“Universe,” Kalam, and Equivocation
The second premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument states, “the universe began to exist,” where William Lane Craig defines “universe” as “the whole of material reality.” This definition is important to the Kalam argument because it serves as a linchpin for Craig to argue that the universe must be caused by something which is “uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial.” In other words, if the universe isn’t the whole of material reality, then it’s possible that some other part of material reality caused it.
To be fair to Crag, his definition of the universe is traditional, but it also might be outdated. In the book The Hidden Reality (Pg. 4) physicist Brian Greene writes:
There was once a time when ‘universe’ meant ‘all there is.’ Everything. The whole shebang. The notion of more than one universe, more than one everything, would seemingly be a contradiction in terms. Yet a range of theoretical developments has gradually qualified the interpretation of ‘universe.’ The word’s meaning now depends on context. Sometimes ‘universe’ still connotes absolutely everything. Sometimes it refers only to those parts of everything that someone such as you or I could, in principle, have access to. Sometimes it’s applied to separate realms, ones that are partly or fully, temporarily or permanently, inaccessible to us; in this sense, the word relegates our universe to membership in a large, perhaps infinitely large, collection.
In A Universe from Nothing (Pg.125-126), physicist Lawrence Krauss echos the same sentiment:
Talking about many different universes can sound like an oxymoron. After all, traditionally the notion of universe has become synonymous with ‘everything that exists.’ More recently, however, universe has come to have a simpler, arguably more sensible meaning. It is now traditional to think of ‘our’ universe as comprising simply the totality of all that we can now see and all that we could ever see.
Craig, however, often cites the work of physicist Alexander Vilenkin to buttress his claim that “the whole of material reality” began to exist. So I emailed Dr. Vilenkin the following question:
Dr. Vilenkin,
Could you briefly define your use of the term “universe,” as you use it in the context of your work on the beginning of the universe? I’m just curious to know whether you use the term in the traditional sense, “all of physical reality,” or if you use it in the more modern sense of “those parts of ‘everything’ that we could, in principle, have access to.”
. His response:
Hi,
It is certainly more than what we can have access to. Regions beyond our cosmic horizon are included. But if there are other universes whose space and time are completely disconnected from ours, those are not included. So, by “universe” I mean the entire connected spacetime region.
Alex V.
So, it seems to me that there is some equivocation going on between Craig’s definition of the word “universe” and that of the physicists he uses to support his claim.
Certainly, Craig seems to be assuming there are no disconnected universes. But I don’t think this is much of a problem for the Kalam argument because such universes can be methodologically eliminated by Ockham’s razor, since there is probably no hint at all at their existence (or else they wouldn’t be really disconnected…).
Equivocation I find in the expression ‘begin to exist’. The need of a cause is very intuitive for whatever earlier didn’t exist and later began to exist, but when there is no earlier (as is probably the case for the universe) I’m not sure a cause is required.
You still have problems with virtual particles and atomic decay. Yes I have heard Craig’s flimsy excuse of why he claims they are not uncaused but no one except apologists are buying it.
Ted, please, tells us how do virtual particles and atomic decay indicate the existence of disconnected universes?
It also doesn’t hurt the Kalam argument because even if there are other disconnected universes, it still is the fact that our universe came into being. If these other universes are disconnected, then they can’t have any causal influence on ours. Therefore we still have to wonder why our universe came into being.
Basically, this guy is just making crap up to avoid logical conclusions.
No, what Craig means by ‘universe’ is all material reality; this universe, multi-verse (if this is the case) or beyond. All physical reality, if you will. Just go to reasonablefaith.org and search the Q&A or select a podcast on the kalaam cosmological argument and you will find out what he means by “universe”.
LauLuna says “I’m not sure a cause is required.” if past time is infinite. His or her s intuition is correct. No cause is required from WITHIN the universe. The cause that caused t=0 would be from outside of space-time , one cannot even use the word PRIOR…there is no space-time prior to t=0.
Gigahoo, I actually meant I’m not sure a cause is required even if the past is finite. To me, it is only eveident that a cause is needed for X if there is some time at which X didn’t exist. But if time itself began together with the universe, no such prior time exists for the universe.
