William Lane Craig & Scott Clifton Discuss the Kalam Cosmological Argument

hey guys welcome to capturing christianity my name is cameron bertuzzi and today i'm hosting a dialogue between none other than dr william lane craig and i've got actually a friend of mine scott clifton here with us and we're talking about today the kalam cosmological argument and so i i actually don't want to waste any time on this i want to get directly into the dialogue because we don't have uh longer than an hour today also let me mention this before we get started is that we probably aren't going to have time for questions as much as i would love to do some q a with these two we don't have time to do that uh but with that out of the way let's go ahead and just jump straight in dr craig give us what we're going to do today we're going to have a dialogue about it's sort of an open-ended friendly conversation about the column cosmological argument so what i thought was best is if we start with just a short summary presentation from dr craig of what this argument is and then at that point we'll jump into dialogue scott will have he's got some objections to the argument and we'll we'll run through some of those and just have a great dialogue so dr craig why don't you start us off and give us that summary of the of the kalam certainly thank you cameron the kalam cosmological argument is a very ancient form of the cosmological argument that goes back to the efforts of early christian commentators to refute aristotle's doctrine of the eternity of matter and they developed various arguments for the finitude of the past these um arguments were then taken up into medieval muslim theology when islam swept across north africa and evolved into a highly developed argument for definitive of the past the name of this theological movement in islamic theology is kalam and so i dubbed the argument that was so characteristic of this movement the kalam cosmological argument it was then bequeathed back to the west um through the intermediary of jewish theologians and became a subject of hot debate uh finally being um ensconced in emmanuel kant's first antinomy concerning space and time in his monumental critique of pure reason the argument as stated by one of its greatest medieval proponents al-khazali is very simple it basically has three steps premise one whatever begins to exist has a cause uh or alternatively an even more modest version of premise one would be to say that if the universe began to exist then the universe has a cause premise two is that the universe began to exist this is the crucial premise of the argument medieval thinkers offered various arguments against the possibility of an infinite temporal regress of events and in my own work i've attempted to defend two such arguments against the eternality of the past in the past century however we have found dramatic empirical or scientific evidence for the finitude of the past both in contemporary cosmogony as well as in the study of the thermodynamic properties of the universe both of these fields of study provide dramatic scientific confirmation of the conclusion reached by purely philosophical argument alone that the universe began to exist so in my work there are these four independent arguments in support of the second premise the universe began to exist from those two premises it follows that therefore the universe has a cause and one can then do a conceptual analysis of what it is to be a cause of the universe and a number of very theologically striking properties come out of such an analysis the argument leads i think to the existence of a first uncaused beginning-less time-lapse space-less immaterial enormously powerful personal creator of the universe which is i think a core conception of what we mean by god well thank you for that summary dr craig so let's turn into just some open dialogue about this argument what are the merits of it and maybe what are some some good objections to this argument so scott take us away let's uh let's just get into some good some good dialogue so cool so cool um well just off the bat i just i want to say a couple of things one is that um clearly if there were ever proof of god's existence it's the fact that i'm sitting here right now i i want to express my gratitude to both cameron for arranging this dialogue into dr craig for his generosity with his time and the clear leap of faith you know cards on the table i'm a soap actor and i have no philosophical training so it's a leap of faith on on dr craig's part that this uh is not going to be a waste um i i recognize what a rare privilege this is i recognize that i am in the presence of a great mind who has gone toe-to-toe with other great minds and won often so uh so my highest aspiration here is not to win a debate that would be pretty foolish of me um but to [Music] create a a document together um that that sort of maps out the the assumptions and intuitions that can cause reasonable people to disagree about whether the universe is something that has a cause um and and and this dialogue may include me hearing for the very first time uh answers to my objections that are totally satisfying you know i i i don't know what the response is to some of what i'm gonna say here today and uh to me that's very exciting okay so that's that's all i just wanted to get that out of the way out of the way and say that um uh dr craig i i if it's okay with you i would like to i'm genuinely agnostic on the truth of the second premise whether the universe began to exist and so i would like to grant uh for the sake of argument that the second premise is in fact true that the universe did begin to exist because i think that will corral us over to the first premise which i think is um one more interesting to me i think you can just do so much with it uh and i think it's under scrutinized um so that's i i would like to do that and as i understand it uh you have three defenses for your first premise um one is uh a sort of uh inductive argument right i mean you you look around the world things have causes there appears to be no exception to this rule by the way dr craig if at any point i'm misrepresenting you or i've got you wrong i prefer that you actually interrupt me because i don't want to or i want to talk past you a second longer than i have to uh the second argument as i understand it is like in it you could call it like a chaos argument right it's in the reductio family and it's sort of like well okay if if that first premise is false then it becomes inexplicable why anything and everything doesn't just pop into being uncaused out of nothing right um and then the third argument as i understand it is a sort of appeal to our intuitions we have this deeply held metaphysical intuition that uh out of nothing nothing comes and um i was hoping that i could tackle the first the inductive uh argument first because um i think that i can offer i think that induction doesn't get you there all the way to whatever begins to exist has a cause and i think i can show that by offering an alternative causal principle that i just made up um but but which i believe enjoys exactly as much empirical support and i'll call that i'll call it the double causal principle right so here's my here's my principle um whatever has an efficient cause of its existence has a material cause and i think you can take that and you can sort of make it into a a um parity column argument right so that's the first premise you can have a second premise that something like the universe has no material cause conclusion therefore the universe has no efficient cause of its existence and if i can succeed in showing that there's symmetry here right because this is i believe that this this uh principle enjoys as much empirical support but that you would reject it right you have reasons for rejecting this uh and i think that would show that we need a tie breaker right and then we could if i'm successful in that we could move on to some of your other arguments which are also really interesting all right um let me ask you a question scott sure to begin do you think that the causal premise of the argument is false or simply that it's unproven uh i i i think that it's false uh really that yeah i i think that it's false because well so when i think about causality you know when i kind of said do an armchair analysis of what causality is it appears to have all these features right um it it uh it appears to be a temporal and spatial process it appears to take place within the by an interaction of an efficient cause with a material cause within time and space um i think something that something begins to exist only if there was a point in time before it existed where it didn't exist yet right there's all these features of causality as we observe it in the empirical world that i think can't be exported to something like the universe which is defined as the totality of material reality okay well now now wait though um that would not necessarily mean that the causal premise is false i mean that's not a proof of its falsehood you don't think do you that things can just pop into existence uncaused no no no certainly not so i i don't think that within the space-time universe i i think that so here i guess what i would say here is that i think that the scope of the causal principle is physical and not metaphysical right i i i yeah exactly so i don't think i think once you get to something like the totality of time and space itself the causal principle breaks down and i don't think we have good enough reasons for thinking it would apply to the universe itself right okay now that that's quite different that's not uh an attack so much um on the idea that something that begins to exist as a causes the scope of the principle that you don't want to allow it to apply to the universe itself now there i think one would want to hear what good reasons would disqualify the universe from lying within the scope of this principle um what is it about the universe that would allow it to come into being uncaused from nothing but the things within space and time couldn't do that i can't think of any germane feature of the universe that would make it plausible that the entire universe could just come into being on cost now you did mention one you said anything that well that's not even right you i was going to say you said anything that begins to exist there has to be a time before it but that's an attack on the second premise not the first one um and i think that that principle is false anyway it would preclude the time had a beginning if you say that for something to begin to exist there has to be a time before it during which it did not exist that would mean the time could never begin to exist because it would be a self-contradiction to say there was a time before time at which time did not exist and yet this is commonplace in contemporary cosmology to talk about the beginning of time and and space so i think all you have to do is to say that something begins to exist at a time t if there is no time earlier than t at which that thing exists and that would allow time to begin to exist without being self-contradictory and it would also say that um things do begin to exist without there being this sort of empty time before they come into being so i don't think that principle applied to the universe would be disqualifying for the universe to lie within the scope of the causal premise right so i i should clarify some things here so so it's not it's not that that's my argument right my argument here or or my objection here is not that um the universe didn't begin to exist because there was no time you know prior to the universe's existence what i was trying to do there was show that there are there are all these features of of something being caused to exist within our empirical experience of the world that you actually have to sacrifice you have to jettison those features when it comes to the universe so for example when we see things beginning to exist or when we see things caused to exist we see that it's by the interaction of an efficient cause with a material cause we see that it's it's uh it takes place within time and space there is also this what to me intuitively seems essential to causality is the affect effect relationship right so you have uh you know you have a cause which which affects something and from the interaction of the first u you have the effect right and so that you have to get rid of you know when it comes to something like creatiox nihilo so i'm saying that there there are all these features of causality as we know it that to me seem essential right and you would disagree with that you would say well no those those things are clearly