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BookofJames
Guest
How do I refute the claim that the cosmological argument violates its own premise?
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Love4All
Guest
Flesh out the question a little better. Clearly state the claim you wish to refute. Thanks.
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BookofJames
Guest
An athiest will say the cosmological argument will violate its own premise.
The cosmological argument states everything in the universe is contingent on something else: planet earth, you, me, a cloud. They don’t esplain within themselves their own existence. Finally we must come to God, an eternal, infinite being to explain the existence of these phenomona.
Now the athiest will say that putting God in the picture just takes it one step further. Like, how does God explain His own existence? God is no longer a first cause. How do I refute that?
Do you guys understand what I mean? Sorry if I’m coming off as unclear.
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john330
Guest
I love studying this argument. The cosmological argument is not full proof. And you are never going to be able to fully convince someone that there is a god. That is the holy spirits job.
The argument is an infinite regress argument, sort of. It leads back to a cause which needs no cause. The answer is that if you are right, and there is a cause which is infinite in power, then the cosmos makes sense, taking into account the way quantum mechanics functions. If there is no god, then the cosmos still doesn’t make sense. Because a finite world CANNOT create itself. And yet this finite world still exists, which leaves you and the atheist left in the conundrum. The atheist doesn’t want to believe in god, and isn’t interested in truth (probably), otherwise he would accept its logic based on the laws of physics. Don’t try to convince him. Give the argument plain and simple and let him accept or reject. Maybe later he will see the wisdom in it. That’s how it worked with me when I converted from atheism
The argument is an infinite regress argument, sort of. It leads back to a cause which needs no cause. The answer is that if you are right, and there is a cause which is infinite in power, then the cosmos makes sense, taking into account the way quantum mechanics functions. If there is no god, then the cosmos still doesn’t make sense. Because a finite world CANNOT create itself. And yet this finite world still exists, which leaves you and the atheist left in the conundrum. The atheist doesn’t want to believe in god, and isn’t interested in truth (probably), otherwise he would accept its logic based on the laws of physics. Don’t try to convince him. Give the argument plain and simple and let him accept or reject. Maybe later he will see the wisdom in it. That’s how it worked with me when I converted from atheism
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BookofJames
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Interesting! I guess that’s why prayer’s so important in converting someone. I’ll keep your post at heart!!
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snarflemike
Guest
Poke around on edwardfeser.blogspot.com. He will help clarify the argument, and the nature of God, for you.
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Mount_Carmel
Guest
For me the ‘Cosmological Effect’ proves that the physical and temporal cannot be the only set of dimensions/state(s)/realities, that there MUST be radically ‘Other’ to explain physical and temporal existence - that in the infinity/eternity of things there must be at some stage and place(s) an acausality of power and ability - ‘God’, "I Am which I Am.
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Tyrion
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I suggest you not even try, since you cannot succeed. The two premises (theist and atheist) are almost identical.
The atheist says that the Universe SIMPLY EXISTS. It needs no explanation, since it is the ontological foundation on which all explanations depend. It did not “come” into existence, it just exists.
The theist says that God SIMPLY EXISTS. It does not need explanation, since it is the ontological foundation on which all explanations depend. It did not “come” into existence, it just exists.
Now, this shows that the theist really “pushes” the unexplainable one step further, thereby violating the principle of parsimony (commonly called as Occam’s razor). This would not be a problem, if positing God would have any explanatory value! But it has none. It gives us no explanation about the universe at all. HOW it was brought into existence. When stripping all the “fluff” away, the residue is simply this:
**An unknowable being, employing unimaginable means, using some inexplicable magic made it somehow happen. **
And this is as far from any “explanation” as it can be. Ask any theist to tell you this: “how did God create the universe ‘ex nihilo’? What was the method he used?” The answer probably will be: “it is a mystery”. It cannot be known. It must be accepted on faith… or something similar. So what does God “add” to the problem? Nothing. None of the so-called philosophical “proofs” for God can accomplish what they wish to accomplish. They all commit some kind of fallacy. And even if some would succeed, it would only lead to faceless “first cause”, never to the christian God with all its attributes.
So, why bother?
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Steinway
Guest
These arguments are very complex, you need to review these links completely:
Dr. William Lane Craig:
reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/s4
Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D.:
magisreasonfaith.org/podcast.html
ArguingWithAtheists:
ArguingWithAtheists.com/Pages/Intelligent_Design.htm
This should keep you busy for a few weeks
Dr. William Lane Craig:
reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/s4
Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D.:
magisreasonfaith.org/podcast.html
ArguingWithAtheists:
ArguingWithAtheists.com/Pages/Intelligent_Design.htm
This should keep you busy for a few weeks
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ilikepizza1
Guest
This is inaccurate. That God simply exists, (i.e. that his essence is identical to his existence) is not a premise of the cosmological argument, rather it is the conclusion. The entire intent of these arguments is to demonstrate that the Universe cannot simply exist, that it does not contain within itself sufficient reason for its existence, that it is not purely actual etc. It may or may not succeed in proving that but it is not simply assumed.
The cosmological argument is not put forward as some kind of “explanatory hypothesis” in the first place, the standard argument has always been defended as a purely metaphysical demonstration of the impossibility of a per accidens ordered infinite series. If it succeeds in that then whether or not one knows all the other details of this entity is irrelevant.