This is the best blog ever, thank you. Keep updating, please! My problem with the Kalam is that we can say nothing about the beginning of the Universe until we observe it or can demonstrate what is/was likely. You do that with observation of the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation and with particle accelerators – you don’t do it with syllogism. I don’t care if William Lane Craig thinks his arguments are logically sound (they aren’t) – I want to see evidence. Craig constructs word games because he has no evidence.
Ted, I’m not sure what you mean by ‘logically sound’. Craig’s arguments are indeed logically valid, i.e. their conclusions do follow from their premises. Their premises may be controversial,but Craig doesn’t claim them to be ‘logically sound’; they don’t rely on logic but on metaphysical or mathematical intuitions: causality, probability, etc.
Probability? His claims of probability are silly. Stop being an apologist and look into cosmology instead of word games. No cosmologist takes the Kalam argument seriously because we have no idea – meaning there is no way to determine probability beyond t=0.
Stop being an apologist and start to know the arguments you want to criticize: the kalam doesn’t rely on probability, the fine tuning argument does.
All objections based on intuition are not valid in discussing the universe(s). Our intuition does not apply at all to things far outside the scale of the human body, either microscopic (quantum theory) or megascopic. Craig’s notion that everything that begins to exist needs a cause is illegitimate. Also note that he could have said that everything that exists needs a cause, but he needs an exception for God who presumably never began to exist. It’s all pseudo-philosophical rubbish.
No, tap17x, stating that everything that begins to exist, and not simply everything, needs a cause is not rubbish: it’s intuitive; nobody believes that number 7 needs a cause, since it is atemporal. Causes work explaining changes over time. It is just controversial whether the beginning of the universe, which was preceded by no time at all, is the kind of beginning to which our causal intuition applies.
Intellectual intuition is a legitimate resource in arguments; after all, absolutely everything we are convinced of (e.g. that intuition doesn’t work) ultimately relies on intuition, Absolutely everything; give it a second thought and, please, tell us what your intuition tells you about this.
It is rubbish. And you can’t prove the beginning of the universe was caused, you can’t prove that there was no time before it (Stephen Hawking certainly doesn’t agree with it) and intuition is not how you do science. Jesus Christ do you have anything intelligent to say or just apologetic rubbish? I know what you don’t have is evidence, so please stop playing games here and let Astrophysicists and Cosmologists search for answers.
Ted, you’ve reported what your intuition tells you. I’m grateful but I’d say you’re wrong.
Cosmologists enter on stage once the universe exists. Why the universe exists is not their concern; that’s philosophy’s task to ascertain.
This is just sound common sense.
If scientists relied on common sense and naive intuition, quantum theory and relativity would never have been discovered–let alone the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe. It’s Christianity that utterly violates common sense and intuition. Step back and objectively consider the bizarre notion that Jesus=God was temporarily sacrificed by God=Jesus to pay a debt not owed by humans to God=Jesus. Unbelievable. Probably the worst theology ever thought of.
You get far off the problem: the Kalam’s causal principle is intuitive, not rubbish.
Which just goes to show how fallible our intuitions are. Science may start on an intuition, as you claim, but the significant difference between science and WLC is that unless the intuition can be backed up with concrete evidence it’s thrown in the bin. WLC has indicated that even if his arguments were to be proven wrong he would still continue with his belief in God.
Your conceptualisation of science and progress as being done by intuition is actually a misrepresentation. Mostly science is the laborious task of experimentation … to claim to rely upon intuition would imply that steps were missed … only sloppy scientists go by intuition alone.
[Causes work explaining changes over time]
Precisely. Since causation is an temporal thing, to ask for causation outside time is a contradiction. Craig´s God is an square circle.
[Intellectual intuition is a legitimate resource in arguments]
Correct. And the rational being give up such intuitions as soon he verifies they fail. Our intuitions are demonstrably failures when describing the physical world. Anyone born having an intuition that heavier things falls faster, the Earth is flat. Pretty much everything in Newtonian mechanics, that describes the world at the scale we live in, are non intuitive. Inertia is completely nonsense for the non initiated. How things can keep moving forever? What is in motion, must stop, that´s our intuition.
