This is what I mean by love for yourself. You are so right, and in love with yourself you can’t understand how insulting this is. I may as well just argue - Hey I can’t help you if you don’t understand why I don’t understand your tripe. I can’t really do your homework for you. If you don’t understand the distinctions then brush up and come back. Sounds pretty insulting doesn’t it? Of course not - you’ll tell me why it isn’t I’m sure.
This is what I wrote in relation to design. It’s a fairly cohesive response in line with what many other philosophers have concluded …but of course they should just do more home work. Whatever.
The problem with the Kalam cosmological argument is that while the first premise in and of itself may be true, It makes the categorical mistake of confusing a set with a subset, and vice versa. The theist says that whatever “thing” - the word thing is important - that begins to exist must have a cause. The theist, then, switches that “thing” to “the universe.” The problem, here, is that it may be inappropriate to treat the universe in the same way one treats some “thing” within the universe. Let’s say that I have a number set in the form of 2,4,6,8… From studying “inside” the set, I can draw the conclusion that every thing is two counts away from the next thing. My statement is perfectly valid inside the set. Two is two counts from four, four is two counts from six, etc. The problem is that the rule that is valid within a particular set is not necessarily valid of the whole set itself. Let’s say that my set above is in a list of sets. Set 1 is in the form 1,2,3,4 … the set I mentioned above is Set 2, the next set in the list, Set 3, is in the form 3,6,9,12 . . …and so on, and so on. The Kalam argument is attempting to presuppose an axiom where none exists. A rule from the subset 2 says everything is two counts away from the next thing, but if I applied this rule to the whole set itself, however… my statement would not be true. Set 2 is neither two counts away from Set 1 nor two counts away from Set 3. This is exactly what the theist is doing when he goes from the statement that “Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence,” leading to his next statement and conclusion that “The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.” but this argument treats the universe as a “thing,” and not “the set of all things.” This is a categorical mistake. This always falls back on my argument that in my opinion no theist has ever reconciled. You can’t appeal to logic that exists within the parameters of the physical universe to explain this god thing that exists outside of it all. IT’S ABSURDITY OF THE HIGHEST KIND. Clearly - If I asked a theist to prove his statement, “Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence,” he would have to appeal to things inside the physical universe. He might say that a flood is caused by torrential rains…etc…etc… This statement is a physical statement that relies on induction and on physical laws. In other words, the first premise is not a tautology (though it may seem to be one), but rather an empirical statement demonstrated by induction. The problem comes when the theist tries to apply natural laws to the universe itself. He is doing the same thing that I did with the number sets above. He is finding a rule that is true inside the universe (i.e. inside “the set”) and saying that it must apply to the universe itself (i.e. to “the set” itself). There is no way to prove that this is the case, though. No way at all. There is no way to prove that a rule inside the set (i.e. the universe) must apply to the set itself. The Kalam argument falls apart if the first premise cannot be maintained categorically.
Irrefutable!
but now the serious heavyweights have weighed in, I’m more like :yyeess:
