William Lane Craig's Argument for God Explained 

Part 2 It is here that Craig begins to flesh out a version of God that fits into the Kalam and prepares to defend creation ex nihilo, or creation from nothing. He states that if God had a beginning, or existed for an infinite number of hours or any other unit of time, that he would indeed succumb to the same causal requirement as the universe. But a God that is without creation and timeless, would not. Craig summarizes this position by saying "I would argue that God exists timelessly without creation and in time subsequent to creation". Mackie describes this timeless quality as "mysterious" in his rebuttal, to which Craig responds that he agrees if what he means by mysterious is awe inspiring and wonderful. This is quite a positive spin on a word that was clearly meant as synonymous with poorly defined and non explanatory, but Craig's interpretation of the word mysterious is not surprising given the religious baggage that comes with the word. Craig goes on to say that this timeless God is in no way unintelligible, which is true, but it's an interesting thing to say given his previous dismissal of things popping into existence, and that they should not be taken seriously just because they are conceivable. He gives the example: "Just because I can imagine an object, say a horse, coming into existence from nothing, that in no way proves that a horse really could come into existence that way" I would argue that the exact same thing is true of a timeless God, and I would add that a horse appearing from nothing is actually easier to imagine than a timeless God. At least the parameters of former occurrence are well defined, unlike the concept "timeless", or God for that matter. So what exactly does Craig mean by timeless? He often uses terms like timeless, spaceless, and immaterial to talk about things outside of the universe that could act as it's cause. The argument is, if the universe contains time, space, and material, its cause must not be of this universe, and therefore it must be timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. The difficulty here, is that this sounds suspiciously like non existence. If you take everything there is, the negation of this is simply nothing. This clearly isn't what Craig intends, as there would be no place for God, or any casual entity to reside in this null state. If we allow some supernatural realm to remain upon the subtraction of space, time, and material, the question becomes, what properties does it possess, and how could we possibly investigate these properties to make coherent arguments about what is possible. Also, what is stopping us from putting all of reality including this supernatural realm into a set, and describing something outside of that? Perhaps it's supernatural realms all the way down. We enter dangerous territory entertaining these realms, especially if we enter into this philosophical investigation with a priori beliefs that lead us in one direction or another ( and it's hard to see what the motivation for inventing a completely non investigable realm would be without a supernatural belief). Poorly defined supernatural realms can easily become a playground where we can pick and chose the properties we want, and discard the ones that are troublesome to our arguments. Things with beginnings need causes? No problem, we'll create an entity without a beginning that has existed forever. Now we have a problem with infinite regress? Again, no problem, we'll just say the realm is timeless and nullify the regress. How can anything in a timeless realm act to create a universe? We'll insert a mind with free will to remedy this. It's not hard to see how this type of property selection a la carte can act as a get out of jail free card for having to play by the rules of logical discourse. We see evidence of this in the introduction of this timeless God. Craig evades God's beginning, as well as the problem of infinite regress in one fell swoop by stating that God is timeless. An obvious question to Craig would be, how can a timeless God do anything at all, given that time is necessary for events to occur? He solves this by stating that God is changeless and timeless sans creation, and in time with creation. When I first heard this definition of God, it was in a debate, and giving Craig the benefit of the doubt, I assumed that in the supporting documentation for this definition, a coherent well thought out argument would be found, that was simply being omitted due to time and attention constraints of the debate format. But to my complete lack of surprise, when you remove the fluff, it was like most of Craig's arguments, supported only by logical possibility and conceivability, something he becries for spontaneous horse generation, but not for a time bending God. This concept of God, with its post hoc logical consequence dodging properties, is completely anathema to my own way of finding truth, so I want to spend a little time talking about why this difference in truth seeking methods is important, lest I be putting out fires set by Craig indefinitely. As a computer scientist, I'm in intimate relation with the harshest critic of my ideas; the compiler. It doesn't matter how great my idea is, how elegant the code is, or the fact that it working is not logically impossible, if it's wrong, the compiler will spit it out unapologetically. It is a sanity checker for ideas. The same goes for the scientific method. It doesn't matter how beautiful or elegant your hypothesis is, if it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. I see no such sanity checking measures in place for the philosophical meanderings that leads Craig to a timeless God. There are no double blind experiments that can be done, or observations that could falsify such an idea. This is not an attack on Craig by the way, it's an understanding that if we start with a belief, and actively look for philosophical arguments to support it, without any way of tethering us to reality, we will surely find these arguments, but we will succumb to our biases in the process, and end up with an explanation that is indeed conceivable, but one that is so detached from reality that we have no reason to believe it's true. Our ability to find pathways through philosophical arguments to back almost any starting point is in my eyes a bug, and not a feature. This was a bit of a tangent, but I feel it is necessary. I don't want to fall into the trap that most people arguing for naturalism fall into while arguing against Craig; that essentially, the arguments that come from Craig's philosophy are of the same quality and rigor as the ones that come from science, because they absolutely are not.

