, "everything but god", placing the supposed conclusion (god) into the premises, which is the definition of question begging. Kalam is a turducken of fallacies. Or, to be brief, a turd.
@@whatsinaname691 yeah, no. “Things” refers to tangible objects. Your list of things don’t “exist” in the same way as tangible things, so that’s an equivocation. Or, they don’t exist in the same way as a theist believes a god exists. So again, an equivocation. Unless you’re arguing that the number 632.782 could be the cause of the universe, you’re just spewing philosophical nonsense to avoid recognizing the worthlessness of the Kakam.
I find that apologists have a very hard time avoiding contradictions when discussing this topic. For instance, WLC describes "begins to exist" as follows: "if there was a point in time that it didn't exist, and a later point in time that it did exist, then it began to exist". But if we apply this to time itself, the absurdity becomes clear: If there was a point in time that time didn't exist... I recently heard Frank Turek make a similar assumption, stating "once there was no time, space, matter, or energy". But what can "once" possibly mean if time doesn't exist? I don't know if I've ever seen an atheist press an apologist on this question, and I wonder what they would say.
Here is what I don't understand. In the Kalam, they say that "Everything that begins to exist has a cause, and since the Universe began to exist it has to have a cause". Ok, I understand that. Then they immediately claim an "uncaused" Creator. How do they know it is "uncaused"? It seems this is very easy to debunk. First you have to prove there is a Creator, and then you have to prove they are uncaused. How can ANYONE think this is a good argument? It just seems so simple to me. Prove an uncaused creator or STFU.
Easy. They don't just claim an uncaused creator, they claim at the same time that this creator is eternal and therefore doesn't have a beginning and needs no cause. Nothing to prove here, they're basically defining it into existence. The brainfuck is that they find it perfectly acceptable to postulate an eternal god, where they deny the concept of an eternal universe. I see it as a sophistiacted shell game, where they shuffle around empty words until you lost track where the actual substance is.
@@dtphenom There does appear to be an age of the universe, I agree! I wasn't trying to suggest it is eternal. In fact, it seems that time itself had its beginning at the beginning of the universe, so that it doesn't even make sense to speak about anything preceding the universe. My point was that it is very odd that people who have problems imagining an eternal universe, at the same time have no problem at all imagining an eternal god. That's not consistent. That is making a special case for a god. It is driven by wishful thinking.
Here are the problems with the Kalam cosmological argument that I can think of: 0. "Begins to exist" is an ill-defined concept within ontology, because there is no consensus as to what existence entails, let alone the beginning of one. 1. "God," and even specifically, "YHWH," since the only people who use the Kalam cosmological argument are Abrahamic monotheists, is ill-defined within theology, as there is no consensus as to what "YHWH" is defined to be. 2. The premise "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" contains the ill-defined "begins to exist" phrase. 3. The premise "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" presupposes that "begins to exist," despite being ill-defined, is a spatiotemporal phenomenon, since the premise links it to causation, a spatiotemporal phenomenon. 4. The premise "The universe began to exist" contains the ill-defined "began to exist" phrase. 5. The premise "The universe began to exist" presupposes that the universe is a spatiotemporal phenomenon, since it links it to beginning to exist, which was presupposed to be a spatiotemporal phenomenon by the previous premise. 6. However, we know the universe is not a spatiotemporal phenomenon, because spatiotemporal phenomena a priori require the existence of spacetime, and the universe, in a set-theoretic sense, contains spacetime. Therefore, the premise "The universe began to exist" is false. 7. Proponents of the Kalam cosmological argument will say that if the universe had a finite past, then it began to exist. This is an equivocation fallacy. "Begins to exist" is presupposed by the argument to be a spatiotemporal phenomenon, which requires the existence of spacetime. So regardless of whether the past is finite or infinite, it is false that spacetime began to exist, and so, problem 6 remains. Spacetime has never not-existed. 8. Also, there is no proof that the universe cannot have an infinite past. Proponents of the argument claim that if the past were infinite, then the present could have never been reached. Mathematically, this is false. 9. The conclusion "Therefore, the universe had a cause" fails to establish what the properties of the cause are. 10. If the cause entailed by the conclusion is YHWH, assuming that YHWH is even a well-defined entity, which it is not, then there is the issue that it raises the question, "what is the cause of YHWH?" Proponents of the Kalam cosmological argument reply by saying that YHWH has no cause because YHWH did not begin to exist. But the fact that YHWH did not begin to exist is special pleading, because it is an arbitrary exception not established by the Kalam cosmological argument.
Very nice, and I think you left out some other problems for the sake of brevity. I find it enlightening that a simple, short argument could have so many logical flaws. This type of flawed reasoning can only survive in a culture of "sound byte philosophy." Unfortunately, I think this means that we, as a society of thinking, sentient beings, are doomed.
@@eljison Proofs for or against the god hypothesis have been attempted for many centuries, and the fact that this issue is still being debated attests to their failure. So how probable is it that someone can pick a very simple argument that dates back many centuries and present it as a convincing argument to the world? It is clear from the outset that this is aimed at the uneducated, unprepared, gullible and needy. Fortunately for WLC, there is no lack of them.
Even a multiverse needs to be created. However you can't keep going back unless you get to something that can no longer be created. It's logic and reason.
Prove it. That is not logic and reason, your claim is no diffrent than stating the sun goes around the earth; its logic and reason. We have no evidence for or against infinite regression and we have no evidence for or against uncaused creation. Until you have a falsifiable testable model that makes accurate predictions you have nothing.
@@nocare You want evidence for something that is common sense???? Shocking! I am shocked! Scientists tells us unhappily I might add that the Universe had a beginning. They don't like this of course because it means something had to create the universe because it didn't get here on it's own (but you already knew this). Why are we questioning things we already know to be true? Only in the world of atheism. This is why atheism has never ever impressed me. It's all a bunch of people questioning even common sense. The sky is blue somewhere on Earth! Prove it! Where is the evidence? I just laugh. It's dumb yes, but it's just people rejecting God (and the creation of the universe) and you don't need evidence for that.
@@Docwiz2 A blue sky is an observation, you on the other hand have made a claim about why the sky is blue and then also claimed its and observation when its not. There is a difference between observing a piece of data and then an explanation as to why it is that way.
@@nocare Either way, my point is that no matter what I have to say, it's not going to be convincing. That's my exact point. You should know this stuff by now and the fact that you don't have a clue is a big problem with your level of thinking and thus understanding. I shouldn't have to tell you these things, you should have known them by now. If you want to know God, go ask him in a private room and let him tell you and give you evidence. I have my evidence and a ton of it. You won't believe me anyway on what happened to me, so it doesn't matter. I am more than excited on what the end game is and this is a short life and it will end for us all, but it's not the end of my life in general and you have no idea what is going to happen. You may think I am delusional, but nevertheless, God is GOOD!
@@Docwiz2 I don't think your delusional, I just think your methodology of determining truth is either inconsistently applied OR is flawed altogether. I also don't think you know the difference between an observation, a hypothesis, a negative vs positive claim or why evidence is testable predictions not observations.
Love talks about the Kalam, especially from Matt! The Kalam (and others like it) were the last holdouts I had to remain a theist. It wasn't until I heard its refutations (the real refutations, not the ones preachers say the atheist will answer with) I could let go of the idea of a god needing to exist. After I was able to internalize that idea (which took a long time) I could admit to myself that I am an atheist.
Original bible Number 7 :Used 735 times, the entire Word of God is founded on the number 7. “Sevenfold” is used 6 times and “seventh” is used 119 times, bringing the total references to 7 to 860. It is used 54 times in Reve- lation alone. Seven is the number of completeness and perfection and is tied directly to God’s creation of the heavens and earth. • The word “created” is used 7 times describing God’s creative work (Gen. 1:1, 21, 27 three times; 2:3; 2:4). • There are 7 days in a week. • The Sabbath is the 7th day of the week. • The 7th year is the land Sabbath. • There are 7 feasts of God, beginning with Passover (V). • There are 7 annual holy days. • There are the 7 weeks of the spring harvest. • The cycle of the 7 holy days is completed in 3 festival seasons by the 7th month of the sacred calendar: Passover and Unleavened Bread, 1st month; Pen- tecost, 3rd month; and Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles and Last Great Day, 7th month (C). • In the book of Revelation there are 7 churches, 7 angels to the 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpet plagues, 7 thunders and the 7 last plagues (V). • The first resurrection takes place at the 7th trumpet, completing salvation for the Church. • There are 7 divisions of the Bible: 1) the Law; 2) the Prophets; 3) the Writings, or Psalms; 4) the Gospels and Acts; 5) the General Epistles; 6) the Epistles of Paul; and 7) the book of Revelation. (The seven divisions are covered beginning on page 15.) • There are 49 books in the Bible-7 x 7- demonstrating the absolute perfection of the Word of God
@@TheIronicRaven it is as they say seven is used a lot at the right times etc , anyway i thought il leave you with something to think about a different type of pitch to the norm
@@turnfrmsinorhell_jesus if you want to convince someone that the bible is perfect, I'll even settle for good. maybe work on removing all the horrible and factually wrong aspects of it.
@@TheIronicRaven if you would like to ask something or give an example on something that put you off of it you can try ask me and I will try to assist. Once you get what they really actually say in the bible it will blow your mind
Theists are always the last ones who realize that their arguments are ridiculous. Perhaps in a decade or so they see the folly of the useless Kalam Cosmological Argument.
They will. They'll tuck it away for a generation and spin on to the next one in the roladex of debunked old rubbish. then they'll whack the Kalam back out in a generation after people forget.... rinse and repeat for all of recorded history...
Matt nails it at the start. There is no reason to accept the first premise. We have no idea if everything began to exist. The premise that everything that we know of had a beginning is patently false. Everything we know of was simply something else. I see no reason to believe that the same isn't true of the universe. That said, I don't know and neither do the people that propose the Kalam. Given that there is no reason for anyone to accept the first premise, the argument is a waste of time.
1. No one claims that EVERYHTING began to exist. 2. See 1 above. 3. And if it was something else it DID NOT EXIST. 4. Matt's criticism of the first premise is in error.
