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What are your thoughts on the Kalaam Cosmological Argument linked here?

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  • AmpersandAmpersand 858 Pts   -  
    It makes intuitive sense but is incorrect.

    As per general relativity, space and time are linked. So when you get to the big bang and all of existence being a single micro-singularity not only is there no real space for the universe to exist in there is no time either for there to be causality.

    To quote Stephen Hawking From A Brief History of Time:

    “The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a Grand Designer, and revealing how the universe created itself. … Time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the big bang, because there was no time before the big bang. We have finally found something that does not have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed. Since time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang, it was an event that could not have been caused or created by anyone or anything."

    This shows that the initial premise the argument relies upon is actually false and the theory can therefore be disregarded. We live in a causal universe and expect things to be causal, hence the assumption in the argument that "Whatever begins to exist has a cause". However based on our understanding of physics, this is actually an incorrect assumption when it comes to the birth of the universe

    While the Kalam cosmological argument is only inductive logic, a hundred years ago the reasoning of "In every single moment of human history causality has applied, therefore causality will apply to the creation of the universe" made a certain intuitive sense and I can understand why people thought it was relevant. Of course this was regardless of the logical hole that they're applying a set of rules that apply in one situation (a universe exists) to another situation where you have no idea if those same rules will apply ("the universe doesn't exist"). It's like saying "Water boils at 100 degrees C every single time I boil it, therefore all water everywhere boils at 100 degrees C" and being ignorant of the fact that water only boils at that temperature in Earth's standard atmospheric pressure, so if you try and boil water under stand conditions it can actually boil at different temperatures.

    Just like someone who has never tried to boil water outside of standard Earth atmosphere and doesn't have the scientific knowledge to analyse the situation would be making a reasonable but false claim by saying that water boils at 100 degrees, the same applies to someone who has never experienced causality outside of the existence of the universe but imagines it will be the same. It's understandable that people made that error back in the day but even then it was wrong. Now we have no excuse as the scienctific evidence is there and the Kalam cosmological argument can be discarded entirely.
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5965 Pts   -  
    We have been through this already; all 3 parts of that argument are inherently wrong. Once again, let us go through them one by one:

    1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
    This is a questionable statement. While the causality principle is the cornerstone of modern science, in reality "cause" is a human construct. When a muon spontaneously experiences a decay, then, as far as we know, and according to Bell's theorem, there was no reason for it to happen - it just happened as a product of chance.
    Granted, I personally disagree with such interpretation, as I see it as a product of a cause which we have not, or even physically unable to uncover. However, the non-causality interpretation, while philosophically problematic, logically is not wrong per se.

    2. The universe began to exist.
    Just because the Universe exists now, does not mean you can pinpoint a moment at which it "began" to exist. Modern science states that Universe and time appearance was coincidental, and the consequence of this is that the Universe never really "began" to exist - rather, it has existed for as long as time has existed, and we cannot look at what was there "before time existed", because "before time existed" is a self-contradictory construct.

    Therefore:
    3. The universe has a cause.
    Since 1. is questionable, and 2. is both questionable and, according to our knowledge, incorrect - 3. has not been proven.

    In addition to this point, even if we do assume that the Universe has a cause - that cause does not have to be cognizable by humans. Nor does it have to be a "God", as in something supernatural. Perhaps our Universe is a part of a bigger "Metauniverse", within the boundaries of which Universes are born and destroyed due to the physical processes far beyond our modern knowledge. 

    In addition, I personally would state that nothing outside of Universe can exist by definition: "Universe" encompasses the entirety of our physical reality. Anything outside that reality is non-interactable, hence does not exist outside of abstract theoretical models, hence has no manifestation in observable reality, hence is as good as not existing, hence (according to Occam's Razor principle) does not exist period.

    To summarize, Kalam's argument logically is wrong, philosophically is inconsistent, and intellectually is dishonest. It is an attempt to substitute the lack of factual support towards existence of something with logical trickery. In reality, however you try to spin it, we have never observed anything "supernatural", and no logical games can make up for the lack of data. If we do not know something, then we do not know something.
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