William Lane Craig and CosmicSkeptic Discuss The Kalam Cosmological Argument

I want our your listeners to understand how radical the view is that you're expressing here well I think that's a kind of anti realist view of reality Oh Oh Alex I think that's just a well as you say that's included in my list of arguments so bad I could this episode of the cosmic skeptic podcast is brought to you by you to support the podcast please visit patreon.com forward slash cosmic skeptic [Music] [Applause] [Music] so welcome back everybody to the cosmic skeptic podcast my name is Alex O'Connor and I'm joined today by dr. William Lane Craig who is the professor of philosophy at both Houston and Biola universities with two PhDs has famously debated God and the existence of God with an expansive array of very high-profile atheists and always seeming to come out of those interactions unscathed he's also the author of more books than years I've been alive so dr. Craig thank you for taking the time thank you for being on the podcast certainly Alex good to be with you that number of books in your age may be a reflection of your youth I think maybe I think you all how prolific you are is kind of the point that I was trying to get out there sure so as I said just before we got started dr. Craig I'm sure that most of my audience will be familiar with you and some of the things you've said but there'll be familiar with them through the lens of the atheist because in my community a lot of people have responded to your works and so the people who are listening might feel as though they've heard everything you've had to say before but it's unlikely that they've really given the time to listen from the horse's mouth except in a debate scenario where they're probably going in with some biased kind of starting points so today I wanted to discuss the Kalam cosmological argument and one of the principal reasons for that is because not too long ago I put out an article on my website about why I thought there was a particular version or justification for their Kalam cosmological argument that begs the question and I got a wealth of response from it and I also saw that you'd made a series of objections that you cooled something like objection so bad I couldn't have made them up and that was one of them and I thought well maybe I'm misunderstanding something here so I thought it would be good to sit down and talk to the man himself so just as a bit of introduction why is it that you're so well connected to the Kalam cosmological argument are you the person who gave it that name I know you're incredibly well known having popularized it so what's that connection I did my doctoral work in philosophy at the University of Birmingham in England and I did it on the cosmological argument for God's existence and in studying the history of this argument I discovered that although the argument goes all the way back to the 4th century after Christ in medieval Islamic theology this argument became highly developed and highly sophisticated and so I tagged the argument the Kalam cosmological argument in honor of that medieval Muslim tradition Kalam is simply the Arabic word for a point of doctrine and denotes medieval Islamic theology excellent and so the form of the argument is quite impressively simple and I'm sure that most people listening will have at least heard it in passing would it be a fair analysis to say something of the following the first premise is everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence the second premise is that the universe began to exist and the conclusion which logically follows is that the universe had a cause yes and this is a deductive argument which means that if both the premises are true the conclusion must also be true so the only way to attack this argument the only way to raise objections is raising objections with the premises right I find that most people when they try to raise objections they jump to the second premise something like the universe beginning to exist it's quite a difficult thing to prove it seems and yet you've got quite an expansive literature on different reasons why we can know this to be the case so perhaps we can start there before talking about the first premise how can we know let's say philosophically because I know there are scientific ways and philosophical ways to look at this for the Sophocles speaking how can we make that assertion that the universe began to exist I do think that the second premise is the most controversial premise in the argument and therefore the one to which I've devoted the most attention historically the second premise that the universe began to exist was supported by philosophical arguments it wasn't until the 20th century that there was any sort of empirical evidence for the beginning of the universe and as I looked at the various arguments that were offered historic for the beginning of the universe the finitude of the past it seemed to me that two of them stood out one would be the argument based on the impossibility of an actually infinite number of things in reality and then the other would be the impossibility of forming an actually infinite collection of things by successive addition these arguments are independent of each other even if one fails the other could still be sound and so together I think they provide very persuasive philosophical grounds for affirming the finitude of the past enhance the beginning of the universe sure so let's think about this the difference between an actual and a potential infinite which is the crucial distinction to make as far as I understand it is that an actual infinite is kind of what it says on the tin is it's it's an actually existing infinite number of things that were that actually exist in reality where as a potential infinite is something that can tend towards infinities such as dividing the space between two points on a ruler you can divide that infinitely but that doesn't mean that there are actually an infinite number of things between each point is that a fair analysis oh that's exactly right Alex and the concept of the potential infinite dominated Western mathematics and philosophy until the 19th century when Georg Cantor our German mathematician discovered the concept of the actual infinite so the notion of a potential infinite plays its role in calculus where we think of infinity as a limit which a process approaches but never arrives at where is the notion of the actual infinite finds its application in infinite set theory where mathematicians talk about sets that have an actually infinite number of members in them and it is absolutely crucial to distinguish these because one is not denying the the potential infinite can exist the denial is that there can be an actual infinite in the real world sure so there are two objections that to me can be derived from this idea of the distinction between the potential and actual infinite infinite and the first is this there's an argument to be made that potential infinite in some way assume the existence of actual infinite for example people think that if a potential infinite is something like two spaces the space between two objects being infinitely divisible that there are somehow an infinite number of divisions between those two points and so although it's like although when you do the divisions it tends towards infinity the number of actual divisions the number of halfway points or something like that is an actually infinite number of things so it that would imply that actual infinite do exist in between any two spaces what's the problem with that the problem with that is that it is guilty of a modal operator shift it is true that possibly a line is divided here and here and here and here ad infinitum but it doesn't follow that there is a place here and here and here and here where the line is possibly divided that's two different claims and I would say that a line is not a composition of points that the line is logically prior to any points that you specify right on it and that therefore the possibility of potentially infinite processes does not imply an actually infinite number of points to assume that a line is a composition of points is to already beg the question in favor of the existence of an actual infinite number of things sure so to flesh this out let's think of a more concrete example I'm thinking of the example of this paradox of the light bulb which you've probably come across this this is this is how I'm kind of understanding the objection in its most strong form you can imagine some kind of light bulb that that is programmed to switch on and off at particular intervals and it's programmed such that you have a length of time that say you know 10 minutes that once half the remaining time has elapsed the switch gets hit right so so it starts off and halfway between the kind of time elapsing that the light bulb gets turned on and then halfway between the remaining time it gets turned off and halfway between the remaining time then it gets turned off and obviously the on and off switch is increasing in speed in terms of how quickly it's going on and off now the reason that this is an interesting point to raise is that by the time the actual time has elapsed it seems that you actually have a substantiation a thing that has actually happened an infinite number of times and we have to answer the question of whether the light bulb would be on and off at the end of the question but the kind of real