Christian historian Dr. Wallace Marshall and I are debating whether or not enough evidence points to the existence of a god. For background and format, and Dr. Wallace’s opening statement, see entry one. For subsequent entries, see index.
That the Evidence Points to God (II)
Say with yourself, ‘Somewhat now is, therefore somewhat hath ever been.’
—John Howe, 1675 [1]
Let all the earth fear the LORD: for he spoke, and it was.
—Psalm 33, c. 1000 B.C.
In our opening entries, Dr. Carrier and I presented outlines of our respective cases. I’ll use this entry to develop the Kalam Cosmological Argument:
- If the universe began to exist, the universe has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
- The cause of the universe is most plausibly God.
Premise 1 is primarily derived from the causal principle, “Whatever begins to exist has a cause,” which is a corollary of the ancient philosophical maxim, Ex nihilo, nihil fit (from nothing, nothing comes). If it ever were the case that nothing whatever existed—no matter, no energy, no spirit, no God—then nothing could ever exist. Likewise, from the fact that something now exists, we can reach the simple yet profound truth that something has always existed; and that something is either the universe, God, or both.
I consider Ex nihilo, nihil fit to be a self-evident axiom of metaphysics. “Nothing” is simply non-being. “It” has no powers, properties, or potentialities: nothing that could turn into something or bring something else into being. To deny this would be “absurd,” as the atheist skeptic David Hume remarked. The causal principle, he said, is “a proposition, which indeed a Man must have lost all common Sense to doubt of.” [2]
There are three additional reasons to believe in the causal principle:
- It is a universally verified, and never falsified, principle of experience.
- If something can come from nothing, it’s inexplicable why just everything and anything doesn’t pop into existence out of nothing. Why is “nothing” so discriminatory about what it “turns into” and when it does so?
- As the late philosopher of science Bernulf Kanitscheider pointed out, a denial of the causal principle would put us “in head-on collision with the most successful ontological commitment” in the history of science, “a metaphysical hypothesis which has proved so fruitful in every corner of science.” [3]
At the very least, we should conclude that the causal principle is more likely than its contrary.
So did the universe begin to exist? (Premise 2). We now have compelling scientific evidence that the cosmos—time, space, matter and energy—is not past-eternal but came into being in the finite past at an absolute singularity or boundary. Although some cosmological models posit a multiverse or a succession of Big Bang’s or a future-eternal inflation, none of these models has been successfully extended to past eternity. [4]
As the eminent cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin stated at Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday party, “All the evidence we have says the universe had a beginning.” [5] Hawking calls this “the most remarkable discovery of modern cosmology.” [6] Even Lawrence Krauss, an atheist physicist who has gone through all kinds of contortions to avoid this conclusion, has conceded, “I agree all the evidence says the universe had a beginning.” [7]
In addition to the scientific evidence, there are two philosophical reasons to believe the universe has not always existed. First, mathematicians have long understood that you run into all kinds of contradictions if you try to suppose the actual existence of an infinite number of things. As David Hilbert, perhaps the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century, declared: “The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality…. [Its role] is solely that of an idea.” [8]
Herb Silverman, an atheist mathematician I debated at the College of Charleston, recounts of his early education, “The most important lesson I learned was that … the number ‘infinity’ does not exist in reality.” [9] But that implies that the number of past events in the history of the universe cannot be infinite, and therefore that the universe had an absolute beginning.
The second philosophical reason to believe the universe has a finite past is the impossibility of forming an infinite series by adding one member after another. That may sound complicated, but it’s actually not difficult to understand. If you were immortal and began counting today, it’s easy to see that you could never get to infinity, because there would always be one more number you could recite. The same logic applies to counting down backwards from negative infinity. If you were counting down the negative numbers from eternity past, you would have finished your countdown long ago—indeed, infinitely long ago—since at any point you would have already been counting for an infinite amount of time; which means that it could never be ‘now’ now—which is absurd, since obviously it is ‘now’ at this very moment.
So we have good philosophical reasons as well as scientific evidence to believe that the universe began to exist (P2). At the very least, the universe having an absolute beginning is more plausible than its existing from past eternity; from which, it follows from P1 that the universe had a cause for its coming into existence.
But are there good reasons to suppose that this cause is God? Yes. First, it cannot be a prior or early (quantum) state of the universe, because the above philosophical arguments would apply equally to that early/prior state. And as for the scientific evidence, there is currently no commonly accepted theory for how a multiverse or quantum vacuum could extend to past eternity. It is the origin of the whole matter-space-time manifold that we are trying to explain, not a mere iteration of it.
So what possible causes remain? In the nature of the case, the cause would have to be spaceless, timeless and immaterial, since whatever it is brought matter, space and time into existence. It would also have to be immensely powerful in order to have brought the universe into being. Surprisingly, only two options fitting this fourfold description have been proposed: an abstract object (say, a mathematical entity) or an unembodied, transcendent, timeless mind, which is how monotheism conceives God.
It cannot be an abstract object, because abstract objects are by definition causally effete. That leaves a divine Mind as the only alternative. In addition to abstract objects lacking causal powers, there is another reason for choosing divine Mind over abstract object as the cause of the universe. If the cause of the universal were an impersonal entity (in the philosophical sense of lacking will or intelligence)—as an abstract object obviously is—we would expect the effect (the universe) to be eternally co-existent with the cause, since there would in that case be no will to bring the universe into being at a definite point/boundary in the finite past.
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Such is Dr. Marshall’s first response.
Continue on to Dr. Carrier’s reply here.
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Endnotes
[1] John Howe, The Living Temple, in The Works of the Rev. John Howe, 3 vols. (London: William Tegg, 1848), 1:203-204; first published in 1675.
[2] David Hume, 1754 letter to John Stewart, and Letter #22, as quoted in Galen Strawson, “David Hume: Objects and Power,” in Reading Hume on Human Understanding, ed. Peter Millican (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 233. Atheist philosopher Peter Slezack similarly comments: “Only academics could be so ridiculous [as to suppose something could come into existence out of nothing]. If made seriously outside the seminar room, such claims would be evidence of clinical derangement.” Peter Slezack, as quoted by William Lane Craig in his August 27, 2002 debate with Peter at the Sydney Town Hall in Sydney, Australia. See Plato, Timaeus, 27-28, for a classic articulation of the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause.
[3] Bernulf Kanitscheider, “Does Physical Cosmology Transcend the Limits of Naturalistic Reasoning?” in Studies on Mario Bunge’s “Treatise”, eds. P. Weingartner and G. J. W. Doen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), 344.
[4] “We have no viable models of an eternal universe. The BGV theorem gives reason to believe that such models simply cannot be constructed,” Alexander Vilenkin, “The Beginning of the Universe,” Inference: International Review of Science, Vol. 1, Issue 4 (23 October 2015), accessed 4/16/2017. On the common misunderstanding of eternal-inflationary cosmologies being past eternal, here is Alan Guth, the father of inflationary cosmology: “We refer to it as eternal inflation, but the word ‘eternal’ is being used slightly loosely. Semi-eternal might be more accurate. It’s eternal into the future. We do not think it’s eternal into the past…. We’ve been able to prove, mathematically, that it’s in fact not possible to extrapolate arbitrarily far into the past.” Alan Guth, Interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Closer to Truth (PBS program), starting at about the 3:15 mark (accessed 1/6/2015).
[5] This is from a talk Vilenkin delivered on January 8th at Cambridge University to a group of scientists gathered to honor Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday, as quoted in Lisa Grossman, “Why Physicists Can’t Avoid a Creation Event,” New Scientist (Issue 2846) 11 January 2012. The gathering was entitled, “The State of the Universe.” Grossman opens her article with the quip, “You could call them the worst birthday presents ever” (as Stephen Hawking was on record at that meeting commenting that one of his concerns about the universe having an absolute beginning was that it had theistic implications. “A point of creation,” he said, “would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God”). Also see, in the following day’s issue (2847), “The Genesis Problem.”
[6] Stephen Hawking, “The Beginning of Time,” 1996 lecture (accessed April 21, 2019).
[7] Lawrence Krauss, commenting on Alexander Vilenkin’s remark, “All the evidence we have says the universe had a beginning,” made at Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday party. “Life, the Universe and Nothing: Is it reasonable to believe there is a God?” Dialogue with William Lane Craig at Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia, 16 August 2013, at the 53:46 mark (accessed September 20, 2013). “But,” Krauss added, “we don’t know that”—by which, as he made clear throughout this dialogue, he means “know with certainty,” which is quite irrelevant, as no one is claiming that level of epistemic confidence.
[8] David Hilbert, “On the Infinite,” in Philosophy of Mathematics, ed. with an Introduction by Paul Benacerraf and Hillary Putnam (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 139, 141.
[9] Laura Paull, “South Carolina’s Secular Crusader,” Tablet Magazine, 21 June 2012 (accessed 9/18/2012).
An abstract object or a disembodied mind? Has this guy read anything in eastern religions?
Valid point. Taoism offers a well-known third model. False lemmas are what the KCA’s final step always lean on.
So can we suppose you’re going to be an adherent to one of those eastern religions? Which one of those eastern religions do you think caused the universe? “None”, you say? So why would you suggest that Marshall read some eastern religion? Maybe he has and realized, where you couldn’t, how they’re not worth mentioning.
William, he means, the lemma is formally invalid. Not that this means Taoism, let’s say, is true; but rather, one cannot get to “God” without first ruling out Taoism. Yet its entire set of explanations is absent from the lemma. It’s entirely possible the KCA is a successful argument—for Taoism. Or any of a number of other Eastern-religion formulations. That would then mean we should be Taoists, not Christians. Obviously I don’t think it is successful at all, much less to that conclusion. But one still needs a formally valid lemma before one can conclude otherwise.
I’ve actually read quite a bit in eastern religion. My wife happens to be from India. What specifically do you have in mind as a third option that would meet the criteria I discussed above?
Right off the bat, Marshall is bringing his god into the argument (Psalm 33). One of the major puzzlement’s of man (how we got here) and he says his god spoke and brought it into being. I wonder what he was doing with it for the billions of years before man got here?
The universe had a beginning, no one doubts that, it’s a given. So the universe had a beginning? Doesn’t mean God did it. Marshall acts like he scored a point(s) by naming Vilenkin, Krauss, Hilbert, etc. Everyone seems to agree the universe had a beginning. And it will have an ending. When I die, there’s the ending. Who’s to say anything continues? It won’t be me.
I do like your point where you say “If something can come from nothing, it’s inexplicable why just everything and anything doesn’t pop into existence out of nothing.” I’m going to see what the experts say about it.
“The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality….” Your god is not part of reality?
“the cause would have to be spaceless, timeless and immaterial” You may be right but to say your god did it is a very big speculation. And what you have presented here doesn’t even begin to address any evidence that your god exists.
“If something can come from nothing, it’s inexplicable why just everything and anything doesn’t pop into existence out of nothing.”
To argue that, wouldn’t we require some experience with nothing? Is there some place where we can observe or test nothing? Wouldn’t it have to be void of space, time, particles, fields, and laws of nature?
MYSHKYN, I expressed myself wrong. I often ask myself why doesn’t something pop into existence, such as another universe, in this universe? Empty space has particles popping in and out of existence all the time. So, at some point what prevents another big bang occurring in this universe. That was my question concerning the quote (“If something can come from nothing, it’s inexplicable why just everything and anything doesn’t pop into existence out of nothing.”) from Marshall. I should have answered his question that some physicists say universes are popping into existence all the time. That’s known as the multiverse. Not a proven fact but something that is being seriously debated. But can “nothing” even exist? Is that possible?
Myshkyn, I gave four reasons why we shouldn’t think that something can come from nothing.
Right. But just focusing on the argument that things are not popping into existence from nothing (additional reason two), how do we know that isn’t happening if we have no access to nothing? In other words, how can we say something isn’t happening under certain conditions, when we can’t recreate or observe those conditions? Or, can we?
“the cause would have to be spaceless, timeless and immaterial”
The issue could be more clearly stated as follows and would remove the special pleading hiding in the above statement (while also showing that statement actually suggests an unsolved mystery): ‘the cause would have to be spaceless, timeless, and non-substantive’. The mystery is not just about space/time materiality but about existence. From where does the substance comprising God come?
Further, one has to provide some logical path to the acceptance of a personality that can say, think or do things without being in a space/time continuum. Those things appear to require space for storage of information and time for movement of action or thought. If one argues that a god is somehow providing his own space and time usage then it would be more probable that the space and time are emergent or eternal and that the god is an ancient alien. Space/time emerging or eternally existent without a functioning mind is more probable than with it.
Ken- To equate “immaterial” with “non-substantive” would be to beg the entire question of the debate. If God exists, to say nothing of human or even animal souls, the spiritual entities would obviously not be non-substantive, unless by that term you simply mean immaterial, which would take us right back to the term I used. God and spirits may or may not exist, of course, but one has to argue, rather than assume, the pro or con.
You ask, “From where does the substance comprising God come?” You probably know this, but in case not, traditional monotheism (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Deist–even some forms of Hinduism) conceives God as an ultimate entity that did not “come from” anything but has the cause of his existence within himself.
But furthermore, even if it were true or possible that whatever god/God that created the universe came from some higher God/Cause, and we didn’t know what that higher God/Cause was, that wouldn’t be a good reason for rejecting the conclusion that an immaterial, spaceless, timeless, immensely powerful and plausibly personal entity brought the universe into being. As William Lane Craig has often pointed out, “In order to accept an explanation of a given phenomenon as the best, it’s not necessary to have an explanation of the explanation.” If it were, one could never explain anything, because before one could accept any explanation, one would have to have a prior explanation of that thing, and so on ad infinitum!
Yes, I am aware of the theology. And thank you for your response. As far as I can tell, your main argument rests on the idea that there must be something eternal and the best solution to this is a timeless, intelligent being. This, however, does not solve the problem at all since the problem is not simply the materiality of the universe but materiality at all. That is the mystery.
Further, the solution proposed has a number of contradictions (being timeless yet able to think) and is less probable than other ad hoc solutions since the theory involves those plus an intelligent being. If it is possible for an intelligent being to be eternal then it is also possible for materiality to be eternal since God is some kind of materiality. What would it be that allows a super intelligent personality to be eternal but not the underlying substrata on it’s own?
You ask, “What was God doing billions of yrs b/f man?” Try checking the fossil record, visit an observatory, when you see distant galaxies you are viewing the past.
You say, “Who’s to say anything continues when you die?” Me! People die, universe continues, you’re just another person.
Concerning your curiosity of things popping into existence, make sure you take the advice of the experts that hate God to help you figure out what you can’t reason out for yourself.
You ask, concerning Hilbert’s conclusions, “your god is not part of reality?” Hilbert “obviously” is referring to the space-time universe which operates under the causality principle. If there is a “creator God” that brings this limited universe into existence doesn’t it seem clear that it follows that God wouldn’t be restricted by its temporality?
Your last paragraph you claim Marshall hasn’t begun to address any evidence that “your” God exists. What? You are ineffectively trying to shoot down evidence he’s presented so far. Remember, he is making a cumulative case for a creator and has an 1100 word limit in his posts, remember?
Why don’t you all out there try to post something that shows “your” atheism to be true instead of using a heckler’s tone to make your case for you?
