We are here debating the Kalam Cosmological Argument from a deistic rather than theistic perspective. Carlo Alvaro is taking the affirmative; Richard Carrier the negative. See our initial entry for all the details, including an index to all entries yet published.
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Dr. Carrier’s strategy has been the following:
- Maybe things aren’t the way we know they are.
- So it is possible that they are the way I imagine them to be.
- Therefore, they must be the way I imagine them to be.
He has used the same approach for P1 and P2 of the Kalam.
Also, he has complained that I have not talked about my god. Dr. Carrier (and his devotees) should not complain about this because I was not invited to debate that question, but rather, “Is There at Least a Merely Deistic Kalam Cosmological Argument?”
On P1. Dr. Carrier writes,
“…current laws of physics cannot describe conditions prior to the production of those laws of physics.”
There are no conditions prior to the laws of physics and Dr. Carrier has not given any evidence that there are.
Dr. Carrier triumphantly declares victory over this point, but he should know that it is a hollow victory. He showed no evidence and then he says he did.
On mathematics. He writes,
“all mathematicians and theoretical physicists agree that actual infinities are possible.”
Math does not prove that actual infinity exists in physical reality. No mathematician can guarantee that what seems conceptually possible is physically possible. For example, in transfinite arithmetic, inverse operations (subtraction, division, extracting roots) are prohibited in order to preserve logical consistency. This (among a host of problems) shows that actual infinity is merely a concept that is not and, cannot be, physically instantiated. Moreover, as I already observed, arguing from possibility to necessity is modally fallacious.
On science. Dr. Carrier has conveniently exploited our scientific uncertainty concerning the origin of the universe. “Science does not say that the universe began with the Big Bang” Dr. Carrier declares. Well, our current understanding of it actually does!
From the textbook Astronomy Today: The Solar System, 9th edition, published by Pearson (November 13, 2017) © 2018 – Eric Chaisson Tufts University – Steve McMillan Drexel University:
The Big Bang represented the beginning of the entire universe—mass, energy, space, and time came into being at that instant. Without time, the notion of “before” does not exist. Consequently, some cosmologists maintain that asking what happened before the Big Bang is like asking what lies north of the North Pole!
From Stephen Hawking’s “Brief Answers to the Big Questions”:
You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. (Hawking 2018, p. 38) New York: Bantam Books.
Alexander Vilenkin from “Did the universe have a beginning?”:
“There are no models at this time that provide a satisfactory model for a universe without a beginning.”
And see Audrey Mithani and Alexander Vilenkin, “Did the universe have a beginning?” (20 Apr 2012), p. 1, where they state:
“None of these scenarios can actually be past-eternal.”
Dr. Carrier continues saying that he presented evidence. No one of the papers he has cited says that our current understanding is that there was something before the Big Bang.
Furthermore, the following are good indications that Dr. Carrier neither reads what I say not does he care. He writes,
“Alvaro implied (albeit shadily avoiding actually claiming) that his colleague, astrophysicist Michio Kaku, teaches that “the Big Bang theory says that there is no spatiotemporal dimension prior to the singularity.”
This is what I said in my previous entry:
“I teach in the same university where Michio Kaku teaches. Careful now! I am NOT saying that Michio Kaku agrees with me.”
Also, Dr. Carrier continues his ad hominem attack claiming that my understanding of cosmology is outdated. In addition to the sources above, again, all physicists with whom I confer say the same, that the Big Bang is the beginning of time, space, matter, and energy, and that there is no time or space prior to that. It is true that there exist alternative models, but at present they are just fancy models—nothing more than that.
It is regrettably clear that Dr. Carrier was never interested in having a fair-minded exchange; rather, he seems more interested in increasing website traffic audience engagement and Patreon donations.
And it is unfortunate that over the course of this debate, Dr. Carrier always has avoided discussing his own view. Did the universe come from nothing? Has the universe always existed? What does Dr. Carrier believe? Which view is more plausible than the Kalam?
I am willing to change my mind on the Kalam if good evidence can be presented against its premises. So far, all the critics of the Kalam—including Dr. Carrier—have spectacularly failed to refute it. In order to refute it, you must show good evidence that the premises are more likely to be false than true. “Maybe” is not evidence at all.
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Go Back to the Index for the Debate
I am deeply offended by the dishonest conduct in this closing statement. Dr. Alvaro has quoted materials out of context to create the false appearance of support for his position that current Big Bang theory entails a beginning to time and space. All physicists agree we do not know that it does—even the physicists who have proposed speculative models of the Big Bang when it does.
I will now here in comments document this deception item by item.
(1) The full quote from Chaisson, Astronomy Today (a textbook about the solar system, not the Big Bang; which makes this a secondary and not a primary source anyway):
This describes competing speculative models: all physicists agree either is possible, just as I said. There is nothing here about any physicist claiming the Big Bang entails a beginning. They agree it is unknown and therefore debatable now. I extensively documented this already. This brief paragraph in a secondary textbook on an unrelated subject is not adequate to explain that anyway. You need to cite the primary scholarship it is summarizing. Which is what I did, throughout this debate. See the endnotes in my Closing Statement for examples and breadcrumb.
Note how Alvaro hid the rest of the quote, and chose an improper secondary source to cite, misrepresenting what it said and could support.
Apart from those why try to strawman the Big Bang Theory, it never has claimed to be the beginning of everything. It merely says the early universe was in a hot dense state and expanded. The rest is speculative.
(2) Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to Big Questions (2018), p. 58:
Hawking is only discussing his own speculative theory of the Big Bang in this book. He does not discuss the state of the field or what is possible apart from his own model.