question there the real interesting part is relevant to this discussion is that if you had such a programmed light bulb it would seem not just that you've kind of got a potentially divisible potentially infinitely divisible space but that an actual infinite number of things has happened in a finite amount of time yes this is a paradox known as Thompson's lamp after the author who invented it and the question that Thompson was raising is at the end of the process will the light be on or off and there's no answer to that question because there is no causally prior State immediately prior to the final state of the lamp after it's gone through the process and so my argument would be the Thompsons lamp is absurd that it cannot exist because the there will be a causal gap between the states of the lamp in the series of switchings and the state of the lamp after the switchings are complete there is no immediate causally connected state prior to that last state and and therefore the state of the lamp at that last state would be literally uncaused which i think is metaphysically absurd sure this will be supposed to take that the lamp couldn't be programmed in such a way I mean it seems like it doesn't break any kind of on the surface I mean any kind of logical or metaphysical rule to say that you could have such a program but you're you seem to be implying that because of the conclusion it leads to we should kind of go back and then judge that actually that couldn't be programmed in such a way well I I would say that metaphysically it is impossible because of what I just said about this causal says yura so to speak between the states of the lamp in the switching series and the state of the lamp after the switching series is ended but it's also scientifically impossible as well nobody has thought there could really be such a thing because once you get down to certain quantum distances it's impossible to switch the lamp on and off anymore the thing is purely a thought experiment it's not meant to be something that's physically realizable and so this wouldn't have any impact upon contemporary science contemporary science has no use whatsoever for the actual infinite contemporary science operates purely on the basis of potential infinities sure and perhaps it raises the question of whether or not that there is such a thing as a minimal interval of time which I know is it is an open question yes I said we should press the reason this is important to the argument I mean to the kalam is that essentially what we're trying to address the idea that the universe could have been eternal because this is one of the atheists escape routes many of the timeless would you say well look yes maybe there needs to be some kind of explanation for the causes the caused everything but what if that just goes back eternally in the universe is eternal and what you're trying to demonstrate here is that the universe can't be eternal because it leads to logical absurdities oh not logical Alex I would say metaphysical there's no logical contradiction in the notion of the actual infinite infinite set there is a well understood branch of mathematics it's perfectly consistent and coherent but I maintain that when you try to instantiate it in the world of the real right the thing leads to these absurdities and the Thompson lamp illustration is an example of that second argument that I mentioned for the finitude of the past the impossibility of forming an actually infinite collection by successive addition life switching on and off of a lamb sure so this is why we can talk about the concept of infinity in mathematical literature but that shouldn't give us reason to think that it can be substantiated in such a way that would affect the argument right yes that's right in mathematics there are just all sorts of entities for example imaginary numbers and infinite dimensional spaces and so forth that cannot be physically instantiated but they're perfectly consistent logically okay so the second objection that this racism and why it's important is that you can ask the question if an actually infinite number of things a number of events or something like that is impossible to be real in the sense that way using the term real does God not count as an actual infinite now it's important to understand here Alex that this is not an objection to either premise it would just show that the theist is going to have a problem too but it doesn't do anything to refute the argument now theists typically will not typically universally held that God is not composed two parts God is not an aggregate of definite and discrete elements that make up a collection and therefore the notion of God's infinity is not a mathematical notion it's not a quantitative motion it's a qualitative notion it means things like God is perfectly wholly omniscient omnipotent timeless spaceless and so forth all of those sort of qualitative attributes go to make up God's infinity but his the infinity of God is not a quantitative concept sure the reason why I would have immediate trouble with this is thinking about although the attributes of God that you mentioned are qualitatively infinite there may be some room for applying quantitative infinite's for instance if God is not dormant right if God is not just a kind of impersonal being that that sits there doing nothing we have an image of God that does things that intervenes that creates universe is that particular times but not at others would imply that perhaps you could ascribe to God something like an infinite series of events in terms of an infinite number of actions that he's caused unless there's some point beyond which God is dormant I don't see why you can't apply the same reasoning to say that if God commits actions then God has committed an actually infinite set of actions what you're raising here alex is the very interesting question of God's relationship to time yes and as you explained so well if there is a series of successive events in God's life then the same arguments against the infinitude of the past would apply to God that apply to the universe and therefore the classic proponents of this argument like Alice Holly argued that there is a beginning of time and that God existing beyond the universe not before it not before time but beyond time is timeless and unchanging and perfect and that therefore the arguments are inapplicable to God because God doesn't have a past so anticipating this this reply I was thinking about the kept of the afterlife and how the reason why it's not problematic to say that the afterlife is infinite is because that seems to be a potential infinite right because it could it starts at a certain point and tends towards infinity but there isn't already an existing kind of infinite set of days or something in in heaven in the afterlife the problem I see is reconciling that with what you've just said which is that God exists not kind of infinitely for an infinite amount of time but outside of time itself my understanding of the afterlife is somehow being with God right and so if if if the afterlife is being with in an infinite kind of way doesn't that mean that the afterlife is a kind of actual infinite or is a kind of I think what it implies Alex rather is that God is in time the view that I defend is a rather novel hybrid view but I think it's the best view and that is that when God creates time he enters into time in virtue of his real causal relationship with temporal changing things and in virtue of his knowledge of tensed facts like what time it is now so on the view I defend God is timeless saws creation but in time from creation going forward on into the afterlife sure and it's important that you say sans creation rather than before creation because it's like God will fill with a big bang or something like that as it was said that that's like asking what's north of the North Pole right it's just it's a contradictory notion yeah but does that imply that in order to accept all of the assumptions that you're making all the arguments you're making I should say that although the afterlife is a kind of being with God it's not being with God in in his kind of timeless state you you are still confined to time in the afterlife in some way so there's still how would we understand like a part of God that's outside of the afterlife no no I don't think so I think God enters into time he takes on a temporal mode of existence at the creation of the world so that when God creates the first moment of time he enters into time and thereafter has the temporal mode of existence so I think God exists right now I think that in the Incarnation God entered into human history in the person of Christ and that in the afterlife we will enjoy what the Bible calls ever lasting life with God and with his uncracked Jesus Christ which implies potential in infinity because everlasting is a kind of ongoing ongoing process so that's right does that mean that when we say God is timeless as I've heard you say a number of times we kind of mean that he he was timeless a part of him is timeless but now is a temporal being something like that well here it's so easy to be tricked by language right and I think what we have to say is that God is timeless Saul's creation and endtime subsequent to creation and that is a non contradictory way of stating it is that non contradictory because the way I'm thinking of it is is God sans creation is timeless and so God kind of exists eternally as a timeless being