Does the Universe Have a Cause?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 มิ.ย. 2021
- Dr. Craig gives a virtual lecture on the Kalam Cosmological Argument and focuses on a much-neglected aspect of the Kalam, the inference to a transcendent cause of the universe.
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Thank you God for allowing me to study this. Thank you Craig for making such valuable videos and making them available for free to the public, I really appreciate you.
Would love to see WLC and Hugh Ross do a video together! :)
Great video. Took a lot of my brain to follow it, but it just reenforces that nothing comes from nothing :)
Thanks, Dr. Craig! I appreciate the video-talk combination.
Thank you Dr. Craig! Getting to this part in your book Reasonable Faith.
Hats off to WLC.
Excellent video, this one is a keeper, saved!
As Frank Turek said “ I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist “
It's not about faith, it's about rejection. All these atheistic arguments point to a common reason: I don't want God. I don't see them approaching things like these with an open mind saying: well let's see where it goes, maybe we get to meet God or maybe not. Rather they have decided, "there is no God", thus whatever is there must be accommodated to the decision: not God. So the verse comes into reality: the fool has set in his heart, there is no God.
@Scott Seufert All you said prove me right. Same story everywhere. You don't want God. As you take God for a simple figure of authority and not what He stands for you reject that authority over your head you and fail to recognize what God is, especially to us.
And you don't know what made me believe. It's actually as clear as the sky above. When you get to be born again you will not be able to deny the heart transplant that happened to you, overnight, in which only faith was your part. But the spirit realm is not revealed to that level until repentance. And even before that must come acceptance of what God is. In the test of Abraham with his son, the first 2 verses you must accept as what they ask is: Does God have the right to play God? If you can't get past them, your search is futile and even the conclusion of that chapter you will miss.
Intellectual arguments for God help a Christian grow, from "baby to adult". They help with providing reasons to believe and as defensive, to protect against those trying to lead them away from the truth. This is why a Christian must stay in the Bible verses and not only listen to preachers. But I have yet to see anyone, even online, saying: by arguments I was convinced of God. There is was always something that changed their heart and the arguments simply helped them along. So you see, if an argument would convince you of God then an argument can convince you otherwise. The problem is at the heart and I mentioned above where to start with.
@Scott Seufert spewing the ‘ol lack of belief drivel.
@Scott Seufert Why have you welcome God and Jesus into your heart in the past? False converts are everywhere, even those that say "I am born again". But Jesus said: by the fruit, you shall know them. You've been sold a popular Jesus. One meant to be better than sex or drugs and alcohol. Something like "give Jesus a try, He will do wonders for your life".
You come to Jesus because of His title: The Savior. So the question is, how sinful do you see your life being?
Having a child made me think of that, as I ponder "how am I going to teach him the things of life, morality? Me... who have done this and that and have a mind so perverse".
God has no reason to give you anything because He doesn't owe you anything. It is you that need to realize your imperfection and come to Him with a humble heart. So asking for "physical evidence" is a prideful gesture and I promise you, you will not get it.
But proof can come in other forms and The Bible actually tells us that witnessing is the main one. So here is my testimony, to what I witness. Like I said above, after having a child I started to think. And after a while, it came to me, through youtube, via a clip where someone preached the Gospel and captured me instantly. Now my feed and my searches were about tv shows (Sci-fi mostly), music (mostly rap), and games. Very strange how the algorithm decided to give me preaching of the Gospel. But while that's not much what came after it is. A complete change of heart, after one night of sleep. All I did is what that guy said, to pray for forgiveness. But I believed. So immediately I started wanting things of God not of man, to love what He loves and hate what He hates. I even had problems with porn (which to myself I kept denying), even that just, puff, away it went with no struggle, in that very night and it took me about a month to notice. Because I just started getting hunger for God's Word and leaving the former self behind. That is the miracle of God, where He takes a sinner's heart and puts a new one in its place. It is instant and will last forever. I don't want to write a novel here to you, to explain who I was, what I liked, and how I just changed like flipping a switch. That's the proof, clear as sky that shall forever bear witness in me that God is real. Btw, I used to laugh at protestants and that's further proof that it was God's hand on me that made me listen instead of just dismiss it jokingly.
