Hello, today we are going to finish the Cosmological Argument subunit, and we're going to do so by examining what I take to be the best version of the Cosmological Argument currently available, and that is the Kalam Cosmological Argument by William Lane Craig. So William Lane Craig is a contemporary theologian, however he calls it the Kalam Cosmological Argument because he found some medieval cosmological arguments that were in some ways similar to this in the Kalam School of Philosophy. So, that's why.
Now, if we remember what we learned last class while examining the five ways, for a cosmological argument to be taken as a challenge to the atheist naturalist view, if it wants any hope of persuasively establishing its conclusion, it needs to do three things. First of all, it needs to be valid. Second of all, it needs to use only the weak version of the principle of sufficient reason. That is, it doesn't, shouldn't have anything to do with regresses or anything like that.
And then third, its conclusion must be incompatible with atheist naturalism. So let's start with just a statement of Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument. Simple argument, two premises and a conclusion.
Premise. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. Premise, the universe began to exist.
Conclusion, the universe has a cause. So, is that argument valid? Of course it is. If you'll notice, that is the same argument form as all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause. Definitely valid. Does it use the... Only weak PSR?
Yes. Where does it use it? Premise one. Everything that begins to exist has a cause is just another way of saying tigers don't just appear. They have a cause.
So it definitely uses weak PSR. Why does it not use strong PSR? Because there's nothing about regresses. Last one. This is the trickier one, as I mentioned last video.
Why think that... The conclusion is incompatible with atheist naturalism. So first of all, focus in.
The conclusion is just the words, the universe has a cause. So why is it that a consistent atheist naturalist cannot utter those words, at least as a true statement or assertion? Because, here's the trickier part, a cause must be distinct from its effect, which means if the universe has a cause, then something exists.
besides the universe, which was the effect. An atheist naturalist says that only the universe exists, hence they cannot allow something that posits a cause of the universe. So, tricky point, hopefully you got it. What does that mean?
That means that this cosmological argument has a chance. That means we need to look at it seriously and evaluate it on its merits. So, Craig does not do much to defend premise one. but it'll come back a little bit as we talk about later. His primary defense of the argument rests in defending premise two.
Now, if you really want to know, we can talk about this all day on the discussion boards, but here's what happens. Craig gives four supports for premise two. Two of them are philosophical arguments, he says.
Those both fail pretty grotesquely for reasons we can talk about if you want. It's not controversial of me to say so. However, there's two what he calls scientific confirmations. One of them is about the laws of thermodynamics.
In a closed system like the universe, what happens? Energy equalizes. You drop an ice cube in a cup of coffee, the ice cube melts, and the coffee gets colder.
The temperature equalizes. So what does that mean? If the universe was infinitely...
old. All energy would be equalized since energy is not equalized. We know the universe is not infinitely old.
Therefore, it began to exist. So that's the aside, though, because, well, wait a minute. What if there was a giant infusion of energy, say, 14 billion years ago?
Then things shouldn't be equalized yet. So notice that the really important, and the only one you'll be responsible for on the final, the really important support of premise two is Big Bang Cosmogeny. So.
Let me give you the very quick rundown of that. Oh, sorry, cosmogony, literally how the cosmos was birthed. Big bang.
So here's the general idea of what you need to know for the course. Approximately 14 billion years ago, 13.8 I think, the universe was what's called the singularity. That is approximately an infinitely dense point. Now, what that means, and this is, oh, sorry, and then what happened? It banged.
And the universe has been expanding ever since. So, first and foremost, it's a noodle bender because, remember Einsteinian general relativity, that space and time curve around the objects in them, we know that. Which means, when things were infinitely dense, there was no space. It's not like this thing banged into space.
Its space itself has been expanding ever since. And then very similarly, there's an important sense in which time did not exist before the Big Bang either, because time also bends. So, that makes your head hurt, I know, but that's okay. So first of all, I don't even use the words Big Bang Theory because we know this event happened.
If you've ever turned on an old school TV and saw the static, static is actually background radiation from the Big Bang. Tons and tons and tons of confirmation. We know this thing happened. And what does Craig say?
Well, that sure seems like the universe beginning to exist to me. Hence his supportive premise too. So that's the general idea. And roughly speaking, his position is that God caused the Big Bang. So that's that.
Now, we are finally in a position to evaluate cosmological arguments, and here's what it seems to come down to. This is what I call the cosmological push on your review sheet, a trademark that's coming up in a publication I have in May, so please don't spread that around too much. It refers to a push on a roulette wheel. If you've ever played roulette, sometimes a roulette wheel will have a push slot.