Just FYI, I don’t think Hilbert ever discussed causality (at least not in any respect relevant here).
William Olson says: “Try checking the fossil record, visit an observatory, when you see distant galaxies you are viewing the past.”
Earth wasn’t even around while the greater portion or all of those galaxies was/are being observed. I asked what was God doing with the universe for the billions of years before man arrived. What was the purpose of the universe? Or maybe this “spaceless, timeless and immaterial” god is just slow. Or maybe man is not the purpose of the universe? And check the fossil record for what?
So life continues when you die? How do you know that? You’re speaking as a living person. You can’t know that you’re dead and there’s no evidence whatsoever that there’s life after death. So to be able to know that the universe continues after you die you’d have to be able to speak to someone after they’re dead. Have you done that? I think you’re assuming that life goes on after you die.
Reality – “the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.” So Marshall is saying, by quoting Hilbert, that his god doesn’t exist (see definition of reality and infinity is not part of reality (God being infinite))? My understanding of the god that Marshall is referring to is part of reality.
“You are ineffectively trying to shoot down evidence he’s presented so far”
I haven’t seen any evidence so far.
“post something that shows “your” atheism to be true”
My atheism consists solely of this statement “I don’t believe any of the things that religious people say about a god.” I don’t believe you. What do I have to prove? That I don’t believe you?
Charles, if you read my opening entry you’ll see that the KCA is not an argument specifically for “my God.” And above I give an argument, not ‘speculation,” as to why the “spaceless, timeless, immaterial” and (don’t forget) immensely powerful cause of the universe is plausibly God. What specifically do you disagree with in that part of the argument?
Dr. Marshall, concerning the KCA, when I was in the fourth grade I asked my teacher, “Where did God come from?” That’s what I disagree with as regards the KCA. I always define God as the cause that got me/us here. I don’t know what that is and it may be “timeless”, may be “spaceless” but definitely not “immaterial.” Of course, your definition of immaterial may be different than mine.
As far as immensely powerful and divine mind (you’re bringing your bible into this), I don’t see how you can come to that conclusion? Where did you come up with two options? There’s only one. How did this happen? I don’t feel that’s been answered. Or can be answered. Right now. We will at some point, though. I believe in mankind.
You answered someone above with “God as an ultimate entity that did not “come from” anything but has the cause of his existence within himself.” I basically agree with that statement. Something that sprang out of nothing that caused existence. I don’t buy the all powerful mind part. As they say “sh.. happens.” But everything that’s been said is speculation. Except sh.. happens.
Charles – You basically agree with the statement, “God as an ultimate entity that did not ‘come from’ anything but has the cause of his existence within himself”. Yet you say, “I don’t buy the all powerful mind part. As they say ‘sh..happens.'”. So are you saying that you think the universe simply happened for no reason without a cause? If so, this is a nonsensical position because the universe has been shown, scientifically, to NOT have the property of self-existence. The universe BEGAN to exist so to say it just happened without a cause is in effect to say it caused itself! Note that the Kalam argument is careful to state that all things that BEGAN to exist must have a cause. Scientifically we know the universe began to exist so it must have a cause, therefore by definition it does NOT have the property of self-existence.
God (the cause of the time/material universe) on the other hand, did not begin to exist otherwise he could not be an ultimate cause of the universe. Therefore, God (the cause of the universe) has the property of self-existence. This seems to follow logically and scientifically. It follows logically in that for anything that began to exist must have had an ultimate prior existing cause that did not itself begin to exist. This is logically necessary because an infinite past regression of “causes” that had to have a cause itself would never achieve the “now” that we all experience. It follows scientifically in that the current scientific consensus is Big Bang cosmology, which continues to be confirmed by observational evidence, and requires the universe to have a beginning. If a beginning, then a cause.
Therefore, Dr Marshall has supported the premises of the Kalam argument with both logic (evidence) and science (evidence). Given the premises are more plausibly true than false, the conclusion follows. Try as you might, you cannot effectively refute this argument. If you wish to present an effective refutation you need to take one or more premises and undermine them. I have yet to see it done successfully…
Of course Dr. Marshall has not in fact supported the premises. He has not even addressed my refutations of them.
B Clark, my thoughts on your post are that, logically, this all had to come from nothing. Because if you say “where did God come from” or “where did a fluctuation come from” you end up in a never ending circle. B Clark says: “the universe has been shown, scientifically, to NOT have the property of self-existence.” Is that the Cosmological argument? Nonsense and not scientifically proven at all. It’s an assumption.
Everybody seems to agree that the universe had a beginning. Why do apologists seem to think that is a big deal? Sean Carroll said (paraphrasing) that someone asked him why did all this happen? He answered, “Why Not?”
As for the rest of your argument, as Dr Carrier says above, “Of course Dr. Marshall has not in fact supported the premises. He has not even addressed my refutations of them.”
The assertion is that the classic definition of the Judeo-Christian God is the most plausible explanation. This assertion is justified by the requirements of the cause of this time and material universe. Logically, the cause of something can’t be that something itself, nor part of that something. Therefore the cause of the universe can’t be the universe itself or part of the universe because prior to the existence of the universe it would not have existed! Therefore, the cause of the universe must be other than the universe, thus other than material and other than time bound. Thus the cause must be immaterial and timeless. This aligns perfectly with the classical concept of the Judeo-Christian God. This is why it is most plausible to postulate God as the cause of the universe
We don’t actually know that self-causing entities are impossible (if we stretch cause to include things that can be simultaneous with their effects, the only way God can even be a cause). Nor do we know all things require a cause. Nor do we know there was a beginning to be caused. Thus we never get to god. Except by assuming things are true we have no knowledge of. Which is fallacious.
Why does it feel like I just read a WLC debate transcript?
“Marshall has a Ph.D….and currently heads the Charleston, SC chapter of William Lane Craig’s organization Reasonable Faith.”
Ah, that explains a lot indeed. I also see the regurgitation of WLC’s many times refuted claims.
Eelko- Theists and atheists have been debating for centuries now, and obviously each side believes it has “many times refuted” the other side’s claims. So the pejorative “regurgitation” doesn’t seem a fair designation from either side of the argument.
What is fair is to expect that with a series of arguments and counter-arguments that have been around for a while, each side will be fairly well acquainted with the counter case and be able to represent it fairly and accurately.
As I pointed out to Ron Beverly in reply to his similar complaint to my first entry:
“I would just point out that one oughtn’t judge an argument by how old it is, how often it is repeated, or whether it’s recited by people who are less educated or even idiots.
“One could lodge your identical criticism against the Problem of Evil: it wouldn’t mean the Problem of Evil is a bad argument.
“If anything, the fact that an argument has been around for a long time and is recited by lots of people might be an indication that the argument has at least some merit.”
Dr. Marshall,
If you are going to quote David Hilbert, you need to put the quote in context. He is talking about the existence of the infinitely small and the infinitely large. He claimed that he could not find examples of the infinite in physics: that doesn’t preclude the possibility. His arguments are based upon science, not philosophy. Nowhere in his essay did he actually demonstrate a mathematical contradiction that comes from assuming a real infinity exists. Neither of your quotes from mathematicians supports your claim: ‘First, mathematicians have long understood that you run into all kinds of contradictions if you try to suppose the actual existence of an infinite number of things.’ Mathematicians have debated whether or not an infinite number of things could actually exist, but I do not know of any have that have demonstrated any contradiction that would follow from assuming so. You need examples of such contradictions, not quotes about infinity not existing. The latter, in context, are what mathematicians would regard as conjectures, not theorems.
