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Thread: Arguments for the Existence of God

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    Veteran Member Petros Agapetos's Avatar
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    Default Why the Kalam Cosmological Argument fails...

    Begging the question and special pleading to avoid infinite regress

    The kalam argument seems to have been worded specifically to address the refutation of the cosmological argument, as it made the qualification that only things that begin have causes. The kalam arguer will simply state that God didn't begin, and so no regress occurs and no Creator of God is necessary.

    In Dan Barker's article Cosmological Kalamity, he writes

    The curious clause “everything that begins to exist” implies that reality can be divided into two sets: items that begin to exist (BE), and those that do not (NBE). In order for this cosmological argument to work, NBE (if such a set is meaningful) cannot be empty[2], but more important, it must accommodate more than one item to avoid being simply a synonym for God. If God is the only object allowed in NBE, then BE is merely a mask for the Creator, and the premise “everything that begins to exist has a cause” is equivalent to “everything except God has a cause.” As with the earlier failures, this puts God into the definition of the premise of the argument that is supposed to prove God’s existence, and we are back to begging the question.

    In other words, the set of items that do not begin to exist must be pluralized - otherwise it is just another word for God.

    The wording of Kalam is arguably a form of special pleading on the part of the theist. As Richard Dawkins put it, the cosmological argument makes "the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress." Whether we qualify the first premise to exclude non-beginning things (as the kalam argument does) or not (as the cosmological does), the essential question is why it is more logically defensible to claim that for the rule that everything must have a cause, an exception is made for God but not for the natural universe as a whole? Why does god not begin? It appears to be a wholly arbitrary choice.

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    Veteran Member Petros Agapetos's Avatar
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    Not all events necessarily have causes

    The argument asserts that "everything that begins to exist has a cause". However, this is arguably a false statement and a hasty generalization. It is possible that some events, particularly on the quantum scale (such as in the early universe), do not have causes (or at least we do not fully understand the cause at this time). Thunderf00t's video on Kalam questions the validity of using everyday concepts like "everything that begins to exist has a cause" in extreme situations such as the beginning of the universe. Hume argues the only way to know if principles (such as causality) hold in very different conditions is to have direct experience of it.

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    Veteran Member Petros Agapetos's Avatar
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    Equivocation of "beginning to exist"

    Kalam also equivocates on the first premise when it refers to everything that "begins to exist". Presumably this premise is referring to everything around us on this planet--everything in your house, everything on the streets, everything we see in the cosmos. However all of these things did not "begin to exist" in the same sense theists are claiming the universe "began to exist" (creation ex nihilo). According to the laws of thermodynamics, matter can neither be created nor destroyed, and everything we are familiar with is a actually reconfiguration of preexisting matter than has been around for billions of years. The atoms that comprise people, places, and planets do not "come into existence" in the same sense Kalam is claiming the universe came into existence (matter appearing from a previous state of non-being/non-existence). Rather they have always existed in some form, and the objects we see around us are merely the latest rearrangements of those atoms. So in speaking of the universe requiring a "cause" for it's existence, Kalam is not referring to it as you would an automobile, which is being "caused" by a group of laborers rearranging physical matter into the form of a car, or mountains being "caused" by the shifting of tectonic plates (also made of atoms which have been around since the big bang), but of something being caused by creation ex nihilo, which is not at all the type of creation we are familiar with in every other circumstance. Kalam therefore is using a word game to equivocate between the behavior of matter and the origin of matter. This is an equivocation between wildly different things.

    In summary: Kalam proponents believe God made the universe exist ex nihilo. But everything around us only "begins to exist" in a trivial sense, as rearrangements of preexisting, uncreated stuff. Since the universe is literally the only example of something truly "beginning to exist" from a previous state of nothingness, this means there is a sample set of one in this category, leaving no inductive support for the premise that "whatever begins to exist (ex nihilo) has a cause".

    Once the argument is reformulated to take into account the hidden premises, it looks like this:

    Every rearrangement of pre-existing matter has a cause. (supported by every observation, ever.)
    The universe began to exist from absolute nonexistence, NOT from a rearrangement of pre-existing matter.
    Therefore the universe has a cause.

    In other words
    :

    Every X has a cause.
    The universe Y.
    Therefore the universe has a cause.