If our intuitions worth almost nothing in the “regular world”, they are completely inept in the micro and macro level, where Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity can fry any brain with its unacceptable absurdities and paradoxes.
Given this, anyone believing that we can apply our every day intuitions to the beginning of the Cosmos is seriously deluded, and such thing can only be explained by the childish desire to make a God appear at all costs. God is nowhere for us to see, but must be somewhere between the nothing and inflation, otherwise my ticket for eternal life will expire.
Claiming that we should not apply our rational intuition to explain the beginning of the world is, to my mind, anti-scientific. Science and math are all the time relying on rational intuition.
I agree that the explanation of the universe from God cannot resort to the usual causality, which works inside time and this, I think, is the main problem with the kalam.
However, the argument based on the principle of reason remains unaffected: some reasons are causes (within time) and some reasons are not causes. God, as the ultimate reason of the universe, need not be its temporal cause, it may be its atemporal fundament.
But if we turn to the principle of reason, then the fact that the universe began to exist is, for all I know, irrelevant. This is why I doubt very much that the kalam really contributes anything.
Your remarks about intuition being almost useless in dealing with the physical world are excellent. Thank you!
LauLuna – Intuition is indeed essential in everyday life and in coming up with new ideas in science and mathematics. But its use must yield to more formal thinking much of the time. In quantum theory alone we have the exceedingly unintuitive and aven unbelievable phenomena of uncertainty, superposition, wave-particle duality, entanglement, and more, which were forced upon us by nature. The notion that “everything that begins to exist” certainly takes inuition to where it doesn’t belong. And for the metaquestion of whether iintuition tells that intuition doesn’t work, I put that claim down to observation, not pseudo-deduction. Intuition initially told us that it applied everywhere but deeper thinking refuted that.
The source of everyone of our claims and arguments is rational intuition. Disposing of it is either muting oneself or letting everything be valid. When rational intuition is seemingly failing (as in QM), then rational intuition imust be used to show the failure only apparent. The alternative to relying on rational intuition is silence or madness. Criticizing the Kalam because it relies on rational intuition is tantamount to yielding to it.
Intuition is thinking while relying on “information” not fully conscious. It developed through evolution to help us survive, operating in situations we were or became familiar with. During its development, advanced and even elementary physics was not in the picture. Now we understand much more than our ancestors, so naturally their modes of thinking have become augmented with more precise and explicit methods. You can’t develop a theory of the universe relying on intuition.
You say:
“You can’t develop a theory of the universe relying on intuition”.
You can’t do otherwise. Each reasoning, each mathematical proof, ultimately relies on intuition. There is a core to rational intuition that no one can consistently doubt and that every physicist uses. To my mind, that nothing comes from nothing belongs in that core.
You must have a different definition of intuition. If you think that Wiles’ proof or entanglement is intuitive, we are on different wavelengths. If you think that God’s sacfirice of Jesus is intuitive, I have nothing more to say.
What has God’s sacrifice to do with this issue? I thought the topic was whether the impossibility of something out of nothing was intuitive and whether intuition is reliable. It seems to me you’re reasoning has gone amiss.
Excuse the grammar: I was too floppy in copying and pasting.
Philosophy 101 for the obsessed anti-WLC critic
The word ‘universe’ keeps changing….well why would it stop now? Perhaps the word changes back to it’s old definition 3000 yeara from now?
It is pretty irrational to juggle definitions, but why do we have the answers now in 2012, given the fact that we still haven’t even put another human being on another planet yet or traveled to our closest star, given there are billions of them out there.
So what? If WLC is making NOW claims about the universe he has to use a COMMON definition of the universe, otherwise he will be misunderstood.
Criag is so committed to his superstition ( I have an idea why) that regardless of what evidence or reasoning anyone supplies, he will NEVER give up his silly beliefs. He has admitted that if evidence firmly contradicts his superstition he would go with “faith” every time. That is not the position of a thinker, it’s the position of a dogmatist. But I don’t think he’s dumb enough to believe much of what he professes.