but somehow at the same in in the same breath exists as a temporal being as well so it's the sauce creation this is a timeless spaceless existence and time and space come into being at the moment of creation which I would identify for the sake of simplicity with the Big Bang with t equals zero the first moment of time sure so when we talk about so it doesn't make sense to talk about God creating the universe at a point in time right so yeah it doesn't make sense to talk about God creating the universe at a point in time well let me modify what I said I shared with you my understanding what I think is the best view but there are certainly other theist philosophers who hold different views of God in time for example Richard Swinburne Allen Padgett John Lucas hold to a view of God existing literally prior to creation but in a sort of non-metric time that is to say a time in which you cannot distinguish successive intervals of duration so that there is no point a million years prior to the moment of creation there is no point one hour before creation there is this kind of amorphous time that is pre creation time but it's not metric it doesn't have a metric to it that enables you to distinguish intervals of varying duration so there is that view out there that's not my own view but I want to say there are a number of options open to this it's not as though the Kalam argument commits you to a certain view of God in time other theists wouldn't maintain the God is timeless just simpliciter that God never enters into time I disagree with them but there are theists who would hold to that and that would be consistent with the Kalam argument as well I'm sure the reason I think this is important is because I know it's not strictly the conclusion of the Calallen or maybe you think it is but I've heard you talk in the past about how once we identify that there's a course to the universe we can say that it's a personal a personal cause let's say because of the fact and I may be misunderstanding here but my interpretation was that it has to kind of do something to create a universe right and if an infinite being creates a finite thing that doesn't seem to make sense unless the the infinite being can change its nature in some sense but how can we understand this outside of the idea of time right because my when I first heard that kind of line of thought I was thinking well are we saying there's an infinitely existing being who because at some point in time creates the universe something must change and therefore it must be a kind of conscious decision making cause without side without time I don't see how that how that jump can be made I wouldn't express it exactly the way you did but I think that you're in the ballpark the problem here is how do you get a cause with the begin or pardon me how do you get an effect the beginning from a cause which is permanent yes if the cause is truly sufficient for its effect then if the cause is there permanently the effect ought to be there permanently how in the world do you have a permanent cause but in the fact that only begins to exist a finite time ago and it seems to me that the best answer to that question is that the cause is a personal agent endowed with freewill because freewill can initiate new effects without antecedent determining conditions and so what I would say is that this timelessly existing free agent freely wills to create the universe and therefore time comes into being at that moment and this being enters into time at that moment so this is the problem I'm having as you say he wills the universe into being at that moment but how can we make sense of a term like at that moment if this being is timeless because as you say it's an infinite being the question is if if that calls is sufficient and infinite then the effect should also be infinite implying that there was no sufficiency up to a certain point but how can you talk at the points with no time this is a great question and the question here you're raising is which one is explanatorily prior God's decision to create the world is simultaneous with the origin of the world they they're at the same moment the first moment of time so which is explanatorily prior is at the moment of time and it is at that moment that God chooses or is it rather that God makes a free choice and therefore that is the first moment of time and I would say it's the latter God's free choice is explanatorily prior to the existence of the first moment of time because in the absence of some sort of a an event there would be no time it would just be timelessness you need something to happen in order for time to exist and what happens is that God freely chooses to create the universe so it's all about explanatory priority here so the the insufficiency of the cause before let's say if there's the wrong language but before the universe exists the the insufficiency of the cause which means that it hasn't existed yet is is prior in in explanation rather than prior in time well what I'm trying to say is that what you call the insufficiency of the cause is due to the fact that the freewill of this being has not chosen to create the universe the this being has not made such a decision but the instant that such a decision is made time comes into being indeed the decision is explanatorily prior to the first instant of time yeah when you say the the free it's because of the the freedom of the being and the free being hasn't made the decision it feels like that it's begging for the word yet to be on the end of that it hasn't made the decision yet you know but it's like we're carefully avoiding that language because of the complications of time but it seems like the explanation that you're giving it fills me like naturally it invokes a sense of time I I still don't quite see how it works without time well you you just have to be very careful if you're going to be philosophically precise to use tense les burbs in your sentences and not use temporal particles like before or yet and things of that sort and I think that we can avoid those in make coherent statements for example I said songs the universe God exists timelessly that's a tense list verb songs the universe God does not freely choose to the universe so I think that these statements can be correctly made if we just watch our tenses and our adverbs sure so I should say so the listeners I'm going to leave resources and writing to dr. Craig has has has made on these points because there's no way you can get to the bottom of them in a podcast like this but the reason that I wanted to kind of talk about this for a little bit was because of the fact that one of the objections that has been made and I think I've made it in the past is this idea that yeah the Kalam cosmological argument gets you a cause of the universe right but it doesn't get you something resembling a God but here what we're doing is we're trying to show that an order if we if we kind of admit that the the quote there is a course of the universe that's outside of the universe and is therefore timeless eternal infinite whatever it may be that it does in fact have to be personal it does in fact have to have free will in some form of consciousness and so the Kalam actually does imply a type of course not just a cause I I think that's does that make sense well it does to me this is Alice's Ali's argument right for the person third person hood of the cause of the universe this isn't original with me it's in alpha solids work and when I first read it I thought this is absolutely brilliant this is the only way that you can get a temporal effect with the beginning from a permanent cause it's if you've got an agent endowed with freedom of the will who can choose to do something without antecedent determining conditions and since that time alex i've enunciated two other arguments for the personhood of the creator one from richard Swinburne based upon the distinction between personal explanations and scientific explanations and then another based upon the causal power of the cause of the universe a an unembodied mind is the best candidate for a timeless spaceless immaterial cause of the universe so I've got three arguments all leading to the same conclusion that the cause of the universe is a personal unembodied mind which is very close to a theistic concept sure so what we've kind of covered then and and those points again I'll leave resources down below of people to explore I don't want to get I don't spend too much time on the same point or same restriction what we shown here is that there's a philosophical reason at least to think that the universe began to exist that's the second premise and this philosophical reason to think that if the if the conclusion does hold that the cause is a personal cause that's probably best described as God so I want to discuss the first premise because a lot of the time in the literature as far as I can see people think that this is the kind of this is the kind of obvious one is the kind of all come on of course everything that begins to exist has a cause now let's not say there was an argument ation behind it but it seems like people are just far more willing to accept it as intuitively true do you know same thing well actually Alex that's what I think when I first enunciated the Kalam cosmological argument to me the first premise is a no brainer I thought anybody who is intellectually honest will agree to the first premise and so I have been amazed frankly at the