Is the deductive argument he uses really a bad one? Or is it that all deductive arguments are possibly unsound?

If all deductive arguments are possibly unsound, then we can pick and choose which ones to invalidate, or we can invalidate every one of them.

As for the best explanation, this isn't exactly immune to problems either. The best explanation for an event might be something we haven't thought of or discovered yet. We might not even be looking for the best explanation, because we already have a good explanation. We might not even want to accept the best explanation, so we spend all of our time studying alternative explanations.

As for your question, I don't know. I found the argument compelling when I was in my teens when I first believed. Back then, it probably was very important to me. But now, I suspect it is not so much that important for the kalam to be sound or correct. But it is valid, isn't it? It just seems like you are throwing out the bathwater in order to get rid of the baby.

there are sound deductive arguments but the premises have to be correct and the conclusion has to necessarily be true when when the premises are correct.

Consider

P1 All men are mortal
P2 Socrates is a man
C Socrates is mortal

Would be a sound deductive argument.

Both. It's always possible that something we believe to be true turns out to be false on new evidence. But the claim that "everything that begins to exist has a cause" is not supported at all. Firstly because this is such a audacious claim. How can we possibly know the cause of everything? We are completely ignorant about 99.9...% of the contents of the universe. Secondly, and as Carroll goes on to say immediately after where the video cuts off (IIRC) we have observed virtual particles begin to exist uncaused. This is a fatal blow to P1 of the Kalam.

So we don't need to worry about a debilitating skepticism undermining deduction... we just need the premises to be accepted as true, pro temp. Think "all men are mortal" or what have you.

As above, pretty much. We don't have to construct arguments that are 100% absolutely locked down and are immune to any conceivable skeptical scenario. We just want persuasive arguments that aren't obviously flawed.

It seems valid, but a logical fallacy can arise when one is asked to justify the dodgy premises e.g. some point out that there is equivocation about the use of the word "begin" between premise 1 and premise 2, some point out that "everything that begins to exist creates a set of things that don't begin to exist which ONLY includes the Christian god, thereby begging the question. It fails as an argument in a lot of ways, but I think Carroll would be fine with attacking P1 with "Maybe not" given the time-limit on these debates. To be able to refute an argument in less than a second is good going when there clock is ticking.

Incidentally, WLC claims that these philosophical arguments are completely unnecessary for a Christian to believe in God as the "witness of the Holy Spirit" is the means by which we come to know the truth of Christianity. Given your response that the KCA was/is important, should I assume that you have not felt the witness of the Holy Spirit?

What is the baby and/or bathwater in this analogy?

Does it not rely on a derived premise, that the causal chain is non-circular and finite. If it is neither of those things then there needn't be a first cause. Even if there was a first cause, why label it 'god'?

What is it that you're looking for?

The point is that as unbelievable as it seems to you, it's as credible as your position. I think that says something about your position, that I can just invent something as equally likely and as apparently irrefutable.

And right there you have my biggest problem with religion, the way it can stifle curiosity and progress. It's entirely subjective whether or not the god hypothesis is 'good'. Count me in on the 'think it's bad' column.

I have to admit when clicking this thread I really wasn't expecting someone to come in labeling a simple explanation of how deductive arguments work as "worthless".

An argument is not unsound merely because it is speculative or because we don't know if one of the premises is true. In order for it to be unsound, the premise must be false. Not knowing that it is true doesn't demonstrate that it is false. So, we might say that an argument with a speculative premise is unsuccessful as a proof of the conclusion since we don't know that all the premises are true, but it would be inaccurate to claim it was unsound on this basis.

Thanks... Wasn't aware of the difference between unsuccessful and unsound.

Just to clarify, my use of "unsuccessful" was colloquial, whereas soundness has a technical definition in logic.

That definition seems to suggest that the premises need be actually true rather than not false for the argument to be sound or am I missing something?

I'm not sure what issue you mean to be raising here. It is correct that this definition of soundness assumes bivalence.

I was trying to distinguish between proving a premise to be true and the premise itself being true. For an argument to be sound, the premises need to actually be true--not proven to be true. Thus, it is possible for us to just not know whether an argument is unsound or sound. In those situations the argument will likely have little persuasive force and so will unsuccessful as a tool of persuasion. But that doesn't mean it is unsound.

So what confused me was that this that I saw a conflict between

and the definition of soundness from the IEP you linked.

So I guess what I was failing to grasp was that the argument could exist in the state of being neither unsound or sound. Not getting that I managed to interpret your quote above to suggest that the argument was sound rather than merely not unsound. I thought I was likely missing something.

So it's Ok for a deductive argument form to be constructed from inductive elements? ("Everything that begins to exist has a cause" is inductive, isn't it?)

I wouldn't phrase it the way you did, but yes it is fine to try and support a premise in a deductive argument inductively, or abductively, or any way you wish. When the argument is valid, we modulate our convictions on the conclusion based on the strength of our convictions of the premises. Note though that the premise you cite does not intrinsically demand an inductive justification. It may well be that people commonly provide inductive justifications for it. But it is at least a priori possible that someone would attempt a deductive argument in support of that premise.

I think you could probably argue that the first premise is a fallacy of composition.

Meh. I'll go as far as to say that the Kalam is not only solid, but it is almost rock-solid. The objections to it, quite frankly, seem pretty weak. Even if I were to grant that we can't know how or why these virtual particles appear, that does not mean that they are "uncaused." You are now guilty of the same kind of thinking that you criticize theists for-- except now you have a "god of the gaps" issue in reverse.

I don't have as much faith as you do that we will find that the final verdict will appear to defy basic intuition, logic and common experience.