Because the intent of the cosmological argument is not to, by itself, deduce all the attributes of the Christian God. Those must be determined by further arguments; the Cosmological argument is necessary but not sufficient for proving the Christian conception of God
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ngill09
Guest
The Cosmological Argument (at least as presented by William Lane Craig) fails because it is utterly dependent on human intuition for its premises about the nature of the origin of the universe. It’s dealing with a scale of things that completely baffles human intuition. Moreover, it depends on the phenomenon of Creation Ex Nihilo, which has never been observed and is arguably incoherent.
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snarflemike
Guest
Thank you for pointing out this most fundamental error in Tyrion’s thinking. The question has never been, which thing shall we arbitrarily claim exists without cause. The question is, rather, what must be the properties of a thing which exists without cause, and “the universe” simply does not have those properties.
Not to mention that inconvenient Big Bang thing.
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Steinway
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I think you need to listen to the podcasts on his site, none of it is based on human intuition, everything is fully backed up by top astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmologists and planetary scientists.
reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/s4
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ngill09
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I’ve listened to way more WLC than I think anyone should, and while he tends to use a scientific basis for Premise 2 of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, he relies entirely on “metaphysical intuition” for premise 1.
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john330
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Indeed, prayer is paramount. I will say a prayer for your evangelization efforts right now.
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StrangeSoul
Guest
The cosmological argument does not violate its own premises.
The main premise is that everything that is contingent has a cause, not that “everything has a cause”. God is not a contingent being, He is a necessary one, and His necessity is the conclusion of the argument, not a premise.
Take me and you for example. If we didn’t exist, there would be no logical contradiction. We can imagine a possible universe where we don’t exist, or where there’s not some specific kind of animal or plant. However, we can not imagine a universe without a first cause, thus that first cause is not a contingent being, but a necessary one; necessary because if it didn’t exist, then there would be a logical contradiction, which is simply impossible.
The main premise is that everything that is contingent has a cause, not that “everything has a cause”. God is not a contingent being, He is a necessary one, and His necessity is the conclusion of the argument, not a premise.
Take me and you for example. If we didn’t exist, there would be no logical contradiction. We can imagine a possible universe where we don’t exist, or where there’s not some specific kind of animal or plant. However, we can not imagine a universe without a first cause, thus that first cause is not a contingent being, but a necessary one; necessary because if it didn’t exist, then there would be a logical contradiction, which is simply impossible.
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Steinway
Guest
That’s only one of several arguments. The fine tuning is a pretty good one. I like the cosmological arguments on:
ArguingWithAtheists.com/Pages/Intelligent_Design.htm
They are different than all the rest.
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hicetnunc
Guest
Hi ngill;
Hope you don’t mind if I weigh in…the cosmological argument is a favourite of mine!
A couple of quick things first: you can’t argue that the argument is incoherent unless you can point to a formal or material error in the argument. Criticisms of incoherence are subjective: who’s to say that what is incoherent to you is going to be incoherent to everyone? Such arguments are variations of appeals to ignorance.
There is also a fundamental misunderstanding about Thomas argument (ST 1a,q.2,a3), which he elaborates in the summa contra gentiles. His argument is not, as many people think, that everything must have a cause. His argument is completely the opposite! His argument is in fact that everyhitng can’t have a cause, since if everything had to have a cause, nothing would exist—since then, as an earlier post points out, we would be trapped in an infinite regress.
In fact, the incoherence lies in the arguments against Thomas…the incoherence lies in (1) the notion of an infinite period of time; the famous German mathematician Georg Cantor showed that infinite temporal sequence does not hold mustard as a concept. Here’s a great 8 minute snap of a video which explains the problem with the concept of infinity as a number:
youtube.com/watch?v=elvOZm0d4H0
Finally, one does not need to understand creation ex nihilo to understand the cosmological argument. In other words, one does not need to know the nature of a cause in order to know that there is a cause. For example, one does not need to know what caused the house to blow up in order to know that the house blew up. You don’t need to observe a cause, in other words, to know that there is a cause.
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ngill09
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I’ve got a Bachelor’s in Mathematics, so I know all about infinity. In fact, I remember those proofs in the video you linked (I’m also subbed to numberphile).
The problem with the cosmological argument, in my estimation, is that it relies far too heavily on intuition to describe what the “Uncaused Cause” is. Especially since at that scale of things, we’ve found that intuition is completely useless.
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tdgesq
Guest
I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. Craig asserts he has a strong metaphysical claim for P(1) because based upon our observation of the universe the possibility of the contrary lacks support.
P(1): Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
The primary argument is that the contrary assertion “a thing may begin to exist without a cause” has no empirical support in our universe. We do of course see things come into existence that have a cause from preexisting matter everyday, and speculatively observe quantum phenomena (virtual particles) come into existence with certain necessary casual conditions (vacuum state).
Craig’s question becomes: why is it that only the beginning of the universe doesn’t have a cause? Or, why is it that we don’t observe other uncaused events? And these are difficult questions to answer, especially for scientists who are in the business of investigating causes to explain the nature of the universe.
Is there a scale of things that compares to the beginning of the universe? More to the point, Craig certainly doesn’t claim to rely upon intuition when describing the attributes of the Uncaused Cause. He presents arguments as to why it can’t be explained by the physical laws of our universe and why it must be a personal cause. Although I understand you may find his arguments to be based on intuition, he doesn’t claim they are. In any case, many forms of the Cosmological Argument don’t attempt to assign attributes to the Uncaused Cause; preferring instead to come to a purely philosophical definition of God.
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