number of non theists who are willing to admit that the universe began to exist I think they're impressed with the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe and therefore bite the bullet and say the universe came into being uncaused from nothing and to me that is just a compromise of its intellectual integrity to be honest well yeah I mean to be clear if if a person accepts the second premise that the universe began to exist and that includes you know a lot of people will want to say well the Big Bang wasn't the beginning of everything but whatever was before the Big Bang would just be part of the universe as as we're talking around it right if we accept that premise then the listener needs to bear in mind that the only way to deny the conclusion is to as you say bite the bullet and say that something at least that begins to exist doesn't have a cause so and this this fact drove a lot of the resistance to Big Bang cosmology during the 20th century right people like Fred Hoyle the proponent of the steady-state model was very explicit that it is metaphysically absurd what the Big Bang Theory says that the universe came into being without a cause at some point in the past he said this is impossible there's got to be something before it and so he adopted or propounded his steady state theory and we've had oscillating theories vacuum fluctuation theories all sorts of alternatives to try to avoid that beginning because I think quite rightly these theorists see that if the universe truly began to exist it would be a metaphysical absurdity to say it just came into existence uncaused an interesting piece of trivia Fred Hoyle is of course the man who coined the Big Bang Theory but he did so majority of Lee he was on a radio show and he said what is this Big Bang Theory he was making fun of it and that's where we get the name from but let's talk about this so on your website reasonable faith because I do do my research I found you gave three justifications for this first premise reminding that the listeners the first premise is everything that begins to exist has a cause now the three justifications you give with a bit of explanation but just assert that just the first line is firstly that something cannot come from nothing secondly that if something can come from nothing then it is inexplicable why just anything and everything doesn't come into existence from nothing or come into being from nothing and the third point is and I quote common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise one what kind of common experience are you talking about when you say that everyday experience scientific experience we always look for causes of events that's the whole project of science and we never come across things coming into being uncaused now immediately people will think about quantum indeterminacy that there seemed to be events that on at least the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics are uncaused but two things here need to be said the argument is very carefully worded it does not say every event has a cause it says everything that coming ins to exist has a cause play so the argument is quite consistent with quantum indeterminacy and they're being uncaused events what it says is that there can't be things substances that come into being without a cause and then the second thing that I would say is that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum indeterminacy is by no means the only or the most plausible interpretation of quantum mechanics there are at least 10 different physical interpretations of the equations of quantum mechanics and some of these are as fully deterministic as not a quantum theory so that it's not a proven counter example in any case yes which is something again listeners should bear in mind I do hear a lot of people I want to reference quantum physics which is famously not very well understood so we've got to be careful when we when we try to do that kind of thing but I friend who says that the quantum mechanics is sort of the trump card right that a lot of people like to play they don't understand it but they're just say well if quantum mechanics can be like that than any absurdity it can happen yeah it's just it just shows really a lack of understanding of the theory now it's not to say that there aren't very well thought out arguments related to quantum physics in kind of in relation to the discussion we're having but you are right that a lot of the time you do hear from people who are as you say using as a trump card I've experienced that myself but there's a kind of there was an inconsistency that I that I found which I was struggling with or and apparent inconsistency when I was when I was reading your points on the kalam okay and it's on this point right because on the one hand you say if things can come into existence without a cause then why wouldn't it be happening all the time right why wouldn't a horse or an Eskimo village as you say just pop into existence out of nothing right why don't we observe that holding that in mind in in the Blackwell companion to natural theology you you are talking about this this quantum idea that quantum mechanics gives us evidence of something coming from nothing essentially and your response to that is to say this you say popularizers doubting such theories as getting something from nothing that is quantum mechanics apparently do not understand that the vacuum is not nothing but a sea of fluctuating energy endowed with a rich structure and subject to physical laws such models do not therefore involve a true origination ex nihilo okay so yes help me out here will you say no quantum mechanics isn't an example of something coming from nothing because it doesn't come from nothing but then you say well if something could come from nothing why wouldn't a horse pop into being well my thought is that if we did observer or horse popping into being in my living room that similarly wouldn't be out of nothing right because my living room isn't nothing oh all right now here we're talking about whether there's an efficient cause for that remember Aristotle distinguished between several different kinds of causes efficient material formal and so forth and when I talk about whatever begins to exist has a cause I'm thinking of efficient causes there needs to be something that brings it into being I don't think it has to have a material cause but it there does need to be at least an efficient cause that brings it into being now with respect to quantum mechanics the point there is that certain popularizers of modern science like Lawrence Krauss law to say that in quantum mechanics you have theories by which the universe comes into being out of nothing and in fact that's just not the case you have a physical state of affairs which is either a quantum vacuum a field of fluctuating energy or these are quantum physical fields described by physical laws and these physical states of affairs can reconfigure themselves so as to produce particles or the universe and so there definitely are causes in this case for the universe or the particles coming into being yeah Lawrence Krauss his book a universe from nothing is a fantastic overview of cosmological science but I hear this a lot of the time to you people say well you know you talk about something coming from nothing but nothing isn't really nothing and if that's the case then we're not talking about the same thing yeah well I agree with you on that point have you ever had the review in the New York Review of Books of Krauss's book a universe was nothing Shema did David Albert the philosopher of quantum physics David Albert wrote a review of Krauss's book and it just is excoriating for the sloppiness of Krause's use of the term nothing I have I have read that that review I think I've read it in preparation to talk to Lawrence Krauss who I know follows me on Twitter so I'll be careful what I said here and how much I agree with you and on the sloppiness of his work but yeah it's worth bearing in mind that we kind of we're talking about two different things here when when a philosopher is talking about nothing they mean as our Stossel said what rock stream if they mean nothing right and so if there's some kind of quantum soup or something then dad that is not actually nothing but yeah here's how I like to he put it Alex nothing the word nothing even though it's a pronoun it's not a referring term right it's not a singular term it's a universal quantifier it's a negative quantifier it means not anything so if I say I had nothing for lunch that is saying I did not have yeah because if you don't make that careful distinction and you think of nothing of something that can be can be spoken about you can make arguments like in AC Grayling's history philosophy he puts forward the argument nothing is brighter than the Sun a candle is brighter than nothing therefore a candle is brighter than the Sun right but clearly the point being raised here is that when we talk about nothing we have to be clear that as you say we're talking about we're talking about a kind of existential qualifier we're saying no thing not existent or water fire okay which again the importance of philosophy of language in dealing with even scientific issues yeah but on that point of equivocating terms where perhaps they they shouldn't be I'm intrigued because a lot of the time people will say now I'm not sure if this is an argument you would make but this is what my article was