1. We know from observation that “everything that begins to exist” is just a new arrangement of already existing matter and energy. 2. We know from physical laws such as “conservation of energy”, “conservation of momentum”, “conservation of mass”, that nothing is created out of nothing. Therefore what does even mean that god is the “cause” of the universe existing? Craig’s Kalam is craftily worded to avoid stating something that goes against well known physics yet if there’s no claim that god created the universe out of nothing what is the claim exactly? The sun caused and sustains life on earth: is the sun god?
Sean Carroll destroyed the Kalam a few years ago in his debate with WLC. I don’t know what else needs to said. BTW, the beard looks way better than the goatee.
One objection to the argument is that it leaves open the question of why the First Cause is unique in that it does not require any causes. Proponents argue that the First Cause is exempt from having a cause, while opponents argue that this is special pleading or otherwise untrue.
@@michaelbernard1041 No they don't. Atheists generally say they don't know what the cause of the universe is. There are many theories by scientists who have a better understanding of these things. I see though how you try to throw back the question so you don't have to answer it yourself. Show your cards if you dare. Do you believe in an uncaused first cause?
@@redmed10 This isn't primarily a scientific argument its a philosophical one. Graham Oppy's causal principle is an example of what michael was talking about.
my favorite is asking theist's what a timeless spaceless disembodied mind is, and how it even functions. like how would it think? if it has no beginning or time or continuity how or when would it make decisions? how does it interact with reality? on top of being omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omnipresent there is a never ending surplus of contradictions and utter nonsense.
When someone tells me about a thing that is timeless and space less I like to point out they just defined something non-existent. If something doesn’t exist at any time, and doesn’t have any physical make-up what could it possibly mean for that thing to exist. Theists are using a definition of exists that makes no sense, but they talk about this existence as though it’s the same as other existent things.
@@JohnSmith-fz1ih I have long taken the same view. However, in philosophical circles numerous attempts have been made to rationalize the apparent contradiction in assigning a timeless state of existence to God. For instance, if there is a creator God then by definition he created the time and space which we inhabit, which implies that he did so from another sphere not subject to the same temporal-spatial rules as us, and so on. I suggest looking up the peer reviewed article God and Time in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy for detailed analysis of this topic. A lot of straw clutching there in my humble opinion.
Original bible Number 7 :Used 735 times, the entire Word of God is founded on the number 7. “Sevenfold” is used 6 times and “seventh” is used 119 times, bringing the total references to 7 to 860. It is used 54 times in Reve- lation alone. Seven is the number of completeness and perfection and is tied directly to God’s creation of the heavens and earth. • The word “created” is used 7 times describing God’s creative work (Gen. 1:1, 21, 27 three times; 2:3; 2:4). • There are 7 days in a week. • The Sabbath is the 7th day of the week. • The 7th year is the land Sabbath. • There are 7 feasts of God, beginning with Passover (V). • There are 7 annual holy days. • There are the 7 weeks of the spring harvest. • The cycle of the 7 holy days is completed in 3 festival seasons by the 7th month of the sacred calendar: Passover and Unleavened Bread, 1st month; Pen- tecost, 3rd month; and Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles and Last Great Day, 7th month (C). • In the book of Revelation there are 7 churches, 7 angels to the 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpet plagues, 7 thunders and the 7 last plagues (V). • The first resurrection takes place at the 7th trumpet, completing salvation for the Church. • There are 7 divisions of the Bible: 1) the Law; 2) the Prophets; 3) the Writings, or Psalms; 4) the Gospels and Acts; 5) the General Epistles; 6) the Epistles of Paul; and 7) the book of Revelation. (The seven divisions are covered beginning on page 15.) • There are 49 books in the Bible-7 x 7- demonstrating the absolute perfection of the Word of God -
To explain that things can exist without beginning to exist, I like to point out that on Earth North and South begin to exist at their respective Poles, but East and West do exist without ever beginning to exist.
@@michaelsommers2356 no that isn't the case. Soundness just means the premesis can be shown to be true, individually. Valid just means the conclusion follows from the premesis. So you can have an argument that's sound but not valid, or valid but not sound. The kalam, imo, is both invalid and unsound. I was just going along with the joke and being dismissive of what they're trying to do.
AFAIK, the only things that humans have actually observed "beginning to exist" are subatomic particles. This also appears to be a causeless phenomenon.
The problem with all “arguments” is that they try to define something into existence without providing any evidence of actual existence. As such the kalam is a non-starter for me because i can replace “god” with “yeti” or “aliens” and have the same result. The kalam gets you no further but makes you feel clever without being clever.
Being reasonable is a word game. Or if you prefer we could all just random words and non true statements at each other and see how far the human race gets
From what I've seen most(if not all) religious arguments in philosophy use the inconsistencies of language to weasel a god into existence. it's always some semantic trick rather than some profound statement.
9:28 “Causality is necessarily temporal” That’s your issue. That’s why you don’t understand. Once you understand that causality is not tethered to the temporal plane you begin to understand.
@@hrothgr52 Lol I like ur honesty. Before I continue to explain about causality and its relation to time, are you aware of the issue that stands in your way? If ur saying "cause then effect, time" and are claiming that "cause" cannot occur without already existing time then how did the big bang happen lol. If you claim that a cause cannot take place without time, and we know that time began to exist at the very beginning of the universe, then by your very own argument the universe could NOT begin to exist at all because its cause had no time to act within, which obviously we know is false because the universe does exist and therefore renders your argument incorrect lmao. Your argument is self defeating.
I've always said that the use of the word "cause" smuggles in the concept of agency (e.g. John was the cause of the accident, Jane was the cause of the team's success). Surely it's much more accurate to use a neutral word like "explanation"?
This will not stop them. I seem to refute a new version of this on twitter every week. Contingent, uncaused first cause, blah blah so many different variations. Complete garbage.
It's hard to conceive something not having a beginning, it's also hard to conceive nested for loops in JavaScript. On that note, if the Kalam Cosmological argument was written in a programming language, it would require a lot of if statements and defined variables.
if the big bang was the beginning of both time and space, asking what happened before the big bang is like asking what's north of the north pole. It's a meaningless question.
Using the kalam cosmological to appeal to a god is just a god of the gaps argument in disguise. Also the explanatory power of something doesn't give a person grounds for a truth claim, almost every question has a plethora of speculative answers/solutions with explanatory power. Evidence is what one needs.
There is evidence for God and Christ and there is no evidence for lack of God or no god. Atheism is a faith without evidence or hope. I don’t ever hear of millions of lives changed because of their atheist faith.
you seem awfully confused.atheism addresses one thing and one thing only.we are not convinced that any of the 7,000 gods that have been proposed by humans over time in hundreds of different languages and in hundreds of different countries is real..maybe were not at class the day that the most basic principles of logic were explained..It is completely irrational to believe something (anything) until it can be demonstrated to be true. the logical (athiest) position is to withhold belief until a claim is proven to be true.so until you or anyone can demonstrate that their preferred God is real we rational folk are entitled to treat God claims as superstitious nonsense that has no basis in fact whatsoever
Even more mysterious than the circumstances that caused the universe to exist is the fact that an intelligent person like William Lane Craig uses the Kalam cosmological argument in support of god. How in the universe does he not see how flawed that is?
The KCA is indeed a tautology.. What is the differences between "everything that began to exist" and " the Universe " Nothing that I know of. But then I only know things in the Universe..
I wouldn’t even grant the first premise. In order to state that “everything that begins to exist has a cause”, you would have to know everything that currently exists, everything that has ever existed and everything that will exist in the future.
Yes, some of us Christians do abuse the KCA as if it's deductive, when it is actually inductive and should be used to raise the stakes alongside other evidence.
Thank you Matt, I always thought WLC did not explain much when presenting this argument, because the conclusion of the premise is missing very vital steps. But he tends to talk over it so quickly, he seems to get away with it way too often.
Well put, Matt. For me, this argument is so nonsensical that I can't even begin to argue against it. I find it so superficial and naive, it's like arguing with a crying baby.
1) Everything we have observed to exist has a beginning. 2) The Christian god is claimed to have no beginning. 3) Therefore, the Christian god does not exist. They may present their god for observation to prove otherwise.
@@mg-ew2xf Replace "Christian God" in 2) with "the Universe" - as the video tries to prove. Does the Universe still exists? 1) is a hasty generalization.
@@Adiusa0874 so you're arguing the evidence that the universe had a beginning is false? If you replace the universe it becomes "the universe is claimed to have no beginning." But I'm not sure who's claiming that. Current evidence shows there was a beginning.
@@mg-ew2xf The video makes the claim that the universe could be eternal - we just don't "know". All Kalam refutations posit that the universe is indeed eternal. 1) is still a hasty generalization. Applies only to contingent entities. God is a necessary entity - by definition. See "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - God and Other Necessary Beings".
I would say not even shifting to "everything that begins to exist needs a cause" because that just shifts the problem back one step. Now you have to use special pleading to say "yeah, but god didn't begin to exist"
The people using the kalam accidentally keep proving that in the beginning Chronos laid an egg from which Phanes emerged to then create the cosmos and everything in it. (Chronos is time itself, so obviously "timeless", as such not governed by space, and is a mind.)
Yikes, it's frustrating to see how many people Matt influences positively. Please do your own research, sincerely look into the arguments, read Craig for yourself. Perhaps you will be convinced perhaps you won't. You can be sure however, that you will come to realize Matt hasn't the slightest clue what he is talking about. Cheers.
I à not a trained philosopher. I have read critiques of WLC’s Kalām. I thought it had big holes before I read the experts. Now I think it has more. I certainly did not get the impression that WLC is curious about exploring the faults in reasoning in his Kalām. Rather, he seems to think it is unquestionably true. That makes me even more suspicious!
I recently read William Lane Craig's book "On Guard". I figure I should give WLC his chance to convince me. But honestly, it's pretty bad. It relies pretty heavily on cosmological arguments, which for a number of reasons are just not very convincing. To start with, how can I possibly know if everything that begins to exist has a cause? I'm not omniscient.
So if the energy, that made Matt Dillahunty always existed ( as he just said) then that energy has to be capable of consciousness in order to bestow it. So by saying he always existed, he still proves God.
@BoyKagome That is demonstrably false, though. A chunk of metal and some oil, don't have the property of making lift, but make them into an airplane, and they are able to. It's a gestalt. The sum of the original parts is greater than the original parts.