The first premisse can be interpreted as something cannot come from nothing, but according to eg Kant causality is not a part of the noumenal world (Das ding an Sich, in philosophical terms) but the way our conscious experience works. Without the possibility to interpret events with causal relations, nothing would make sense, so according to Kant it is just the only way the universe can ‘present’ itself to us, the true nature of the universe is according to his reasoning principally unknowable. That doesn’t has to lead to the conclusion that there isn’t a explanation for the existence of the universe, but that we can’t get there by reason, like Craig pretends.

Part 1 We'll begin by stating the premises of the Kalam, and go through each one to see if they hold up to scrutiny. Premise 1) everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence Premise 2) the universe began to exist Premise 3) the universe had a cause for its existence This is what Craig has to say about the first premise - "Premise (1) seems obviously true-at the least, more so than its negation. First and foremost, it’s rooted in the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come into being from nothing" he goes on to say "if things really could come into being uncaused out of nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything and everything do not come into existence uncaused from nothing" This, at first doesn't seem too unreasonable. In everyday life we do see things as having causes, and indeed things don't come into existence out of nothing. But we have to be careful here, and realize what type of argument we're making. The Kalam claims to be an argument for God that uses deep philosophical concepts, so it's very suspect to use terms like "obvious", and "intuition". In philosophy, any ground gained, has to be fought for and argued, and not simply assumed by appealing to what the average Joe would consider reasonable. As we will see, Craig has a habit of appealing to cold philosophical reasoning when propping up his own ideas, and appealing to common sense when rebutting an idea from the other side. I feel this preface is necessary, so that if I refuse to accept propositions which seem obvious and intuitive like "things don't pop into existence from nothing", you'll see it as my doing the due diligence that a deep philosophical discussion deserves, and not me simply arguing for the sake of arguing, which incidentally is the charge that Craig launches at people that deny his first premise. So what can we make of Craig's statements? Well, he states that we have a metaphysical intuition that something cannot come from nothing. The first thing to note, is the use of the word nothing here. As we will see, Craig goes to great pains to differentiate between things that masquerade as nothing, such as empty space and quantum vacuums, and true philosophical nothingness. But here, we hear him saying that we have an intuition for nothingness, namely that something can't come out of it. But how can this be? Since the beginning of the universe, there has never been nothing. To put it another way, every experience we have ever had, has been an experience containing something, even if that something is empty space. I would agree if Craig had said something like "we have an intuition that things don't come into existence from empty space", but he specifically says nothing. This may seem like nitpicking, but remember we are doing philosophy here, and Craig gives no mercy to philosophical arguments he sees as weak, and so neither shall we. Craig also says, is that if it were possible that something could come from nothing, why don't we see things coming into existence from nothing all the time? Again, we see him conflating the idea of true philosophical nothingness with things that aren't nothing, like empty space. It's completely logical to say that something could come from nothing, yet not from empty space. It's not obvious or intuitive, or even something I'd argue for, this is just a reminder that we're doing philosophy here, and we must be thorough and precise about our definitions. This failure to solidify definitions, seeps into many of Craig's rebuttals where we can see him creating caricatures of arguments, in order to dismiss them via ridicule, instead of through careful philosophical reasoning. A good example of this is the following response to J.L. Mackie. "Does Mackie sincerely believe that things can pop into existence uncaused, out of nothing? Does anyone in his right mind really believe that, say, a raging tiger could suddenly come into existence uncaused, out of nothing, in this room right now?" I feel as though I'm repeating myself at this point, but Craig repeats this idea of "popping into existence out of nothing" yet again, and adds even more extravagance. We've already dealt with his confusion about what constitutes nothingness, and he seems to be pushing this to the limits by saying that a room now falls into that category, and that tigers are analogous to a fundamental substrate that might be argued as the universe's initial condition. More importantly, I hope that its clear to everyone that this is no way to have a philosophical discussion. He is creating a caricature, appealing to what an average person would think of this mischaracterization, and mocking ideas that should be at least entertained until they are properly fleshed out, as opposed to dismissing them off hand. He doesn't seem to appreciate how things look from the other side, and how easy it would be for me, or any of his interlocutors to say something like "Does Craig really believe that a disembodied mind can exist, as a matter of brute fact? If such minds could exist, why don't we see them popping up all over the place?" How useful would this statement be, in the context of a philosophical discussion? If both sides acted in this way, they would instantly find themselves in a stalemate trying to refute their mutual incredulous stares. After Craig discards the absurdity of assuming things can pop into existence out of nothing, he sites another rebuttal by Mackie: "It makes more sense to believe that the universe came into being uncaused out of nothing than to believe that God created the universe out of nothing"

