QueenOfBlasphemy

I have recently started attending lectures at university for a philosophy of religion course:

The course theme is 'Faith and Reason'. The key question for investigation is this: under what conditions, if at all, is it justifiable to hold religious beliefs? (Are there some religious beliefs which we may rightly adopt and live by? If so, what religious beliefs are they? Or ought we to 'grow out of' religious beliefs and practices altogether?) To deal with the key question we will consider whether religious beliefs have to be 'reasonable' in order for it to be justifiable to hold them. If they do, then in what sense of 'reasonable' do religious beliefs have to be reasonable? Religious beliefs are often claimed to be held 'by faith'. What does that claim mean - and is it true? If religious beliefs are a matter of faith, what does that imply about whether, and in what sense, religious beliefs have to be held 'reasonably'? Is it justifiable to hold and act on beliefs 'by faith', and, if so, under what conditions?

Our key question concerns the justifiability of holding and acting on religious beliefs. But what are 'religious' beliefs? Rather than try to answer that general question directly, we will take as our example the core beliefs of the 'theist' religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). However, we will have two sessions which will focus on Hinduism and Buddhism.

Professor Bishop's part of the course will assess the prospects for a successful theist apologetics (i.e., a defence of the reasonableness of theist belief from an initially uncommitted perspective), by considering arguments from religious experience and from miracles, and the central natural theological arguments (Teleological, Cosmological and Ontological). We will then consider the prospects for successfully showing the unreasonableness of theist belief, paying particular attention to the Argument from Evil (i.e. the argument that the existence of suffering counts against the reasonableness of belief in a morally perfect and omnipotent God) and attempts to respond to it by constructing theodices. The case for holding that God's existence is 'evidentially ambiguous' will thus emerge, and we will consider 'fideist' responses to that ambiguity with reference to Kierkegaard and William James.

Professor Higgins' part of the course will consider alternatives to classical theism, beginning with a discussion of Nietzsche's philosophy of religion (which presents a major challenge to traditional theism), and moving on to consider Hindu conceptions of God and the non-theistic approach to religion found in Buddhism. Professor Bishop will conduct the final sessions which will return to the theistic traditions and ask what scope there is for embracing alternatives to the traditional 'omniGod' within those traditions themselves


Last lecture we looked at the Kalam Cosmological Argument (we're only looking at that version basically cause of time constraints, and it was presented as follows (note, this is just a summary based on my notes, and sometimes borrowing from the web, if you're not already familiar with it i'm sure that somewhere on the internet you'll be able to find a far more succinct and clear version).

Please also note that we are, again because of time constraints, making a few assumptions:
1) We shall assume that the concept of God is meaningful and intelligible, and that (indirect) empirical verification or falsification is possible.
2) We shall assume that, the God in question, is the classical Judeo-Christian God - omniscient, omnipotent etc.
3) We shall assume that there are no good a priori arguments for or against the existence of God (This rules out the atheist's Incompatible Properties arguments, and the theist's Ontological arguments).

Borrowing from Wikipedia, the Kalam Cosmological argument is as follows:

Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause
Premise 2: The universe began to exist, therefore

Conclusion 1: Therefore, the universe must have a cause

As support for the first premise:

P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause for it's existence (we argued this a little bit, and came to the conclusion that it is more plausible than its denial, as this assumption is rooted in the petaphysical intuition that something cannot come from nothing, which is confirmed by experiences)
P2: The universe began to exist, therefore

C1: The universe has a cause for it's existence.

As support for the second premise:

P1: An actual infinite cannot exist
P2: An infinite temporal regress is an actual infinite, therefore
C2: An infinite temporal regress is cannot exist

And along the same lines:

P1: The temporal series of events is a collection formed by successive addition
P2: An infinite collection cannot be formed by successive addition
C1: The universe must have had a beginning, otherwise we would never arrive at today, for an infinite number of moments would have had to have passed, which is not possible

Similarly:

The Big Bang Theory - says the universe is expanding and originally was infinite density, which equates to nothing (apparently?), and something can't come from nothing

Finally, along the same lines:

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states eventually our universe would result in "Heat Death" - the universe has obviously not been around infinitely otherwise Heat Death would have occured and we would not be here, for how much more time than forever - infinite moments - is necessary?

I have a tutorial in a couple of days time, at which we will be discussing this, and I'd appreciate it if you fellow atheists could help me in terms of formulating objections (I'm rather outnumbered by christians, actually, which surprised me). There are a few things that have occured to me that I'm trying to figure out how to convey, but probably lots more challenges I could make to the argument that haven't even occured to me. Some of my (very unpolished) thoughts are as follows:

- Why is the first cause god? (To which I guess the answer would something to do with the fact that time hasn't been "created" yet, so therefore the cause has to be timeless, which god allegedly is, so a response to their predicted reply is necessary!)