He also did not finish the book; he died while writing it. We therefore cannot take this as what he would have wanted published. It was just a draft.
But it is dishonest to present Hawking’s own speculative theory as a statement that only his theory is entailed by the Big Bang and to thus imply he would not have admitted if asked (were he still alive) that pre-Big-Bang models are also possible on current observations and that we do not yet in fact know what is the case. To the contrary, Hawking admitted other models were possible that didn’t have our Big Bang as the beginning.
This is therefore an impertinent source. Compared to all the sources I cited that actually discuss the question at issue (of what is possible and known, and not known, about the Big Bang, rather than isolated pet theories), quoting this here appears dishonest and evasive to me, as much as name dropping Michio Kaku was in a paragraph claiming “eminent physicists…tell me that the Big Bang theory says that there is no spatiotemporal dimension prior to the singularity,” while the only one he named teaches the opposite of that (as I documented).
This is shady. And it is not acceptable behavior for an academic.
I have to agree, your adversary is trying to pretend the BBT is something it is not. There is speculation that it was the origin of the local presentation of spacetime, and possibly there are other spacetimes from which it emerged ( a wider ‘cosmos’ we know nothing about)
(3) In the video of Vilenkin’s lecture that Alvaro quoted, here is the whole quote in context (mins. 34–35):
Notice he is talking about his own estimations of probability and personal preference, not to what’s possible or what the Big Bang entails.
And this, you notice, refers to “a question” he asked earlier. Here is that context (from minutes 3 and 4):
The Big Bang is never discussed in this lecture. Vilenkin is not talking about that and never says anything pertaining to the Big Bang “entailing” a beginning to spacetime. He is talking about sequential multiverse models, wherein we are a bubble universe, prior to which could be countless prior bubble universe, and thus our Big Bang is not the first one.
When Vilenkin argues that the sequence must have a finite starting point, he means many many Big Bangs prior to ours, not ours. He also elsewhere admits (as I cited in this debate) that even this conclusion is only true for classical spacetime. A quantum singularity is unknown in its effects on spacetime solutions and therefore we cannot say the universe is past-finite prior to a quantum state of it, because we literally lack the physics to answer that question.
This is all explained in the interviews and papers I cited, including direct interviews of Vilenkin on the point. Which Alvaro either did not read, or dishonestly tried to deny the content of with a misquote of Vilenkin out of context, misapplying a discussion of the bubble nucleation of universes to “the Big Bang.”
His second quote of Vilenkin is the same…
(4) The paper by Audrey Mithani and Alexander Vilenkin, “Did the universe have a beginning?” (20 Apr 2012), was answered by Leonard Susskind’s paper that I cited in this debate (Leonard Susskind, “Was There a Beginning?”, MIT Technology Review). Alvaro either did not check my sources and did not know that, or he did and chose to conceal this fact from our readers.
When Vilenkin and Mithani say “none of these scenarios can actually be past-eternal” they are, again, speaking of sequential multiverse models, not the Big Bang. You can read the paper for yourself to see this. On the very same page and crossing onto page 2:
Notice the qualifier: a “potential” problem (so, we don’t really know this for sure). And notice the conclusion: they do not say that our Big Bang was therefore the beginning; they are saying a past-sequence of Big Bangs that precede ours must be finite (and only on the assumptions they adopt, which they admit are not known for sure; e.g. “if” the volume continues, if entropy is conserved through a quantum singularity, etc.). Likewise on p. 4 (“the simple harmonic universe cannot last forever,” i.e. it can still last a long time, therefore our Big Bang need not be the first).
So this is an impertinent quote, misrepresented by Alvaro as about the Big Bang (it is not), and as saying the Big Bang entails a beginning (this paper never says that, just as Vilenkin never said that in the misquoted video lecture).
Even insofar as Vilenkin believes it likely the past sequence of Big Bangs is finite, this is only his admitted opinion, as something likely, not as something he is saying is entailed by observations.
Hence I cited Vilenkin saying the following, as I also cited in this debate: Alex Vilenkin in “Before the Big Bang 9”; see timestamp 21:07ff.:
Those are Vilenkin’s actual words. You can watch him speak them. Alvaro is trying to conceal these words and pretend Vilenkin said the opposite, by quoting an article and a lecture out of context.
I also cited Physicists & Philosophers debunk the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Watch Guth and Vilenkin explain all this there (context starting around minute 31; Guth in minute 32; Vilenkin in minute 34).
Direct quote from Guth (and you can watch him say this yourself):
Guth is then asked if there are still possible models that are past eternal. He answers “Yes, that is right.”
Vilenkin then says:
One of those is discussed by Sean Carroll in the other video I cited in this debate (the Quantum Eternity Theorem), Kalam Cosmological Argument 2: Physicists and Philosophers Strike Back (around minute 32), where Carroll explains “we don’t know” whether the past is finite or eternal, because we don’t have a theory of quantum gravity that can answer that question, and thus even the BGV cannot answer it (it assumes spacetime remains classical and thus only follows if a quantum theory doesn’t change anything about that, yet it likely will).
That video goes on interviewing many scientists pointing out that because we do not know what happens in a singularity at the quantum scale, we cannot know whether the rules of classical entropy or spacetime still hold at that scale, and therefore we do not know if the past is eternal or not; we lack the physics to answer that question.
Even Wikipedia knows this. Likewise Physics StackExchange.
In my experience it’s normal for Christians to introduce distortions, quilt-quoting and misrepresentations to try to force their own delusion through. It’s always been this way with them, they cannot help it unfortunately.