not essential because we need a cause of the universe and you can't have uh you know you can't have time before time you can't have space before space and so on and so forth so we clearly have different intuitions about what aspects of our empirical experience of the world we have to get rid of we have to sacrifice that was the point i was making there yes um now what i would say with respect to everything that has an efficient cause also as a material cause that does have very powerful inductive evidence there's no doubt about it but the question is whether or not this is simply a common feature of our experience or whether this is an essential feature of efficient causality that it always acts on a material cause and i think probably we could find counter examples even within the realm of our experience as to when we do have efficient causes operating without material causes and the most evident of these would be when the cause is an intellectual agent or mind who produces thoughts uh in that case you have causality by a personal agent of mental events but one doesn't need to have or they're not they don't have any sort of material cause thoughts are not constituted out of matter or stuff and so that would provide a counter example to the claim that efficient causes are necessarily rather than simply commonly accompanied by material causes yes yes so so yeah there's some there's some ambiguity with respect to the phrase material cause and and the the the sense in which i understand it which i think is the aristotelian sense is that the material cause it's not a synonym for physical cause so i want to be that that seems like an equivocation to me right material cause does not necessarily mean cause that is physical in nature cause that is made out of matter and energy as i understand it the material cause of a thing is just the stuff out of which it was formed physical or otherwise and so i'm stipulating that that's what i mean when i say material cause uh-huh okay well that isn't the classic understanding i mean for aristotle prime matter was the material cause of which things are made so it was a very physical notion if you allow that thoughts have material causes well then what's the problem with divine causation of the world because god is a personal agent who has thoughts and has will and intentionality and he can will that the world exists and as an omnipotent being the world comes into being so i mean if that's what you mean by a material cause then that principle isn't sacrificed in having a transcendent cause of the universe so um one thing that i believe that you and i have in common is that we would both identify as nominalists um and as i uh yeah as i understand uh the kalam cosmological argument what we're really talking about here is is the beginning of existing of concrete right we're not talking about abstractions we're not talking about events uh we're not talking about mental events such as thoughts or concepts um so we're not talking about universals we're not talking about numbers we're talking about concrete objects right uh and so when i say what whatever whatever i'm i'm really saying whatever concrete thing that has an efficient cause of its existence has a material cause of its existence right um and so the the uh the universe is not like a thought right the universe is is a concrete object and and in our experience of the world when we see concrete objects begin to exist it's it's always by the interaction of an efficient cause with a material cause in our experience yes well uh oh i think i lost your audio yeah dr craig we lost your audio for just a second so uh just repeat the last thing you said oh yeah you're good well i i was just going to comment that that would at best show that this is a common feature of mundane causes rather than that this is an essential feature of causality as such uh it seems to me that if you have a personal agent who transcends the world that that agent can by thinking bring into reality concrete objects like the universe now one of the difficulties with the argument scott that you're propounding it seems to me would be that it leads to a sort of double absurdity in the case of the universe if the universe began to exist then on the view you're suggesting it would have neither an efficient cause nor a material cause on my view at least it has an efficient cause that explains why it comes into being even though it doesn't have a material causes you to find the term and so while i grant you that inductively our common experience shows that efficient causes work in cooperation with material causes to deny that with respect to the beginning of the universe leads to a situation that far from being more plausible than my view is doubly absurd because it says the universe came into being with neither an efficient nor a material cause yeah i i appreciate that argument i i my view is that that commits a kind of category error it's it's viewing an a-causal beginning through the lens of causality right so an analogy would be you know hitting a home run without a ball is absurd but hitting a home run without a bat or a ball is doubly absurd right you know a a universe being likewise the universe being caused to exist without a material cause is absurd but without an efficient and material cause is doubly absurd the the problem is that i'm not claiming to have hit a home run and i'm not claiming that the universe was caused so you would have a it would be doubly absurd if you're positing that the universe was caused to exist without an efficient cause or a material cause but i'm not positing that the universe was caused to exist in the first place so i'm not claiming to have hit a home run either yeah i don't i don't think that's a pertinent analogy the home run here is the beginning of the universe and you do believe that the universe exists uh existed in the past and for the sake of argument began to exist so you've got the ball going over the fence on your view now the question is is there a causal explanation of that uh and i would say that it's more plausible to say it's got an efficient cause that produces it than to say it has no cause at all that it's completely a-causal which is what you're committed to so i yeah i disagree that the the home run here is that the universe began to exist if if the home run here is that the universe