What does that mean? Everybody gets their money back. There's no winner.
and no loser. So let's talk about cosmological arguments and why you might think that. First of all, is Craig's argument sound? If so, we have to accept the conclusion. Well, if you agree that tigers don't just appear, then you grant premise one, seemingly.
What about premise two? Does the Big Bang establish that there was a beginning of the universe? Craig says yes, and I think that's a reasonable interpretation. But do we have to accept that interpretation? No.
And this is the thing we need to be very, very aware of because Craig is a little incautious with his language sometimes. It has to do with scientific consensus. What is scientific consensus?
The scientific consensus is that the Big Bang happened. But it's not scientific consensus that the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe. That's an interpretation Craig gives. And there are other interpretations.
For instance, you might have heard of the oscillation model of the universe, where there's a Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch. Not that common a theory, because the physics doesn't really support that terribly well. But it's another model.
But more importantly... There's a question of, is the singularity really the beginning of the universe? Could the singularity have been sitting there for an infinite amount of time first? Maybe. But there's also multiverse theories of the universe.
Imagine that the universe is much bigger than we think it is. Take an analogy, a bubble bath filling with water and all these bubbles are expanding. And our universe is just... one bubble in a much, much bigger scenario. Things like that.
And so there's a lot of dispute in theoretical physics and astrophysics about not that the Big Bang happened, but whether the Big Bang was the beginning in that sense. So, or you might just say the Big Bang happened at uncaused. Some people say that as well.
And so... Here's the general idea is do I need to, uh... Premise 2, the universe began to exist, is Craig's interpretation of the Big Bang.
However, that does not reflect scientific consensus. And so if we modify Premise 2 to reflect scientific consensus, we actually have to have a different Premise 2. If I just want to restrict Premise 2 to what scientists agree on, is that Premise 2 would then say the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe as we know it. But if we change premise two to that, we must also change the conclusion in order to preserve validity. So if we change premise two to the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe as we know it, then we can only conclude that the universe as we know it began to exist. But notice that conclusion is compatible with atheist naturalism, because of course the universe as we know it began to exist with the Big Bang.
And so the question becomes... Which of those two arguments should I accept? It seems to rely on what my interpretation of the Big Bang should be.
Is it a better interpretation to say that the Big Bang was caused by an uncaused God? Or is it better to say, for instance, the Big Bang itself was uncaused? And this is the position I refer to as the cosmological push, because... How do we choose between those two seems to be a matter of intuitions, because neither seems to have an advantage.
For instance, how many uncaused entities does the atheist naturalist posit? One. An uncaused Big Bang. How many uncaused entities does the theist posit?
One. An uncaused god who caused the Big Bang. And then once the Big Bang happens, they also agree on everything in terms of... physics at least that follows from the big bang and so that the only point of dispute is is the bitter big bang better interpreted as caused or uncaused now why think one side or the other it has to do with intuitions uh first of all when we're talking about infinities and space itself expanding etc the stuff gets weird and so it your intuitions might really be about what's less weird and so how you feel about cosmological arguments Seems to be answered by the following question.
Is it less weird to have an uncaused god causing a big bang, or is it less weird to have an uncaused big bang? Well, just like tigers appearing would be weird, a big bang just banging would be weird as well. But why think the other side's weird? Because an uncaused god, especially a conscious god, is really weird as well.
That would be a being who is a perfect intellect, but has literally been sitting around doing absolutely nothing for an infinite amount of time before deciding 13.8 billion years ago was the time to create. That's weird too. So I like to say that what the cosmological arguments are good for, I don't know if they're good for determining whether there's a higher power or not, but they're really good for figuring out exactly where the disagreement is. in helping fix our intuitions.
And that's not a bad thing. And so for the rest of the semester we're going to look at some extra evidence. So remember belief should be based on all evidence.
So say cosmological argument leaves us on the fence. Well our next subunit we're going to look at design arguments that try to push in favor of an intelligent higher power. And then the final subunit of the semester we're going to look at the problem of evil which kind of pushes against a designer. So that's about all I have to say for cosmological arguments.
Love to hear your thoughts in the discussion. I will just say, in case you're following along on the review sheet, I just decided not to do fine-tuning arguments this semester. Things have been difficult enough without introducing a bunch of extra stuff to look up. So next is going to be Paley.
Before you read the Paley, You need to know a little bit about analogies, and so I will be posting a brief video just about how analogical reasoning works in general before you read the Paley. So watch for that, and we will see you next time.