Dr. Alvaro is not a Christian. But a broader generalization may apply: “it’s normal for religious believers” to do this, owing to cognitive dissonance psychology. Delusion operates that way. Once they have decided something is true and need to believe it is true for whatever reason, this very motive risks eroding their moral character, inducing them even to tell lies in defense of it. And then act indignantly when caught.
There are two other “outs” available to them. Evasion (avoid ever debating or arguing their beliefs, so as to not have to tell lies to defend them) or escape (when their moral character forbids either lying or evasion, they abandon the belief, however difficult or painful that is).
All of that is what I said in this debate.
Alvaro has thus only responded to what I actually said by a series of disingenuous misquotations that do not even address what I said, yet Alvaro dresses them up to “seem” like they do, just as he did with the pointless namedropping of Michio Kaku (the only named source he ever gave us on this point before this).
The material I quoted is available to anyone. For example, the textbook chapter is online here: http://lifeng.lamost.org/courses/astrotoday/CHAISSON/AT326/HTML/AT32602.HTM.
The Vilenkin one is a video lecture where he states that our current model entails a beginning.
The Hawking is a famous statement that you can find everywhere and you can buy his book.
Also I have a statement from Dr. Nari Parameswaran: “That is why I said it is fair to say that space and time come into being with the Big Bang.” (I will forward you that email)
The problem here is that Dr. Carrier hates to be wrong.
I just refuted all of those statements with direct quotes from the actual sources and the men themselves.
You, Dr. Alvaro, are now lying.
And I’ll await the honest context of the private quote from Dr. “Nari Parameswaran” (it’s actually Parameswaran Nair), because it already looks like you are lying again, since there are clues in your own cherry pick that suggest the context undermines you: “That is why I said” (omitted context: the why he said that) “it is fair to say” (not that it is entailed but that one can have reason to propose it) “that space and time come into being with the Big Bang.”
I’m willing to bet he agreed there were viable models in which that is not the case, and that we do not actually know for sure which is the case. And if you manipulated him so that he didn’t realize that was the issue when you asked him, I can always catch you out by asking him to clarify that very point. But you could do that yourself, and report the results here.
I do not believe you will.
As predicted. Dr. Alvaro sent me the email exchange he quote-mined. It reveals he falsely represented what was said.
This is what Parameswaran Nair actually said (in an email to Carlo Alvaro dated Monday, March 25, 2024 9:50 AM):
Note that Dr. Parameswaran Nair is not answering the question Dr. Alvaro claimed. He is answering the question of whether current spacetime (our spacetime) began at the Big Bang, not whether there could be spacetimes prior to it.
Indeed, he is repeating what I have said several times in this debate: we have no working theory of quantum gravity yet, and that makes it impossible to say what preceded the Big Bang. That is why Dr. Nair says “matter/energy” might not have begun at the Big Bang: it could be derived from something preceding it. And that is why he said he means “classical” space and time began at the Big Bang, on our side of the singularity; not all possible space and time. Hence “our notion of space and time make sense only after” classical physics condenses out of the Big Bang.
If Dr. Alvaro had asked him, instead, whether there are viable models that our universe (our spacetime) emerged from or was caused by a universe prior to ours, as proposed by eternal inflation (and that is just one example), we all know how Dr. Nair would have answered: the same as Vilenkin, as quoted above: “Yes.”
It’s like taking candy from children isn’t it? We know that science has no certain knowledge about conditions where our mathematics breaks down and produces infinities (singularities) so we know that no scientist can claim with certainty that the BBT entails the origin of all there is. So any selective quoting Alvaro uses to misrepresent their views is bound to be discovered. And so it was!
But Dr Carrier already refuted those claims and it is clearly nonsense to state that Scientists know that the universe had a beginning. Nothing in the BBT warrants that conclusion. Some cosmologists believe it has always existed, some not – neither is based on a firm understanding of quantum gravity because we don’t have that.
You keep deleting my comment. All the cited material is available online or by purchasing books, especially university-level physics textbooks.
Dr. Alvaro, your comments are visible.
No one deleted them.
They published automatically. They didn’t even go to moderation.
And I did not remove them even for a moment.
My vote for The Winner: Alvaro.
For the entire debate, Dr. Alvaro did not cite any specific physicists or mathematicians or expert sources by either that supported his position. (He only vaguely said that “he kept abreast” with current physics and “consulted” with colleagues). He did not even rebut or comment on the many specific sources cited against him. Then, in a closing statement, which is supposed to be a summary of what went before, he starts offering citations, knowing that there will be no opportunity to respond to them.
What an unseemly tactic — maybe “dirty” is the better word — that by itself should disqualify him in the view of fair-minded observers.
I feel the same.
I do not object, however, to new sources being cited in an unanswerable closing. But they do have to be honestly cited: the information presented has to be true and relevant to what has been said, and therefore it has to be something that cannot properly be objected to (since supposedly they only reinforce what was already argued in the debate).
But Alvaro used this opportunity to dishonestly cite sources, fabricating support with deceptive quote-mines from impertinent source material. And that is what is beyond the pale for me.
Dr. Alvaro wrote:
Dr. Alavarado I should point out that the Kalaam argument in of itself does not make the specific argument for a deity (or creator), but rather SOMETHING that is eternal (and came into existence without a cause).
You could’ve just as easily left the argument at that. But it was you who felt the need to take the argument one step further in stating in conclusion that it must’ve (necessarily) been a “god” (creator), with these statements:
-and-
-and finally-
So to be clear it was YOU who (for whatever reason) felt the need to introduce and continue to reference your “god” (creator) into the debate and ongoing discussion. Once you did so it was fair game for Dr. Carrier and others following the debate to question you on that point. It is like in a court of law where questions on certain topics can be out of bounds for the prosectuion to ask (for relevance of other reasons), but if the defense lawyers bring it up first then it is only fair for the prosecution to be able to ask follow-up questions on that topic.