began to exist and we're saying it's absurd that it didn't have an efficient cause and doubly absurd that it didn't have a material cause then you're begging the question in favor of the universe requiring a cause but if you say that the what the home run here is that the universe was caused to exist without an efficient cause or a material cause then you get your double absurdity but otherwise you're just assuming the truth of the conclusion that the universe needed a cause to my ear well but but look at your argument your argument is that in the case of the universe i'm positing an efficient cause without a material cause and i'm suggesting that while that's unusual you've not shown any sort of absurdity in it you've just shown that that's not the way mundane causes work but that leads to the absurdity that something came into being out of nothing and that's contrary to the first argument that i give for the causal principle is that it's metaphysically impossible that being should come from non-being and so there needs to be some sort of cause in fact you know scott if you look at the argument the argument doesn't really specify what sort of cause the universe has it it just says whatever begins to exist has a cause the universe began to exist so the universe has to have some kind of cause and then we can investigate well what kind of cause was it it was certainly efficient was it also material well no it can't be that because all matter and energy came into being at the beginning of the universe so again that's that's treating material cause like a physical cause right you could have had god creating the universe out of some non-physical material cause some ectoplasm or some you know some pressure existing stuff you'd better not admit that or your argument goes by the board because then that's what i could say well yeah but you believe in the doctrine of creationx niallo so you wouldn't say that the universe has a material cause of its existence i think theologically i wouldn't say that no right right but the point is that the argument itself doesn't tell you what kind of cause the universe has it's only when you get to the conclusion and you you analyze well what is it to be a cause of space and time matter and energy that you get to the conclusion that this doesn't have a material cause in the typical sense and so it it forces you to adopt this very peculiar view that here we have a case of efficient causality without material causality and all you're able to show against that is that that's unusual but not that there's any kind of conceptual problem with that right so i think that there's parity here right so uh you know on your view when it comes to you saying you know everything that begins to exist has a cause well i don't know if if things that begin to exist having causes is an essential feature of if having causes is an essential feature of things beginning to exist or a common feature of things beginning to exist likewise on my view it's not clear that having a material cause is an essential feature of things being caused to exist or or an accidental or a common feature as you put it one thing that i always took note of in your defense of your argument is that you do you know it um your your first premise is ambiguous with respect to whether that cause has to be efficient or material and that runs a foul of my intuitions in a way to treat to treat something beginning to exist as if it could have either you know it could have a material cause as long if it doesn't have an efficient cause it should at least have a material cause but that's strange to me right like if you and i went to a museum together and and we were looking at a beautiful marble statue and i turned to you and i say dr craig what caused this statue to begin existing and you say marble you know i i wouldn't feel like you had answered my question because material causes are not really what we're thinking about when we say that such and such was caused to exist and so it seems strange to me if you can have something beginning to exist if your argument allows for something to begin existing with a material cause without an efficient cause to borrow some of your phrasing it becomes inexplicable why things don't just begin to exist with material causes without efficient causes all the time right you would need an explanation for why that is uh-huh um well that that's an interesting point um whether something could have a material cause but not an efficient cause but again that's not germane to the case at hand because in the case at hand with the universe beginning to exist there there can't be a material cause in the normal sense of the word and so the alternative it seems to me scott is you've either got to deny that the universe began to exist or you've got to say that it came into being without a cause and when i think of those alternatives it seems to me more plausible to deny that the universe began to exist than to say the universe came into being without a cause to me that that's just metaphysically absurd yeah it's because you and i have radically different intuitions about this right about what is essential to causality as we understand it to me to say that that a a causal event took place you know the creation of the universe for example we don't have to call it an event because that presupposes a sort of sequence whatever you want to call it but to say that a cause something was caused uh in the absence of you know the interaction of an efficient cause with a material cause i mean the idea here would be that that an effect was produced without anything anywhere having been affected right and that that aspect of causality as i understand it intuitionally is indispensable right so to me that is a higher to borrow to borrow a phrase that you've used that i find incredibly useful that is a higher intellectual price tag than just saying listen for all we know the scope of the causal principle is simply physical and not metaphysical because the universe is not the kind of thing that could have a cause as we understand causes all right well i think we just have a real uh disagreement here uh on bedrock metaphysical principles yeah i agree i agree where would you like to to go from here yeah i didn't expect to get to a disagreement so quickly should we turn to the to the other we could also talk about uh scott