I used to think Kalam was the best argument for a god, but not so much now. Well, compared to the other arguments, maybe, but it's like saying 1985 is the best year for the Yugo. One thing you didn't mention (which you've mentioned in the show) is that cosmo arguments don't specify anything about the supposed creator. It's equally likely to be Krishna, Odin or Yahweh. Or a god that created the universe then ceased to exist. Of course, there's no way to prove any of those, so there's no reason to assume any of them are true.
Good point. The universe could have been created as the result of two gods who were fighting, then killed themselves in an explosion which then resulted in the Big Bang, and neither gods existing anymore.
Mr. Deity (Brian Keith Dalton) said something in one of his videos that struck me as true, namely: Arguments are not definitive evidence, except in cases such as mathematics in which all of the logical moves have been validly and meticulously defined. Aristotle, for example, believed that heavy objects fall faster than light ones and gave an argument to prove it. The argument, however, didn't make his belief true.
I had a funny personal experience with the Kalam.. A work friend of mine is Jewish Orthodox, who even got certified to be a Rabbi, told me one day "You have to read this article, it proves the existence of God in a logical way that even you can relate to". So I did, and it basically was the full blown Kalam with the leap of faith to God and everything. The funny thing was that the author was a Muslim and was trying to prove the existence of Allah! I told my friend some of the refutations Matt brought, but it didn't persuade him. I was less versed in logical refutations of arguments for God than I am now, but still managed to deduce at least some of the basic ones for Kalam. Anyhow I found it funny that he referred me to this Muslim writer, trying to convince me that his Abrahamic god exists. Yes I know that Allah and the Abrahamic God are one and the same, but the religion still differs wildly.
@@hecticnarcoleptic3160 The person who formulated the argument used the laws of logic, the logic behind the argument is eternal only the formulation of the argument has a point in time.
So Matt responds with “we don’t know” and that ended the argument with a 17 min detour? Gotcha Atheists getting more pathetic with each day. No wonder it’s dying out
You should watch Sean Carroll - God is not a good theory 1 hour video. He concludes at the end that: "it's still on the table as a logical possibility (for God to exist)".😅
I'm a Christian, and I'm about to say something that may surprise or even shock you. I agree with you. I have watched WLC and others make this argument. Even if you agree with all the premises, all it leads you to is 'something' outside of the universe. It makes me NUTS when someone uses this argument and then makes huge leaps of logic to make it point to God. Frank Turek is one in particular who drives me nuts with this. He claims that whatever created the universe must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal and intelligent. While I would agree with the first four, as I believe any reasonable person would, those last two are a leap of logic that the argument simply does not support. I took the time to watch your video because I want to know what the other side says. I have to say you presented strong arguments and good reasoning, but what got me was that you were mostly respectful, at least until the end where you were a little condescending. To be fair, I had come to this conclusion on my own without the help of your opinion, but logic is logic and you sir are quite correct.
@@heavenbound7-7-7-7 Provide evidence that it did. Because if the universe was just masless disperse radiation before, then there was no time and it doesn't need a beginning. And guess what, masless particles exist. Not to mention the first law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only transform. So where is your evidence that the universe begin to exist then?
@@heavenbound7-7-7-7 Do you know how to read? Energy can't be created or destroyed, it can only transform. This means that energy ALWAYS existed. This isn't rocket science eh. It's basic text comprehension.
I think Kalam supporters assume that "begin to exist" is a given. It is sneaked into the syllogism in the hope it won't be questioned. But it looks like "begin to exist" could mean something that literally began to exist from no starting point at all - nothing of the thing that now exists - previously existed before the thing began to exist. This could possibly rule out the universe - since - perhaps - something or maybe everything of the universe may have always existed or at least existed at some point. So I am not confident that the premises are true.
You should see Cosmic Skeptic's chanel. Since he made the statement that after his debate with Craig he sees the Kalam as more plausible than before - he has thousands of Christians fawning over him and subscribing to his channel.
Bottom line = a being that has NEVER been Proven to Exist CANNOT be the "Cause" of the Universe. If you think your specific "god' is the cause, then first PROVE your specific god is even real, then we'll talk. Praise the Magic Toe Nail. Amen.
In order to ensure its validity, I would state the Kalam cosmological argument as follows: 1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe is a thing that began to exist. 3. Therefore the universe began to exist. This I think is a point that Kant made, that we may not be justified applying our intuitions about elements of the universe the collection of all things. Is the collection of all things taken as a whole itself a thing that we are quantifying over when we refer to all things?
I consider the Kalam Cosmological Argument in its religious form is just an expansion of the God of the Gaps argument expanded to the universe and its cause. I even saw an Arab Christian argue that this is an example of them not committing the God of the Gaps argument when this is the biggest one.
Name one peer reviewed scientific paper written in the last 50 years that uses a syllogism to make its argument. I'm being generous as syllogistic logic was criticized by scientists in the 17th century.
I remember, years ago, reading somewhere that the KCA was the best argument for god. I of course immediately looked it up and read it. My reaction was something along the lines of: You gotta be kidding me. If this is your best then you really should just pack it in. 😅
Matt Is doing something that I find to be disgusting. He’s encouraging this line of high minded cocky atheists… so hot shot, tell me why the kalam is bunk.
@@thetannernation You'd know that if you'd watched the video. His reasoning on the subject is similar to what I thought when I first read the syllogism. I feel no need to repeat it. Fascinating that you think "high minded" is a pejorative. A quick Google of the term defines it as "having strong moral principles".
@@Jay_Scott_Raymond Ooh I used the wrong phrase you’re right. I meant something like high horse / unjustified high ground / arrogant. Ah whatever, you win this round. I’ll be back.
@@thetannernation Kudos and a thumbs up on your comment for admitting the mistake and not getting pissy about it, as happens all to often on da interwebz. 👍 Really. Not being a wise-arse here. I genuinely appreciate it.
1 - Cause and effect is a relationship that can be proven, therefore observed, in spacetime. 2 - The cause for the universe is outside of spacetime. 3 - Spaghetti monster
Since no even one atom in my body is same as it was when I was born then when "I" begin to exist and when "I" end(ed) to exist. Why and how you want to transcript this on the universe which does not switch its atomic build over time. IMHO even the structure is problematic.
You forgot the primary equivocation: the definition of the word "Cause". In a scientific sense, a "Cause" is the answer to a "How" question. What caused the Earth to come into existence? The collapse of the solar nebula. That is the "Cause" of the Earth. (Approximate.) But what the theist means by "Cause" is a "Why" or "Purpose" or "Intent" question. What caused the Earth to come into existence? God wanted it to exist as a home for Man. That is the "Cause" of the Earth. That's where the theist sneaks in the need for the "Cause" to have a mind, because a purpose or intent requires a mind to have that intention or desire.
The main weakness of the Kalam is that horrible objections like those in this video have proliferated to the point that it’s not worth attempting to put forward. If you’re going to go ahead and say “I’m done with the Kalam”, you could at least have included an objection by someone like Wes Morriston or Graham Oppy. This reminds me of the start of the RR-CC Kalam debate when RR stepped completely out of his depth, but without Joe Schmid, Alex Malpass, etc… coming in to educate him on more advanced arguments.
03:30 "We can't really tell if the Kalam is in fact sound." Err... yes we can, and it isn't. It fails at the first premise: "Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence." That is unsound for two reasons, one philosophical and one empirical:
1) Philosophically, we can't accept the 'everything' statement in Premise 1 because we haven't observed 'everything' - not even close - and if we accept it, we run into the Black Swan problem. In fact, the amount of 'everything' that we have observed is minuscule. Hypothetically, it could be true (although see my second point below), but we still could never accept it because we could never demonstrate that we _should_ accept it.
2) Empirically, we have never yet observed _anything_ 'begin to exist', let alone 'everything'. We have only ever observed changes of state in things that already existed. This alone kills the Kalam. [Edit: this is the point you get to at around 04:00]
Perhaps an alternative to the Kalam could be salvaged, with a first premise along the lines of "Every change of state has a cause", which would really just be describing the general principle of cause and effect. It still wouldn't get you anywhere near to a god, or any other kind of supernatural cause, but at least it would allow you to get past the first premise.
Also, how the fuck did William Lane Craig get not only a doctorate but also an entire career out of an argument this transparently dreadful?
my bigger question is this: even if you accept this argument, how does this help theists at all? How do you go from "universe has a cause" to "there is a god that answers prayers, creates an afterlife, etc..."
Excellent!!!!
In the words of Mel Brooks: "Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit. Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit." I may have omitted or added a couple, but that's how.
@Joe D
"his sneaking in of the, strangely enough, Christian God (why not Allah?)"
They are the same.
Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God, they just argue about who is doing it right.
Theology - the art of debating the existence of a thing that can never be proven or disproven because the characteristics of the thing are never properly classified. Leaves plenty of room to constantly adapt. If you keep changing the meaning of ‘begin’, ‘exist’, ‘cause’ etc. You can make it last forever…
Kalam is the special pleading argument with more steps
@@bobmiller5009 "there necessarily HAD to be something before the universe" ... "my ancient cosmic horror does not have this same requirement". it's just unfalsifiable junk and honestly I haven't heard anyone outside AIG even humor this argument in maybe since WLC, like a decade ago
I used to have trouble refuting this argument on my own then it just clicked and I realized it’s very simple and silly. You’re correct.
"it's Craig's favorite argument"
And that's why I know the argument is crap
Eh, let's not be dumb. Craig is a well-respected philosopher, even if we disagree with his views on a supposed god.
@@digipoke12345 Not by me he is not. To me he is a slimey little man.
@@digipoke12345 No, he's an idiot. When you spend all of your time talking to the grossly gullible, of course you're going to be respected. That doesn't mean it's earned.
@@digipoke12345 Craig's defense of god is so much filled with fallacies and intelectual dishonesty that I admit my predisposition to just throw him entirely on the garbage
that being said, I've never come into contact with his other works outside the realm of apologetics, so I could be wrong and would be willing to review my opinion of him (regarding non-religious topics, of course)
@@digipoke12345 Well respected by thiests mainly. Don't get me wrong, he obviously has a sharp mind and speaks very well.
However he is on record as saying that if all evidence pointed to Christianity being false (confirmation that Jesus did not rise etc) that he would still remain steadfast in his Christian faith because of his experience with the holy spirit.
How can you respect someone that thinks like that?
Everything that exists has a cause.
God has no cause.
Therefore, God does not exist.
Good point. Even if true, the Kalam is self-defeating when it comes to attempting to prove god.