Admittedly this is not a court of law and the same rules not necessarily apply. It is just an analogy, but I think you get my point. The point being that it is unfair to introduce something into your argument and then complain when someone questions you about the very thing that YOU brought up.
You made it seemed relevant (to your argument), until someone questioned you about it.
And then suddenly (and conveniently) it was no longer relevant.
Indeed, no attempt was even made to distinguish god from “a host of other absurdities” that one might similarly conclude from a Kalam-type argument. I was expecting many things, but ignoring that entire paragraph completely and complaining about it being brought up wasn’t one of them.
Well said. And this seems to underline Alvaro’s own tactic:
“Maybe things aren’t the way we know they are. (aka there is a god)
So it is possible that they are the way I imagine them to be. (aka there is a god)
Therefore, they must be the way I imagine them to be.” (no consideration of anything but a god)
I find it rich that Dr. Alvaro accused you of ad homs then he proceeded to personally attack you by denigrating your motives ala increased web-traffic, Patreon donations, etc. He is a philosopher–he should know better.
Dr. Carrier wrote:
I tend to give people the extreme benefit of the doubt before I accuse them of lying.
I consider the possibility that maybe they have an extreme case of confirmation bias along with just repeating information they’ve gathered from unreliable sources (e.g. apologetic websites) claiming to have sound and authoritative knowledge on various subjects.
But when you pointed out “The full quote from Chaisson, Astronomy Today”, along with all of the other instances where Dr Alvaro has taken things out of context, it becomes all too clear that we’re not dealing with someone who is being intellectually honest here.
What a shame.
I’m still waiting for the discussion to look at a) radioactive decay as “uncaused” and b) the revision of the meaning of causality in light of relativity.
This did not come up because his peer-reviewed paper (which we are debating) established them not to be relevant. See my related comment on this point.
A lot of verbiage has been spilled by Dr. Alvaro here. But in the end, it’s rather straightforward: it is a fact that many (perhaps even all?) relevant experts in the fields of theoretical physics and astrophysics allow for the possibility of either an eternal past (e.g. Sean Carroll, CIT), a multiverse (e.g. David Deutsch, Oxford), a cyclic model of big bangs and big crunches (Roger Penrose, Oxford), or some kind of quantum initial state (e.g. Alexander Vilenkin, Tufts). Scientific models such as these demonstrate that P2 is not established as true and thus P3 fails. All else aside, that’s that for the Kalam.
Dr. Alvaro is free to ignore all of these scientific models, of course, but doing so has removed his participation here from the realm of honest debate and into the fetid outlands of religious apologetics. Because it is quite clear now that Dr. Alvaro has started from his preferred conclusion (a god exists and created the universe starting with the Big Bang) and then has worked backwards to find any kind of argument that supports it. And when those arguments fail (as they inevitably do when trying to support the existence of the supernatural), rather than acknowledging this in the tradition of an honest philosopher, he instead handwaves, misrepresents, dismisses without justification, makes groundless assertions, and knocks down strawmen right and left.
But this debate did demonstrate one thing: intelligence, formal academic training in logic, and having easy access to current scientific knowledge is no guarantee against irrational faith in religious claims. The moment one has to defend such a belief, logic and science and even honest communication are all on the chopping block. Dr. Alvaro has thus been a stark and sad reminder of how religious beliefs can undermine critical thinking and intellectual humility, even amongst our brightest.
What a perplexing end to an otherwise normal debate.
I’m stunned at one particularly audacious sentence in Dr. Alvaro’s conclusion: “There are no conditions prior to the laws of physics.”
First of all, it’s plainly not supportable, as many of Dr. Carrier’s links and scholarly quotations make clear. There are perfectly reasonable theories that model some sort of spatiotemporally different quantum state with its own parameters, distinct from the physics we know. (These models are far from intuitive, and I don’t pretend to understand them fully, but I would never deny they exist.)
Second, it undermines his own thesis. If there are no conditions that precede (at least logically if not temporally) our spacetime and its laws, then under what conditions(!) could anything have existed to give rise to that spacetime and its laws? There is no logical space remaining in which to situate any such first cause… much less to posit such a cause having the characteristics of a deity (even the most minimalistic, deistic kind).
At the end, I’m left wondering what the philosophical import of Dr. Alvaro’s interpretation of the Kalam amounts to anyway. If it’s merely a way of positing “insofar as our universe began, then logically some entity began it, an entity which no longer exists and which never has nor ever can interact with humanity in any way, shape, or form,” then even if one were to stipulate that as true, how would it be philosophically relevant (much less spiritually relevant!) to anyone or anything?
These are points worth making.
But to be fair to Alvaro, I was being as charitable as possible and assuming he did not mean by those words that “there are no conditions prior to current physics” (that’s not even true a few moments after the Big Bang) but “there are no conditions prior to any possible physics,” i.e. tautologically, before any physics exist, no physics exists.
That is true, although only for contingent physics. This was a point Alvaro seemed never to understand. He seemed to ignore the possibility of logically necessary physics. We do not know if there is any or what it would be; but for that same reason, we do not know (and thus cannot state as a premise) that there isn’t any.
Alvaro’s entire point was that his P1 does not apply to “eternal” things. He was using words weirdly, confusing eternal, which means infinite time, with logical necessity, which means ‘always exists whenever there is a place or time to exist’. He actually meant P1 does not apply to “logically necessary” things, which is correct, because those things do not “begin” in the sense required by his P2. They are not brought about by something else but exist simply because they cannot not exist.
