luvluv

I have come to the conclusion that the general response around here to the implications of the kalaam cosmological argument contains a fallacy.

The kalaam argument, basically, is as follows:

1) Everything which begins to exist has a cause for it's existence.

2) The universe began to exist.

3) Therefore, the universe had a cause for it's existence.


Now, typically atheists deny premise 2.

They say something like the following:

1) There was never a time when the universe did not exist.

2) Therefore, the universe did not begin to exist.

On further review, I believe this response commits the fallacy of the false dilema.

Basically, the conclusion assumes that all entities must either begin in a PRE-EXISTING time, or have no begining at all.

This neglects the possibility that the universe and time could have begun simeltaneously with each other (which, in fact, they did).

I argue, therefore, thusly:

1) Time began to exist simeltaneously with the universe.

2) Simultaneity is a temporal relation.

3) The universe began it's existence in a temporal relation (simeltaneity).

4) Temporal relations are impossible in the absence of time.

5) Therefore, the universe began to exist in time.


Possible objection 1:

The argument appears to be committing a category error by arguing that that time itself can stand in temporal relation with matter/energy.

I would argue that this is not a category error since in the special case of the big bang alone time actually BEGINS at t=0, simeltaneously with the emergence of matter and space, and thus it is not a category mistake in this one case for one aspect of time (it's beginning) to be in just one temporal relation with matter/energy (the temporal relation of simeltaneity).

I maintain that there is no contradiction involved in there having never been a time when the universe did not exist AND the universe beginning to exist in time, so long as it is held that the universe began to exist SIMELTANEOUSLY with time.

If the universe, then, began to exist in time, there is no backdoor out of the kalaam argument besides denying the law of causality.

Have at me, knaves! Huzzah!

ComestibleVenom

In fact it's not so clear. Some physicists hypothesize states at which time and space have not crystalized.

Secondly, this simultaneity is exactly what atheists are appealing to. If they are simultaneous, then there is no time at which the universe does not exist, and no transition requiring explanation outside of the universe itself.

Your argument has failed because the law of causality, by definition, cannot be appealed to here. That is, in effect, what the temporal objection is trying to communicate. Since there is no point in time at which the universe does not exist, it is logically impossible to describe it's birth in terms of causation.

The kalaam cosmological argument remains dead.

HRG

Actually, many people (not necessarily atheists) would also question premise 1.

AFAWK, there is no general "law of causality". There are statistical regularities on the microscopic scale (which say little about a single event), and apparent causality on the macroscopic scale. The latter can be understood as the result of averaging over a large number of microscopic processes.

Regards,
HRG.

Nic Hautamaki

if the direction you're trying to go in with this argument is that God exists, the objection that I have always raised is a little different. If God created the universe, what created God? If it's possible for God to exist without a creator, why can't the universe?

Nectaris

While I would agree that this is a valid argument, a theist would counter that the first assertion starts out with everything that begins to exist requires a cause. Their deity has always existed and therefore there is no need for cause as such. The theist's argument is framed in such a way that allows for the possibility of an always existing god.

CX

Actually I would also have a problem with premise 1. It's stated as a brute fact, but I suspect it requires supporting argumentation.

Family Man

This is especially true since premise 1 is only really concerned with the universe as we have it. One of the big problems with the cosmological argument is that it assumes that the "cause" of our universe is outside of it. If so, then it isn't bound to physics as we know it. How we can make an intelligent statement out of something that is obviously unknowable is a little beyond me.

Nom

If the direction luvluv is trying to go is that God exists, then there's a loooooong road ahead. Even if you grant that the universe had a cause, that says nothing about what that cause is. Jehovah? Allah? The Greek pantheon of gods? A quantum vacuum fluctuation? Super-intelligent hyper-dimensional mice? The ever-popular IPU?

The cosmological argument, whatever variety, is the last refuge of a god who's been kicked out of gap after gap as human knowledge has advanced. From the weather to disease to the stars and on and on, divine explainations have been replaced with natural ones, and theists keep retreating further back in the hope of finding some unexplainable gap in which to house their god. I consider it a tribute to human knowledge that we've shoved them all the way back to the beginning of time!

fishbulb

It's not so much that there is a formal fallacy with this argument, its just that we have to assume that premises (1) and (2) are true in order to conclude (3). Since we have no good reason to believe that either (1) or (2) is likely true, the conclusion rests on unsupported premises. The argument is based on pure speculation with. To believe that (1) and (2) are true, in the absence of any credible supporting evidence, is wishful thinking.