Your second philosophical objection to infinite time makes no sense whatever to me, a mathematician. You can’t count the negative numbers backwards an infinite amount of time ago. I get that this is your point: but your error is that you could never have even started ‘infinitely’ long ago. That’s not how the number line works. You could start 1000 years ago, maybe, but not infinity years ago. Particularly not if you are assuming this immortal being had a beginning. And certainly, once you start counting 1000 years ago, you are not going to be able to reach -infinity, for the same reason you already can’t reach infinity. So I agree that you can’t count to infinity, but that still doesn’t rule out an infinitely long past… just the existence of beings that started counting infinitely long ago.
Also, not being able to count to infinity is not an issue: that certainly doesn’t rule out an infinite future. You are confusing the size of the set with the elements of the set: the set of natural numbers does not include infinity as a number. In fact, your discussions about infinity show a very limited understanding of the mathematical concepts. It appears that you are always only considering ‘countable infinity’, where Hilbert was actually talking about uncountably infinite, which is strictly larger by Cantor’s diagonal argument. If you are denying countably infinite time, then that means that we only have a finite future. Thanks to Cantor, having an infinite countable future is equinumerous with having both an infinite future and an infinite past, so your argument forbidding an infinite past either forbids an infinite future, or requires you to be viewing time as a totally ordered set, which it is not.
Also, you defined God as an eternal mind which created the world. Now you state that god is spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and immensely powerful. Are you just going to keep adding properties to your definition of God whenever you feel like it? I certainly recognize that many believers assume their God has all those properties, but they are not universal. Definitions must be explicit. I also fail to see how a divine Mind that is timeless, immaterial and spaceless is not an abstract object.
Note: My reply (forthcoming) indeed touches on many of these points (with quotations of leading literature).
Note also: I suspect Dr. Marshall is an A-Theorist with respect to time (because W.L. Craig is), which is the basis for the artificial distinction he is relying on between potential and actual infinities (by contrast I, as with nearly all physicists today, am a B-Theorist). Of course, that there are always an actual infinite number of points spanning even your own fingernail is a problem for the “no actual infinities exist” crowd (as also the fact that calculus works by running infinite sums all the time). But they have metaphysical yoga for that too (based on old hand-wringing from early 20th century mathematicians like Hilbert, rather than a reading of any more current literature on transfinite mathematics). The introduction to the anthology Marshall cited Hilbert’s paper on actually covers this (as well as explaining why Hilbert was wrong), co-written by renowned philosopher and mathematician Hilary Putnam. Which I will also be pointing out.
Thanks for the clarifications Jacob. When I read the post this morning the quote-mine alarm bells were going off in my mind. I’m neither a mathematician or a logician but I have learned to beware the apologetic ellipse!
Jacob- Hilbert certainly does give a philosophical reason for believing infinite quantities cannot be actualized in reality. See his famous “Hilbert’s Hotel” argument. The medieval philosopher Al-Ghazali provides similar arguments, some of which appear in Kant’s famous “antinomies” in his Critique of Pure Reason.
Hilbert and other mathematicians (like Herb Silverman whom I also quoted) are obviously well aware of Cantor’s work and the whole discipline of transfinite mathematics in general. The question is not whether one can do mathematics with infinity but whether infinite quantities can be actualized in reality.
Your second paragraph seems to simply be illustrating and reinforcing the very argument I made.
You say, “Also, not being able to count to infinity is not an issue: that certainly doesn’t rule out an infinite future.” I take it you mean that even if it were true that past time is not infinite, future time may be. But this seems obviously false for the reason I gave in my argument above. Matter and energy could go on existing forever in some form, but if they once began to exist, their future, however long it goes, would never be infinite. It would just be an ever increasing number that approaches infinity but never reaches it.
You write, “Also, you defined God as an eternal mind which created the world. Now you state that god is spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and immensely powerful. Are you just going to keep adding properties to your definition of God whenever you feel like it?”
Of course not. Surely you are well aware of the classical conception of a monotheistic God, so the properties of that entity are not willy-nilly. Rather, the argument shows that some very important properties of whatever the cause of the universe is correspond with some of the essential properties monotheists have usually ascribed to God.
Finally, you say, “I also fail to see how a divine Mind that is timeless, immaterial and spaceless is not an abstract object.” It is not abstract because a divine Mind would have causal powers; abstract objects, as I pointed out, do not.
Premises 1 and 3 require a whole universe that operates according to “everyday” causality, but then the argument concludes that there must be an acausal causer at the front end. What a strange idea! First, we have no idea whether 1 and 3 are valid. It’s just an assumption based on everyday observations about much of our local universe. Second, if we are postulating acausal stuff that doesn’t have to meet anything other than some conceptual requirements for somehow pre-existing and motivating the universe, we can dream up a (conceptual, sure) infinity of options.
How about: alternative causal anti-verses with upside-down photonic robo-bunny-fairies who spontaneously create one another in a loop, then fart off things like our universe? Where did they come from? Doesn’t matter because causality is different for them. The loop thing is just the best we can do to conceive of what is going on. Must they be pure mind and uncaused? Naw, they are ring-caused and unmind.
David Albert says it best about something-out-of-nothing questions, whether critiquing Krauss or otherwise: it’s such a weird kind of question that we don’t have any real purchase at all. Why claim otherwise?
Two obvious questions: 1) Who or what created God? 2) If there was a God responsible for creation, is this being still alive?
Joey,
As you know, God (with a capital-G) is held by monotheists to be an uncreated, ultimate being. The being, whatever it is, is timeless, which certainly suggests not being created.
But as I pointed out above in my reply to Ken Browning:
“Even if it were true or possible that whatever god/God that created the universe came from some higher God/Cause, and we didn’t know what that higher God/Cause was, that wouldn’t be a good reason for rejecting the conclusion that an immaterial, spaceless, timeless, immensely powerful and plausibly personal entity brought the universe into being. As William Lane Craig has often pointed out, “In order to accept an explanation of a given phenomenon as the best, it’s not necessary to have an explanation of the explanation.” If it were, one could never explain anything, because before one could accept any explanation, one would have to have a prior explanation of that thing, and so on ad infinitum!”
You ask, “If there was a God responsible for creation, is this being still alive?” Again, his being timeless would certainly suggest so, as would his immateriality. The Moral Argument, which I will present later, requires God to still be living.
Dusn’t jesus/yahweh ixist IN time now post creasn? If memry survs, this is whot Billy Craig sez.
Kalam never gets to “and then god gone it.”
He has to make a positive case for god and so far all he has done is try to answer a mystery with a bigger mystery.
Jon,
My argument is a positive case for God. If your only objection to it is that God in himself is a greater mystery than the mystery of the creation of the universe, what of it? Who expects to come to the very fountain of being, the be-all end-all of existence, and encounter no mystery?
Besides, science itself routinely explains or seeks to explain certain phenomena by things that are more mysterious than the phenomena themselves, as anyone’s who read isome quantum physics will realize. If you are to be consistent with your objection, you’d have to reject all of that science out of hand.
Moreover, while God may be mysterious (and monotheists and pantheists alike think he/it is), as an explanation of the origin of the universe, the God hypothesis is remarkably simple.
Finally, whatever mystery there may be in God’s creating the world ex nihilo, it is at least a coherent explanation and lacks the absurdity of the universe popping into existence out of sheer nothingness. To use a favorite analogy of William Lane Craig, it’s like the contrast between (1) a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and (2) a rabbit appearing out of a hat without any magician!
“It would also have to be immensely powerful in order to have brought the universe into being.”
Though I’ve seen this mentioned by apologists many times, I still can’t understand their logic here. That means that a match that lights a bomb has more power than the bomb itself? The push of one domino stone is more powerful than the millions of stones that fall after it? The butterfly wings that flap are more powerful than the storm it causes due to the butterfly-effect?