i i don't know how developed your thoughts are on this but the uh the the move that's made after the conclusion is reached there's a cause of the universe and we do this kind of conceptual analysis um i'm sure that you disagree with that we could we could turn there if you'd like to stick here and uh talk about some other objections to premise one how would you like to i would feel disingenuous um taking on the argument about whether if the universe has a cause it that cause is a person you know an omnipotent omniscient person because i just what i can't get around is the idea of something like the universe having a cause right so i i can't um i i don't even think that much about that because i'm i'm still stuck you know i i if i'm like this you know if i were this perfectly neutral you know perfectly rational audience to the kalam cosmological argument um i i imagine somebody going okay but i still don't understand why we should think that something like the universe itself you know that the totality of space and time which you know by definition exists at all temporal points by definition you know has literally always existed needs a cause um and there's different ways to unpack that you know you can say that the universe exists necessarily you can say it's a contingent-proof fact i understand that there's ways of looking at it in terms of a and b theory of time but the one thing that you can't say is that the universe you know popped into existence or came from nothing that that language to my ear is is misleading and paints a picture much like the one you know of the tiger popping into existence in my living room behind me right here right our intuitions about that are pretty solid uh but i don't think that can be exported to something that has literally always existed well i i would disagree with that i think on a tense theory of time according to which temporal becoming is real the universe doesn't just have a front edge so to speak which is its beginning in the way that a yardstick say has a front edge at the initial inch rather on a tense theory of time that yardstick comes into being uh it it and in that sense it pops into being without a cause that's what one means when one says from nothing and that contradicts i think one of the most ancient and deeply rooted metaphysical principles of western philosophy that goes all the way back to parmenides that being only comes from being and that therefore something cannot come from nothing and if if to avoid the argument's conclusion we've got to believe that something in this case the entire universe just came into being for no reason at all no explanation that just seems to me to be unbelievable so maybe and you know i'm not i'm sorry i'm not alone on this uh i wanted to quote for you a passage from david hume of all people in a letter he wrote to john stewart um [Music] in 1754 uh in which hume said this but allow me to tell you that i have never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause i only maintained that our certainty of the falsehood of that proposition proceeded neither from intuition nor demonstration but from another source in other words what hume was saying was that he couldn't prove the causal principle that anything that begins to exist has a cause but he regarded its denial as metaphysically absurd and so he believed the the principle and i would be very happy to simply say that the causal principle is a metaphysical assumption of the kalam cosmological argument um [Music] so that anyone who who shares this assumption should follow the argument to where it leads that there is a cause of the universe right well i sir if i understand the quote correctly i i'm certainly in agreement with hume that it is an absurd proposition to think that anything could come into existence on cause i don't believe that i don't think that objects within the physical universe could come to exist on cause and so i cert i certainly don't believe anything could come into existence on cause um oh you just you made another point right after that that was really interesting and i already forgot it this is why i'm not a good note taker no anyway um but what you do think is that something can come into existence without a cause namely a universe well okay so let me ask okay here so so why is there an argument for why we should think that the scope of the causal principle is metaphysical and not yes that's a really good point because it's not a physical principle i i i think this is so important it is a metaphysical principle as i say that underlies western philosophy all the way back to the pre-socratics it's not like boyle's laws uh or the second law or the conservation laws of thermodynamics or laws of gravitation it's not a physical law that simply governs our physical space-time arena but this is a metaphysical principle that being doesn't come from non-being um and that therefore nothing can come into existence from nothing their their something comes into being only from something else there needs to be a cause of something coming into being so what what folks like yourself have to do is to try to provide some reason for restricting the causal principle to this physical universe or or within the physical universe i mean but deny its applicability to the universe as such right misunderstanding so so i think that when somebody um objects to the causal principle by saying you know this is something that applies to you know things within the universe the interaction of efficient and material causes within time and space um that what they're doing there is challenging the assumption that the scope of the causal principle is in fact metaphysical and not physical right so to my ear it does no good to respond to that objection by reasserting the very thing being questioned which is that the scope of the causal principle is metaphysical that that sounds question begging to me so so my question to you is why should we think that the scope of the causal principle is metaphysical after all we've only experienced with things within the universe anyway well again because it is stated as a metaphysical principle it's not stated as a merely physical principle the way a law of nature is so the person who wants to restrict the scope of the principle needs to provide some sort of justification as i think you've tried to do with your argument