This is actually the case with my nothing-state model: I am describing the state that is logically necessarily the case when we remove everything that is logically possible to remove (and hence, remove all contingent facts). That would thus qualify for his “eternal fact” and thus eliminate deism. He never got this point, because he never got around to defending deism in any sense.
The point here is that his P3 cannot get to any deity (a point I made in my first reply and my closing). It actually gets us back to atheism (once we reinsert basic epistemological principles like Ockham’s Razor and evidence-based reasoning).
P3 also just happens to not follow because P2 is not established. But it is important to note that I do not deny P2; my point is that we do not know P2 is true. P2 could well be true. And P1 could well be true, but not in the sense his argument requires (since he insisted on distinguishing spontaneous changes of state from caused changes of state and thus refused to accept a nothing field-state as satisfying P1).
Thus, his argument either is unsound, or its conclusion is trivial and irrelevant to any atheism-deism debate—depending on how one semantically interprets the meaning of its premises. He never gained or restored clarity on this point but remained confused the whole debate.
I think Dr. Alvaro is not aware that in the early phases of the big bang, the laws of physics keep changing as the universe cools down. He probably thinks the current laws of physics already obtained during the big bang and so cannot envision they would not exist at point 0. It appears clear to me that he has little knowledge of the big bang and has only gathered whatever information fits his model. There is no substitute for a scientific mind.
I think it’s more likely we have no idea about these things and the rational position is to be agnostic. After a promising start this was a bit disappointing, I don’t feel like any progress was made after the first few posts. Ending on an actual ad hominem attack about web site views and patreon seems quite distasteful. I disagree with Dr Carrier on many things and am not a devotee, he does hate to be wrong but your behaviour was worse in this instance. Hope we do better next time.
Agnosticism on this singular point is indeed credible. Merely because there must be some ground of all being (whether a temporal first cause or an ontological foundation sustaining reality) tells us nothing about what it is likely to be (whether a nothing-field state, a quantum tunneling event from a false vacuum, some other ultra-simple first state, or an existential accident, or a deity of any alien and bizarre kind sufficient to explain observations). “We don’t know” is therefore the only conclusion. From that point by itself. This is why the Kalam is ineffectual and pointless.
The question of what is likely can only be answered empirically. Empirical facts then make agnosticism no longer viable, and atheism the only credible position.
All empirical precedent supports it (Naturalism Is Not an Axiom of the Sciences but a Conclusion of Them).
All other pertinent evidence supports it (Bayesian Counter-Apologetics: Ten Arguments for God Destroyed).
And any attempt to conceive of a god so theoretically gerrymandered as to “explain away” (and thus still fit) all of those facts is a Cartesian Demon, which inherently has a minimal probability from excess theoretical complexity (We Are Probably Not in a Simulation and The Argument from Specified Complexity against Supernaturalism).
Hence after any complete analysis (beyond the Kalam), the burden of evidence now lies with the theist or deist; and they have never come even remotely close to meeting it (Misunderstanding the Burden of Proof and The Argument to the Ontological Whatsit).
I think it would be really enriching if you (Dr. Carrier) wrote an article whose focus is this point, that is why you are convinced that agnosticism is not credible when considering all the evidence. I know that theism is edging on being impossible and I agree with atheists on many points. However, it still seems to me that a general indifferent creator of sorts is probable (I specifically chose pobable, not possible and not more probable) and hence I am an Agnostic. Of course, I come from a journey where I was raised and remained a conservative Muslim for 27 years so I already acknowledge that this may have something to do with me finding this general deity probable even after converting to agnosticism.
I know you linked here to several articles but one consolidated piece with this itself as a central theme would be really interesting.
On agnosticism:
Indeed, I have written that up: Misunderstanding the Burden of Proof.
Also pertinent is Who Is an Atheist? and my general trend of arguing for naturalism (and not just against theism):
Bayesian Counter-Apologetics: Ten Arguments for God Destroyed
Naturalism Is Not an Axiom of the Sciences but a Conclusion of Them
The Argument from Specified Complexity against Supernaturalism
Thanks a lot for your response!
I will make sure to read them thoroughly.
Thanks for the reading suggestions, I’m sure I’ll find it interesting. Ultimately if someone rolled a dice inside a box and we couldn’t see the result, we would both agree it can’t be seven. You might say it’s probably not 6 and I would agree with that, but ultimately it’s beyond our knowledge.
I don’t deny naturalism, I would expect for us not being convinced of evidence for god it would have to be natural too. I’m atheist when it comes to the idea of the ‘supernatural’. It just depends on the definition of god and I’m quite open to theists or deists or whoever defining it however they want to. I can disagree with them claiming God loves us but will punish some of us eternally for being exactly the way he planned, but there are lots of versions I can’t deny. I can say calling the universe ‘god’ is pointless, and making up an entity with a human like mind is delusional but ultimately I have to say we just don’t know.
If there’s an entity that we can’t interact with or understand it’s pretty safe to say it doesn’t exist, I just feel it’s healthy to check ourselves and admit that unknown unknowns are always a possibility.
I’m not just agnostic towards god but everything, I’m an agnostic fundamentalist, a religious zealot if you will. I say “we can’t know anything for sure” with such certainty that I spontaneously combust.
Thanks for having this debate, I still learned a lot from you and Dr Alvaro.
Indeed, this is why sound epistemology must be probabilistic and not absolutist. I account for the possibility the truth is far stranger than it seems in the low percentage I assign it—which is very, very low, but still not zero.