If God had a cause that leads to an infinite regress
@@fmtpulmanns7593 why
@@ceceroxy2227 Special pleading fallacy.
@@ceceroxy2227 "why" - a cause is not necessary a god. BTW Kalam is not compatible with quantum physics, so it is wrong at premise 1.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument plays with the idea of "things" without taking into account that most of whatever exists is waves of energy, not "normal" matter (protons, electrons, and neutrons). And most of what exists is loosely called "dark energy" and "dark matter", two entities that we don't even know if they should be called "energy" and "matter". It is mighty arrogant to say that "things" that we cannot even point at are so clearly understood that we know that they have "a cause".
It is an argument that is 800 years old, and obsolete since the beginning of quantum theory, around 1920.
@@freddan6fly Exactly. At that time it is not even clear if the existence of air was known. It looks very intuitive, but it cannot even survive the double slit experiment, where any simple definition of cause and effect falls flat on its face.
@@freddan6fly I'd say it was obsolete since the beginning of thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Thus, how can the universe be said to have a "beginning" when the energy that (at least partially) makes it up cannot be created?
Of course, that's an assumption that the inside of the universe, where the energy currently exists, is extendable to the boundary of the universe, where things might be different. But, we don't know what the physics of the boundary conditions of the universe are, so we can't say whether or not energy could be created in such a condition. So rather than presume to claim that "it must have a cause," better to simply say, "we don't know."
@@dhwyll Agree, because cause effect is the creative and destructive force of nature,no first or last cause can be, things can't appear like magic.
Nothing in nature turns to nothing, it's ingredients or form just change over time, everything is impermanent but nothing can truly disappear.
Dark Matter matters.
It always amuses / annoys me how god is given special exemption from the "everything must" clauses when those same exemptions could just be granted to the universe.
everything EXECEPT this thing needs to be caused - because! Also nothing else applies to the thing! Because!
Bruh “god” is literally a label for the first cause. That’s what they mean by god: if something caused god, then by definition it’s not god. Good lord I’m not even a theist and I know not to be that dishonest
I don't see how it's dishonest. If god doesn't require a cause then the claim everything requires a cause is already false. If things can happen without a cause I don't see what prevents a natural universe being one such thing. Unless that makes such a universe itself god.
Everything has a cause + god has no cause seems more like an argument god doesn't excist than it dose.
Yes, I agree. I know many theists will try to argue "well we can't have infinite regress that would make no sense"....blah blah blah and actually, I get that, in fairness to them, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say this but like you said, why should the god they believe in be the exemption that stops infinite regress?
After all, if we accepted this "uncaused infinite being" idea, we would still have to get our minds around the very concept that something has just....uh...SOMEHOW always existed and never had a beginning.
It's the same problem that would defy our normal intellectual reasoning whichever way we look at it. OK, having said all of that, what are we left with? Well, all we are left with are those words that I guess we all hate but it is the most honest thing to acknowledge, namely, we just don't know.
I'm certainly uncomfortable saying that too but as Matt Dillahunty has often expounded, it's better to say that than PRETEND to have an explanation or in the case of theists, have an '"explanation" that would, in fact, be no more of an explanation than to just say the answer is magic 🤣
Dude at least try to correctly read the argument. No one says that everything has a cause, it's that everything *that starts to exist* has a cause. Stop hitting strawmen
I am always a bit uncomfortable whenever anyone starts talking about time. Sean Carroll has suggested that time is "what clocks measure." I kind of like this definition because it tells us that we really have no idea what time is. I used to teach a unit on Special Relativity to my physics students. Special Relativity is more than sufficient to blow away intuitive notions about both time and space. So, anytime I am presented with arguments that presuppose an authoritative understanding of time, I become very skeptical.
Special relativity is nonsense
@@MadebyJimbob Please elaborate. I want to be educated. If special relativity is nonsense, then I want to know why. Please help me.
I wish I was better at special and general relativity.
I always have hang ups on the B theory of time. It's clearly accepted as correct and I understand it and even can accept that if relativity of simultaneity is correct. Its relativity of simultaneity I have problems with.
However even with the examples I never have gotten to a satisfactory level with the relativity of simultaneity.
I always am left with unanswered questions about how we can justify saying one event must have happened first when we didn't measure the round trip time since the one way speed of light is unknowable.
Or
Why we don't have a standard reference frame (deep space at 0 relative to the CMB) for determining event order. Especially given we can transition from our reference frame to any other.
Things like if I set up two timers to cause a simultaneous event then accelerate my frame so I do not observe it as simultaneous why I should accept there non simultinaity as reality when I know I set them to be.
The hardest one because it technically breaks physics to do it but if I observed two events as non simultaneous then teleported to each event thru some form of FTL to confirm the age of the event, I would have to time travel during teleportation to get the same observation as from my distance accelerated frame.
Yet a stationary observer would not have to.
So does that mean the direction of motion thru space makes you time travel when using any form of FTL travel. Does stopping somehow change this.
@@nocare When I taught Special Relativity I tackled the question "How can A see B's clock run more slowly and B can see A's clock run more slowly" head on by doing a detailed example. The apparent contradiction never actually arises when you do the detailed calculations. Everyone arrives at the same answers regardless of their point of view. It's really very cool how it all fits together.
@@matthewalan59 Made by Jimbob is just a religitard that never responds and drops one sentence replies without backing them up.
My favorite description of cosmological arguments is "trying to prove God with word games."
Yes, no reasonable, rational person puts these words together: That which begins to exist." It's just manipulative language distortion.
most arguments are word games. My favorite is "creation needs a creator" and my answer "does the big bang needs a big banger?" or any other word that doesn't work
What's worse is the Ontological Argument. All its parts are pure abstractions, with no reference to phenomena in the substantial world.
@ktownbball ktownbball the big banger? that's the idea
And very specific type of God too.
"Everything that isn't my god has a cause"
"Therefore everything was created by my god who is real and exists"
"everything begins to exist but my god does not,my god exists without beginning to exist" wait a sec ,yeah it makes sense😂😂
The God proposition is untimely, baseless and utterly immaterial
@@whynottalklikeapirat Well you got one thing right.....God is immaterial.
@@oldschoolsaint Dude, wiser people than you have tried their very best, throughout history to cash in claims like that, and so far they have all failed. Why do you feel up to the task?
@@whynottalklikeapirat Says who? You?
I have an argument:
1) Everything we have ever observed to exist, exists in our universe and obeys the laws of the universe.
2) God has not been observed and does not obey the laws of the universe.
3) Therefore God cannot be said to exist.
i think it has the same problems as the kalam, but i like it, because it's a good answer for anyone using the kalam... to refute your argument, they would have to think hard enough to refute their own!
Since god has not been observed, we cannot says that it does not obey the laws of nature.
@@legionleschyzophrene4929 the first point is that everything we have ever observed obeys the physical laws of the universe so that's covered.
Theists are very prone to saying thst God exists outside of time and space. This is just a counter to that.
Arbitration. Straight up. You haven’t observed the Big Bang.
@@Dantalismanno it is not. A being outside of physics can’t be observed therefore you have to look from different angles . When you limit yourself to observation=existence you are making a presumption and it still comes down to philosophy with causality. And the presumption you are making is worse than the one you are making an objection to made by theists. In other words it is a Hypocrisy. That’s the first part. Secondlywe HAVE observed stuff where physics DOES break down that being the Singularities and the Big Bang. Which makes the OG comment beyond stupid and contradictory in its own nature.
The KC argument (in WLC form) is inductive one, disguised as a deduction and wrapped with a fallacy of composition.
The undisguised first premise should read:
"So far, Everything that begins to exist, in this universe, has a cause." And then the argument is a non sequitur.
cant even say that - we only know what we have observed
"As far as we have observed...."
As far as we have observed, we haven't seen anything begin to exist. So let's just leave out observation and hope no one notices we've made an entirely baseless assertion.
@@uninspired3583 Don't agree. It would be a fallacy of composition to assert that, because its parts didn't begin to exist with the entity, then nothing begins to exist. In this universe, there are entities that didn't exist before, even when the material and/or efficient causes already existed, and we can observe that.
@@TheCheapPhilosophy like what?
@@TheCheapPhilosophy but what does 'begin to exist' mean? When did this computer I'm typing on begin to exist?
I don't care what WLC's favorite argument is. He has amply demonstrated that he doesn't do philosophy, he does apologetic sophistry.
You opinion against philosophical journals and societies 😂
Even if what you claim is true, that Craig doesn't do philosophy, the Kalam is a philosophical argument, and, I assume, Craig does the same with other arguments.
As a firm atheist, you’re just wrong. He’s a fantastic philosopher and I respect him highly. He is without a doubt the best Christian philosopher there is in my opinion.
@@OfficialMiniFridgeI think that online atheists fall into two camps, the fools who are blind to their side's sophistry, the fools who believe that the Puddle and Spaghetti Monster arguments are good arguments, and the ones who know most atheists aren't that smart and will swallow such nonsense. Dillahunty repeats a lot of very bad arguments, but all ones with YT channels do it. Some are much worse than others, like Aron Ra.
@@OfficialMiniFridge So which camp of fools are you in? ^^^
Hitchens used to say that he always wanted to know how apologists thought they were in on a secret about god and the universe and why that secret was denied to him.
I think that brilliantly fits this.
He had access to a Bible its not Gods fault he looked to everything BUT.
@@jimmynolet3752 What an incredibly stupid sentence.
@@jimmynolet3752
“ he has access to the Bible.” That is just one of many holy books. We will need evidence, separate independent evidence, that that was the right holy book. Before we gave it any weight at all.
@@jimmynolet3752 So he had access to a fiction book therefore is his own fault? That is quite pathethic, even for your god.
@@jimmynolet3752 He also had access to the Bhagavad Gita, or the Qur'an, etc. Why not look at those?
Let's see, the creator of the universe...
...created time, so it must be timeless.
...created space, so it must spaceless.
...created matter, so it must be immaterial.
...and created minds, so it must be mindless, right?
Strawman. A mind must create another mind. The whole point of God being timeless, immaterial, personal, powerful, and intelligent is to prove that he is the uncaused first cause. You can say that is special pleading or ect. But being timeless, means he is outside of time. In other words, time doesn't exsist but yet he still does.