For all we know creating a universe may require nothing more than a tiny sneeze from a timeless, spaceless, mindless space-goat.
I don’t understand your logic. Who lights the match? A person, a mind. That same mind can detonate the bomb which can light and even destroy the match. It’s not the butterfly alone that causes/creates the storm. There are other factors in operation. Put the butterfly on the moon and see if you’ll ever get a storm. Neither does the butterfly cause/create the other factors involved (heat, radiation, air, water, light, gravity and so on). I hope that helps you find your answers. BTW, “mindless space goat”? No substance here.
You also mentioned in another post Marshall’s “regurgitation” of WLC’s arguments. Much better than your vomit. C’mon, let’s all cut the negative tone and heckling. It just shows you are not seeking truths of reality. Try Carrier’s and Marshall’s demeanor as a model to reflect.
Eelko,
The three examples you gave are all disanalagous. Notice that in each instance, you suppose the “bomb,” “millions of stones,” or a “storm,” as already existing! None of this holds when we come to the creation of the entire cosmos ex nihilo.
I assume your last comment is made mostly in mockery, but notice that even there you present a logically incoherent concept. A goat is a physical entity and as such cannot be spaceless. Obviously it is not immaterial (one of the four characteristics of whatever the cause of the universe is, you’ll recall). Nor, as you describe it sneezing, would it be timeless.
Seems to me that Premise 1 has an ambiguity built into it. If “the universe” means “the set of all that exists or has ever existed or will ever exist,” then the universe necessarily contains its own cause (if a cause exists). The nature of that cause is undetermined, since the set of all that exists may contain forces, dimensions, or entities entirely unknown and currently or even in principle unknowable to us. The argument becomes an invitation to a generalized agnosticism about the ultimate nature of reality, not a defence of theism.
But if “the universe” means simply the observable universe (“the cosmos,” which Marshall defines in passing as “time, space, matter and energy”), then what we have is an unresolved scientific question, the answer to which may or may not be relevant to evaluating theism.
Robert- As you noted, I did define what I meant by the universe. I gave an entire argument for a particular answer to the question of the origin of the universe. Why not interact with the specifics of that argument?
I still don’t understand how Premises 1, 2 and 3 get you to god. And I certainly don’t understand how they deposit you at the feet of a Judaeo-Christian version of that god without a) a lot more logical contortions and presumptions and b) reliance upon a book (which implies circular reasoning from the get go)
Vincent- You may not have read my opening entry, but if you do you’ll see that I’m not arguing for simply the Judaeo-Christian God. But that aside, if you don’t understand the argument I gave, I’d just encourage you to go back and read it again and then point out some specific things that you either disagree with or you think are unclear in the way I express them.
Dr. Marshall appears to have rested his defense of the premises on an assumption: the universe came into to being from nothing (ex nihilo). But based on his definition of nothing, that’s not what scientific models would predict.
He supports this by making an appeal against infinites, but isn’t the claim of a past infinity being impossible basically just a reformulation of Zeno’s paradox? This essentially showed that while infinites “feel” impossible, they actually can be solved. Having an infinite past does not invalidate any one point (the present) occurring, nor the relative points before and after occurring in sequence.
If I am wrong in any of these, please correct me. I am very much trying to better understand these evidences/arguments.
Keith,
Indeed, you are not wrong.
‘The evidence that points to God’— is so invalidated by our such ungodly puny minds. Why was it done so? Not any created in god’s own image visible here! The Bible is simply one cultural creation myth of many, dated by the tools they had at the time: to look out and try to create some sense in what they saw around them. Gave some structure to the behavior rules, or code, formulated so they could optimally survive. Not much more. History, exaggerations, philosophy, moralizing, poetry, superstition was good psychology, the good, the bad, and the ugly all thrown in for good measure. They did come to some good observable scientific conclusions about behaviors— as of establishing rules to ensure accountability and ending human sacrifice. Then the xians try to reinstate unaccountability and human sacrifice. That makes it attractive and a big selling point for some. Done to create a lot of thought bending and inner conflict, also known as a circle jerk. So unbelievable they had to kill millions and have religious wars to establish their belief. Power travesties as ‘belief’. Cesar’s Roman Empire glory had to be maintained. Charlemagne obliged defending the Pope LeoIII from the invaders. He was rewarded—mafia style— by being crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Dec 25, 800. An event which brought death and hell to millions in Europe and elsewhere. Still does. So before anyone gets elevated into lofty arguments, look back into a most bloody and ungodly history as ever possible: because that is the irrefutable premise upon which you stand.
Keith,
The dominant model of the origin of the universe is an “ex nihilo” model. Scientists have not been able to construct a viable theory of how a matter-space-time-energy system could have always existed. As MIT physicist Alan Guth says, “Hard as physicists have worked to construct an alternative, so far all the models that we construct have a beginning; they are eternal into the future, but not into the past.”
Zeno’s paradoxes do have some relevance here but are not the same thing as I am saying. Take his paradox about the impossibility of traversing a finite length (say, walking across your backyard) because for any part of that distance you may walk through, you must first pass through half of that distance, and before that, half of that, and so on, to where you can never begin to move!
We know of course that something is wrong, because we actually DO traverse such finite distances all the time. Aristotle’s explanation was that the finite interval (length of your backyard) is conceptually prior to any divisions we might make of it, and that the Zeno’s intervals of distance in the example are unequal and therefore finite.
In the case of an infinite past, however, the intervals (moments of time) are equal, and the prior conceptual line is not the finite distance of your backyard but the infinite string of moments between the present and a past that has no beginning.
But Zeno’s paradox does highlight the important difference between a potential infinite and an actual infinite. A three-foot line is potentially divisible into an infinite number of points, but the argument I have given (it’s not original to me but has been around for a long tie) says that you could never actually divide that three-foot line into an infinite number of points. You could go dividing and subdividing forever, each distance being shorter than the previous one, but you would never reach an infinite number of divisions. Infinity is a limit you would forever approach but never reach.
Thanks for replying (both of you).
Dr. Marshall, I’m not sure I follow (maybe the word here is just “agree with”) your first paragraph. Even if I accept that scientists cannot create a viable model of how local matter-spacetime-energy could exist eternally, that does not imply creation ex nihilo. The general understanding I get from science is that they do not know what existed/happened before the Planck time. But we have multiverse theories (including our universe bubbling from another), transitional state theories (where our local universe is just a different from of pre-existing “something”), and quantum state theories (where a simple quantum state, not nothing by your definition, can develop our universe). All of those models are viable mathematically.
Also, I appreciate your engagement of Zeno’s paradox, and glad to know I was not completely off base there. That said, I still don’t follow the assertion that a past infinite is impossible because there could never be a “now”. That simply doesn’t follow. While it may be true that one could never be aware of all preceding causes (as they would be infinite), the awareness of those preceding causes has no bearing on their existence. A number line is infinite, but each integer is still unique. You do not need to count infinite integers in the past for 1 to be 1. Also, “now” is a perception of relative time, not a finite number, so it doesn’t appear to have any bearing on infinities.
Keith-
The cosmological theories you mention (whether single- or multi-verse) are not past eternal. Vilenkin and others have pointed out the scientific problems with positing a physical state of things that has existed from past eternity.
The past-finitude of the cosmos leaves us with two options: the cosmos (space, time, matter and energy) originating ex nihilo with no cause whatever, OR it being brought into existence by a cause that in the nature of the case must be immaterial, spaceless, timeless, and immensely powerful. My argument above evaluates the merits of these two options and concludes (I think on quite reasonable grounds) that the latter is more plausible.
You write, “While it may be true that one could never be aware of all preceding causes (as they would be infinite), the awareness of those preceding causes has no bearing on their existence.” Of course: but my argument has nothing to do with someone or something being aware of an infinite string of past events.