We just have to avoid the theist’s favorite fallacy that if there is any nonzero chance of something, no matter how small, then we get to believe it.
Being an Agnostic from an Islamic background who thinks theism is terribly improbable, I am usually very interested in the deism (for a general indifferent designer) – atheism debate. Consequently, I was at first happy to see a debate by Dr. Carrier with a non-Christian deist for a change. However, Dr. Alvaro’s attitude in citing and responding to the scientific evidence was really very sad, I got the sense this would be the case from the instance he said “or some quantum gobbledygook” in his first response if I correctly remember as it gave me the impression that he will just try to escape the good past-eternal physical models without any attempt at justifying why.
That said, this closing statement was the worst thing ever, worse than what I would have even imagined especially the ad hominem attacks related to traffic and patreons, such a shame really.
It is regrettable that the debate ended this way. It’s neither totally mine nor Dr. Carrier’s fault. However, I would like to say the following:
I believe that Dr. Carrier has no desire to interact with me (or any other deist or theist or Kalam proponent) because he is very confident that the Kalam, as well as all the arguments given in support of the premises, are invalid, uncogent, and unsound. Throughout the debate, Dr. Carrier nonchalantly dismisses all the arguments I presented. For example, he makes such grandiose claims to the effect that ALL mathematicians proved that actual infinity exists, that unembodied minds cannot exist, etc. But it is not quite so simple as he claims it to be.
In my initial entry I gestured to the idea of sidestepping scientific talk (a) in order to avoid exactly the disastrous predicaments that the debate is now facing, and (b) because our current scientific knowledge of the origin of the universe is inconclusive.
The debate is about two worldviews, a (roughly speaking) naturalistic one according to which the existence of reality (and other questions) requires no supernatural cause or explanation, and a (roughly speaking) supernaturalistic view according to which existence is best explained in terms of a transcendent entity.
I believe that a god is the most plausible explanation. Why? Because when I compare the two worldviews, I find many arguments in favor of a god to be cogent and sound. On the other hand, I find that the arguments in support of the naturalistic view are not cogent or sound.
Let me try to give a short overview. Take P1 (that all finite things, those things that begin to exist, were brought into existence by something else). If P1 were false, as Dr. Carrier argues, I would have to believe that it is possible that some of these things, sometimes, can come into being by nothing and from nothing. Dr. Carrier has a point here. He says, “Why not?” My problem is that I have excellent reasons to doubt his “Why not”.
The first reason is that it seems metaphysically absurd that something just materialize without reason—regardless of whether we are talking about events or objects within our universe or anywhere else.
The second reason is that we have empirical evidence that finite objects and events are always brought into being by something else.
The third reason is that given the complexity of the universe, I highly doubt that it came into being by nothing (here I am referring to truth, logic, morality, the fine tuning, etc).
The fourth reason applies to P2. Namely, I doubt that the universe can be past eternal. Here I am surprised that Dr. Carrier did not mention the B-theory, or static view, of time. I am surprised because the B-theory of time is the best argument against P2 because if time is an illusion, then there is no temporal sequence about which to worry. But I understand that this might have opened a bigger philosophical can of worms.
Conversely, the arguments against P1 and P2 are too tenuous. Being as charitable as I can possibly be, it seems to me that Dr. Carrier’s argumentative strategy is to merely cast doubt on P1, P2, and their respective supportive arguments.
Yes, Dr. Carrier, our human knowledge is incomplete and, maybe, as weird as it seems, we might not have 100% certainty of P1 and P2. But this is not strong enough an argument to make me doubt the truth of P1 and P2—just like solipsism is not enough to seriously make me doubt that there is an external world and other minds besides mine exist.
Therefore, in the end, I believe that my arguments tilt the scale on the side of P3, i.e., the universe was brought into existence by something else.
How do I then go from P3 to the existence of a deistic god? That is not simple. However, if one accepts that the universe is not eternal, and thus it was brought into being by something else, it would seem to me that the “something else” in question must be outside the causal chain, it must not be an event or a material object, it must not be a temporal object, and it must be endowed with a significant degree of freedom such that it can start a causal series. I think Dr. Carrier here ask me the following, “Assuming for the sake of argument that P3 is true, why does it have to be a god? There are other options.” Fair enough, but we did not even get there, and I think that a god is the best explanation.
Dr. Alvaro-
This account (overview? outline?) of your larger argument is interesting, and I think could be (or have been) the basis for a more fruitful debate.
Speaking strictly for myself, I would still disagree on several points, but they could be prompts for discussion rather than obstacles to it. To summarize:
The Kalam itself, as you presented and defended it, does not get one to supernaturalism nor any transcendent entity. Reaching such a conclusion would definitely take additional steps.
If P1 is false, yes, the alternative is that some things can come into existence from nothing. So? Dr. Carrier’s argument was not merely “why not?” (although that’s a valid question—why is that objectionable?); he offered links and citations, including to a published scientific article specifically defining a nothing-state from which a “something” could emerge, on the grounds (to oversimplify a bit) that “nothing” is a precarious and unstable condition that’s liable to collapse. You don’t take up this argument in any fashion.
Instead, you object that something-from-nothing “seems metaphysically absurd.” That’s not an argument. That’s just personal intuition, which is notoriously unreliable and, for that matter, inconsistent from one individual to the next.
Any empirical evidence based on objects and events within our spacetime is, of course, limited to our spacetime, not generalizable beyond it (e.g., to its origins).