    As you can see, once the equivocation is made plain, the argument is invalid.

    Further equivocation

    There is a further type of equivocation on the phrase "begins to exist". Premise 1 refers to things that begin to exist within time. In other words, there was a time when a thing did not exist, followed by a time when it existed. This is not the case with the universe, since time is part of the universe. The universe is a finite age (13.8 billion years), and because time did not come into existence until after the inflation began, there is literally NO TIME at which the universe did not exist. It has existed at every point in time. Rephrasing the argument to accurately include this information, we get something like this:

    Let X = "a thing which began to exist a finite time ago after a point when it did not exist"

    Let Y = "a thing which has existed for a finite time, but which exists at every point in time"

    Everything that is X has a cause for it's existence.
    The Universe is Y.
    Therefore the universe has a cause for it's existence.

    Once again, equivocation is at play. Premise 1 and 2 are comparing apples and oranges. The universe has existed at every moment in time and did not begin to exist in the same way that every object in P1 began to exist, so the argument is invalid.

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    Veteran Member Petros Agapetos's Avatar
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    Special pleading that the universe is not necessarily existent

    If God not having a beginning is not a problem for Craig and other defenders of this argument, why is it a problem for the natural universe? To answer this, we must look at a further problem. This problem concerns the definition of god used in Kalam and the cosmological argument. A theologian might reply this counter argument and insist that the decision is not arbitrary, and that god must be allowed to have these attributes that the kalam argument seems to imply. He may say that the argument is an attempt to show the need for there to be a God that has the attributes that we cannot find in the universe. He might say that because we know that everything in the universe needs a cause and that the idea of infinite time is nonsense, there must be this being with these unique attributes. That is, there must be this being that does not begin, has no creator, and is thus able to create the universe. But this is just a bald assertion. The lack of human imagination when it comes to solving mysteries at the boundaries of current knowledge is not a good reason to invoke a hypothetical entity with mysterious powers that enable it to be immune from paradoxes.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Petros Agapetos View Post
    But the God of classical theism is omnipotent. What is your justification for positing that? Why not say sufficiently powerful, which makes it more probable it exists, and is by definition enough to create the universe. Why posit something above and beyond common sense such as infinitely powerful or omnipotent.

    An Omnipotent God entails the idea that God can create a rock so heavy he could not lift it, yet he can. It would imply that God is powerful enough to create something he cannot destroy and yet be able to destroy it. It violates sound logic. It leads to contradiction, and that's where madness lies. It violates the cornerstone of reason, the logical absolutes, namely the Law of Non-Contradiction (A =/= not A), which is a foundation not only of logic and reason, but also of thought.

    You can look up "The Logical Absolutes" to get more information about it.

    If you however refer to the Sufficiently Powerful creator of the universe by "God of classical theism", then that's your prerogative, but my understanding is that the God of classical theism is all-powerful, which I think is an absurd stance to take about God, and doesn't do God's nature much justice to hypothesize something which you don't even need in order to explain creation.
    Quote Originally Posted by Petros Agapetos View Post
    The most concise answer to this argument is: "Who created God?", which in turn raises the question "Who created God's creator?", and so on ad infinitum. This is known as an infinite regress or "It's turtles all the way down".

    It is not necessarily impossible for there to be an infinite chain of causes and effects. Among scientists, it is widely agreed that our universe began with the Big Bang. But we don't know what occurred in the first split second after the Big Bang, nor can we comment on anything that came before it, as no experiments have yet been devised that could test any hypotheses about these early moments.

    Some have claimed that with an infinite past, we could never get to now. Flip the infinity: does an infinity of seconds not stretch forward into the future, eternally? Starting from an infinite future, can you go a second before that, and a second before that, ad infinitum, and get to now?
    God is defined as the greatest conceivable being, perfect, timeless, uncausable, all powerfull being, whether you want to define it sufficently powerful or not in accordance with your rock analogy is your problem. Asking who created God is not the proper thing to ask if we are referring to uncasuable, timeless being. For example some Multiverse theories posit a quantum vacuum from which other Universes were born and are still born and it just happens that vacuum was/is there always, uncausable. So I don't see what it the big deal in believeing in uncausable intelligence. We can ultimately logically claim that our existence came in two possible 'illogical' ways, both unimaginable to human beings who dwelve in time. Our existence either came through an infinite regress or from a timeless source which just happen to be, which just is (be it an eternal cyclic Universe, quantum vaccum, God and so on).