On the hypothesis of an infinite past, any “now” moment would have already come and gone and infinitely long time ago. We can posit an imaginary observer who is there counting down the negative numbers from for the entire infinite history of the universe. As soon as we do that we realize that any such observer would have completed his countdown infinitely long ago. That is the problem.
Dr. Marshall says:
As the eminent cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin stated at Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday party, “All the evidence we have says the universe had a beginning.” Hawking calls this “the most remarkable discovery of modern cosmology.”
But there is more to the story.
Hawking states:
And on his No Boundary proposal Hawking stated:
OU812INVU-
Vilenkin made his comments that I quoted long AFTER Hartle and Hawking developed the no-boundary model you reference. Putting aside various criticisms physicists have made of viability of the “imaginary time” element of that model, the main reason Vilenkin can say what he does is that on Hawking’s model, the universe still begins to exist.
Hawking himself, in his 2014 book “The Grand Design,” describes the model as the universe originating at a “south pole” rather than in a singularity as he and Penrose originally proposed (visualize the difference between the bottom of a sphere and the point of a “cone” one typically sees in Big-Bang-model illustrations).
Whether there is a “T=0” moment (as in the singularity) or simply a “rounded edge” beyond which there are no prior moments (as in the Hartle-Hawking model), space and time still come into existence.
Hawking (now putting on his philosopher’s hat in the second quotation you give from him, and trying hard as always to avoid the possibility of God [cf. his comments at his birthday party in the endnotes to my entry above; this is why the New Scientist article humorously quips, with regard to the talks given at his birthday, “You could call them the worst birthday presents ever”]) thinks that because on his model the universe doesn’t begin at at a point, he doesn’t have to answer the question, “What happened before the beginning of the universe?” (p. 135 of The Grand Design).
But that question applies equally to the singularity and the no-boundary model. Neither model has a “before moment” prior to the origin of the universe, because both represent a finite history of the universe.
Hawking seems to think that having a beginning implies having a beginning “point.” But Zeno’s paradoxes of motion show that this isn’t true.
Finally, just a general point that we need to beware of what sociologists call the “halo effect” when scientists move from discussions of physics to discussions of metaphysics and philosophy. (Advertisers rely on the “halo effect” when getting celebrities to endorse their products.)
There is of course nothing wrong with scientists discussing philosophy. One of the things that makes modern cosmology and physics so interesting is precisely their convergence with philosophy and theology at certain points. But we need to be aware that when scientists move into philosophy, they are no longer speaking from within the realm of their expertise, and often they have little to no training in philosophy. As Einstein observed, “It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.”
Dr. Marshall says: “As Einstein observed, it has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.”
Isn’t philosophy just speculation/BS? What we’re all doing here?
Science is just philosophy with better data. All scientists are philosophers. They only suck at it when they don’t train as generalists and try to reason well outside their specialization. Good philosophers are generalists.
See Is Philosophy Stupid?
One more thing to note. Einstein should have also observed that scientists are also poor theologians. Hawking asserts that Genesis gives a creation date of 4004 BC. Wrong. He was apparently duped into believing that Ussher’s and Lightfoot’s date for creation was to be accepted by all Christian theists. I doubt you’ll find many Christian theists on this forum holding that view. Nowhere in Genesis does it mention 4004 BC. There wasn’t even a “BC” in existence when it was written. The “days” of Genesis are obviously wrongly interpreted to be 24 hour periods. This shows that both atheists and theists can be wreckless thinkers. We can’t conclude that theism or atheism is false because of the errors some it’s adherents cling to or make.
Why don’t we accept that we simply can not know what our origin is?
Things seem to be as they are within our limited set of observable dimensions (space, time, matter).
We need time to explain our observed changes in space and matter.
We need space to explain our own bodies being and our ability to move around with our bodies.
We need matter to explain our ability to think and experience.
2D beings can not experience what 3D beings experience. 3D-ers can bring a 2D-er in to being, the reverse is impossible. A man can create a painting wheras a painting can not create anything.
When we are an creation of some higher dimensional beings we can never prove (either by theory or by observation) a begin or end of our dimensions (space, time, matter).
We don´t know how this universe came into existence. Maybe science will find the answer. So let´s wait till the day the answer is found. Until then: don´t speculate.
Speculating is okay. That’s what cosmological science mostly consists of: abducting hypotheses (speculating) and adducing ways to test or rule out those hypotheses.
The problem isn’t speculation. It’s elevating speculation to the status of probable fact that is fallacious; in fact, pseudoscience.
Speculation is rightfully elevated to probable and even laws all the time. Speculation of motion, gravity, etc are now even more than probable, they’re called laws. I agree in some areas though. Some people incorrectly treat evolution (most specifically macro) as a law. Now if you disagree with that, explain “origin of life” or how it could be possible from natural processes. How does nature collect all the correct left handed amino acids sequenced into all the necessary correct proteins necessary for all the parts of a functional cell system in a hostile environment. It seems fair to speculate that a mind would be helpful. Don’t need Bayesian equations here. The super minds on this planet can’t get one cell put together from basic amino acids even in a controlled environment. Mathematical chance? Check with Charles Thaxton. Check the works of Stephen Meyer.
By randomly mixing gazillions of them across gazillions of planets across gazillions of galaxies for billions of years. That’s how.
In fact, that’s the only way a mindless nature could do it. Thus the fact that that theory predicts the unusual observations that there are gazillions of planets and galaxies and has been billions of years is evidence nature did it mindlessly and thus is evidence against a mind having been involved. Otherwise, that mind weirdly made the evidence look exactly like it would have to look if no mind was involved. Which evinces deception. A curious thing to propose of a supposedly moral mind; least of all one that supposedly wants us to know it exists.
Dr. Marshall stated:
I could just as easily say that there is of course nothing wrong with theologians discussing science. But we need to be aware that when theologians move into science, they are not only no longer speaking from within the realm of their expertise, but are also inherently bound by a mindset and belief that anything that seemingly contradicts their particular brand of religuous “inerrant” dogma can’t be true.
Furthermore many Christians seem to be under the impression that scientists (as a whole) are out to disprove their religious beliefs.
But that is not the case. To the contrary most scientists go about their work with complete indifference and disregard about what any particular religion claims or beliefs about how the world actually works. So when their scientific findings often contradict some of the most fundamental religious beliefs (e.g. Creationism, Young Earth) that is inevitable and happens rather organically.
“If the universe began to exist, the universe has a cause.”
Right away, I have issues. Causality is necessarily temporal, and Wallace’s own argument allows that “time, space, matter and energy” all began at a definite point in the past. There is no meaningful way to say “before” that point in time. It’s as nonsensical as trying to go north from the north pole; you’re as far north as you can go. If you go to the first instant of time, you cannot go back any further. Which is problematic, since you cannot speak of causes that took place when there was no time in which they could preceed them.
“Premise 1 is primarily derived from the causal principle, “Whatever begins to exist has a cause,””
Which is an assertion, not a demonstration. The problem comes about when people like Lawrence Krauss try to argue that there is actually a situation in which something comes from nothing and paired virtual particles spring into existence out of “nothing.” Krauss has been told that empty space with quantum gravity and background radiation isn’t sufficiently ‘nothing’ to demonstrate a counter-example of Premise 1.
The problem with that, however, is that if there is no state of “nothing” that we can observe or have ever observe, how is it determined that something can’t come from nothing? Have you ever seen something come from nothing, I would be asked. But that’s the problem. Under the ‘total state of non-being’ definition of nothing, I’ve never seen it. Neither have you. Neither has anyone else. And if we’ve never seen it, never experiencced it, never witnessed it do anything or fail to do anything, we can’t say anything about it. “From nothing nothing comes.” How would you prove it. “From nothing something comes.” How would you prove it?