- If everything has a cause, what/who caused god? Why is he immune to this? (Again, back to being timeless, I guess)

- It's true that everything we know has been created, but out of something - by rearranging existing matter. How is it possible for a physical universe to come into being if there is no physical matter to start with? (I assume the reply would be something to do with god being omnipotent and all that)

- If we accept god is a timeless and a personal being, when did he choose to create the universe? (And why? Although that's rather besides the point, in this case)

- What's to say that, even if there was a personal cause, god is still around now and able to answer prayers etc - why do we associate him with the attributes of classical theism? (This is rather getting into an entirely different argument, and doesn't seem to be addressing the cosmological argument properly)

- When the universe - space and time - ends - 'heat death' - will god also die since he is now susceptible to time? (This is still conceding that he exists)

- My feeling is that there is a good argument somewhere to do with the concept of infinity, but I am having difficulty grasping quite what it is, and putting it into words, so help would be appreciated.

- There's always completely different theories, like that we are just one of many universes, or that we are like an ant hill to a universe with inhabitants too large and far away for us to be aware of, but these are simply posing alternative theories with no evidence.

Any other suggestions? Anyone able to phrase my objections properly, with more sound reasoning? Any help at all is much appreciated, as I feel rather outnumbered in my tutorial!

QueenOfBlasphemy

P.S. I am very sorry if a thread similar to this has already been created - the search function does not seem to work for me; if I type something in the search function it just says the page cannot be displayed. I suspect it's just my computer throwing a tantrum, for works for me on my home computer, but if it's a bug it's a very annoying one!

GenesisNemesis

Assumption. Our minds are tuned to "action-reaction", so naturally we would attempt to find a first cause. But who are we to say the Universe had a first cause when it could very well be uncaused? Also, of course something can't "come from" nothing, because nothing has no substance, no form, etc. Nothing doesn't even exist. It can't even exist. I don't think any scientist was suggesting that the Universe "came from nothing". Anyways, time and space were created at the Big Bang, but there is no need to recognize any supposed Deity.

It may have always existed.

See above.

This seems like a refutation against God.

How do you know that?

Again, how do we know an infinite temporal regress cannot exist? It has been shown from time to time that reality never has to work on the same level of human reasoning.

Zossima

The main problem with the cosmological argument is that the universe is not a thing. Every thing has a cause, yes, but the universe is not a mere thing. It has no cause because causation is something that applies only to things within the universe. To say God is the cause of the universe is to pretend to know something of a causation that has nothing to do with the causation we're familiar with, and of a thing that somehow exists outside the universe, which is supposed to encompass all things. This is basically Kant's criticism of rationalist theology, and it's just as strong today as it was in 1781.

joedad

How exactly does something "begin to exist?" That would be my first question.

The KCA is just an exercise in question begging it appears to me.

whichphilosophy

There is no way of knowing whether the cause is live or not, except by means of a subjective study where individuals will arrive at different opinions.

The application of current science or theology while exacerbating one or the other with philosophy on an objective level will only run in circles where the question will end up the same as the answer.

whichphilosophy

True, a good starting point. The Cosmological Arguement is not an argument but a piece of intellectual mastrubation more likely to be responsible for a high level of migraine attacks and incidents of substance abuse upon the students rather than englighten them.

We can propose that whether or not something changes there must be some eternal element whether alive or not. The question we have to look at is the nature of the cause, conscious/live or not from our own subjective analysis and logic.

show_no_mercy

The Universe did not begin to exist.

Space-time began to exist ~14 billion years ago.

Smullyan-esque

It depends on how you define "The Universe".

If you define it to mean "Everything that exists", then if God exists, He is part of the universe! He could not therefore have created himself, ending the argument.

If you define it to mean "Everything that exists except God" then you are explicitly using special pleading by treating God as special from the very beginning of the argument!

And, as GenesisNemesis said in post #3, if you say that an actual infinity cannot exist, then if God exists, He must be a finite being. So Kalam only works (if it works at all) to establish the existence of something that no normal theist would call "God".

It all boils down to the simple counter-argument: "If it is possible for God to always exist (or be timeless, or whatever) then why can't the Universe always exist (or be timeless, or whatever)?" The only way out is special pleading.

QueenOfBlasphemy

Thanks so much guys, I really appreciate it! Some of the above arguments I'd sorta thought of, but hadn't figured out how to coherently express, and others just hadn't occured to me. Much appreciated everyone!