Complexity is also not an argument, especially when (again) grounded only in intuition. We have countless examples of more complex systems emerging from less-complex ones even within our spacetime. It’s worth noting in passing, however, that morality is not one of them (it’s a purely human construct, not a natural force), and also that arguments about “fine tuning” for human life tend to be grounded on flawed assumptions.
Yes, Dr. Carrier casts doubt on P1 and P2. That’s why he wins: because the way you framed the problem, you set yourself the burden of foreclosing all doubt. As long as there is any credible doubt about P1 and P2, the Kalam fails. It must be logically necessary under all circumstances in order for P3 to follow. Merely “tilting the scale” is (as often noted) to offer an inductive argument rather than a deductive one, which moves the goalposts.
Circling back around… even if the Kalam gets us to “something else,” further arguments grounded on “it would seem to me” are obviously open to objections in the form of “what about these other alternatives”? IOW, one could stipulate “something else” for the sake of argument, and still propose that Occam’s Razor leaves us with nothing more than some logically prior state of being, set of conditions, or combination of forces. As noted upthread by commenter Ash Bowie, for instance, these could include “either an eternal past (e.g. Sean Carroll, CIT), a multiverse (e.g. David Deutsch, Oxford), a cyclic model of big bangs and big crunches (Roger Penrose, Oxford), or some kind of quantum initial state (e.g. Alexander Vilenkin, Tufts).” On what basis can you dismiss those possibilities (or others!) in favor of something more complex (which any form of consciousness certainly is)?
I wish the debate had worked its way through those points.
For my part, I can certainly see why Deism was an intellectually serious position a couple of centuries ago, when it was held by the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin—in a time when we simply had no known scientific explanations either for the existence of life on earth, or for the existence of the universe itself. It accounted for those facts while setting aside the other absurdities of organized religion. But today we are no longer burdened by those limitations; we have (multiple! competing!) scientific explanations. To defend Deism, therefore, requires one to reject them… and to explain why.
Once again your entry in the comments section is far better than your actual debate posts. I look forward to reading more of you in a different setting. I swear debates bring out the worst in people.
Dr. Alvaro wrote:
I need to point out that this debate was titled “Defense of his Kalam Cosmological Argument for Deism”.
Note the “for Deism” at the end of this title. What that suggests is that Dr. Alvaro was not just to defend the Kalam Cosmological argument alone, but that if even if true he needed to demonstrate how it necessarily proved deism – the existence of even a “god” (lowercase g).
Along the way Dr. Alvaro alluded to this part of the argument, repeatedly making the statement/claim that the the Kalem argument was not only sound but the “something” must’ve necessarily been a “god”.
He was the one that kept bringing it up, but just ignored any request for him to explain.
Not even a simple “We’ll get to that later” type of response (given that he is the one that kept bringing it up). Just seemed a bit disengenious to me.
Dr. Alvaro wrote:
And this is what I see proved to be the downfall of this debate. Science by definition is the understanding of our world. As such it has to be central to any debate such as this. To exclude or ignore science in a debate such as this is pointless. If you’re going to take the stance that science simply hasn’t proven (convincingly) facts that support any certain theory about the origin of the universe (a case for agnocitism) then that might be fair position to take. But in doing so you would also have to bow out about making claims about the Kalaam being a sound argument.
It seems to me that Dr. Alvaro wanted to have it both ways. He gestured to the idea of “sidestepping scientific talk”, but in the same breath tried to point to what he thought were some scientific facts supporting his position. He then went on to emphasize that his knowledge was based on his following current research in the cosmological field. In trying to make such a point he was essentially acknowledging that such knowledge is central/important/relevant to the discussion. So once again such seems a bit disengenious to me.
Has the dust cleared yet? I emerge from my bunker.
The Kalam is a bad argument not because it’s unsound (which it is) but because it’s silly to begin with. Reducing the origins of the universe to a syllogism is a clever rhetorical game where the proponent gets to believe that the observable universe is entrapped inside something larger though unseen while never actually having to admit to this belief. It can be loads of fun right up until the opponent asks him or her to explain, in intelligible terms, what this larger thing actually is.
Syllogisms Usually Suck.
They are more commonly a scam or self-deceit than a legitimate methodology for arriving at empirical knowledge. So I am always deeply suspicious when someone claims they can prove some fact with one. It’s not that it’s impossible. It’s that experiential priors don’t even remotely favor it.
Me, I am still boggling that philosophers in all seriousness treat “cause” as something fundamental and not just a perceptual response.
There are solid reasons for that. This has actually been resolved by one of the most influential philosophical studies of our lifetime: Judea Pearl’s Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference (now in its 2nd Edition, 2009); and yes, that is Daniel Pearl’s father.
I did read that. But that is about statistics, deducing likelihood of a causative relationship: causation is a product. We choose observed phenomena and test a predictive relationship to chosen preceding events. We could say that being born causes suffering, or that desire causes suffering, but neither statement is in any sense fundamental. Maybe our parents caused our suffering. Or our children.
I don’t understand your original statement then.
Causation has been proved by Pearl’s statistical argument (which is an argument to epistemic probability) not to be “just a perceptual response.” It is something real.
So the distinction between causal sequences and non-causal ones (mere correlation) has to be ontologically real (and therefore must itself have some existential cause, i.e. there must be something about the world, not just our perception of it, that produces these causal patterns, and in specific instances and not others).
I emphasize the word “choose”, because it is a deliberate act to draw a boundary around one part of space-time and say “these are effects” and another “these are potential causes”. The universe evolves continuously: change in each infinitesimal volume is a product of changes in that and immediately neighboring volumes, infinitesimally earlier, producing more change there and in neighboring volumes infinitesimally later. The universe doesn’t use such boundaries; we do. At the resolvable limit, it becomes virtual-particle soup under Schroedinger dynamics.
