hi everyone this is video for a and the subject matter of the video is william lane craig x' Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God William Lane Craig is a very well-known Christian philosopher and theologian he's a research professor at the Talbot School of Theology but dr. Craig is probably his fame comes from the fact that he's debated atheists scientists other philosophers all over the world he'll go anywhere to debate you on matters having to do with God he's trying to defend the Christian faith and he's a very very good debater in this folder for the folder for this week you'll notice I have a YouTube video by Craig dealing with Hilbert's hotel and there you can really see what kind of a public speaker he is I give him when I was in college I majored in philosophy but I minored in speech and not that I'm any great public speaker but I thought that it would be important if I was going to be a teacher to learn something about the art of public speaking and I would say Craig gets very very high marks as regards to the art of public speaking I think you'll enjoy that video very much now we want to go through his version of a very famous argument called the Kalam cosmological argument this is somewhat different from the argument from contingency let me point out the difference right away or at least one difference you remember Richard Taylor when he was talking about creation and he said creation means essentially dependence dependence of the world on God to say that God creates the world means that the world depends upon God for it's very existence but see Taylor's argument was compatible with the notion that the world has always existed he gave that example of the flame and the beams of light suppose there were an eternal flame a flame that has always existed it never came into being in time and the flame is casting beams of light and the beams of light never came into existence in time so you have an eternal flame and you have eternal beams of light would the beams of light still depend upon the flame Taylor says yes so Taylor's argument from contingency is compatible with the notion that the world has always existed but he says even if the world has always existed it did not have a beginning in time it would still be dependent upon God for its existence now the Kalam cosmological argument of William Lane Craig tries to show that the world did begin to exist at some point in time so you might say that his argument tries to actually prove what's in the Bible because what's in the Bible it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth a Christians Jews and Muslims all believed that the world had a temporal beginning that it began to exist at some point in time and that's what and when a Malayan Craig's our Kalam argument tries to show that the universe began to exist at some point in time so that's the difference between Craig's co-op at least one difference between Craig's Kalam argument and witcher taylor's argument from contingency now in your PR for notes notice the very first point that is made Craig's version of the Kalam cosmological argument is heavily heavily influenced by al-ghazali a twelfth century Muslim theologian now Cazalas argument goes like this step one premise 1 whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning premise 2 the universe began to exist and therefore a conclusion the universe has a cause of its beginning now bill Craig at least in this article that he wrote which was actually a lecture he reformulates premise 1 as a conditional conditional means if if this then that if P then Q and he he rephrases or reformulates premise 1 to say if the universe began to exist then the universe has a cause of its beginning why does he reformulate it in that way because he wants to get across the point that he's talking about the whole universe Ghazali x' premise 1 says whatever and that means all things that begin to exist but Craig wants to talk about the whole universe or of the whole world and not for example subatomic particles you know I really think that Craig thinks that subatomic particles do come into existence at some point in time and then and that they're caused to exist but they're there is this debate in quantum physics are subatomic particles caused or uncaused and Craig thinks for at this point that would be a distraction so he doesn't want to get into that so he wants to talk about the whole world beginning to exist right and having a beginning of its existence and so he wants to get around a talk about the subatomic particles and so he reformulates gazali is step 1 as a condition if the universe began to exist then the universe has a cause of its beginning now he gives three reasons why he thinks that premise his premise which was not gazali x' 1 but Kraig's 1 prime ok he gives three reasons for 1 prime the first reason is hey something can't come from nothing the old dictum ex nihilo Neagle fit out of nothing nothing comes to be nothing can't cause anything the second reason is if something can come into being from nothing then it it becomes inexplicable in other words really hard to explain why just anything or everything doesn't come into being from nothing I mean if the universe comes into being from nothing what why doesn't a rootbeer he says come into being from nothing or wait isn't Beethoven come into being from nothing or why does this computer I'm looking at coming to being from nothing so if something can come into being from nothing then it's hard to explain why other things don't come into being from nothing like root beer baked oven in this computer and in number 3 says common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise 1 the scientific evidence the dominant scientific theory for the origin of the universe and that the universe began to exist some people say thirteen billion years ago others say I think rose says fourteen and a half billion years ago but everybody thinks it will the majority of scientists in the scientific community believed the universe began with the Big Bang and that was at a finite point in the past some thirteen or fourteen billion years ago so you've got all the scientific evidence that confirms the truth of the universe is coming into being and having a cause now what about premise two and this is really a key premise the universe began to exist that means the universe began to exist at some point in time Craig thinks that there's strong scientific and philosophical evidence for premise 2 and what I say the strong scientific evidence concerning the origin of the universe is the big bang theory which has been widely embraced by the scientific community in another article if just on his website reasonable faith org called does God exist he claims that discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics have led to the hypothesis that the universe does not have an eternal past in other words it hasn't always been around it's not always have it it's false to say it has always existed they came into being around 13 billion years ago in a cataclysmic event known as the Big Bang so the universe began to exist with the Big Bang indeed all matter and energy even physical space and time themselves came into being at the Big Bang prior to the Big Bang there was