Using word games instead of logic. Got it
@@proofmarygold922 Can you demonstrate "A mind must create another mind"
Can you also demonstrate: "But being timeless, means he is outside of time"
If not, then the argument has no weight or evidence behind it and be dismissed without any extra thoughts.
@@proofmarygold922It seems you've arbitrarily picked which attributes must come from the same and which must not come from the same.
In reality, it seems that material only comes from material, but minds come from non-minds. So you have it backwards.
@@proofmarygold922 the cause for the universe just needs to be smart enough to be a mechanism for pumping out universes. Theres no reason to believe it is personal or even self aware and can just as easily defined as immarerial timeless...
What a fantastic breakdown of the Kalam, and of the problems with it at each step of the way. The equivocation between things changing state and things actually beginning to exist, the flat out misunderstandings of the Big Bang, the leap from cause to God, and the leap to a specific God from there. Definitely gonna be watching this quite a few times, possibly saving it to show people later
Do you know the difference between material and efficient causes? Kalam most definitely does not commit the fallacy of equivocation. It references both causes within the universe and the cause of the universe itself in terms of efficient, not material causation.
@@oldschoolsaint “the efficient cause is the thing or agent which actually brings it about.” How would you define ‘brings it about’ in this situation? What does it mean for something to be ‘brought about’?
@@aaronmueller1560 Not my quote.
@@oldschoolsaint dude, why are you replying to every fucking thread on this video? Do you need attention that badly?
@@robertpresley1503 I did not reply to every thread. Nice try though.
WLC and cosmic skeptic actually have a lengthy discussion on several of the topics here. From memory, the question of when something begins to exist and why the cause requires personal agency.
Side note: they also use a different word from “before time” to get around the implication of time in the word “before”. I would encourage anyone who enjoyed this video to check that out as well. It was a respectful conversation
FWIW, CS makes some major errors in that discussion.
@@Oswlek FWIW?
@@EPIGOLD For What It's Worth. Just saying that it's not a rebuttal or anything, I thought it might be good to know.
Yeah people should watch that instead of this video because you’re not gonna learn anything in fact this video just gonna make people more ignorant of the argument and make them dumber.
Too many ppl forget/aren't aware that the original argument didn't use "begins to exist"
That phrasing was adopted to get around special pleading and yet it doesn't.
we should be proud whenever someone changes old believes to match reality better, so don't be mad about THAT ;)
@@christiang208 using the phrase "begins to exist" does nothing to align with reality. What example do we have of something that begins to exist?
@@uninspired3583 at one point you didn't exist, right? Now you do. So at some point, didn't you begin to exist?
@@uninspired3583 it takes out their god of need to to have a cause, so the change makes it better for their view.
My choice of words was was certainly wrong.
@@diaboloavocado I'm composed entirely of material that existed before, so no I didn't begin to exist in an ontological sense. I didn't pop into existence out of nothing, I'm a rearrangement of pre existing components.
Since the argument arrives at the conclusion of the universe beginning in an ontological sense, it commits a category error.
It's the philosophical equivalent of pseudoscience. With pseudo-philosophy you can appear to have a solid logical foundation for your position to the general public. And let's be real, for a lot of these people it's more about convincing others rather than being accurate and/or honest. And to be fair I understand why. The truth carries far less weight amongst religious people than belief. And if you can convince your entire church of a belief then it can be just as, if not more motivating, than an actual truth. The problem is that when the truth and belief are unlinked then you can literally believe anything. Including things that can lead to some very dark places for humanity.
Bruh, you don't get it 😂
Very well said
It's not dead, it's just resting.
Saying "well...god didn't begin to exist therefore he's exempt from this argument" isn't the get out of jail free card people think it is. God still needs to be explained, and the argument states that he must have a cause.
"Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence."
Tell that to virtual particles.
Tell it to anything at all. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, so we've never once seen anything begin to exist. We've seen matter changed into new forms or configurations and start applying different names to it, such as tree, lumber, chair, but it always existed.
Well, to be fair, there is a "cause" to them in the sense that there is a description of a physical process that has virtual particles as an output. It is also possible to do the quantum math without resorting to virtual particles, so it could be said that they don't even exist. But if we are using them, then they are a consequence of real things that happen: A force between two objects might have an exchange of virtual particles and it is the interaction via the force that "causes" the virtual particles.
You are literally committing the argument from ignorance fallacy
@@dhwyll
But, given superposition, did the “cause” actually precede the “effect” of particle manifestation? Because we cannot definitively answer that question, the very model of cause-and-effect may not even be applicable to the most basic (and earliest) manifestations of our local universe.
@@TheAusugn Who is? Nobody is saying X is true because it hasn't been proven false (or vice versa).
I've never seen Matt with a full beard but i like it. It suits him.
Indeed, it’s only been a week or so but I think it really suits him too.
It suits him so well that I didn't even notice it until I read your comment!! 😂😂
Agree
It looks distinguished.
A strange comment. Relevance?
The Kalam reminds me of the South Park episode with the underpants thief’s (gnomes I think). They had a plan:
1) Steal underpants
2) ???
3) Profit!
Theists use the Kalam in a similar way:
1) The universe had a cause
2) ???
3) God!
This is an exact analogy.
Yep, perfect fit! 😄
"Blah blah blah therefore God"
@@TalesZuliani so what should we believe. That everything came from a unobservable so called singularity. Without cause and reason. Is like a joke.
@@vishaldive3777 but a god that has no cause or reason for its existence is plausible? That's even more ludicrous. The singularity at least have some evidence to it. Magical sky daddies, however, don't.
Thanks Matt ! That was a great explanation of what I thought was always a terrible argument anyways, but it shed some new light on it.
You're absolutely right too. Craig has built a career on absolutely nothing.
Lol out of nothing, comes nothing
Every priest, preacher, shaman, holy man, etc. has done exactly the same thing. Oh and add faith healers and psychics to that pile of shit too.
@@uninspired3583 Of course ,nobody has ever seen something as a human like advanced machine encoded at every level come out of nothing ,code is science and science comes out of higher intelligence , easy life makes one ignorant of stringent surviving requirements of life here on earth , entropy is a filter for evolution of life here on earth and it is also known to evolve or change .
@@obiecanobie919 I was making a pun. The original post said Craig has made a career out of nothing.
"Out of nothing comes nothing" is something that Craig often says, to point to the absurdity of a universe beginning to exist without a cause.
I'm connecting his own words to the idea that he's made a career out of absolutely nothing, to state that his work has no value.
@@obiecanobie919 that's unfortunate. You should go outside, get some exercise and sunlight. It won't fix everything, but one step at a time.
The set of "things that did not begin to exists" is: [god]. So the set of "things that begin to exist" includes everything except god. Therefore, the statement "everything that begins to exist" can be re-written as, "everything but god", placing the supposed conclusion (god) into the premises, which is the definition of question begging. Kalam is a turducken of fallacies. Or, to be brief, a turd.
That’s simply false. The set would include numbers, potentially certain quantum events, potential platonic objects, and a host of other things.
@@whatsinaname691 yeah, no. “Things” refers to tangible objects. Your list of things don’t “exist” in the same way as tangible things, so that’s an equivocation. Or, they don’t exist in the same way as a theist believes a god exists. So again, an equivocation. Unless you’re arguing that the number 632.782 could be the cause of the universe, you’re just spewing philosophical nonsense to avoid recognizing the worthlessness of the Kakam.
@@whatsinaname691 No. You are confusing concepts with objects. Muddying the water by calling both "things".
@@DrKlausTrophobie No, you are presupposing anti-realism. Further argumentation is necessary for you to reject this argument
@@rickwitten Not unless you are arbitrarily defining things to presuppose reductionist materialism and arbitrarily limiting out platonism
I find that apologists have a very hard time avoiding contradictions when discussing this topic. For instance, WLC describes "begins to exist" as follows: "if there was a point in time that it didn't exist, and a later point in time that it did exist, then it began to exist". But if we apply this to time itself, the absurdity becomes clear: If there was a point in time that time didn't exist...
I recently heard Frank Turek make a similar assumption, stating "once there was no time, space, matter, or energy". But what can "once" possibly mean if time doesn't exist?
I don't know if I've ever seen an atheist press an apologist on this question, and I wonder what they would say.
Here is what I don't understand. In the Kalam, they say that "Everything that begins to exist has a cause, and since the Universe began to exist it has to have a cause". Ok, I understand that. Then they immediately claim an "uncaused" Creator. How do they know it is "uncaused"? It seems this is very easy to debunk. First you have to prove there is a Creator, and then you have to prove they are uncaused. How can ANYONE think this is a good argument? It just seems so simple to me. Prove an uncaused creator or STFU.
Easy. They don't just claim an uncaused creator, they claim at the same time that this creator is eternal and therefore doesn't have a beginning and needs no cause. Nothing to prove here, they're basically defining it into existence.
The brainfuck is that they find it perfectly acceptable to postulate an eternal god, where they deny the concept of an eternal universe.
I see it as a sophistiacted shell game, where they shuffle around empty words until you lost track where the actual substance is.
@@stefanheinzmann7319 Yeah, that’s why I say they have to prove a creator first. If you can’t do that, I don’t listen to the rest of the nonsense.
Two words: Infinite regress
@@stefanheinzmann7319 Isn't there an age for the universe though? How can the universe be eternal if it only exists for a definite amount of time?
@@dtphenom There does appear to be an age of the universe, I agree! I wasn't trying to suggest it is eternal. In fact, it seems that time itself had its beginning at the beginning of the universe, so that it doesn't even make sense to speak about anything preceding the universe.
My point was that it is very odd that people who have problems imagining an eternal universe, at the same time have no problem at all imagining an eternal god. That's not consistent. That is making a special case for a god. It is driven by wishful thinking.
Here are the problems with the Kalam cosmological argument that I can think of:
0. "Begins to exist" is an ill-defined concept within ontology, because there is no consensus as to what existence entails, let alone the beginning of one.
1. "God," and even specifically, "YHWH," since the only people who use the Kalam cosmological argument are Abrahamic monotheists, is ill-defined within theology, as there is no consensus as to what "YHWH" is defined to be.
2. The premise "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" contains the ill-defined "begins to exist" phrase.
3. The premise "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" presupposes that "begins to exist," despite being ill-defined, is a spatiotemporal phenomenon, since the premise links it to causation, a spatiotemporal phenomenon.
4. The premise "The universe began to exist" contains the ill-defined "began to exist" phrase.
5. The premise "The universe began to exist" presupposes that the universe is a spatiotemporal phenomenon, since it links it to beginning to exist, which was presupposed to be a spatiotemporal phenomenon by the previous premise.
6. However, we know the universe is not a spatiotemporal phenomenon, because spatiotemporal phenomena a priori require the existence of spacetime, and the universe, in a set-theoretic sense, contains spacetime. Therefore, the premise "The universe began to exist" is false.
7. Proponents of the Kalam cosmological argument will say that if the universe had a finite past, then it began to exist. This is an equivocation fallacy. "Begins to exist" is presupposed by the argument to be a spatiotemporal phenomenon, which requires the existence of spacetime. So regardless of whether the past is finite or infinite, it is false that spacetime began to exist, and so, problem 6 remains. Spacetime has never not-existed.
8. Also, there is no proof that the universe cannot have an infinite past. Proponents of the argument claim that if the past were infinite, then the present could have never been reached. Mathematically, this is false.
9. The conclusion "Therefore, the universe had a cause" fails to establish what the properties of the cause are.
10. If the cause entailed by the conclusion is YHWH, assuming that YHWH is even a well-defined entity, which it is not, then there is the issue that it raises the question, "what is the cause of YHWH?" Proponents of the Kalam cosmological argument reply by saying that YHWH has no cause because YHWH did not begin to exist. But the fact that YHWH did not begin to exist is special pleading, because it is an arbitrary exception not established by the Kalam cosmological argument.
Very nice, and I think you left out some other problems for the sake of brevity. I find it enlightening that a simple, short argument could have so many logical flaws. This type of flawed reasoning can only survive in a culture of "sound byte philosophy." Unfortunately, I think this means that we, as a society of thinking, sentient beings, are doomed.
@@eljison Proofs for or against the god hypothesis have been attempted for many centuries, and the fact that this issue is still being debated attests to their failure. So how probable is it that someone can pick a very simple argument that dates back many centuries and present it as a convincing argument to the world?
It is clear from the outset that this is aimed at the uneducated, unprepared, gullible and needy. Fortunately for WLC, there is no lack of them.
"No concensus as to what existence entails"
Maybe the dumb*st thing I have ever read.
This was delightful 😊
Thanks again Mr. Dillahunty
Even a multiverse needs to be created. However you can't keep going back unless you get to something that can no longer be created. It's logic and reason.
Prove it.
That is not logic and reason, your claim is no diffrent than stating the sun goes around the earth; its logic and reason.
We have no evidence for or against infinite regression and we have no evidence for or against uncaused creation.
Until you have a falsifiable testable model that makes accurate predictions you have nothing.
@@nocare You want evidence for something that is common sense???? Shocking! I am shocked!
Scientists tells us unhappily I might add that the Universe had a beginning.
They don't like this of course because it means something had to create the universe because it didn't get here on it's own (but you already knew this).
Why are we questioning things we already know to be true? Only in the world of atheism.
This is why atheism has never ever impressed me. It's all a bunch of people questioning even common sense.
The sky is blue somewhere on Earth! Prove it! Where is the evidence?
I just laugh. It's dumb yes, but it's just people rejecting God (and the creation of the universe) and you don't need evidence for that.
@@Docwiz2 A blue sky is an observation, you on the other hand have made a claim about why the sky is blue and then also claimed its and observation when its not.
There is a difference between observing a piece of data and then an explanation as to why it is that way.
@@nocare Either way, my point is that no matter what I have to say, it's not going to be convincing.
That's my exact point.
You should know this stuff by now and the fact that you don't have a clue is a big problem with your level of thinking and thus understanding.
I shouldn't have to tell you these things, you should have known them by now.
If you want to know God, go ask him in a private room and let him tell you and give you evidence.
I have my evidence and a ton of it. You won't believe me anyway on what happened to me, so it doesn't matter.
I am more than excited on what the end game is and this is a short life and it will end for us all, but it's not the end of my life in general and you have no idea what is going to happen.
You may think I am delusional, but nevertheless, God is GOOD!
@@Docwiz2 I don't think your delusional, I just think your methodology of determining truth is either inconsistently applied OR is flawed altogether.
I also don't think you know the difference between an observation, a hypothesis, a negative vs positive claim or why evidence is testable predictions not observations.
Love talks about the Kalam, especially from Matt! The Kalam (and others like it) were the last holdouts I had to remain a theist. It wasn't until I heard its refutations (the real refutations, not the ones preachers say the atheist will answer with) I could let go of the idea of a god needing to exist. After I was able to internalize that idea (which took a long time) I could admit to myself that I am an atheist.
Original bible
Number 7 :Used 735 times, the entire Word of God is founded on the number 7. “Sevenfold” is used 6
times and “seventh” is used 119 times, bringing the total references to 7 to 860. It is used 54 times in Reve-
lation alone. Seven is the number of completeness and perfection and is tied directly to God’s creation
of the heavens and earth. • The word “created” is used 7 times describing God’s creative work (Gen. 1:1,
21, 27 three times; 2:3; 2:4). • There are 7 days in a week. • The Sabbath is the 7th day of the week. • The
7th year is the land Sabbath. • There are 7 feasts of God, beginning with Passover (V). • There are 7 annual
holy days. • There are the 7 weeks of the spring harvest. • The cycle of the 7 holy days is completed in 3
festival seasons by the 7th month of the sacred calendar: Passover and Unleavened Bread, 1st month; Pen-
tecost, 3rd month; and Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles and Last Great Day, 7th month (C). • In the
book of Revelation there are 7 churches, 7 angels to the 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpet plagues, 7 thunders
and the 7 last plagues (V). • The first resurrection takes place at the 7th trumpet, completing salvation for
the Church. • There are 7 divisions of the Bible: 1) the Law; 2) the Prophets; 3) the Writings, or Psalms; 4)
the Gospels and Acts; 5) the General Epistles; 6) the Epistles of Paul; and 7) the book of Revelation. (The
seven divisions are covered beginning on page 15.) • There are 49 books in the Bible-7 x 7-
demonstrating the absolute perfection of the Word of God
@@turnfrmsinorhell_jesus or it demonstrates that someone is really obsessed with the number 7 and will find it everywhere they look
@@TheIronicRaven it is as they say seven is used a lot at the right times etc , anyway i thought il leave you with something to think about a different type of pitch to the norm
@@turnfrmsinorhell_jesus if you want to convince someone that the bible is perfect, I'll even settle for good. maybe work on removing all the horrible and factually wrong aspects of it.
@@TheIronicRaven if you would like to ask something or give an example on something that put you off of it you can try ask me and I will try to assist. Once you get what they really actually say in the bible it will blow your mind
Theists are always the last ones who realize that their arguments are ridiculous. Perhaps in a decade or so they see the folly of the useless Kalam Cosmological Argument.
Not holding my breath.
As long as there is brainwashing of children,I see no end to god belief.
Maybe we need Evolution/logic school's not faith school's.
They will. They'll tuck it away for a generation and spin on to the next one in the roladex of debunked old rubbish. then they'll whack the Kalam back out in a generation after people forget.... rinse and repeat for all of recorded history...
Matt nails it at the start. There is no reason to accept the first premise. We have no idea if everything began to exist. The premise that everything that we know of had a beginning is patently false. Everything we know of was simply something else. I see no reason to believe that the same isn't true of the universe. That said, I don't know and neither do the people that propose the Kalam. Given that there is no reason for anyone to accept the first premise, the argument is a waste of time.
1. No one claims that EVERYHTING began to exist.
2. See 1 above.
3. And if it was something else it DID NOT EXIST.
4. Matt's criticism of the first premise is in error.
Hence why its based on what we currently believe atm.
1. We know from observation that “everything that begins to exist” is just a new arrangement of already existing matter and energy.
2. We know from physical laws such as “conservation of energy”, “conservation of momentum”, “conservation of mass”, that nothing is created out of nothing.
Therefore what does even mean that god is the “cause” of the universe existing? Craig’s Kalam is craftily worded to avoid stating something that goes against well known physics yet if there’s no claim that god created the universe out of nothing what is the claim exactly?
The sun caused and sustains life on earth: is the sun god?
@@oldschoolsaintspot on
Sean Carroll destroyed the Kalam a few years ago in his debate with WLC. I don’t know what else needs to said. BTW, the beard looks way better than the goatee.
One objection to the argument is that it leaves open the question of why the First Cause is unique in that it does not require any causes. Proponents argue that the First Cause is exempt from having a cause, while opponents argue that this is special pleading or otherwise untrue.
Atheists agree with an uncaused first cause. They just think it's the universe.
@@michaelbernard1041
No they don't. Atheists generally say they don't know what the cause of the universe is. There are many theories by scientists who have a better understanding of these things.
I see though how you try to throw back the question so you don't have to answer it yourself.
Show your cards if you dare. Do you believe in an uncaused first cause?
@@redmed10 This isn't primarily a scientific argument its a philosophical one. Graham Oppy's causal principle is an example of what michael was talking about.
Hey Matt thank you for passing along great knowledge
my favorite is asking theist's what a timeless spaceless disembodied mind is, and how it even functions. like how would it think? if it has no beginning or time or continuity how or when would it make decisions? how does it interact with reality? on top of being omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omnipresent there is a never ending surplus of contradictions and utter nonsense.
When someone tells me about a thing that is timeless and space less I like to point out they just defined something non-existent. If something doesn’t exist at any time, and doesn’t have any physical make-up what could it possibly mean for that thing to exist. Theists are using a definition of exists that makes no sense, but they talk about this existence as though it’s the same as other existent things.
@@JohnSmith-fz1ih I have long taken the same view. However, in philosophical circles numerous attempts have been made to rationalize the apparent contradiction in assigning a timeless state of existence to God. For instance, if there is a creator God then by definition he created the time and space which we inhabit, which implies that he did so from another sphere not subject to the same temporal-spatial rules as us, and so on. I suggest looking up the peer reviewed article God and Time in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy for detailed analysis of this topic. A lot of straw clutching there in my humble opinion.
@@JohnSmith-fz1ih Delusion definitely hinders logic, religion definitely hinders human progress.