Let’s go down one step further. “Nothing exists.” What does that even mean? What does it mean for there to be nothing. If you’re talking about a state devoid of all properties, how can that even be said to exist, for isn’t existence a property? But even if we grant that existence is the one and only property of this nothing, doesn’t that mean that there’s no limitation on what it could do? Why couldn’t a state of existent-non-existence produce things? Are there limits on what it can or can’t do? Isn’t that further properties that you’re attaching to this thing that we just agreed was devoid of all properties.
This may be a fault of my own imagination, but whenever I hear the philosophical “nothing”
“I consider Ex nihilo, nihil fit to be a self-evident axiom of metaphysics.”
I don’t. Now what?
William Olsen wrote:
As David Mills author of Atheist Universe wrote:
Consider that it was only in recent centuries that scientific findings revealed what would prove to contradict a long-held belief in a 6000 year old earth (based on biblical geological history). In 1862, the physicist William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin published calculations that fixed the age of Earth at between 20 million and 400 million years. Then following the development of radiometric age-dating in the early 20th century, scientists now believe the age of the earth to be over 4.5 billion yers old.
I defy you or anyone else to provide evidence that prior to the 18th Century you could find many (if any) theologians that refuted the long-held creationsit belief that the earth is roughly 6000 years old. You won’t be able to because those were long-held religous beliefs. And the only reason that many modern day Christians have abandoned such beliefs is because scientfic findings have forced their hand to do so.
So are we to believe that prior to the 18th Centuries all theologians were “wreckless thinkers”? If they were relying on an honest account of Genesis chronology then I would suggest that was the case. Modern day theologians are still “wreckless thinkers”, it is just that many try to re-interpret scripture to get around such obvious problems (with scripture).
The 4004 BC wasn’t even known until the yr 1650 calculated by Archbishop James ussher. In 1642 John Lightfoot calculated a date of 3928 BC. Christians have been curious about the meaning of “day” (yom in Hebrew) going back to Augustine. It may be safe to speculate that others before Augustine were curious. This answers your challenge that you defy anyone to provide earlier evidence. Both atheists and theists used to be flat earthers. Nothing wrong with changing your mind when good evidence is presented. Not all Christians have embraced young earth theology so no mind changing there. So do we say atheism is wrong because some atheist flat earthers at some time changed their mind? Of course not. Notice the disingenuous heckling/tone of Mills which you quote. I speculate he has a general hate for theism. There’s no problem with scripture. There are confessed difficulties in proper interpretation/interpreters just as in science. Yes, wreckless thinking on both sides.
“The 4004 BC wasn’t even known until the yr 1650 calculated by Archbishop James ussher. In 1642 John Lightfoot calculated a date of 3928 BC.”
Response: Fair enough. You point out that it wasn’t until around the 16th century that someone did the work to determined what what the scriptures had to say about the chronology of man. So it wasn’t until some time later that anyone even did the work to calculate what the chronology translated to (from a number of years standpoint). And what it translated to was wrong (Modern human fossils found to be 300,000 years old). It is just that it didn’t become apparent it was wrong until scientific discovery sometime later.
So to summarize it had been wrong from the beginning, it wasn’t until sometime later that anyone even did the work to figure out what the chronology numbers translated to, and sometime later before scientists proved it was wrong all along.
“So do we say atheism is wrong because some atheist flat earthers at some time changed their mind?”
Response: No. However if atheists (like theists) held a belief some type of “inerrant” dogma that they refused to admit was wrong (even when the evidence clearly shows that to be the case in many instances) then that would put them more on par with their theist counterparts in that respect.
“There’s no problem with scripture.”
Response: There are just so many places I would go with this. So much territory to cover.
Here are a few primers to get you started and hopefully enlighten you:
The 2 most influential Christian theologians lived before Darwin and rejected literal creationism.
St. Augustine, 4th century, debatably the most important extra-biblical Christian theologian. He did not believe the 6-day creation story and strongly advised against taking Genesis literally in his work “The Literal Meaning of Genesis.”
https://geochristian.com/2009/03/17/augustine-the-literal-meaning-of-genesis/
St. Thomas Aquinas, 13th century, debatably the other most important extra-biblical Christian theologian. He too strongly advised against taking Genesis literally, quoting Augustine.
A Christian can accept evolution.
RA Fisher was a 20th century geneticist who practically invented modern statistics, including the venerated theories underlying the p-value and hypothesis testing. He was probably second in impact to the field of evolutionary biology only behind Darwin.
He was a devout Anglican.
The great Belgian Cosmologist Lemaitre was a priest. He proposed the Big Bang Theory.
Mendel is the father of genetics (pre-evolution but foundation of evolutionary theory). He was a Catholic monk.
Historical Christianity is not anti-Science.
There is a reason the west won, and it’s not because white people are the smartest – they aren’t.
Historically, western scientists were mostly (not all) Christian working at institutions with Christian roots.
Ampere, Kepler, La Grange, Kelvin, Presbyterian minister Thomas Bayes (the famous Bayes theory), Theologian Libenez invented Calculus, Copernicus, Newton, Pascal, and many more were all devout Christians.
Without the Christian educational institutions, we’d still be in the dark ages. The church built the west.
Unfortunately, most of us were only taught the negatives of church history. These deeds were tragic, but similar atrocities were committed by almost every major society around the world.
John wrote:
“A Christian can accept evolution.”
Response: Not without rejecting Creationism (e.g. God created man in His own image; LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life)
John wrote:
St. Augustine, 4th century, debatably the most important extra-biblical Christian theologian. He did not believe the 6-day creation story and strongly advised against taking Genesis literally in his work “The Literal Meaning of Genesis.”
Response:
To quote David Mills from Atheist Universe:
“Another means by which non-literalists attempt to pervert Genesis is by claiming that the genealogies were not meant to be interpreted literally—i.e., that the genealogies are in fact metaphors. But how could a dry and colorless list of names and numbers be a metaphor? A metaphor for what?”
“Let’s review a mercifully brief sampling of the Genesis
chronology from Genesis, Chapter 11: Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu. And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug. And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor. And Nahor lived nine and
twenty years, and begat Terah.”
“Honestly now, did the author of the above genealogy intend a literal or a metaphorical interpretation of his data? If we are to interpret these names and numbers metaphorically, then I suppose that the telephone book—which is also a list of names and numbers—is also a collection of deeply profound metaphors.”
And…
“Genesis and the scientific method are mutually exclusive. They cannot be reconciled. How, then, do we explain the wildly popular belief that the Bible and science are, in the end, harmonious? By (1) perverting science, as the Fundamentalists do, or by (2) perverting the Book of Genesis,as the non-literalists do.”
So it sounds like St. Augustine was indeed a non-literalist who perverted the Book of Genesis in an attempt to reconcile it with science.
LOL
The primordial origins of material, motion, and causation are unsolved riddles. Every attempt to solve them fails at some point. Theistic criticisms of a claimed materialist solution are often valid, as are materialist criticisms of a claimed theistic solution.
No demonstrably sound solution to the riddle of primordial origins has yet been published.
RC: “Of course, that there are always an actual infinite number of points spanning even your own fingernail is a problem for the “no actual infinities exist” crowd (as also the fact that calculus works by running infinite sums all the time).”
Points do not exist, they are abstractions of zero dimension. An actual infinity would be an infinity of actually existent things, and no such infinities have been shown to exist.
“the fact that calculus works by running infinite sums all the time”
The result of an integral is not, in general, an exact sum, rather, it is the limit of the summation, with dx being the limit as delta x goes to zero, not the exact zero dimension of a point.