nothing so the universe began to exist from nothing and it's not as if nothing was the cause of the universal right it just means that prior to the universe nothing existed you know except God of course for Bill Craig as the distinguished Oxford philosopher Anthony Kenney puts it a proponent of the Big Bang Theory at least if he's an atheist must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing what is Craig's philosophical defense for premise two premise two says the universe began to exist meaning at some point in time and I point out his first philosophical argument which will be our main focus is based on the idea that an actually infinite number of past events is an impossibility see if if you believe that the universe did not begin to exist at some point in time then there must have been an actually infinite number of past events and Craig says that's impossible so he wants to argue as follows number one if the universe did not have a beginning the number of past events is actually infinite a number of past events is not actually infinite so the universe had to have a beginning so the idea that the universe is eternal lets us make any sense to craig now this is important he doesn't think that in reality maybe in your ideas but not in reality the infinite meaning the actually infinite is nowhere to be found right he brings in the famous mathematician David Hilbert who claims quote the infinite is nowhere to be found in reality it doesn't exist in nature nor does it provide a legitimate basis for rational thought the role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea but past events are are not ideas past events are real so the number of past events can't go back for other forever the universe must have begun to exist now now there just make this important Craig doesn't have any problem with the concept of the actual infinite as long as you're restricting it to the role of ideas or or in mathematics okay in mathematics he thinks it's a legitimate concept his problem is that there's no such thing in reality as an actually infinite number of things and if there can't be an actually infinite number of things in reality then there can't be an infinite number of past events and if there can't be a number of infinite events that means the world had to begin at some point in time now I point out it's really important that you distinguish between an actually infinite set of things and a potentially infinite set of things now there's a great thing that I found on the web a few years ago it was an article that tried to summarize rows position and and the author of the article is a man by the name of Bill Raimi it's actually dr. bill Rabia he's retired recently from the University of British Columbia I think he's a molecular biologist he's not even a philosopher but I mean if this guy had gone into philosophy he would have been great right because this is a wonderful argument and it's clear that Bill Raimi really knows some philosophy now what I have here is a couple of passages from his article in which he tries to show that there is a difference between an actually infinite set of things and a potentially infinite set of things this is very very important what does Bill Raimi say he says in contemporary set theory an actual infinite is a collection of things with an infinite number of members for example a library with an actually infinite set of books or a museum with an actually infinite set of paintings now yeah Craig doesn't think you could have what an actually infinite set of books because books are real things or an actually infinite set of paintings but all Raimi's trying to say is what what if there were what if there were an actually infinite set of books in a library or an actually infinite set of paintings in a museum okay well what if that were the case well this is important one of the unique traits of an actual infinite is that part of an actually infinite set is equal to the whole set why that sounds counterintuitive doesn't it we commonly say parts don't equal holes so how can the part of an actually infinite set be equal to the whole set well examples helped us here so Remmy gives this example for example in an actually infinite set of numbers like 1 2 3 4 5 6 gone to infinity the number of even numbers like 2 4 6 8 10 in the set of what in what's in the set of all numbers is equal to all the numbers in the set why is that he says because an infinite set of numbers contains an infinite set of even numbers as well as an infinite number of all numbers hence a part of the set is equal to the whole of the set all right let's take it a different example see I did the opposite of an actual infinite is a potential infinite as he's going to go on to say now try to follow this with me if you will suppose you had a library that had a finite actually finite number of books let's say a thousand and and and 500 of the books had read covers and the other 500 had black covers let's call them 500 read books in 500 black books well in that case since it's a finite set of numbers a finite set of books you know part of the set the what part of the set the part of the set made up of the 500 red books would not be equal to the whole set of books right any more than the set of black books 500 a number would be equal to all that all 1000 so if you're talking about an actually finite set of books or an actually finite set of a paintings in a museum then the part does not equal the whole but if you're talking about an actually infinite set it does the part does equal a whole because look if you have if you had a actually infinite number of books in the library and some of them were red books then that would mean that the set of red books would be composed of and actually infinite number of books just like the whole set would be composed of an actually infinite number of books so in that case the part would equal the whole that's important in an actually infinite set of things part of the set equals the whole set now go back to that paragraph what's another trade of the actual infinite is that nothing can be added to it you can't add anything to an actually I mean if you had a library with an actually infinite number of books under how can you add any more books to it if the number of books is already actually infinite not one book he says could be added to an actually infinite library or one painting to an actually infinite museum in contrast the potential set is a set of things that can be added to in other words if you have only a thousand books in the library a finite number can you add to that well if you had enough space you could add a thousand first book a thousand second book a thousand third book so a potentially infinite set of things in other words it's actually finite but it's potentially infinite it can be added to the collection of paintings in a real museum is a potentially infinite set one can always add another painting to the collection given enough space but there will always be a finite number of paintings in the museum okay let's end the video here and in the next video video 4b I've got to go into one of his philosophical one of Rama's philosophical arguments in support of the idea that there can't be an actually infinite set of past events see you in-vidio 4b