on my essay was on about the begging the question of the Kalam now yes some people have said now when you refer to a common experience I thought you might have meant something like anytime we see something beginning to exist it appears to have a cause that's a common experience that a lot of people will refer to they say look you can never have something to begin to exist me beginning to exist a chair beginning to exist that doesn't have a cause but of course the important point here for me was that the kind of beginning to exist we need to talk about in order for the Kalam to hold in order to get our conclusion is beginning to exist from nothing surely whereas a chair doesn't begin to exist from nothing a chair begins to exist from pre-existing material and yes although it makes sense to say the chair exists now and didn't exist an hour ago what we really mean is that the material that the chair is made out of has rearranged itself or being rearranged in such a way that we now arbitrarily give it the Nate that the label of a chair but but nothing has actually begun to exist Oh Oh Alex I think that's just it well as you say that's included in my list of arguments so bad I couldn't eat just think of your own self you began to exist it is absurd to think you existed before your father sperm and mothers egg United in conception for you to begin to exist you didn't exist during the Jurassic period you didn't exist during the era of galaxy formation you began to exist about eighteen years ago in this conception event and so don't think that beginning to exist is something that is subverted by its having a material cause mmm I explicate what it means to begin to exist by saying X begins to exist at t if X exists at T and T is the first time at which X exists yep and that is fulfilled for the chair and yourself and other things have begin to exist and the point is that when we look at the things that begin to exist we have a tremendous inductive argument that everything that begins to exist so defined has a cause it's hard to think of an inductive generalization that could be more strongly supported than that well this is what we where we have to be careful about language to make sure the point gets across as glad as I am that it's meaningful to say that I wasn't around to witness my parents conception I think that when when we say it's kind of absurd yes that that you know I existed in in the Jurassic period or something well I'm being careful to say here is that everything that I'm made of existed yeah at that time right sure and so when we talk about beginning to exist in in the sense of the common experience in order to justify premise one we're talking about beginning to exist conceptually beginning to exist as an arrangement something like this right we're not talking about actual matter becoming instantiate adorn something like that well I don't think that it's necessarily just a matter of arrangement and I mean take fundamental particles for example like electrons your corpse they're not arrangements of anything because they are fundamental particles you're raising an issue here as to whether or not there are composite objects things that are arrangements of simples that are themselves not arrangements of anything and and there are certainly these sorts of fundamental particles but more to the point Alex would be that the definition I gave of begins to exist namely X begins to exist at t if X exists at T and T is the first time at which X exists is it irrelevant whether or not X is a fundamental thing that is not an arrangement of prior materials or whether it is either one of those fulfills that definition perhaps I can explain why I'm having trouble with this as pertains to something like a chair which is that it seems to me that designating when that point T is is an arbitrary measure that we make subjectively right if you have if you have a collection of wood and you you kind of begin forming it into a chair you could say well like it's not a chair right now maybe if I bend this little bit like this and hammering that now it's a chair it seems like to say this is the point here which the chair now exists is an arbitrary subjective notion that we've kind of placed upon an object it's not actually intrinsic to the object itself uh-huh well I do think that that's a good point I would say an even better example would be a building like a skyscraper when does that actually begin to exist but there are plenty of things that aren't like that like yourself I think it's very clear when you began to exist and even with respect to the chair or the building we don't need to specify time T as an instant time T can be any interval of time it could be 1970 for example so that this building began to exist in 1970 if the building existed in 1970 in 1970 was the first time at which it existed so don't think that the time at which something begins to exist needs to be to finally specify because as you say there will be some vacant Asst or as to win it actually begins at the same time to the universe though this is all academic because there is a very precise time which the universe begins to exist well I'm trying to move towards a distinction between the universe beginning to exist and things like chairs beginning to exist and in order to show why perhaps they don't support each other let's say you know you have a skyscraper and you don't know but particularly what time it begins to exist but you could say that it's a period of time instead still it seems that the notion of beginning to exist as we're talking about it as pertains to chairs and skyscrapers is not something it's not a is not an attribute of the thing but an attribute of us it's an attribute of the people observing it and giving it a label the the the fact that a piece of wood becomes a chair is not something so much true off that off the word but as it is true of us because nothing about the actual material really changes in such a way that's meaningful except as we decide that it's meaningful well I I think that's a kind of ante realist view of reality that I would have grave reservations about that the chair is some kind of a mental construct that right that you make that certainly wouldn't apply in any case to fundamental particles or things that we don't think about I mean for example there was a time at which Tyrannosaurus Rex began to exist and if you go back far enough there were no Tyrannosaurus Rex prior to that and this has nothing to do with my conceiving of it well I mean so this actually quite a helpful example talking about species so take the species of Homo sapiens right I mean the clear I mean it seems to me clearly that although it makes sense to say that you know there was a point at which human beings existed and a point say you know fifty thousand years before that where human beings didn't exist but clearly that the coming into existence of this species Homo sapiens it's something that we have put upon it okay now granted when I said Tyrannosaurus Rex I was thinking of a dinosaur a flesh-and-blood organism I wasn't thinking of a species okay and similarly with Homo sapiens I agree with you it isn't clear at all what is to be classed as Homo sapiens they're all kind of hominids that it's very difficult to classify them but nevertheless if you go back in time far enough for example 1 million BC there weren't any human beings around at that point human beings began to exist sometime later and that's an objective fact that has nothing to do with our conceptions well allow me to try putting the same statement you just made in different words you said there's a human beings began to exist what if I said something like because we both agreed a moment ago that the matter that makes up human beings already existed even if the human beings didn't what if I said something like the the matter which exists arranged itself in such a way that the the we would label Homo sapiens right that seems to me the same thing as saying that the Homo sapiens began to exist aha well if if we would label it correctly but that the there is an objective fact here it's it doesn't begin to exist in virtue of our labeling it the reason we label it as a homo sapiens or as a human being is because you have an organism that is recognizably human it's it's not reptilian it's not amphibian this is a a hominin that is endowed with certain kinds of mental and behavioral capacities that we would count as human and the beginning of existence of that thing is explored by paleontologists and paleoanthropologists just wholly independently of ah I think I've hit on our disagreement then which seems to be that you would say that we cool a homo sapien a new object that begins to exist a new thing because it begins to exist whereas I would say that conceptually it begins to exist because we've decided to call it Homo sapiens it's kind of the reverse right I think that's the disagreement we're having yeah well this gets into this question again that I mentioned whether or not you think there are really composite objects or not and however you come down on that there are going to be certain entities that are not composite objects like fundamental particles like electrons and quarks and so on and I would say persons like yourself and these provide clear-cut examples of things that exist that are not just arrangements of prior matter and therefore don't have any objective reality well okay so the reason why I wanted to make this argument is to try and get across the point that I feel that the only thing that if anything has meaningfully begun to exist the only thing that would fulfill that criterion would be the universe itself because everything within the universe that begins to exist begins to exist in a conceptual sense only as the argument that I was trying to make but clearly you disagree with that right I suppose I think I mean you're talking here about a view that just I need to get technique is called Mary illogical nihilism yes yes there are no Composite I'm essentially yes but even Mary illogical Neela's recognize that there are fundamental particles that are not composites they're not aggregates of things and some like peter van inwagen would say that living things like horses and humans and persons are also not just aggregates of material because they are alive and there have four have a kind of unity to their being that goes beyond being merely an aggregate of material things so I think the person is going to take the line of merry illogical kneel ISM well it's worse than merry illogical nihilism I mean he has to say that there are no fundamental objects I'm not sure that's the case for instance if we accept that fundamental particles exist and what we mean by fundamental particles are simply things that can't be broken down any further and so right what we mean when we say beginning to exist is a rearrangement of fundamental particles in such a way that it kind of that it gives rise to arbitrary labeling as a new odd right right so that's the kind of view that I would take not that there aren't composite things but that everything that begins to exist is just an arrangement of composite things all right you mean arrangement of fundamental things yes Wigan amethyst right yes okay and that would be a consistent view it's a very radical view one that I wouldn't hold I can't see any good reason to be a Mary illogical Neil list but in any case I don't think that that would subvert the argument for the universe beginning to exist right because in that case you can rephrase the argument not such that the universe began to exist but you can say all fundamental particles began to exist sure but that but then do you see how did you see how that just completely undermines the idea of the Common Sense experience the things beginning to exist because although it may make philosophical sense to talk about fundamental particles beginning to exist we wouldn't be able to say something like we've observed it happening oh no I think that's not right Alex what it could requires is a modification of the second premise not the first the first premise that whatever begins to exist has a cause would remain intact it's just that on the miry illogical nila spew very very few things begin to exist because you don't there are no people there are no horses there are no skyscrapers there are no chairs what if you reformulate the second premise so that it states not the universe began to exist but all the fundamental particles began to exist you get the same conclusion ok so perhaps I can explain white because you say it's at least a consistent worldview let me try and explain why I thought this would beg the question when it came to the Kalam was because if we accept the view that everything that begins to exist as we observe it in the world let's say is not actually beginning to exist in the meaningful sense is just a rearrangement of pre-existing matter and ultimately the furthest you can break it down as two fundamental particles but those existed since the beginning of the universe meaning that in other words in the meaningful sense the only thing that began to exist was the universe right now the reason this is a problem is because to beg the question is to accept the first premise only by virtue of already having granted the conclusion now if the first premise is everything that begins to exist has a cause but the only thing that truly begins to exist in the sense we want to talk about is the universe then the first premise just becomes the universe has a cause which is identical to the conclusion no it just means that the universe would be the only instance of that first premise that I want are your listeners to understand how radical the view is that you're expressing here it's not just that things don't begin to exist it's rather that these things don't exist at all there are no such things as chairs and planets and people and skyscrapers none of these things actually exists and that's why they don't begin to exist the only thing that begins to exist would be these fundamental particles and so this is a I mean you can take that line if you want but it's really right Oh radical view because I know that I exist I think Descartes is quite right about that if there's one thing I can't doubt it's that I exist and I began to exist so I think this is not you know this is sort of like an academic way to try to escape fear but it's not a plausible solution the person who really is looking for truth the two the two observations I'd make is potentially first to say that on the Cartesian view yes you can know you exist but I don't I'm not sure you could therefore know that you began to exist but just on the Cartesian view yeah but and secondly and kind of important here is that you say that by denying that things begin to exist I deny that things exist I would rather frame it as saying something like the the limits of an object and for people who are listening what I mean by that are the boundaries of the thing the thing that make it that thing as opposed to something else right the the the definitional boundary that you put around that thing is not a property of the thing but a property of us in a way right so it does exist conceptually so I can make sense of saying here is here is a book but what I'm saying is that my calling this a book and my saying that this has boundaries such that this is a book and this other thing over here is not that book is a product of my mind right but but it's it's like it does conceptually exist however the actual boundary itself is an arbitrary it's a it's a mind dependent yes reality that's why I said this is a sort of Andy realism that uh extremely implausible you're saying that you construct reality by imagining these boundaries but these are not mind independent realities if there were no people there would be no books and planets and galaxies and stars yeah it's a strange i I would say I would say that calling it something like anti-realism might be misleading because of the fact that I wouldn't say that nothing exists independent of the mind right I'm not saying that things existing or or rather you know existence is a product of the mind what I'm saying is that categorizing that which exists into independent objects is a product of the mind right right except for fundamental vocals which themselves began at the beginning of the universe now the only mind independent realities on this Myriah logical Neela Steve you that we just conceptually set boundaries to things and so construct the world of objects around us yeah I think one thing I've learned is is is how radical the view is that I that I hold because I think you're probably right in the implications and I hadn't considered them to the fullest extent before that if I'm going to say something like things only begin to exist as a rearrangement of pre-existing matter and the beginning to exist is a is an arbitrary metric we put on it that the only thing that exists definitionally as an independent object mind independently are fundamental particles and everything else that exists as kind of individual individually discernible objects are mind dependent which is it was a really interesting radical implication of my view that I'll I'll give some thought and for my listeners I'll try and write an explication on that on that view so you do take that view yeah this sort of area logical Neil ISM then you're right we wouldn't have any inductive examples of things that begin to exist right the first premise would still be true that whatever begins to exist has a cause but we wouldn't have any examples of things that begin to adjust other than these fundamental particles we still got all of those to deal with and that's fine but you wouldn't be able to as you say appeal to your common experience on this view yeah so this is that's a fair point and this is why I thought it begs the question was because and I guess the the implications are more radical now that I think about it but the reasoning I was thinking of was well if the only thing that ever really began to exist was the universe then as you say that the first premise although it doesn't become the conclusion it means that the only kind of the only thing which begins to exist is the universe so when we say everything that begins to exist has a cause the only example we can think of is the universe and so by saying the first premise you're essentially believing that because you leave the universe has a cool oh no no I'm not now there I think that's a mistake Alex okay I have actually reformulated the Kalam cosmological argument to make it more modest by rephrasing the first premise in the following way if the universe began to exist then the universe has a cause second premise the universe began to exist therefore the universe has a cause so that statement of the argument would be fully in line with Maria logical Neil ISM if the universe began to exist then the universe