Now you say you are ready to accept but want proof. Some will say so was Thomas. But Thomas wanted assurance because he wanted to believe and ready for whatever the truth will be, not that he wanted to see if it's worth it. Are you ready, for example, to accept there may be a God who says: homosexuality is a sin?
Neither am not ignorant enough to be a theist.
I've thought about the impossibility of an infinite past a bit and I have analogized it to a cake. Let's I have an infinicake, and someone asks me for its recipe. I then tell them that there is a literally an infinite amount of steps required to make the cake. That should be impossible, since I have already finished making the cake.
The cake is an analogy for the present, it is impossible for there to be an infinite steps taken to come to the present. Is it a decent analogy? I'm not sure myself.
It's a decent analogy. The only objection I can think of is that I don't like the fact that it is not possible to have an infinite cake and eat it too 😉
Each of the ingredients, or at least one of them, would have to be infinite as well. It would presumably take an infinite amount of time to add such an ingredient, and the size of the bowl one adds it to would also have to accommodate an infinite amount of volume.
@@seagrif why would that be a problem though ?
@@laurentmaquiet5631 - Would you like to demonstrate how to make an infinite cake?
@@seagrif what if it already existed
This deserves more views. this is vintage Dr. Craig here and the team has really helped the quality of the presentation as of late. I love it.
two objections:
1) according to Vilenkin the universe doesn't come from NOTHING but from quantum vacuum, therefore we can't say that the universe comes from nothing and that requires God's intervention;
2) what about the theories of the time? Do those fit with classical logic? If in quantum phisics the time runs differently, isn't classical, could we say that it's impossible an infinite regressus?
Can’t wait to see Craig discuss the Kalam with Scott Clifton....😁
Amazing!❤️
It seems one could ask, does logistics have a beginning and a cause or harmony
Infinite falling domino will never knock off the domino of today. Why? because those dominos are endless in numbers
Krauss has made himself the joke. Anyone that is educated and says such things should be ran out of the industry instead of elevated. But alas, it is the world we currently live in.
Beautiful
sure
I wonder if the concept that God created the universe “out of nothing” is little misleading and that Christians should avoid it. Possibly it is more appropriate to highlight that the universe originated out of the “will of God”; which is “Something” and much different than the “nothing” most Atheists [absurdly?] refer to.
Then their argument will be this "something" has therefore always existed. The creation of the universe is a difficult concept to us as finite beings and can only be explained by the supernatural; therefore trying to minimize the supernatural origins of the event to explain it to people who don't believe in the supernatural is absurd. (Absurd, not in a derogatory sense to your post, but absurd to them in a logistical sense.)
Deep.
Yes
But, in the absence of limitations, all there can be is pure potentiality (by default). "Limitations" must be created and/or established, otherwise the default is a state of unmitigated potentiality (without limits). Perhaps this is the nature of God.
Rather pure actuality or pure act, which is precisely what God is. There can be no potentiality without somerhing already actual having it. Hence actuality preceeds potentiality and therefor the first cause must be purely actual.
What baffles me, in the absence of time - how could God make an act of creation? I understand He is timeless, therefore eternal. But to do something, like moving, it has to be within the realm of time for you to do so? In the absence of time, there is no action or movement just suspension?
With the big bang theory, which I believe to be accurate, what is the matter expanding into - what we call space? What is beyond that space? And how can we truly define nothing?
God, and this reality, is supremely incomprehensible for the human. Best we can do is observe and understand what we can...
That's a strong counter argument tho.. Fortunately, we have answers for it. Look for elephant philosophy.
Time comes into being at the moment of creation.
@@charles4208 That is my whole point, in the absence of time how could creation take place? There was no time for it to happen, and yet, we find ourselves alive and breathing today.
The being, or whatever it truly is, which caused all this had to be incomprehensible powerful to act beyond all, beyond circumstance, beyond logic, etc. Which is an attribute to who we call God. Omnipotent.
@@shawnchristophermalig4339 Thank you
@@tyler-qr5jn ya and if time comes into being simultaneously with the act of creation then there becomes no problem.
Btw elephant Philosophy TH-cam channel isn’t up anymore
I'm "lay" people....
First, thanks for this video. It’s the first time I encounter WLC responding to Vilenkin proposal for the beginning of the universe.
First of all, I would like to point out that philosophical argument for the beginning of the universe presuppose that, for instance, time can’t reboot. If this assumption is found to be wrong, then the conclusion collapses (and the CCC model from Penrose allows that). I say this only to remember that common sense is irrelevant when we try to understand how Nature operates.
I would really like to know why our universe can’t cause itself. You presuppose that an effect an its cause can’t simultaneous. But how can you derive that for the universe?
About the Hilbert’s Grand Hotel, the goal of this thought experiment is to illustrate that infinite sets have counterintuitive properties, not to prove that actual infinites aren’t real. Again, common sense is irrelevant when you want to handle infinities. There is no paradox, only counterintuitive but true properties. And your so called “second” argument from Ghazali is a rephrasing of the Hilbert’s Grand Hotel, nothing more.
At 22:50, WLC seems to play some kind of word game : he insists on “nothing prevent […[“. What Vilenkin seems to claim is that the spontaneous creation of the universe by itself is allowed and therefore must happen given enough time. So the sentence “there is nothing to prevent of such a universe from being spontaneously created out of nothing” is to be understood as “the probability of the universe being spontaneously created out of nothing is not 0”. And therefore, the universe can and will create itself.
I will conclude with this remark : WLC loves to use General Relativity (GR) or the BGV theorem when he likes the conclusions that they offer. But he disagrees with the way GR treats time! And he disagree with Vilenkin about his model for… no good reason. Vilenkin’s life job is to study quantum mechanics and cosmology. I think that Vilenkin has a better understanding about these subject than WLC (and proof of that is WLC’s economical analogy about positive and negative energy).
hilberts hotel couldnt even be built let alone put people into, how do you build an infinitely large hotel on a planet, its all magical thinking
Isnt God infinite too ?
@@laurentmaquiet5631 God is infinite like you can have an 'infinite lives' on a video game, not like an infinite sized hotel, saying 'one infinite is bigger than another, yet none of that can exist in reality'
@@stephenkaake7016
I fail to grasp the difference :
You can't have infinite lives in a videogame.
What of the hotel already exists and you don't have to build it ? Like God ?
what is reality ? Are mathematical concepts real ?
Both of theses questions are thousands years old and have no answer and therefore kinda pointless.
The fact that mathematical concepts are useful to us is something I can personnally deal with. And infinity is really useful to us !
It's a tought experiment ;) Like Schrödinger's cat if you will.
Tought experiment are usefull in science and the point of Hilbert's Grand Hotel is to indicate that our intuition is useless if we work with infinities.
@@kevinbarbe799 just like theres an infinite amount of infinities, and some infinities are infinitely bigger than other infinities, but none exist in 'reality'
during show and tell at class i said 'Heres my Infinite' and I was really proud of it, but then they all laughed, and said 'thats a tiny infinite' then they pulled out a huge infinite, I ran off crying
the next day at class I showed them my
'square circle' they thought it was cool, but someone pulled out a round triangle, and then I felt bad, but I guess its ok because im a married bachelor
First answer does the Heliocentric universe even exist? All gas pressure requires container. We're breathing gas pressure, so there must be a container above us.
Then demonstrate the physicality of this container. Show pictures and video of someone touching this “container” and show the science that disproves how gravity explains things quite well.
Here’s another post your couldn’t back up.
👍🏻
👍
All arguments for God, Contingency, Ontological, Kalam etc are basically trying to prove cause, however first cause doesn't mean a biblical God, first cause cause be a reaction from eternal energy, something undiscovered, inflationary vacuum, without time and space there is no before and after, there is no cause and effect, however the answer is we don't know, the answer is not we don't know therefore God . A biblical God is a misused metaphor for a creative point of some kind, which could be anything, if God is transcendental then God is supernatural, so there is a huge CONTRADICTION,
Supernatural
( definition)
A manifestation or event attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the LAWS OF NATURE
and cause and effect is a law of nature
Nothing supernatural has ever been proven, until supernatural can be proven a biblical God is just a superstitious excuse for something you can't prove.
Eternal energy, inflationary vacuums etc as a FIRST CAUSE would have to, from a state of timelessness, actualize an event. Then the question must be posed, what IN this something causes the actualization. If you say that its a law or a principle, then, given the initial timeless state, the principle would also be timeless and thus forever have caused the Universe. Then it would have existed from eternity past. But that is impossible. No actual infinite regress can be formed. The only way to INITIATE something from an absolute first state wihout any antecedent causes, is by a pure act.