about material causation but i think that leaves us as i say with an absurd situation um [Music] so that the principle is is simply i mean historically it's it's been part of metaphysics it's not part of science it's presupposed i suppose by science but the principle of it itself is part of and always has been part of metaphysics well you could rephrase what i'm saying here in a way that's amenable to that right you could say you know there's a lot of daylight between you know whatever begins to exist has a cause and you know it being inexplicable why anything and everything doesn't just pop into being uncaused out of nothing right so wait that's the second argument though that we haven't gotten to yet that's true that's true but um the only reason i mention that is because i want to say that there there are plenty of alternatives here right it could be the case that um the causal principle as stated is false it could be true that there's an uh you know a different causal principle is true instead but this causal principle is false for example graham oppe has a causal principle he offers that's that all non-initial things that begin to exist uh have a cause it could be true that whatever begins to exist has a cause within time and spit you know whatever begins to exist within time and space has a cause there are many possibilities for why the causal principle could be false that don't commit us to thinking that there's just chaos you know what i mean well now i would agree with both of the principles that you just stated that all non-initial things have a cause or everything that begins within space and time as a cause but the point is that those more restricted versions of the principle don't justify a denial of the broader principle that um being cannot come from non-being that something cannot come from nothing i i just can't well i mean you say you believe that i guess and and that if that's what you believe fine um but i could i could never i'm like i'm more like david hume you know i could never believe what to me it seems so absurd is that things could come into being without being caused let me let me ask you a very well no i'm not never mind okay go ahead you go ahead oh no now i want to know the question oh yeah me too all right i wish mayor scott i mean for me this is a very personal issue right this is serious business it's not just looking for an academic refutation of a proof we're trying to here to get it reality and figure out the nature and meaning of the world and so i wonder would i be willing to stand before god on the judgment day and god were to say to me why didn't you believe in me and i would say well because i thought the universe might have popped into being uncaused out of nothing i think god would look at me and say you what uh i'm just not prepared to do that sort of thing are you right but i but i i reject that imagery right i don't think that's what by denying the causal principle i don't i don't think that's what is entailed by it that that that seems wrong to me right that the idea that there was this and perhaps you could unpack this right because i don't really understand the reasoning behind this and i admit that you know that i i don't see how you the universe did any coming from if there's no such thing as anything earlier than the universe and and we also agree that there's no such there's nothingness is not like an actual circumstance that could obtain it's not an actual state of affairs so whence cometh the universe right i mean it seems to me that as long as you stipulate those two things that there's no such thing as before the universe and there's no such thing as nothing then then what do you mean when you say that the universe came from nothing there's no nothing to come from i've answered that when when i say from nothing you mean not from anything right right i agree with that right it came not from anything and i think that well the question is is that metaphysically absurd to think that the universe came into being not from anything uh but even even came into being like i would phrase it differently right i would just say the universe didn't come from anything not that the universe came from not anything i would say the universe didn't come it didn't do any coming there was nothing well it was like a verb you know what i mean it crimes it's a tensed verb and the beginning of the universe i think is a tense fact remember my analogy of the yardstick it's not just that the yardstick has a first inch but that the yardstick came into being in the sense that it began to exist so the verbal tense is important here on a tense theory of time which i've gone to great efforts to defend um yes and i i can see that that's not something i'm prepared to disagree with you about you are the world's probably foremost expert on the difference between a and b theory of time and the arguments between them all i can say is that intuitively uh b theory seems more right to me um uh okay but but i but i also don't um i don't want to and i don't believe i am hinging my objection to the kalam cosmological argument or the causal premise in this case uh on b theory uh i i wouldn't want to make that mistake well so far in our discussion today if i were to summarize your position it seems to me that your misgivings are that necessarily every efficient cause is accompanied by a material cause and since that isn't the case at the beginning of the universe therefore the universe began to exist without a cause and you're willing to simply bite the bullet and affirm that metaphysical fact right and and again this goes back to your your heuristic about intellectual price tags right because right that's right to my ear the hot you know what what what accepting the conclusion of the kalam cosmological argument commits us to is is a lot um we have to we have to accept that there are um unembodied minds that there are timeless persons we have to accept that an effect can be produced without anything having been affected anywhere at all we have to accept we have to sacrifice a lot of features of causality as we understand it so so if all these things are true i just i know wait i don't want to i want to look at that you don't have to sacrifice a lot of features of causality you would just say that some common features of causality are not necessarily essential to causality