-"So you really mean that everything that exists must have a cause of its existence?" -"Yes of course" -"So your god have not always existed then?" -"Well i didnt mean it like that!"

Look at all those books!! He must be so smart!!!1111!11!1!!

i think joe schmid presents some of wes moristons arguments against craigs various arguments for p1 quite well

In a 2D world, the drawn conclusions are all in 2D.

- First premise is utterly broken. Nothing above the quantum level is "coming into existence" inside the universe (except maybe for emergent properties) and on said quantum level, things come into existence from seemingly absolute nothing. Also Craig never really defines nothing. Also "magic" is a bad answer as to how something comes from a badly defined nothing. - Second premise is also broken. We don't know the universe came into existence. We can't measure back to the actual beginning of the expansion and don't know what was before. - Infinite past is just Craig being ignorant. Not really worth an answer beyond that. - "The universe is all space, time, matter and energy." Just an assertion, we don't know what lies beyond. - Timeless and immaterial are badly defined. A "timeless" god can't change state from "not creating" to "creating". A t"timeless" god can't think or feel or act in any way. - "The only immaterial things that have causal power are minds." Just an assertion. For all we know, minds are not immaterial. - "This allows us to say that this cause must be itself uncaused." Just an assertion and not how logic works. You don't get to define that this cause is uncaused. - Being purely actual is a bullshit term. Being infinite seems to be incompatible with minds. Being unchanging IS incopatible with minds. Divinte simplicity is just bad, period. Thus, the conclusion does not follow IN ANY WAY. That's not "philosophical", it's sophistry.

6:41 maybe a better way of putting it is that a potential infinite is a process tending towards infinite but never gets there, as under your defintion, i would be potentially infinite as i have an infninte number of potentials (although someone like trent horn would disagree).

Great video quality!!!

Great presentation. Except god is just jammed into the kalam to make it prove god. Special pleading. If you have problems with infinities then how old is God? If you think god could just exist without a beginning then why couldn't the quantum realm do the same thing and the singularity just came from there? I would accept the first 3 points of the kalam but everything after that is just wishful thinking, IMHO.