has a cause or if the fundamental particles began to exist then they have a cause etcetera etcetera so yeah it would just mean that it's not begging the question it would just mean that you're wrong you couldn't use the sort of inductive argument that I appealed to quite right as you point out in your in your series about objections and about the objection of circularity in particular you say well arguments don't beg the question people beg the question right and so I would agree with you that if you reformulate the Kalam or even if you keep it in the original form but use a different justification you're not begging the question - I was just trying to make the point that if you justify it in that inductive manner it seems to me that you're begging the question um well I'll agree with you that the inductive argument wouldn't work if you have this kind of Miria lot renewal ism and then I would fall back on the two metaphysical arguments which for me are the most important as opposed to the inductive argument so the the kind of other justification that you might give and the one that I found really interesting was saying if things can come into existence out of nothing what that is if you deny the first premise and then why doesn't it happen all the time right why don't things begin to exist out of nothing all the time now my first thought was to say how do we know that they don't right because to come into being out of nothing would surely imply coming coming into existence not within the universe because everything in the universe is not nothing as we've said and so to come into being out of nothing it would have to somehow come into being outside of the universe and therefore we wouldn't observe it so maybe it is happening all the time but we wouldn't be able to observe it by definition here I think you're making the same mistake that we talked about earlier when you spoke of the horse coming into being in the living room yeah thinking that therefore it's not out of nothing and what I explained there was that I'm saying without an efficient cause that's what I mean by out of nothing so if things could come into being without an efficient cause it seems inexplicable why things aren't just popping into existence all around us things of different sorts because they don't need efficient causes to bring them into being this was an argument that Iain prior developed and I found it just completely convincing so let me how can i how can I put this a horse how about an argument like this now I've heard what I think might be this kind of line of argumentation from you before but I don't to put words in your mouth so if someone were to say something like and it seems absurd on the surface but if they said something like well what if it's the case that universes are the only thing which can come into being out of nothing right mejor scant come into being out of nothing but but there's something about the universe and we already know that the universe is a special kind of something compared to everything within the universe it seems to kind of have the we need to think about it in a different way yeah could we not say something like well maybe things do come into being all the time except the only thing that come into being out of nothing is a universe and therefore we wouldn't be able to observe it as a hand prior said prior to its existence the universe doesn't exist so as to constrain what can come into being or not so you can't say that only things of certain kind can come into being without efficient causes because without their causes there just isn't anything to constrain it so I don't think that you can say that only certain kinds of things can come into being without efficient causes yeah now the argument that I didn't want to put it in your mouth was one that I've heard elsewhere if people would say the argument that the reason you can't say that only universal can come into being out of nothing is because nothing doesn't have any properties and so therefore can't have a kind of preference for universes over other things yeah my my response to that was to say what if the what if the necessity of it being a universe is not a property if they're nothing but a property of the thing and let me explain myself if for example if we human beings create a circle it has to be round right we can't create a square circle all right but that's not due to a property of us that's due to a property of the circle right yeah so in the same way although nothing has no properties and so can't prefer universes what if it can only what if only universes can come from nothing because of a property of the universe not because of the property of nothing right that's that is exactly what you would have to say because as you say properties only in here in existing things beings have properties not non-being so you'd actually it's an inherent property of the universe that it can spring into existence without a cause sounds absurd that doesn't exist how do existence without a cause because it has a property yeah I mean it sounds strange but the reason why I think it's useful to think in in those terms or at least of the possibility of it happening is because specifically the objection that why don't things pop into existence all the time I suppose what I'm trying to do is make a at least a far-fetched case I'm trying to show at least a possibility that things could into existence out of nothing and yet by definition we'd be incapable of witnessing it so maybe things do come into existence out of nothing all the time but because these are only universes we'll never be able to observe it we'll never be able to see it let me commend you for your method Alex because by pushing these questions what you help the Atheist to see is the intellectual pricetag yes of his atheism and I think that's very valuable you you one of the goals of the Christian apologist will be to try to raise the intellectual price tag of non-belief and if non-believer non-theism requires me to be an Mary illogical realist to think that things have an intrinsic property that they can come into being that other things don't have this is all raising the intellectual price tag of non-belief for me at least Alex just what I'm willing to pay and so that's helpful that you're doing this that is a really really interesting way of thinking about apologetics and and the argument that we're having is kind of like you know what's the better deal here right because both worldview seem at least consistent but you've got to ask yourself you know how much you're willing to sacrifice of your intuitions how much you're willing to sacrifice of the beliefs that you think are true in order to hold to those conclusions and the key point is taking taking the justifications that we're giving and showing what they lead to right because a lot of people consider well this argument may allow this to be the case but they don't think that if you accept that justification it can also lead over here and you don't want that right and so I think this demonstrates this discussion is demonstrated that every time you think of a justification for a point you're trying to raise you have to consider the implications of that justification and the and the other areas of philosophy it causes you to have to sacrifice that's that's really really fascinating way of thinking about and I think it I think is a great place to end and the station thank you so much for having me on today this has been unexpectedly rich and thought-provoking conversation and I've really enjoyed it that's really wonderful to hear because I I remember kind of wanting to have you on and and I didn't tell anybody did this will this will be released without my followers knowing before it happened but if I did tell them they'd probably be saying go and yeah go and go and debate him go and go and show him what's warden and and it's like I would never never dream of trying to do that with someone of your caliber of your caliber so I just wanted to kind of ask questions so I'm glad to hear that it that it that it's kind of led to this kind of conversation especially it's it's gone two directions I didn't think it would go in but it has been fascinating and I think that it's definitely going to lead for some follow-up points that I want to make so anybody listening to this there's a good chance I'll do some kind of video or some kind of essay on some of the points that we've covered because it's just so many things flowing out of so many implications flowing out of what we've what we've spoken about but as I say listeners just just I hope that you found this to be useful I hope that it's good to listen to a conversation about something like the kalam that isn't in a debate format because it may be the case that you've never done so before and I hope this is of use do leave comments if you have any kind of reactions so that the stuff we've been talking about it it's always good to keep the conversation going I want to remind you that everything that I do on this channel is supported by you on patreon.com forward slash cosmic skeptic so if you like this kind of conversation please do consider becoming a supporter but dr. Craig thank you again for coming on it's been a real pleasure to have guys okay so as always I've been Alex O'Connor with the cosmic skeptic podcast and today I've been a conversation with dr. William Lane Craig [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: CosmicSkeptic