Right. Time is a measurement of distance between events. Time began at the first event. Perhaps there was no first event; we reckon time as beginning at the Big Bang: the first event we hypothesise possible for us to see evidence of. Therefore, what we understand as the beginning of time happens at what we understand as the beginning of our Universe.

However:

You have this inside out. Time began to pass in the Universe. Not the other way around. Time doesn't happen outside the Universe because things don't happen outside the Universe, at least not in a the conventional sense of "Universe" and "happen." If you want to suppose that things happen outside of the Universe, and that one of these things was the creation of the universe itself, then you are really just redefining the term "Universe" to apply to a larger entity, and you still have the recursive problem: where did this meta-universe in which our Universe exists come from?

luvluv

COmestible Venom:

Can you expound on this?

If matter and energy are there, then space and time are there. What could it mean for them to have "not crystalized"?

Firstly, is there a contradiction involved in saying both that the universe began to exist IN TIME and there was never a time when the universe did not exist?

As soon as the universe existed, time also existed, so it began IN TIME.

Just as you could say there was never a time when the universe did not exist, you can also say there was never a universe where time did not exist.

Secondly, is pre-existing time necessary for an appeal to causation?

Time is simply a FUNCTION of time and space. It has no independant existence, and as such cannot be a barrier to the existence of that which gives it it's own existence. Space and matter do not CREATE time, it simply gives us a means to measure time.

That is where I believe that the atheist objection commits a fallacy. It attributes preventative power to time, and says that in the absence of it causation is impossible.

That is treating time like it is an actual entity which ENABLES movement, rather than a way of using that movement to record the passage of a hypothetical entity.

It is a fallacy to say, for instance, that matter cannot move through space because time is frozen. Rather, one must say that if matter is frozen it is impossible to tell time. Time is simply a function of movement and space, it is not something which space and matter REQUIRE to exist.

Time is not required for causation because time is NOTHING. It SUPERVENES on matter and space.

Thirdly, the atheist is guilt of equivocation when he says that the phrase:

"There was never a time when the universe did not exist"

equals this phrase

"Therefore, the universe never began to exist"

The former phrase does not entail the latter.

There are only two possibilities for entities that never began to exist. Either they exist "from forever" OR they do not exist at all. Neither possibility seems to fit any data we have about the universe, scientifically or philosophically.

Somehow, the atheist believes he has found a third category, an entity that has some transition from existence to non-existence which doesn't entail any transition from existence to non-existence. For what, according to the atheist account, occured at the Big Bang?

Fourthly, it is possible to speak EXTRINSICALLY about time BEFORE the big bang.

Even if there was a state before the big bang possesed of no INTRINSIC time, all that is required for the temporal relation of "before" is ONE EVENT. Relative to that one event, it is then possible to speak extrinsically (relative to the event i.e. the big bang) about what is prior to that event.

Thus a timeless eternality can be extrinsically distinguished as being prior to the big bang using the big bang as a frame of reference. The timeless eternity stands in the temporal relation of "before" to the big bang EXTRINSICALLY, even if that timeless period had no intrinisic time of it's own.

Thus we can speak, extirinsically, about a "before" the big bang so long as we do not make any differentiation about any specific time before the big bang. We can speak of one long, undifferentiated "before the big bang" relative to the big bang, even if we cannot say something like "five minutes before the big bang" since that would require this "before" to have an intrinsic measure of time.

Finally, the objection to the cosmological argument begs the question in that it simply assumes that this universe is all there is AND that energy/matter and space are all that exist.

As many philsophers of time have pointed out, a succession of mental events (in the mind of any non-material entity, for example) would be sufficient to establish the existence of time. Also, as the multiverse hypothesis establishes, there is the possibility of time being in existence in other universes prior to the big bang, and thus time itself would have been in existence before the big bang.

In order to state that there was never a time when the universe did not exist, the atheist would need to prove that there are no non-material entities (and appealing to a lack of proof for these entities will not amount to a disproof of their existence) and thus prove that time is impossible absent matter/energy and space. Then they will have to prove that there are no other universes which have their existence prior to the existence of this universe.

In other words, until the atheist can succesfully prove that non-material entities do not exist, and that this universe is the only one there is, there is no reason for anyone to accept that there was "never a time when the universe did not exist" and thus this argument:

is without support. If you wish to stick to this objection, Comestible, you must back it up.

HRG:

I am not speaking of causality per se, only of causality relative to things coming into existence.

There is no support within quantum mechanics for things COMING INTO EXISTENCE uncaused, only for energy CHANGING FORM into matter UNPREDICTABLY.

The kalaam argument purposely restricts itself to causality of a certain kind.