Secondly, from my layman's understanding, if virtual particles are appearing, they are appearing out of a boiling field of energy. This hardly sounds like something that is uncaused, or somehow appearing out of nothing. It sounds like something so complex that we just can't yet sort it in detail.

I'm okay with my audacity levels, however. It is regulated by alignment with basic common sense. No belief could be more natural than the belief that "everything that begins to exist has a cause." It is supported by an overwhelming amount of experiential evidence.

Seriously, I don't think anybody can sound smart enough to appear to defeat this argument on a superficial level, which is probably the best that can be accomplished. You are trying to invalidate premise #1 with a hodgepodge of superficial attacks from different directions and simply attaching the word "fatal" to it. That is audacious, imo. You just can't have it all. I think you are really overreaching here.

As for not having knowledge about 99% of the universe's contents, this too can be turned against you. The universe is definitely a lot more mysterious than was at first imagined, and it may get weirder still. Therefore, all the cards are still on the table, as it were. God is still in play.

I'd add more but the battery on my laptop is starting to cry out for a charge, and I'm out.

Having an overwhelming number of examples of things existing with causes is not the same as having "experimental evidence" that ALL things that begin to exist have causes. And when it comes to questions like the entirety of the universe, we DON"T have such experimental evidence.

Not that there is any reason to jump from "a cause" to "a God" even if you could support either premise.

Do "you" exist?

Because, quite honestly, the unlikely arrival of self-consciousness itself seems as remarkable as the unlikely arrival of the universe, imo.

I can point to a million different events that led to the first self-conscious being. He or she did not begin without a cause.

You just want to make an argument now referring to problems of scale. How many cells make up the human body? How many grains of sand are on all of the beaches on earth? How many bacterium live on earth? How many stars are there in the universe?

From what we have seen, the further we move away from large-scale experience and into microcosmic experience, the weirder things get, and NOT the other way around. It is almost as if there is inexplicability at the microcosmic level SO THAT there can be a sensible, intuitive experience at the macrocosmic level. In other words, things 'make sense' up here at eye-level, but down below, when we look closely at the atomic/quantum stew, we find a sort of non-transcribable chaos.

I can play games with scale, too. If you want to propose something illogical and completely counter-intuitive, you have got to do better than this.

You have indeed asserted that you have invented something as equally likely and irrefutable, but have in no way demonstrated it, or done so.

I asked you what the logical difficulties were with the existence of your proposed-being in this world and you ignored the question.

As I have tried to explain to you, our concept of God has explanatory value. It is not just the result of an imaginative exercise.

The universe may demand God's existence. Not a God who died and doesn't exist anymore. But the God who could create, sustain and contain a universe. We derive his qualities from creation itself.

I have no idea what argument you think you are espousing, but this is nowhere close to the kalam cosmological argument.

Ironically, the witness of the Holy Spirit is much more important to me now than when I was younger. When I was younger I wanted demonstrable evidence and proof. I wanted a vision, a dream, or an undeniable sign or miracle, and in the end, I felt nothing and saw nothing. All I had was the miracles and visions of others.

Evolution JUST HAD TO BE false and every prophetic passage undeniably true. I was young, and power-hungry. I was doing it wrong.

But when I came back to Christ many years later, I did so still without a miracle or vision or dream. I did so on a lark, almost. I was teetering between 1. my discomfort with the fruits of my atheism and 2. the appeal of Christianity, and decided to spend 6 months living as a Christian lives. I used the following verse to justify this: "O taste and see that the Lord is good." It couldn't hurt any. My life was a mess anyway.

So I simply acted in faith. I did so as an atheist. I laid my hands on a very sick friend and prayed over him AS AN ATHEIST. I attended church and prayed...as an atheist. I debated from the theist side as an atheist.

The irony is, evolution doesn't HAVE TO BE false for me any more. Prophecies do not need to be clear-cut. I don't need copious amounts of evidence or undeniable proof. I have tasted. I know that the Lord is good. I know that this way is better. And the miracles and confirmations have come. They probably would not have ever come had I not acted in faith.

I know that there seems like there is a contradiction here, as one cannot be an atheist and have faith, but I believe that you only need a very tiny amount of faith in order to move a mountain. "Let's give this a try" is even enough.

I can even scripturally justify this:

I finally found God when I found him with my actions. He met my faith, and not my pleading or begging or doubting.

Umm. Yeah. That's because I am not espousing the kalam cosmologcal in this post. I am replying to your objection, which indicates that we have no other object of-like-scale to compare the universe to.

Indeed. So why are you content to accept these premises about the universe?

What evidence? I dont think anyone has experienced something begin to exist. I would guess that what you are thinking of , is just re-arrangement of already existing stuff into a new alignment or structure, which doesnt count as "beginning to exist"

'Unlikely' is probably not quite the right word wrt the universe, but that's not important. What's important is that it's only your intuitions that tell you either event is actually 'unlikely'.

Given how extraordinarily unreliable our intuitions are with respect to local events, what reason do you have to suppose that your intuitions are reliable with respect to the universe as a whole?

That my god existed, and that he created your god, explains everything for me. Plus, I actually don't need any evidence, as with WLC, it simply makes sense to me deep within myself and I have faith, your doubt simply strengthens my faith. You imagine that your god is greater than anything that could possibly be imagined, but you are wrong, my god was greater but chose to cease to exist after creating your god. Now your god is the greatest being that currently exists but not the greatest being that could exist. Christianity is in error there.

So, there are no logical difficulties with my god and should any occur I will arbitrarily assign attributes to my god that will explain them to my satisfaction. Unless you can prove me wrong?

And you didn't answer my questions:

Does it not rely on a derived premise, that the causal chain is non-circular and finite. If it is neither of those things then there needn't be a first cause. Even if there was a first cause, why label it 'god'?

What is it that you're looking for?