Kalam and the Immaterial

Look! Its the Hand of God!

I haven’t spent much time on this site talking about the Cosmological Argument.  Primarily, I avoid it because it’s not especially relevant to most people, and secondarily, because it’s kind of old hat.  Even Kant’s objections have never received a satisfactory reply.

But over the past week, I’ve been pummeled by this argument from several angles.  I’m going to briefly mention the most common usages of the argument I’ve heard, and briefly outline my responses.

• Every thing that exists has a cause. Maybe.  Maybe not.  It’s fine to say that in our universe, everything we’ve ever witnessed had a cause.  But the cosmological argument and its Kalam variation are attempting to demonstrate something from outside our universe.  And since we have absolutely no idea what — if anything — exists outside of our universe, we can’t very well make pronouncements about the way things work there.
• Infinite regress is impossible. Same objection here.  The argument presumes what it is trying to prove. The ultimate goal is to demonstrate the existence of something outside our existence, but in order to do that, we must presume that the laws we identify in our universe hold true in other existences.  Which doesn’t follow.
• God is outside time and space. Well, maybe.  Maybe not.  This claim fails to provide two essential elements necessary for discussion of a concept — a Universe of Discourse, and a Positive Ontology.   Here’s what that means in a nutshell.  For us to meaningfully discuss something, we must have an idea of what it IS.  The terms “immaterial,” and “supernatural” (as well as “spirit” and other such terms) sound like they’re positive claims, but in reality, they only refer to what something IS NOT.  Try the exercise yourself:  What is the immaterial?  That which is not material.  What is the supernatural?  That which is not natural.  For an easier to understand example, just ask yourself this.  If we were to sit down for coffee and you asked me to pick a topic of conversation, would you know what to talk about if I said only, “Alright.  Let’s talk about ‘not baseball‘”?

So, in a nutshell, here’s the annotated version of the traditional Kalam argument:

1. (1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence.  (Naked Assertion)
2. (2) The universe has a beginning of its existence. (True)

Therefore:

1. (3) The universe has a cause of its existence. (Unsupported claim)
2. (4) If the universe has a cause of its existence then that cause is God. (renaming without adding information)

Therefore:

1. (5) God exists. (Does not follow)

For those who will accuse me of using an unsophisticated and outdated model, I will use William Lane Craig’s updated account.

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.  (Naked Assertion)
2. The universe began to exist. (True)
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause. (Does not follow)

In his sub-arguments, Craig proposes the following:

1. An actual infinite cannot exist.
2. An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
3. Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.

Here, we’ve come right back to our original objection.  The statement that an actual infinite cannot exist presupposes the laws of our universe.  And since we’re talking about something that must have existed outside of our universe, we can’t impose our laws upon it without further justification.  And there is none forthcoming.  So we can reject the claim — not necessarily as untrue, but as unproven.

1. A collection formed by successive addition cannot be an actual infinite.
2. The temporal series of past events is a collection formed by successive addition.
3. Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite.

Same here.  Craig’s analysis of the claim that successive addition cannot lead to an actual infinite is ultimately based on his intuitive belief that it’s impossible.  (To be fair, he does also appeal to experience, but this fails for the same reason.)

When we examine the argument in toto, we discover that the whole thing rests on an underlying assumption – All that exists in any possible state of being conforms to the laws of our universe. This is ironic, since the argument is trying to prove that a being exists which defies the laws of our universe, but in order to do so, it must presume the laws of our universe for that being’s state of existence.

More recent critiques of the CA (notably Stenger, if you’re interested in such things) involve recent discoveries in quantum physics which have demonstrated rather conclusively that things do sometimes pop into existence from “nothing.”  I am not qualified to comment on quantum physics, so I have nothing to add other than to suggest that it’s probably a bad idea for anyone else to comment either, unless they happen to be a quantum physicist.  That shit’s crazy.

Finally, I’d like to address a rather simple diversion from the standard arguments and counter-arguments.  Let’s suppose for a moment that the universe did have an intelligent creator.  At this point, we can suppose quite a few things about its nature.  Perhaps it’s a school boy in another universe, playing with his Tonka Black Hole Kit.  Perhaps it’s a disembodied time traveler from the 91st dimension of Quarbling Fasset.

Maybe the universe is the bloody aftermath of a massively intelligent invisible turtle who decided to commit suicide.

I highlighted that last possibility to illustrate a point that is often missed.  Even if we grant intelligent motivation behind our universe, there’s no particular reason to suppose that the intelligent entity is either still in existence or has ever bothered to check back on his creation.  Any such supposition relies yet again on our presumption of naturalism!  Things are the way they are here, everywhere else.  Intelligent entities would necessarily care about their creations.  They would necessarily want to stay alive.

So anyway… yeah.  The Cosmological Argument has never been very convincing to me.

Addendum:  For those of you who are insistent that I call people by name while discussing their ideas, I’d like to refer you to the following passage from Time and the Metaphysics of Reality, by the aforementioned Craig.

One could also argue that counterbalancing the simplicity of the received version is the heuristic superiority of the neo-Lorentzian version.  Besides all this, the fact remains that we have good reasons for believing that a neo-Lorentzian theory is correct, namely, the existence of God in A-theoretic time implies it, so that concerns about which version is simpler become of little moment. — pg 179

If you’re not following all of that, here’s the breakdown.  The model of time espoused by Einstein’s General Relativity is widely accepted as a simple (!) and parsimonious account, but it causes problems for the cosmological account:

So we see that we cannot attach any absolute signification to the concept of simultaneity, but that two events which, viewed from a system of co-ordinates, are simultaneous, can no longer be looked upon as simultaneous events when envisaged from a system which is in motion relatively to that system.  (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, 1905)

Craig has tried to refute this by proposing the “Neo-Lorentzian interpretation,” in which the work of Hendrick Lorentz — author of one of the last proposals of “aether,” a motionless … something … that permeates the universe — is revived and trotted out as an alternative to Einstein’s model, which calls into question the possibility of a god existing at any one quantifiable discreet moment in objective time.

This may be fine, I guess, except for two things:  First, Craig’s model is adding to an already parsimonious explanation for the sole purpose of proving what he wants to prove.  That, kids, is the opposite of how science works.  Occam’s Razor, though it is not a “Law” in the way that we speak of the Law of Gravity, it is a very good methodological tool, and Craig’s attempt to circumvent relativity is a blatant example of adding an unnecessary element to a simple solution.

Secondarily, Craig’s argument is circular, as I illustrated above in the quote from his book.  In order for the A-Theory of Time to be true, Neo-Lorentzian Aether Theory must be true, but the justification for that is the intuitive rightness of LAT if god exists! Which… of course, he’s justified earlier with the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which relies on the A-Theory of time, which relies on the Neo-Lorentzian Aether theory, which relies on the existence of God.

If you’re interested, Craig uses four other arguments besides the Kalam to support his position:  The strongest of these, I suppose, is The Fine Tuning Argument, which he rather blithely tosses out despite the possibility of a multiverse.  If you’re further interested, he justifies rejection of the multiverse based on “independent evidence of the existence of such a Designer in the form of the other arguments for the existence of God.”  (Pg 14)

So now the circle is extended to include the presumption of the truth of the Cosmic Designer Hypothesis.

I could go on.  I really could.  But I’m really just doing this to prove to prove to my interlocutor that I’ve read some of this stuff.  He seems completely unwilling to use his own words to make the arguments himself.

It’s as easy as that, folks.  Just write out the concept.  If you want to talk about something, don’t chide me for not knowing what’s in your head.  Just write it out.