Original bible
Number 7 :Used 735 times, the entire Word of God is founded on the number 7. “Sevenfold” is used 6
times and “seventh” is used 119 times, bringing the total references to 7 to 860. It is used 54 times in Reve-
lation alone. Seven is the number of completeness and perfection and is tied directly to God’s creation
of the heavens and earth. • The word “created” is used 7 times describing God’s creative work (Gen. 1:1,
21, 27 three times; 2:3; 2:4). • There are 7 days in a week. • The Sabbath is the 7th day of the week. • The
7th year is the land Sabbath. • There are 7 feasts of God, beginning with Passover (V). • There are 7 annual
holy days. • There are the 7 weeks of the spring harvest. • The cycle of the 7 holy days is completed in 3
festival seasons by the 7th month of the sacred calendar: Passover and Unleavened Bread, 1st month; Pen-
tecost, 3rd month; and Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles and Last Great Day, 7th month (C). • In the
book of Revelation there are 7 churches, 7 angels to the 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpet plagues, 7 thunders
and the 7 last plagues (V). • The first resurrection takes place at the 7th trumpet, completing salvation for
the Church. • There are 7 divisions of the Bible: 1) the Law; 2) the Prophets; 3) the Writings, or Psalms; 4)
the Gospels and Acts; 5) the General Epistles; 6) the Epistles of Paul; and 7) the book of Revelation. (The
seven divisions are covered beginning on page 15.) • There are 49 books in the Bible-7 x 7-
demonstrating the absolute perfection of the Word of God -
@@turnfrmsinorhell_jesus I have exactly 7 brain cells left after reading that
To explain that things can exist without beginning to exist, I like to point out that on Earth North and South begin to exist at their respective Poles, but East and West do exist without ever beginning to exist.
North and South started when the world was formed and its poles established
@@danielsnyder2288 How about east and west.
Thanks, Matt. Good explanation.
Seems like all arguments are basically arguments from ignorance it always comes back idk where spce moral etc comes from therefore skydady
Seems like all arguments are, we just dont know, therefore i dont "belive" in god
1. Everything that begins to end has an ender
2. The Kalam Cosmological Argument will never end
3. It's pizza time, baby
That is not a valid argument; the conclusion does not follow from the premises.
@@michaelsommers2356 maybe, but it's sound. Especially the conclusion
@@uninspired3583 If it's not valid, it can't be sound, by definition. Even if the conclusion happens to be true. Which it isn't.
@@michaelsommers2356 no that isn't the case. Soundness just means the premesis can be shown to be true, individually.
Valid just means the conclusion follows from the premesis.
So you can have an argument that's sound but not valid, or valid but not sound.
The kalam, imo, is both invalid and unsound. I was just going along with the joke and being dismissive of what they're trying to do.
@@uninspired3583 Nah, It is not sound either. Because is lasagne time!!!
AFAIK, the only things that humans have actually observed "beginning to exist" are subatomic particles. This also appears to be a causeless phenomenon.
Matter is energy and energy can’t be created.
For the full experience I recommend watching it with Neon Genesis Evangelion opening playing in the background
Love your lectures!
I take the joy of seeing Matt suffer when trying to counter these strong arguments for existence of God. Good stand up comedy.
The problem with all “arguments” is that they try to define something into existence without providing any evidence of actual existence. As such the kalam is a non-starter for me because i can replace “god” with “yeti” or “aliens” and have the same result. The kalam gets you no further but makes you feel clever without being clever.
"The problem with arguments is that they have premises."
🚨 Reddit 🚨
Define "evidence".
@@oldschoolsaint use any dictionary definition you like. The kalam fails for all definitions of evidence.
@@probablynotmyname8521 I see. You won't answer the question. Got it.
At its heart, the Kalam Cosmological Argument is a meaningless word game. You can't use it to prove or disprove anything.
Being reasonable is a word game. Or if you prefer we could all just random words and non true statements at each other and see how far the human race gets
From what I've seen most(if not all) religious arguments in philosophy use the inconsistencies of language to weasel a god into existence. it's always some semantic trick rather than some profound statement.
9:28
“Causality is necessarily temporal”
That’s your issue. That’s why you don’t understand. Once you understand that causality is not tethered to the temporal plane you begin to understand.
How is it not? Cause then effect. Time.
@@hrothgr52
Before I begin, are you truly open minded and want to learn or did you just come here for the sake of disagreeing?
@@appledough3843 I came here because I was bored and looking to argue admittedly but if you have a good argument I am absolutely open to hear it.
@@hrothgr52
Lol I like ur honesty.
Before I continue to explain about causality and its relation to time, are you aware of the issue that stands in your way? If ur saying "cause then effect, time" and are claiming that "cause" cannot occur without already existing time then how did the big bang happen lol. If you claim that a cause cannot take place without time, and we know that time began to exist at the very beginning of the universe, then by your very own argument the universe could NOT begin to exist at all because its cause had no time to act within, which obviously we know is false because the universe does exist and therefore renders your argument incorrect lmao. Your argument is self defeating.
@@appledough3843 I’m not claiming that the Big Bang had a cause we know very little past a certain point. It certainly isn’t self defeating.
Liking the beard, homie!
"Cosmoogical" made me laugh much harder than it should have.
Mee too....
Kalam is such Bull 💩
CosMOOgical. 😉 Great vid as always!
Moo. Moo i said!
I've always said that the use of the word "cause" smuggles in the concept of agency (e.g. John was the cause of the accident, Jane was the cause of the team's success). Surely it's much more accurate to use a neutral word like "explanation"?
Really though, cause saying lightning caused a fire but that doesn't imply agency at all.
This will not stop them. I seem to refute a new version of this on twitter every week. Contingent, uncaused first cause, blah blah so many different variations. Complete garbage.
I have fallen 2 weeks behind, but it *IS* the Christmas season. So... Anyway, here I be, and I have a lot to watch after this 😺👍
It's hard to conceive something not having a beginning, it's also hard to conceive nested for loops in JavaScript. On that note, if the Kalam Cosmological argument was written in a programming language, it would require a lot of if statements and defined variables.
Ha! Nested loops are easy. The "Cause" of the universe is a self-referential recursive lambda function. 🙂
@@scottfraser1973 LoL just watch out for callback hell or whatever the universe equivalent would be to that
if the big bang was the beginning of both time and space, asking what happened before the big bang is like asking what's north of the north pole. It's a meaningless question.
Using the kalam cosmological to appeal to a god is just a god of the gaps argument in disguise. Also the explanatory power of something doesn't give a person grounds for a truth claim, almost every question has a plethora of speculative answers/solutions with explanatory power. Evidence is what one needs.
Matt ur da best
There is evidence for God and Christ and there is no evidence for lack of God or no god. Atheism is a faith without evidence or hope. I don’t ever hear of millions of lives changed because of their atheist faith.
you seem awfully confused.atheism addresses one thing and one thing only.we are not convinced that any of the 7,000 gods that have been proposed by humans over time in hundreds of different languages and in hundreds of different countries is real..maybe were not at class the day that the most basic principles of logic were explained..It is completely irrational to believe something (anything) until it can be demonstrated to be true. the logical (athiest) position is to withhold belief until a claim is proven to be true.so until you or anyone can demonstrate that their preferred God is real we rational folk are entitled to treat God claims as superstitious nonsense that has no basis in fact whatsoever
Even more mysterious than the circumstances that caused the universe to exist is the fact that an intelligent person like William Lane Craig uses the Kalam cosmological argument in support of god. How in the universe does he not see how flawed that is?
When God suddenly gets squeezed into a similar argument, it inevitably devolves into "My dad can beat your dad! You don't even have a dad!"
This is exactly how I describe it “my dad is stronger and smarter than your dad, and has 2 bigger heads too!”
The KCA is indeed a tautology.. What is the differences between "everything that began to exist" and " the Universe " Nothing that I know of. But then I only know things in the Universe..
This man makes me want to learn more about philosophy.
I wouldn’t even grant the first premise. In order to state that “everything that begins to exist has a cause”, you would have to know everything that currently exists, everything that has ever existed and everything that will exist in the future.
Yes, some of us Christians do abuse the KCA as if it's deductive, when it is actually inductive and should be used to raise the stakes alongside other evidence.
Thank you Matt, I always thought WLC did not explain much when presenting this argument, because the conclusion of the premise is missing very vital steps. But he tends to talk over it so quickly, he seems to get away with it way too often.
He has defended every single premise, and you can find it on TH-cam.
@@acemxe8472 Defended it like the Alamo.
@@SlinkyTWF I’ve yet to see it be refuted.
Well put, Matt.
For me, this argument is so nonsensical that I can't even begin to argue against it. I find it so superficial and naive, it's like arguing with a crying baby.
And if you can't begin to argue against it you have no argument against it.
@@oldschoolsaint LOL you are 100% correct. People should think before they comment.
“Im not necessarily convinced” lol. The man is hardly convinced of anything, how does anyone take what he says seriously
1) Everything we have observed to exist has a beginning.
2) The Christian god is claimed to have no beginning.
3) Therefore, the Christian god does not exist.
They may present their god for observation to prove otherwise.
Hasty generalization fallacy spotted.
@@Adiusa0874 can you explain to me which part and what you think the fallacy means? I'm not sure I follow.
@@mg-ew2xf
Replace "Christian God" in 2) with "the Universe" - as the video tries to prove.
Does the Universe still exists?
1) is a hasty generalization.
@@Adiusa0874 so you're arguing the evidence that the universe had a beginning is false? If you replace the universe it becomes "the universe is claimed to have no beginning." But I'm not sure who's claiming that. Current evidence shows there was a beginning.
@@mg-ew2xf
The video makes the claim that the universe could be eternal - we just don't "know".
All Kalam refutations posit that the universe is indeed eternal.
1) is still a hasty generalization. Applies only to contingent entities.
God is a necessary entity - by definition. See "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - God and Other Necessary Beings".
I would say not even shifting to "everything that begins to exist needs a cause" because that just shifts the problem back one step.
Now you have to use special pleading to say "yeah, but god didn't begin to exist"
The people using the kalam accidentally keep proving that in the beginning Chronos laid an egg from which Phanes emerged to then create the cosmos and everything in it.
(Chronos is time itself, so obviously "timeless", as such not governed by space, and is a mind.)
Yikes, it's frustrating to see how many people Matt influences positively. Please do your own research, sincerely look into the arguments, read Craig for yourself. Perhaps you will be convinced perhaps you won't. You can be sure however, that you will come to realize Matt hasn't the slightest clue what he is talking about.