Part 3 Next, we will look at this notion of "beginning to exist". This is a strange inclusion into the syllogism, and screams ulterior motive. It seems like an amendment from a much more natural premise that would read "everything that exists must have a cause for it's existence". Why put this redundant qualifier "begins" at all? Does anything not "begin" to exist? Of course we know the answer to this, the word begins is placed here to leave room for God. The only thing that can possibly fit the criteria for not having a beginning. And what is meant by "begins to exist". In one sense, I began to exist, but the matter that constitutes me has existed in some form since the beginning of the universe. When we talk about the universe beginning to exist, we aren't talking about this type of changing matter and energy from one form to another, we are necessarily talking about matter coming into being. This comes from the Craig's own admission that the cause of the universe must be timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. Immaterial causes cannot have pre existing matter with which to fashion new objects. So it is clear, that the universe beginning to exist, which can be defined as matter and energy coming into existence, is unlike every other thing in the universe beginning to exist, which is simply a rearrangement of matter and energy. This means that the supposed intuition that Craig says we have, for things with beginnings having causes is false. There has only been one thing that fits this criteria, namely, the universe. In light of this, we can truncate the first premise from "everything that begins to exist has a cause" to "the universe has a cause", which makes the conclusion of the argument a simple restatement of one of its premises. There is one caveat to this, and it takes the form of virtual particles, which can in essence pop into and out of existence in a way where we can't really say it comes from existing matter or energy. The incredible irony here, is that Craig is opposed to this argument because the virtual particles don't really come from nothing. After the countless analogies we've heard of tigers popping into rooms and horses magically appearing, Craig finally decides to solidify the definition of true nothingness. He argues that because the virtual particles comes from a quantum vacuum, that's not really nothing. The motivation for Craig's new found philosophical rigor for the concept of nothingness is obvious. If particles can comes from nothing, uncaused, this leaves the door open for universes as well, and a naturalistic explanation for the origin of the universe. But he can't have it both ways. By noting that a quantum vacuum is not really nothing, the problem of why everyday objects like bicycles and tigers don't pop into existence on their own completely dissolves away, given that any possible place for them to pop into existence in our universe, is also not really nothing. Another thing to note, is by now making this distinction between nothingness, and quantum vacuums, he seems to be saying he's not surprised that things can pop into existence from... almost nothing. Aside from this being completely contradictory to his previous claims, it doesn't really make sense in the context of causality (which we will go into more detail later). If we imagine a quantum vacuum, or a room full of air, in what sense can we say that the vacuum or the air "caused" a particle to come into existence? It seems like we would have to be able to differentiate between a vacuum that didn't create a particle and one that did. Why, for instance did the vacuum "decide" to create a particle now instead of two seconds ago, or a year from now? It seems that even if we grant that virtual particles don't really come from nothing, the causal implications of this should still make Craig a little queasy. Before we move on to causality, we will spend a little time talking about infinity. Craig's premise that everything that begins to exist must have a cause, has a possible naturalistic candidate, if we allow for things having always existed. If the universe has existed forever, it never began to exist, and therefore doesn't require a cause. Craig eliminates this type of explanation by elucidating the issues with what he calls actual infinities. Actual infinities represent, as the name indicates, infinitesimal that are actually instantiated in the real world, such as an infinite number of things, or an infinite timeline. He differentiates this from potential infinities, an example of which would be the number of points on a line. We can imagine cutting a finite line into infinitely small sections, but only potentially so. The motivation for this differentiation of infinities comes from the realization that we can in fact traverse a potential infinity. Infinite series can be summed, and Zenu's paradox played out in the real world will see Achilles catching the turtle. Again, this differentiation seems post hoc, much like the addition of "begins to exist" in the first premise, but I will give Craig the benefit of the doubt and deal with actual infinites only, even if it appears to be a distinction without a difference. So what can we say about actual infinites? What would the consequences be of living in an infinitely large universe containing an infinite number of things, or a universe with an infinite past? To answer this, Craig explains the absurdity of infinity. He gives the example of Hilbert's hotel, in which an infinite number of customers occupy an infinite number of rooms. It is possible in Hilbert's hotel, to make room for another customer, or even an infinite number of customers, despite it being fully occupied. Craig sites this paradox as reason enough to exclude actual infinites from reality. Firstly, it's not clear that absurdity should be grounds for dismissing theories of reality. I can imagine similar absurdities being constructed for superposition and other quantum strangeness, yet here we are. But even if we admit this absurdity, we have to understand why it's absurd. There are certain assumptions about Hibert's hotel that must be true in order for us to arrive at these absurdities. Namely, information must travel instantaneously, and we must be able to complete tasks in zero time. These assumptions are taken for granted in a thought experiment, but cannot be when talking about the real world. In order for us to move a customer into Hibert's hotel, for example, we must move every person into the next room. If we perform this action in anything but zero time, it will take an infinitely long time to complete, and we never reach this paradox. Furthermore, if we were to take Craig's implicit assumptions about speed of events and communication, we can create paradoxes in our own universe which as far as we know is not infinite. Just imagine a light switch being flicked at a certain time interval that is halved at each flick. If we allow events to occur arbitrarily fast, we can perform an infinite number of clicks in a finite time and reach a point where the switch has been turned off and on an actual infinite number of times. We can reach a conclusion about the state of the switch, that it is both off and on, which is clearly an absurdity on par with Hilbert's hotel. There is more to say about causality, but this post is already gigantic

No, and I don't even need to listen. You can't prove an intelligent creative force and even if you could, you can't prove it is the biblical god. And the biblical god is highly unlikely a creator god since Yahweh started as a tribal storm god, like every tribe and nation had it's own gods back then.

11:01, how would this work for eternal things? maybe some parts of the universe are eternal so are 'infinite' with no beginning

No. Next.

whats your opinion on scotus?

I'll stick with Aquinas on this one. I believe the 5 ways are better overall

AronRa The Kalam oncological argument. 🤣😂🤣😂