I take it that you are an ignoramus just like every other village atheist on the internet, and you fail to realize that Craig’s KCA has been defended in a SCIENCE JOURNAL
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j66361146539wh38/?MUD=MP
Pls lrn2lrn
Ty
Cornell, thanks for the link. Let me comment.
In his 1999 paper at http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1023%2FA%3A1017083700096, Craig interprets the issue of a cause of the universe broadly as the question of WHY the universe exists (see footnote on p. 728). he does not say that the universe needs a cause directly because it began to exist but rather that the fact that it began to exist proves the universe contingent, hence in need of an external reason to exist (this I take to be a subtle turn from the plainly causal to the Leibnizian approach, i.e. from ’cause’ to ‘sufficient reason’).
The question is then whether the fact that the past is finite adds any evidence for the contingency of the universe. In past times (so in Hume, e.g.),the possibility that the universe was itself necessary was linked to its eternity. This is the link Craig wants to solve.
But the question may be harder. The beginning of the universe does not imply the existence of a time at which the universe didn’t exist (which would be clearly incompatible with its necessity). So, Craig’s approach, though suggestive, may well be in need of further clarification and philosophical research.
Johnnyp76, I’ve followed your first link for a while.
Assuming that ‘everything’ is the universe itself in order to debunk the Kalam is the most obvious petitio principi I have ever found. Of course, on that assumption, you can block any inference to a supernatural cause or reason of the universe. But I wouldn’t say it’s quite a great job. Sorry.
I am presently writing a paper on objections to the KCA. Here are some musings I made earlier:
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/william-lane-craig-and-kalam.html
as well as others here:
http://atipplingphilosopher.yolasite.com/a-tps-blog/william-lane-craig-and-the-kalam-cosmological-argument
See what you think.
FYI, Craig has responded via one of his Q & As, with the help of James Sinclair:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/what-does-one-mean-by-the-universe
Whatever the physics, the argument is adjusted to show an infinite regress, which they think is impossible, therefore God. Prima facie silly, but what are you gonna do?
This is really obvious but Craig apparently doesn’t realize it or chooses to ignore it.: If the universe could not begin without God giving it a shove, where did God come from? Saying that he’s eternal is vacuous. The God mystery is unsolvable, but cosmologists are getting closer to a solution. Science has been pushing religion out of the way for centuries and will keep doing so.
ASking where God came from is just utter ignorance. It’s like asking what caused the uncaused cause. If God isn’t eternal then you aren’t defining God and need to L2theology.
Might as well ask for the name of the married bachelors wife….
Please lrn
ty
LauLuna you don’t understand the scientific method do you? Intuition plays absolutely no part in science. It is people like you and William Lane Craig who draw the line in the sand between philosophy and science. As of right now William Lane Craig is in no position to comment on what a singularity might have been because he only has words, not formula or hypothesis aside from his presupposition. This is not work for the philosopher, this will be determined by those with particle accelerators and knowledge of equation. Which is why not a single physicist or serious philosopher has ever been swayed by the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Only Christians are excitedd by it. If it was serious philopshy it would have warrented discussion in the scientific community, but it hasn’t.
Actually they take the external world being real by intuition. The same goes for the belief that ‘other minds exist’, as well as the reliability of the senses, and the reliability of the past.
Please learn epistemology
ty
intuition in this sense of the KCA is being used as non-inferential knowledge
LOL
That causation is always temporal is a matter of definition. Atemporal causation is not unconceivable, no square circle at all. But I would rather call it ‘reason’ or ‘fundament’, following Leibniz.
Gary Smith: science relies on rational intuition everywhere, if only because it uses logic and math. It is you who fail to know either what science is or what rational intuition is. A bit of philosophy wouldn’t harm people around here..
Good stuff, you will notice that internet atheists are worse than fundy Bible-belt Christians when it comes to anything philosophical.
I’m glad you pointed out the inconsistency!