Cheers.
I à not a trained philosopher. I have read critiques of WLC’s Kalām. I thought it had big holes before I read the experts. Now I think it has more. I certainly did not get the impression that WLC is curious about exploring the faults in reasoning in his Kalām. Rather, he seems to think it is unquestionably true. That makes me even more suspicious!
I'll never understand why people upload laggy videos.
What we want to believe determines what makes the most sense to us.
I recently read William Lane Craig's book "On Guard". I figure I should give WLC his chance to convince me. But honestly, it's pretty bad. It relies pretty heavily on cosmological arguments, which for a number of reasons are just not very convincing. To start with, how can I possibly know if everything that begins to exist has a cause? I'm not omniscient.
I am. You should have asked me.
@@petermirtitsch1235 You should have know already and tell him without he asking you /s.
@@Julian0101 I was...err...testing his faith...that I already knew about...
.
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Mysterious ways!!! Woooooohhhh...!!
You couldn't know you were omniscient in any case.
@@goldenalt3166 of course I can. I'm omniscient.
So if the energy, that made Matt Dillahunty always existed ( as he just said) then that energy has to be capable of consciousness in order to bestow it. So by saying he always existed, he still proves God.
Why does the energy have to be capable of consciousness in order to bestow it? Why can't consciousness arise without having energy have consciousness?
@@tiedeman39 Because you can't give something you don't have.
@BoyKagome That is demonstrably false, though. A chunk of metal and some oil, don't have the property of making lift, but make them into an airplane, and they are able to. It's a gestalt. The sum of the original parts is greater than the original parts.
@@tiedeman39 Not if you travel back to their origins it's not.
@@BoyKagome What?
I used to think Kalam was the best argument for a god, but not so much now. Well, compared to the other arguments, maybe, but it's like saying 1985 is the best year for the Yugo.
One thing you didn't mention (which you've mentioned in the show) is that cosmo arguments don't specify anything about the supposed creator. It's equally likely to be Krishna, Odin or Yahweh. Or a god that created the universe then ceased to exist. Of course, there's no way to prove any of those, so there's no reason to assume any of them are true.
Good point. The universe could have been created as the result of two gods who were fighting, then killed themselves in an explosion which then resulted in the Big Bang, and neither gods existing anymore.
Mr. Deity (Brian Keith Dalton) said something in one of his videos that struck me as true, namely: Arguments are not definitive evidence, except in cases such as mathematics in which all of the logical moves have been validly and meticulously defined. Aristotle, for example, believed that heavy objects fall faster than light ones and gave an argument to prove it. The argument, however, didn't make his belief true.
I had a funny personal experience with the Kalam..
A work friend of mine is Jewish Orthodox, who even got certified to be a Rabbi, told me one day "You have to read this article, it proves the existence of God in a logical way that even you can relate to".
So I did, and it basically was the full blown Kalam with the leap of faith to God and everything.
The funny thing was that the author was a Muslim and was trying to prove the existence of Allah!
I told my friend some of the refutations Matt brought, but it didn't persuade him. I was less versed in logical refutations of arguments for God than I am now, but still managed to deduce at least some of the basic ones for Kalam.
Anyhow I found it funny that he referred me to this Muslim writer, trying to convince me that his Abrahamic god exists. Yes I know that Allah and the Abrahamic God are one and the same, but the religion still differs wildly.
Who was the muslim writer
Whatever begins to exist has an end to its existence.
Kalam's Cosmological argument began to exist...
Prove to me that the argument didn't exist before it was discovered?
@@heavenbound7-7-7-7 _Were you there_ when it was discovered?
@@Julian0101
No, but the laws of logic were.
@@heavenbound7-7-7-7 Arguments are not discovered, genius. They're man-made.
@@hecticnarcoleptic3160
The person who formulated the argument used the laws of logic, the logic behind the argument is eternal only the formulation of the argument has a point in time.
So Matt responds with “we don’t know” and that ended the argument with a 17 min detour? Gotcha
Atheists getting more pathetic with each day. No wonder it’s dying out
more like you tuned out what he's saying and pulled a statistic out of your ass
You should watch Sean Carroll - God is not a good theory 1 hour video. He concludes at the end that: "it's still on the table as a logical possibility (for God to exist)".😅
Only morons think that asserting things convenient to your belief when there's a lack of evidence either way is acceptable.
I'm a Christian, and I'm about to say something that may surprise or even shock you. I agree with you. I have watched WLC and others make this argument. Even if you agree with all the premises, all it leads you to is 'something' outside of the universe. It makes me NUTS when someone uses this argument and then makes huge leaps of logic to make it point to God. Frank Turek is one in particular who drives me nuts with this. He claims that whatever created the universe must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal and intelligent. While I would agree with the first four, as I believe any reasonable person would, those last two are a leap of logic that the argument simply does not support.
I took the time to watch your video because I want to know what the other side says. I have to say you presented strong arguments and good reasoning, but what got me was that you were mostly respectful, at least until the end where you were a little condescending.
To be fair, I had come to this conclusion on my own without the help of your opinion, but logic is logic and you sir are quite correct.
Not to mention that the premises could be wrong. What if the universe didnt really have a beginning?
"What if the universe didnt really have a beginning?"
Provide evidence please, current scientific evidence says otherwise.
@@heavenbound7-7-7-7
Provide evidence that it did.
Because if the universe was just masless disperse radiation before, then there was no time and it doesn't need a beginning.
And guess what, masless particles exist.
Not to mention the first law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only transform.
So where is your evidence that the universe begin to exist then?
@@Aguijon1982
" energy cannot be created or destroyed."
Where did energy come from?
@@heavenbound7-7-7-7
Do you know how to read? Energy can't be created or destroyed, it can only transform. This means that energy ALWAYS existed.
This isn't rocket science eh.
It's basic text comprehension.
@@Aguijon1982
I believe in eternal God and you believe in eternal energy, fair?
I think Kalam supporters assume that "begin to exist" is a given. It is sneaked into the syllogism in the hope it won't be questioned. But it looks like "begin to exist" could mean something that literally began to exist from no starting point at all - nothing of the thing that now exists - previously existed before the thing began to exist. This could possibly rule out the universe - since - perhaps - something or maybe everything of the universe may have always existed or at least existed at some point. So I am not confident that the premises are true.
Yeah. Its a step ahead! Critising on the system of generating conclusions. I too have one on the system of induction.
You should see Cosmic Skeptic's chanel. Since he made the statement that after his debate with Craig he sees the Kalam as more plausible than before - he has thousands of Christians fawning over him and subscribing to his channel.
CS is still a kid oTOH he is a kid who knows where his income stream comes from, and it isn’t serious philosophers or cosmologists.
Bottom line = a being that has NEVER been Proven to Exist CANNOT be the "Cause" of the Universe.
If you think your specific "god' is the cause, then first PROVE your specific god is even real, then we'll talk.
Praise the Magic Toe Nail. Amen.
In order to ensure its validity, I would state the Kalam cosmological argument as follows:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe is a thing that began to exist.
3. Therefore the universe began to exist.
This I think is a point that Kant made, that we may not be justified applying our intuitions about elements of the universe the collection of all things. Is the collection of all things taken as a whole itself a thing that we are quantifying over when we refer to all things?
Thanks
I consider the Kalam Cosmological Argument in its religious form is just an expansion of the God of the Gaps argument expanded to the universe and its cause. I even saw an Arab Christian argue that this is an example of them not committing the God of the Gaps argument when this is the biggest one.
Name one peer reviewed scientific paper written in the last 50 years that uses a syllogism to make its argument. I'm being generous as syllogistic logic was criticized by scientists in the 17th century.
I remember, years ago, reading somewhere that the KCA was the best argument for god. I of course immediately looked it up and read it. My reaction was something along the lines of: You gotta be kidding me. If this is your best then you really should just pack it in. 😅
Matt Is doing something that I find to be disgusting. He’s encouraging this line of high minded cocky atheists… so hot shot, tell me why the kalam is bunk.
@@thetannernation You'd know that if you'd watched the video. His reasoning on the subject is similar to what I thought when I first read the syllogism. I feel no need to repeat it. Fascinating that you think "high minded" is a pejorative. A quick Google of the term defines it as "having strong moral principles".
@@Jay_Scott_Raymond
Ooh I used the wrong phrase you’re right. I meant something like high horse / unjustified high ground / arrogant. Ah whatever, you win this round. I’ll be back.
@@thetannernation Kudos and a thumbs up on your comment for admitting the mistake and not getting pissy about it, as happens all to often on da interwebz. 👍 Really. Not being a wise-arse here. I genuinely appreciate it.
I say the conclusion is premise 3 and the conclusion is "I caused the Universe to begin."
1 - Cause and effect is a relationship that can be proven, therefore observed, in spacetime.
2 - The cause for the universe is outside of spacetime.
3 - Spaghetti monster
Since no even one atom in my body is same as it was when I was born then when "I" begin to exist and when "I" end(ed) to exist. Why and how you want to transcript this on the universe which does not switch its atomic build over time.
IMHO even the structure is problematic.
You forgot the primary equivocation: the definition of the word "Cause". In a scientific sense, a "Cause" is the answer to a "How" question. What caused the Earth to come into existence? The collapse of the solar nebula. That is the "Cause" of the Earth. (Approximate.) But what the theist means by "Cause" is a "Why" or "Purpose" or "Intent" question. What caused the Earth to come into existence? God wanted it to exist as a home for Man. That is the "Cause" of the Earth. That's where the theist sneaks in the need for the "Cause" to have a mind, because a purpose or intent requires a mind to have that intention or desire.
They can have all the complicated argument points they want. But it's all just clutching at straws.
The main weakness of the Kalam is that horrible objections like those in this video have proliferated to the point that it’s not worth attempting to put forward. If you’re going to go ahead and say “I’m done with the Kalam”, you could at least have included an objection by someone like Wes Morriston or Graham Oppy. This reminds me of the start of the RR-CC Kalam debate when RR stepped completely out of his depth, but without Joe Schmid, Alex Malpass, etc… coming in to educate him on more advanced arguments.
Love the final statement about William Lane Craig followed by the "see you next time"
Frank Turek right now : 👁👄👁🖕🏽
🤣🤣🤣🤣. I absolutely hate Tureks “COSMOS” argument. Thanks for the knowledge, Matt!!! First post, Long time fan