but those other elements you mentioned are quite right that's right um so and so i think for our listeners they have to assess where does the higher price tag lie um right and so and conversely um i i think the only bullet that i'm really biting is that be things beginning to exist having causes is a common feature an extremely common feature but it can't possibly apply to everything right it couldn't apply to the universe itself for some of the reasons that i've i've given that to me that doesn't seem like a huge bullet to bite especially given you know how ill-equipped we are in in terms of our intuitions about how the world really works well i think that the big bullet that you bite scott is that as a result of your argument you're stuck with the universe coming into existence without explanation for no reason at all uh without a cause it's the the view that my friend quentin smith used to say the universe came from nothing by nothing and for nothing uh yeah sort of a nice gettysburg address well yeah that doesn't mean the bullet you're gonna bite uh given your your principle that every efficient cause must have a material cause as an accompaniment and i would rather let that go by the board than give up the idea that the universe beginning had to have some sort of explanation yeah it seems to me sometimes it's oh sorry yeah we've only got about 10 minutes left and i was thinking that it might be fun to turn to the second argument that dr craig normally gives i would like to discuss that for about 10 minutes it is a follow-up argument scott to the first we've been talking about suppose you're willing with scott to bite the bullet and say things can come into being without a cause or things can begin to exist without a cause to put it more neutrally then as arthur pryor pointed out you face this very difficult question why is it only universes that come into being without causes why can't beethoven or bicycles or root beer or anything just come into being or begin to exist without a cause once you allow an exception to the principle that everything that begins to exist as a cause then there's no answer it seems to me to that question and yet obviously things aren't popping into being uncaused all the time around us yeah yeah i ha i have two thoughts about that um one is that it seems to me that we can make a kind of parody argument on the other side of that like your defense of of the kalam cosmological argument entails that uh it's not impossible for events to occur uncaused right and so now to me that really runs afoul of my intuitions right that events you know events can just happen spontaneously uncaused and so i would ask the same kind of question i would say well if it's possible for one event to occur uncaused it becomes inexplicable why anything and anything doesn't just occur like why isn't my pen just floating up in the air and spontaneously combusting why aren't windows breaking unpaused all the time now let me let me interrupt at this point scott and say that while the causal premise is formulated in terms of substances rather than events that everything that begins to exist has a cause it doesn't deny that every event has a cause it it just says i'm not committed to that the argument doesn't commit me to that if i were to deny that every event has a cause it would probably be for reasons of libertarian freedom namely that i'm not a determinist and so i think that agents personal agents can freely bring about causes without being determined to do so but that's a quite different debate with respect to libertarian freedom the the kalam argument is just neutral as to whether every event has a cause so there's no parity available there we're right but the lesson as as i take it here is that well here you have an example of something you know in this case events you know you if you allow for mental events you know right and and and yet clearly you agree that just because mental events like in in you know in the context of libertarian free will can and can occur without a cause it's not inexplicable why other events like my pen floating in the air uh can happen without a cause right so so clearly it doesn't follow that just be if if it's the case that the universe is uncaused then we would expect to see things objects within the universe popping into existence uncaused all the time well now libertarians would typically affirm agent causation with respect to acts of free will it's not as though acts of free will just happen uh randomly there there is an agent there who can freely choose to do this or that but in the case of the universe beginning to exist see there's nothing prior to it on on atheism there's there's nothing there so if that can happen without a cause anything should be able to happen without a cause because there's nothing to restrict it yeah see i think of it the opposite way right i think okay if if there were time before the universe you've got like nothing happening nothing happening nothing happening and then pop universe that i would completely deny that that's possible right but when we're not talking about a circumstance like that we're just talking about the universe just being there uh at all temporal points right and again i know that that goes into a theory and b theory and i'm not probably yeah is not committed as such to saying that time began at the creation of the first event um you know people like alan padgett and richard swinburne john lucas and others have just discussed the idea that there could be a kind of non-metric time prior to the moment of creation so i try to open alternatives to people rather than close them off and i'm open to the idea that there was time prior to the creation of the physical universe i don't think there was but i i'm not prepared to say that that's impossible and in that case you need to ask yourself how do you yeah i mean if you think that suppose you think there was time prior to the beginning of the universe yeah that would certainly agree that the universe began the universe had a cause yeah yeah so scott i mean wait a minute now look look what you've just done i mean i think you've backed yourself into theism here because on the view that time precedes the beginning of the universe you admit that the beginning in the universe would require a transcendent cause and that's exactly what people like richard swinburn john lucas alan paget and others believe so i think that you should become a theist yeah no it's true i don't find that objectionable but i think there are we don't have time to go into it but i think there are implications of that that are that are obviously problematic one question i i wanted to ask you for clarification is when you make this argument that it becomes inexplicable are are you making a a a wood kind of argument or a could kind of argument are you saying that if the universe is uncaused then we would see things popping into being within the universe or or that it's possible well i think i'm saying would that if the universe can come into being begin to exist without any cause at all then it's inexplicable why anything and everything wouldn't pop into being without a cause because there's nothing to constrain it you see there's nothing to constrain coming into being because there is no universe prior to the universe to make it the case that only universes can pop into being uncaused out of nothing well okay so so i do want to say to say that something is inexplicable i mean that you're you're not just saying you're not just asking me what's the explanation you're actually making a very ambitious claim here which is that an explanation is impossible i think that shifts the burden back on to you to show that that such an explanation is literally impossible now here here's here's an analogy right say i push the button yeah i thought i did that by my argument that there is nothing prior to the existence of the thing to constrain what sort of thing can come into being without a cause oh yeah so let me answer that yes yes so suppose um suppose i push a button for an elevator and the elevator door is open and i see that the elevator is at maximum capacity there's 15 people in there and i can't fit i can't get on the elevator let's say the elevator is analogous to the universe right the explanation of why i'm not getting onto the elevator is about facts in the elevator right it's the facts that have to do with what's already in the elevator not facts about what's outside the elevator it's not a perfect analogy but outside the elevator would be the nothingness so that this this argument that nothingness has it's not discriminatory excuse me it has no potential i don't think it's the nothingness part it's the nothing the side that's stopping something from coming into being it's the something that's stopping something from coming the problem is scott you've got to have something that it's explanatory prior to the packed elevator you can't use the packed elevator to explain it because that's already there you need something that is explanatory prior to the thing that begins to exist and there isn't any such thing on an atheistic view well that's just a different question though we can ask the question why are there all these people why is there an elevator and why are there so many people in the elevator but the question that you were asking well the claim that you were making is that it's impossible to explain why things don't pop into being uncaused all the time within the universe and i'm saying it's it's hardly impossible to explain that here are all these alternative it could be that the causal principle as phrased is false and some other causal principle is true instead it could be the graham opie's causal principle no no no no no wait there wasn't that no that wouldn't work that that that's the genius of this second argument the second argument is willing to allow you that things can pop into being uncaused out of nothing but it demands if that is possible then why doesn't just anything and everything pop into being uncaused that's arthur pryor's argument and i think it's such a powerful second step because as i say it allows you to say things can come into being uncaused out of nothing but then it asks why that isn't the case for everything and the reason an explanation is impossible is because there isn't anything explanatory prior to those things that would restrict what can come into being unquote i hate i hate to do this we are at the hour mark and that is the the time that we could give to dr craig i appreciate both of you guys for coming on dr craig is there anything that you'd like to say as we sort of yes i would like to say that it is wonderful to chat with someone who has thought so seriously and thoroughly uh about these considerations i i lie awake at night thinking about these things and i'll bet scott does too so thank you scott for this engaging discussion today i i can't tell you how much that means to me i have so enjoyed this conversation and uh again i thank you for your time and your generosity and your charity and uh this this has been great i've really enjoyed just been like this has been me the whole time just sitting back listening to the conversation you're a great interviewer that's what you got to do right it's a lot of these guys want to jump in too much uh well yeah thank you guys both for coming on it's been super super awesome again i was just sitting back listening to dialogue i loved it it was great but uh until the next video i will see you guys later thanks again for joining me and uh see you later all right hey it's me again uh actually don't leave yet i've got something super super important to tell you so first of all you're awesome like you you just watched a really really long video just now and you're still watching it that is actually pretty amazing secondly we have hundreds literally hundreds of other apologetics related videos for you to watch on our channel go check them out i've interviewed exorcist hosted debates between christians and atheists i've even made response videos to atheists all of that is available on our channel go check it out third i rely on people that see value in my work people like you that watch videos to the very end to keep the lights on around here literally this is how i feed my family so if you see value in the work that i do please consider supporting this ministry and becoming a patron links to that are in the description oh and uh have i mentioned that christianity

Channel: Capturing Christianity

Views: 39,970

Keywords: capturing christianity, cameron bertuzzi, apologetics, god, atheism

Id: TmYCwjU_5Wc

Length: 60min 27sec (3627 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 12 2021