Also, if something exists, that something must have that, by which it is distinguished from nothing, either in itself or by something else. Because if that something is not separated from nothing, it IS nothing and if it is separated from nothing by nothing, there is a contradiction. Hence there can be no brute facts. Either something exists by the necessity of its own nature or through something else. Since the initial state cannot be explained by something else, and since eternal energy, inflationary vacuums etc doesn’t explain themselves, they cannot be the initial states. Only something that is pure act or pure actuality can be that absolutely initial something, which is what we all call God.
Causality isn’t a law of nature, its a metaphysical philosophical principle, which simply states that from nothing, nothing comes. For if nothing could produce something, it would have that potential and thus be something. Which is a contradiction.
@@alriktyrving5051 then if that's the case , the same would apply to a biblical God
@@Unconskep No. Read again. From Pure Act and Pure Actuality you can deduce the properties of God.
@@alriktyrving5051 if God created the entire universe and all of it's laws of physics, does God follow Gods own laws ? Or can God supersede his own laws such as travelling faster than the speed of light and thus being in two different places at the same time, as there are new stars and planets all the time, Even if you could travel at the speed of light 300,000 km / second, it would still take you 100,000 years just to travel across our own milky way, so to prove anything beyond reasonable doubt you must provide mechanism....what is Gods mechanism ? , you can't just lay down all those ground rules that apply to every thing except God, that makes no sense
@@Unconskep If God had a mechanism he couldn’t prinicipally be the first cause. Don’t you see that? It is like saying that the first cause is caused by something else, which is a contradiction. The first cause must be PURE ACT or Pure ACTUALITY. It means that it has no unactualized potentialities and is thus omnipotent. It also means that God is necesseraly timeless and spaceless and that he doesnt have properties, he is them. Do you see now that your questions are misled? God is not a thing. He is the cause of all things and thus necesseraly beyond them all.
Cosmologist and physicists should stay away from ultimate questions which cannot be answered empirically.. I mean they are brilliant in their own field, but make terrible blunders when it comes to philosophy. It makes them look bad. Stick to what you know best.
I agree with you to a large degree. However, I would say they should stay away from it. I think they can have views or opinions but they need to realize the limits of materialism, science and physicalism and approach ultimate questions with way more humility. They think if something cannot be measured it’s not real. You are also right that their philosophy is atrocious.
In sum, despite all the bloviating of physicists and cosmologist, God still remains the best explanation of all the facts of reality. Nothing else is even close.
If universe starts from a single point then there’s question single point came from where? Is it by great magician you god?
No
Yes.
@@juance2262 nope
@@martinleon3145 Yep
@@juance2262 na
@@martinleon3145 ye
Immaterial cause can’t be the cause of material universe
Not true. Indeed if there were a cause it has to be immaterial as matter cannot be the cause of matter.
@@ramezaziz2336 and who are we to say what an immaterial cause can or cannot do? We have no way of logically putting limitations on such a cause because we have no idea (in a strictly scientific sense) of the nature of that cause, other than that it is not material
@@ramezaziz2336
Mannan is correct. This is because of the same reason Substance Dualism is false. The interaction problem. How does a wholly atemporal and aspatial phenomenon interact with a wholly spatially and wholly temporal phenomenon. It cant as they are metaphysically separated.
@@Dhorpatan this must be the silliest made up problem I've ever heard of. Okey, maybe not THE silliest but definitely up there at the top of the list
How do we know the two realms cannot interact?
@@matthewnichol4619 I don't think you read my comment carefully. Wether we can say what an immaterial cause can or cannot do is immaterial, if you excuse the pun 😀
I said "matter cannot be the cause of matter". In other words; matter cannot be caused by matter. (infinite regression etc etc). We can scientifically and philosophically arrive to this conclusion. Here we are restricting what we can examine and study, that is the material realm.
From there, and by process of simple logical deduction unimpaired by a priori ideological, non-scientific, non-rational commitment, only one possibility is left to contemplate: a cause other than matter. That is to say immaterial. We are able to do this without having to know or even speculate on what that (whatever it is) can or cannot do. The conclusion is inevitable.