WM: “Matter and energy could go on existing forever in some form, but if they once began to exist, their future, however long it goes, would never be infinite. It would just be an ever increasing number that approaches infinity but never reaches it.”
Indeed, the words “indefinite” and “infinite” are very different. Time will progress indefinitely into the future, but never arrive at infinity no matter how long it progresses, as can easily be shown with an inductive argument.
Infinity is a timeless concept, more along the lines of instantaneously boundless. Since an infinite future time can never be arrived at by a real process of time progression, it is incoherent to speak of a past infinity of a real time process that presently has arrived at now.
Thus, the riddle of primordial origins remains unsolved. The speculation of god adds nothing toward a solution because the assertion of a god that exists outside of time and absent any material is also incoherent. The notion of an existent non-material entity is just a nonsense term, If a thing is not material then in what sense can it be said to exist?
Theists commonly place disjoint words together to form terms that seem to solve a riddle but are in fact incoherent terms that solve nothing.
WLC: “In order to accept an explanation of a given phenomenon as the best, it’s not necessary to have an explanation of the explanation.” If it were, one could never explain anything, because before one could accept any explanation, one would have to have a prior explanation of that thing, and so on ad infinitum!”
Ok, then perhaps we will never arrive at an ultimate explanation and the riddle will remain unsolved for all future life intelligent enough to consider it. Based on the lack of progress over millennia of attempts by some very brilliant people this seems to be the most likely case.
WM: “The dominant model of the origin of the universe is an “ex nihilo” model.”
No. The dominant model in science for the origin of the big bang is the “nobody knows” model. Any scientifically respectable alternative to the “nobody knows” model should be prefaced with the caveat “highly speculative hypothesis” in all caps bold at the top of the paper.
It has also been suggested that something can come from nothing because there is nothing stopping it. That doesn’t follow, because events occur due a mechanism causing them, not due to a lack of a mechanism preventing them. Nothing has no mechanisms, so there are no mechanisms to cause anything to occur, irrespective of the lack of preventive mechanisms.
So, every attempt to deduce primordial origins fails.
The only evidenced conclusion is based on our observation of conservation of material. Material is never observed to appear from nothing or disappear into nothing, material exists, therefore material has always existed and will always exist.
Inventing a fanciful god or set of gods only makes the problem worse by introducing unevidenced incoherent unknowns.
That depends on what you mean by “sound.” Many fully plausible and internally coherent models have been published. The only defect they have is we haven’t been able yet to empirically test any of them to know whether they are true. But theological models aren’t even in the running. Not a single one has ever passed peer review in cosmological science.
Even outside cosmological science, philosophy has published models that are plausible; I myself have published multiple plausible models. They likewise are not known empirically to be true. But they require far fewer assumptions than any theological model. And are therefore inherently more probable. Even as their truth remains unknown.
That’s not true. Points must exist; elsewise the distance between two points would always be zero. The only way to get a span of space is to sum an infinite number of infinitesimal places to be. Ergo, points. Otherwise, those places to be would not exist; and if they don’t exist, any sum of them will always be zero (as the sum of any non-existent things is by definition always zero).
Try as you might, you can never describe any span of space that has places a thing “can’t” be; and you can never describe any span of space as the sum of finite places to be, that doesn’t leave an infinite number of other places to be. So there is no escaping the reality of actual infinities.
Of course. Doesn’t change the fact: infinite series can total finite sums; and calculus runs infinite sums in finite times all the time. If actual infinities were impossible, calculus could never get a result—or all its results would be logically invalid.
Not on present science. Einstein’s theory of relativity entails infinite futures have already been reached, by all unobstructed entitles traveling at the speed of light. You are fallaciously assuming there is some second extra time in which time gets reckoned up. But that’s not the case. Time is just time. And all time already exists, relative to all speed-of-light reference frames (google “B-Theory of Time”). Time is merely a location. We experience its passage only because we are in it. Outside it, it’s all happened already.
And if you shoot a flashlight into space, and any photon in the beam never hits anything but continues indefinitely into the distance, it reaches infinite future time instantly, owing to the Lorentz transformation: all entities traveling at the speed of light pass infinite distances in zero time, relative to their own frame of reference; they only go slower to observers outside that frame of reference. Thus the entire infinite history of a photon is experienced instantly.
This and many other reasons are why cosmological scientists all agree infinite spaces and times exist in most cosmological models matching present observations.
That this is true of events in law-governed spaces that already exist does not entail or even imply it is true of null spaces governed by no laws (“mechanisms”). To the contrary, the absence of all laws, entails the absence of all constraints on what can happen. We do not observe such conditions, because we live inside a place governed by laws; we have never been able to observe any space governed by no laws. But observation is unnecessary: the model entails infinite potential. No constraints means no constraints. Not the presence of constraints. Therefore, if there ever was such a place, a place governed by no laws, we know it will have been constrained in no way whatever. By definition. The only question is whether such a space ever did exist. And what would probably result from them.
Since so far the debate is focusing on the KCA, I’ve been thinking a bit more about it.
Marshall writes:
I was thinking “ya, everything we’ve verified has a cause, seems like a safe thing to accept”.
But the more I thought about it, the more I saw I couldn’t put this together with the Kalam argument.
In order to use it in Kalam, what can “cause” consistently mean here?
I mean, he says it is not time or space or physical stuff. So what’s left that fits his supporting statement of being “verified”?
Let’s be real, what we’ve verified is called physics. Particle is at location x (a dimensional coordinate in space), and in the next moment it is at location x+1 or whatever.
The only confirmed thing we have to go on for causality, I think, is that the moments are comparable, and “causality” is the relation between the contents of these two moments.
But what about Marshall’s proposed “cause”? It’s nothing like any of that. It lacks the physical contents, and even the moments and locations. What’s left that is recognizable as causality? How can you even call it a cause? How can you even make sense of it? Even if “it” existed, what would you have to analyze (at least conceptually) to determine “this is the cause of that”? And what would be the causal relation between them?
And what part of this mind-bender is now “universally verified”? Everything we’ve verified is absent from it.
(indeed, it starts to look similar to proposing “nothingness” as a “cause”, I see no identifiable difference, at least in terms of causality)
His argument only seems plausible at first glance if you don’t think about it and see that his words are hiding the vast gulf between what we have confirmed and the incomprehensible inarticulable things he is proposing.
Just FYI: Your thinking is very close to some of the formal peer reviewed analysis of the impossibility of divine causation by philosopher Evan Fales in his detailed treatise Divine Intervention.
If the infinite doesn’t exist in reality, then God, being infinite, isn’t real and its role is solely that of an idea.
If things that exist must have a cause, then a God that exists must have a cause and hence is not the prime mover. If you allow for one self-causing cause that you call God, then why wouldn’t the universe be self-causing? And even assuming a cause is needed, why necessarily a single one? A multiple causes hypothesis works as well and even better. I’m disappointed to hear so easily refutable theistic arguments.
“So what possible causes remain? the cause would have to be spaceless, timeless and immaterial, immensely powerful, an unembodied, transcendent, timeless mind, which is how monotheism conceives God.”
This is absurd. It seems to me Marshall is presenting two options here:
(1) Either the universe began uncaused, which is something we never experienced, since, according to him, there is evidence everything has a cause.
(2) Or an unembodied mind with superpowers caused our universe, which is something even more absurd, since we have never seen someone with superpowers and without a body. Everything that exists (as far as science is concerned) is material and have very limited potentials.
Supposing these are the only two options: from the atheistic perspective both options are empirically absurd and unreasonable. However, the first seems to be more parsimonious since it requires less ad hoc assumptions and is simpler, while the 2nd tries to save causality but introduces an entire new realm with angels, demons, heaven and hell, other than the scientifically known material reality. And this is even harder to accept than a single and simple uncaused moment.