I wrote my dissertation for my Masters in Philosophy on the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It was a firm favourite topic of mine for some time. As a result, I was always planning on converting my dissertation into a book. Well, over the last few days, I have resurrected the idea and am happily thundering my way through my paper.
Tag Kalam Cosmological Argument
I recently had the pleasure of having an interview/conversation on the subject of Big Bang Cosmology and the implications for the universe having an absolute beginning. The question is also wrapped up with theistic claims that a god is a necessary precursor to the universe (or not). Also, some will argue that the Big Bang is just the scientists’ way of avoiding the conclusion that God made everything.
Counter Apologist has produced an awesome series detailing issues with William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument, which is a pet obsession of mine. This must have succeeded enough, since it warranted a response from Craig himself. Here is Counter’s response to Craig.
Listening to the Reasonable Doubts criticism of the dreadful sounding film God’s Not Dead, Justin Schieber referred to a point made by Wes Morriston.
Causality. It is a funny thing. Or not so funny.
A few years back, I took my class, as a teacher, on a class trip to the Historic Dockyard in the naval city of Portsmouth, UK. My school is some 45 minutes walk and a short ferry ride from there. With the cost of coaches, it is important to be able to walk to such places to keep the costs down for parents.
William Lane Craig and his obsequious co-host recently slammed Counter-Apologist and his criticisms of Craig’s use of time and the Kalam, in his recent podcast. Craig takes chap potshots at CA and is pretty disingenuous. I have red a transcript of CA’s upcoming reply, and he is spot on.
Check this video out as it will give you some background.
William Lane Craig is ubiquitous in conversations about theistic and Christian apologetics. Being the foremost modern philosopher/theologian still operating, he is often called upon or used as a source for theistic and Christian arguments, winning many debates in the process (on technique and rhetoric, in the main). I have part critiqued his Reasonable Faith book here.
A chap called Lothar’s Son from Germany has contacted me to offer an argument against naturalism which he has posted on his blog. His blog, lotharlorraine, hosts the piece which can be found here. Please feel free to comment there as well as here. Thanks for LS for contacting me! Here is his argument, with kind permission:
Over at the website Closer To Truth, which is a site about an agnostic who goes around interviewing philosophers and scientists to try to find answers to the biggest and deepest mysteries of the meaning of existence and the universe, there is a profile of William Lane Craig. In it, they summarize his arguments against the tenseless theory of time. I want to quickly address them here.
Craig’s done his homework to try to put this theory to rest, but I think he ultimately fails. I’m not going to go into detail here, but I will add a few thoughts how I think each of his refutations are ultimately baseless.
Here is my talk to the Dorset Humanists given this last week. It was really well received and got great feedback from audience and organisers alike. The video is of good quality though you may need to turn it up to hear some of the questions a little more clearly. The chops are out and looking mighty bushy, so all seems to have gone well.
I have a comment to answer on the original blog post Libertarian Free Will Defeats the Kalam Cosmological Argument and I thought I would not lose all the work to a comment forgotten in the annals of blog history. So here is the original post almost in full to remind you:
Everything which begins to exist has a cause for its existence
The universe began to exist
Therefore the universe had a cause (for its existence)
I must massively apologise to regular commenters such as Daydreamer1, The Thinker, Honest_John_Law, Peter, Neil, John Grove, Andy Schueler and…
So in my post, the Part 2 of why Vincent Torley is a Christian, Vincent called into question some of Counter Apologist’s work undermining William Lane Craig’s use of science and metaphysics to try to show that the A-Theory of time is true or that the B-Theory is false.
Craig’s case is this:
I was posting on Randal Rauser’s blog recently and made a throw away comment about the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) and libertarian free will. It is an argument which have meant to spell out for some time and so I guess this is as good a time as any.
The BBC have produced the following fascinating article. What do you good people think?
Scientists say they may be able to determine the eventual fate of the cosmos as they probe the properties of the Higgs boson.
A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it.
So having posted the Philpapers survey results, the biggest ever survey of philosophers conducted in 2009, several readers were not aware of it (the reason for re-communicating it) and were unsure as to what some of the questions meant. I offered to do a series on them, so here it is – Philosophy 101 (Philpapers induced). I will go down the questions in order. I will explain the terms and the question, whilst also giving some context within the discipline of Philosophy of Religion.
William Lane Craig, as we all know, is an apologist with a predilection for the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which goes like this:
1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;
2) The universe has a beginning of its existence;
C) Therefore: The universe has a cause of its existence.
The point I want to make today is about quantum indeterminacy. This is the notion that, at the quantum, microscopic level, things could be indeterminate, or ‘uncaused’. This potentially invalidates the first premise.
Having looked at the issue of causality in the last post, I would like to continue to analyse the first…
I have, over the years, been a keen objector to the Kalam Cosmological Argument, an argument that apologists like William…