Causes are an intentional product of making those choices: good choices enable discovering usefully-generalizable causes. The universe goes about its business without. Organisms make the best such choices they are equipped for, and apply what turns up to decrease local entropy, operating only on Earth (“that we know of”). Some of us (humans, others?) have started turning up causes for purposes other than shifting entropy, a kind of phase change.
You keep switching positions here. Pearl disproved what you said at first; then you claimed you said something else that Pearl does not address; I then pointed out that that is moot to what Pearl did indeed prove; now you reverse course and make a completely new claim that Pearl specifically did refute.
I am getting dizzy. Please pick a lane.
For now, I have to respond to this completely new statement of yours: now you are claiming that causation doesn’t exist because we choose which causal relations to attend to. That is a fallacy. Pearl proved the relations exist regardless of whether we notice them or choose to study them. Causal systems are objectively real. And this can be proved with epistemic probability calculations.
We will all agree, with numerical precision, on a causative relationship iff we have agreed on the parameter-space boundaries defining effects of interest and candidate causes. But there is no objective procedure to pick those boundaries. In practice we guess, and vary them until we get a valid causation or give up. Evolution does the same.
Whether such abstract relationships as causation and theorems are discovered or invented is a matter of preference. Platonists will insist on the former.
It doesn’t matter what we “agree” on. Physical causation continues apace. Even when we aren’t around. Even when we don’t know it’s happening. This is what Pearl proved: causal relationships exist no matter whether we know of them, categorize them, preferentialize them—or even exist.
Dynamical evolution proceeds without us, by continuous variation. We impose Newtonian, E-M, Schroedinger, GR, Navier-Stokes, traffic flow, dose-response, whatever model helps us organize measureables to a comprehensible pattern. Nature doesn’t bother.
Causation is a pattern we seek to discover in a model in order to efficiently predict and, ideally, control future events. Perfect causation minimizes input required to produce a result. Overeating causes obesity, but biological energy dynamics are more complex than we understand.
Nature just is. Models are made. Pearl causation is an emergent feature of a model. But often we demand of candidate models that they preserve causation that emerged from a simpler model.
I can’t tell what you think you are saying. The relationship is not invented. The mechanical procedures we use to measure it are, but you seem to be confusing them, like someone conflating numbers with the quantities they signify.
You might be clumsily trying to convey the fact that we choose which relationships to map based on accessibility. So, Newtonian mechanics are an accurate approximation of objectively real causal systems, but we can never array them to account for literally every variable, from microvariations in local gravity to every single atomic collision from an atmosphere being passed through, so we just choose not to because the results are “close enough” for government work, as they say. But this does not make the causal system unreal. We are not inventing it. We are just being lazy in documenting and measuring it.
For more on this point see:
All Godless Universes Are Mathematical
Is 20th-century lung cancer, Pearl’s example, caused by cigarette smoking, tobacco company promotion, a Walter Raleigh investment scheme, co-opted Native American customs, or plants evolving addictive nicotine? Yes to all; you must choose. Different purposes construct different causes. Nature admits only a continuously evolving present as a product of the instant past, and no purpose.
That is not what Pearl showed. I think you need to ante up and actually start quoting and citing him before misrepresenting him; then I can show you the context you are leaving out to distort the information you are trying to sell here.
The fact of the matter is that we don’t have to choose anything. Pearl demonstrated that certain structural (ontologically real) relationships are causal and not merely perceived. It does not matter which ones we are interested in or document, nor does it matter whether we choose to look at distant (mediated) or proximate (unmediated) causal relationships within the same causal system.
That mediated causal relationships can be very complex is not an argument against their being ontologically real. I can only assume you do not know what you are talking about, or you are being deliberately disingenuous.
I consider myself a historian and a philosopher. As such, I am an agnostic and I reject all forms of an anthropomorphic god. I was excited at the beginning of this debate because theoretically I’m leaning towards the possibilities of deism or pantheism. However, it would seem deism is as big a fail as theism is. The cosmological argument has inherent within it, the tendency to be circular if you put god in the premises. Without God in the premises, you cannot get to a theistic/deistic causal agent. You have to intuit god as a causal agent. This is very problematic and counterintuitive. Although, I was disappointed by the flimsy defense of deism presented by Alvaro’s Kalam, this has been very informative. Thank you Dr. Carrier for this information and the sources you provided. I have already purchased 2 of your books and I found them to be fantastic and comprehensive reads. Please add me to the list to be notified of your future debates. Respectfully.
Hi Dr. Carrier,
Is it possible to ask the probability of Deism given the evidence as a Bayesian formula? Wondered what your thoughts are on the matter. Thanks!
I ran a toy calculation in The End of Christianity the result of which was that any real calculation would put the final odds on theism far below trillions to one against.
To run the same for Deism requires an actual defined theory to compare, i.e. someone has to actually articulate what they are proposing “by” Deism (Alvaro, for example, made several incoherent statements about this that made it impossible to ascertain what it is he is even claiming).
For example, do we only mean by Deism a theory that makes no predictions whatever? (And therefore cannot have any evidence against it even in principle?) Or something more substantive than that?
In the minimalist case (a theory that cannot even in principle contradict any evidence whatsoever), we have a middle-order Cartesian Demon running afoul of empirical and logical priors, which alone entails a final odds below billions to one. Add any predictions, so that evidence now starts to directly count against it, and those odds only decline from there.
Because there are no differential odds favoring any known theism or deism (see, for example, A Hidden Fallacy in the Fine Tuning Argument).