    It is not necessarily impossible for there to be an infinite chain of causes and effects. Among scientists, it is widely agreed that our universe began with the Big Bang. But we don't know what occurred in the first split second after the Big Bang
    Scientists don't like infinite chain of causes and effects, they have always ironically adhered more to timeless, uncausable Universe and/or sources of its existence. The Standard theory is that with the BB time also came to be.
    Last edited by Insuperable; 11-29-2016 at 10:29 AM.

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    Arguments against the existence of God.

    http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...e-of-God/page3

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    Pascal's Wager is the argument that states that you should believe in God even if there is a strong chance that he might not be real, because the penalty for not believing, namely going to hell, is so undesirable that it is more prudent to take your chances with belief.

    A crude form of Pascal's wager is based on avoidance of hell, which relies on an emotional appeal.

    "And that they [in heaven] will live a very happy life without sickness, pain, sadness, or death; God will be pleased with them; and they will live there forever. So after this, how can a wise person risk loosing all these pleasures?!"

    The argument from pragmatism builds on Pascal's wager in an attempt to shift the burden of proof.

    God might or might not exist. It is a gamble whether you believe in him or not. As with any gamble, we should consider the odds.
    Pascal described the pay-off of this gamble as follows: If God does not exist, then you neither gain nor lose anything from belief or disbelief. In either case, you just die and that is the end. However, if you choose to believe in God, and you are right, then the reward is infinite: eternal bliss in heaven. On the other hand, if you choose not to believe in God, and you are wrong, then your pay-off is negative infinity: eternal suffering in hell.

    Pascal's Wager

    p1. Believers and non believers alike, agree that payoff is good, punishment is bad.
    p2. if God is real, then you receive infinite punishment for disbelief or infinite pay-off for belief
    a. if you believe, then you go to heaven for eternity.
    b. if you do not believe, then you go to hell for eternity.
    p3. if God is not real, then you really neither lose nor gain anything either way.
    a. if you believe falsely that God does exist, then you have not really lost anything.
    b. if you do not believe and it turns out God does not exist, then you do not really gain anything.
    c1. Therefore, even if there is strong evidence against God, it is still better to believe.
    a. the pay-off for believing if there is a God is infinitely better than the benefit for not believing if there is no god.
    b. the punishment for not believing if there is a God is infinitely worse than the loss caused by believing falsely that there is a God.

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    Problems with Pascal's Wager

    Special Pleading

    Pascal's Wager makes the assumption that the dichotomy of belief vs. disbelief with respect to one particular god is the only relevant one to consider. In particular, it invokes special pleading to apply the argument only to a specific religion's god.

    Belief in one god often excludes belief in another. The Wager can be invoked by any religion that claims to reward belief and/or punish disbelief. One is not left with a choice only between belief and disbelief, but a choice between hundreds of different gods. In using the argument, one asks that it be applied only to his particular god, not all the others. This is special pleading.

    The conclusion that belief is the safe wager also invokes special pleading in that it relies on the assertion that belief will be rewarded. The Wager could be used, equally validly, by a religion with an unconventional god who punishes faith and rewards conclusions drawn from evidence (the Atheist's Wager).

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    Veteran Member Petros Agapetos's Avatar
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    False Dichotomy

    The main flaw in this entire argument is assuming that atheism and Christianity (or whatever religion you choose, for that matter) are the only two options. In reality, there is Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, etc. so what if the person asking the question of, "What do you have to lose?" is, in fact, wrong in their assessment that the religion they chose is the true religion? You have quite a lot to lose if you are Christian and it turns out that Hinduism is the truth. How do we determine which religion to believe in?

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    Veteran Member Petros Agapetos's Avatar
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    Appeal to Emotion, Fear

    Pascal's Wager fails to provide or describe any hard evidence that hell or god exist, or that non believers will go there. Instead it relies on a fallacy of relevance known as appeal to emotion aka argumentum ad passiones. The specific emotion targeted here is fear. This argument attempts to scare the recipient into believing the conclusion instead of providing sound logic or evidence that demonstrates that the conclusion is true. Thus the argument is a fallacious scare tactic and therefore is not a sound argument.

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