Views: 340,483

Rating: 4.9009681 out of 5

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism

Id: eOfVBqGPwi0

Length: 75min 47sec (4547 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Abracadaver2000]

And it MUST be the god that was instilled in me from birth due to the heritage of my family and their geographic upbringing. That's just the icing on the cake.

[u/The_Disapyrimid]

am i missing something? why do people seem to think the kalam is such a strong argument for god?

[u/EyeBugChewyChomp]

I understand this is unproductive but damn he gives me the creeps. Second only to Kenneth Copeland.

[u/mgaasly]

WLC voice irritates me and I cannot listen to what he says. I just want him to shut up.

[u/mingy]

Pretty much. The purpose of these idiotic arguments are to convince you. That begins by confusing you, which for some people results in them dropping their intellectual rigor. Once they have you they have you.

They don't care if is makes sense or even if it is true, they only care that it works.

[u/Repsack]

I watched all of that, and i felt the discussion was at least well thought out all in all. But i do think both the premises at not easily acceptable.

[u/jlevy1126]

I thought it was a god discussion and WLC got stuck a few times having to point to arguments he doesn't make, ones made by others, to try to justify why the argument would have a basis in rational.

[u/rcookerly]

The guy is an idiot, can’t stand listening to him

[u/Metacognician]

I can't stand the guy, but I can see why people who already believe in god fall for his BS: it's his nonchalant condescending arrogance. He always acts like he's schooling his opponents even when he's completely out of his depth like in the debate with Sean Carroll.