Ok I just finished skimming it and I'm going to reread it in a bit. I don't really want to start the thread with a book-length post for fear of starting a trend and making the whole thread unreadable. Here is a link to his argument http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html

To start, here an excerpt from his conclusion where he makes his case that the first cause is a personal creator. This is what interests me most since Deism is pretty much tenable, albeit pointless, IMO.


For one, I don't think there is a compelling argument for why one of the multiverse hypotheses is any less likely than God as the first cause. Perhaps he has addressed this since writing the original paper? If your response is that our universe springing from a multiverse doesn't exempt the multiverse from the same line of argument, then I will concede that this is true.(although I plan to argue that the first cause as he lays it out is not as clear cut as it seems anyway later) It does, however, totally erase the need for the first cause to be personal in any way, at least towards our particular universe.

Second, he seems to be taking it for granted that a Big Bang event from a different singularity would even have the possibility of producing different laws. It seems to me that believing every singularity that could ever begin rapidly expanding produces these same laws is in no way less plausible than the alternative.

Thirdly, he has used a definition of "personal creator" that does not imply whatsoever a being that has any motive for, history of, or even necessarily the means to intervene after the singularity begins to expand. A being that can start the process from outside our universe but cannot enter it himself conforms with his entire argument.

Finally, it seems to me that the need to go back to the source of the singularity to find the necessity for god makes the idea that he has any special interest in Humanity, Earth, or even the Milky Way exceedingly implausible. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of millions of stars similar to our Sun. How can we possibly assume that the cause of it all had our Sun and its satellites in mind? There have been millions of species on Earth, many much more physically impressive than ourselves and many that have dominated the planet for exponentially longer than we have. Why is it that we take it for granted that we are special? Why is it that the only species that believes itself created in a divine image is also the only species selfish enough to wastefully ravage the planet for convenience? I think a much simpler and more plausible explanation is that we are the first species to develop the mental capacity for vanity, and the linguistic ability to pass it through the generations. Religion pretty much follows inevitably from there.

You may also want to post the actual argument (according to Craig):

Notice that even if we completely accept this argument, it doesn't establish "God." Craig subsequently attempts to prove the cause is God in his conclusion (posted by the OP above), using an different argument.

Actually, it's not really an argument at all. Craig just asserts the cause "must" be a personal God. He doesn't consider the logical possibility that the cause of the observable universe is both eternal and a dynamic process, rather than being static, as he assumes. The colliding branes posed by some cosmologists is one such example.

Why must the cause of the universe be a "personal agent who freely elects to create an effect in time?" What does that even mean? Craig merely asserts that without a definition of this "personal agent" or a plausible mechanism of creation. Nor has he sufficiently proved that this person agent is the only possible alternative.

In the end, Craig's argument just comes down to: "I claim God caused the universe because I can't imagine an alternative."

It's not a very convincing argument unless you already are a theist.

something that rarely gets mentioned, but is very worth mentioning about all of these arguments is as follows:

why do theists feel the need to continue trying to concoct arguments for the existence of God?

also premise 2 could easily turn out to be false.

Even CG got it.

Here's the most complete form of the argument by Craig:

Since you've only just skimmed it why not post your criticisms one at a time to make the thread more manageable?

Because people keep denying the obvious. The arguments are designed to show why His existence is obvious. If there were no atheists there would be no theistic arguments.

You apparently don't.

What is that supposed to mean?

Also I agree with the one at a time idea, but the additional points in that version don't really address any of my points from the OP, so if you want to start there that works for me.

to me its unbelievably obvious that religion is entirely man made, and believers are denying the obviousness of this truth.

I guess I'll throw out one more and then just wait for answers to the OP and this before going further.

I think this is definitely a false a dichotomy. Ignoring that, even if there were an agent it need not be free or personal. Further,

is convenient but completely unsupported.

ya, thats a pretty bad false dichotomy imo. unless he goes on and redefines a lot of those terms very loosely to the point of meaninglessness. its either a tautology or a false dichotomy.

There is nothing to refute. Nothing he says is even well defined at present in terms of cosmology. It is ridiculous to try to draw any conclusions about practically anything from cosmology since nobody alive today understands what the universe was like at t=0, whether the big bang was a unique event in space-time, or part of a multiverse, what is the physical mechanism behind inflation ect.

This so incredibly stupid, I hope for your sake you are flat out lying. Nothing about cosmology is obvious. It is so non-obvious that I can't even say the arguments presented are wrong, just that we don't know enough to evaluate them or even verify that they are not gibberish. Just because you are not a deep thinker and you think it is obvious that god exists doesn't mean gods existence can be shown without deep thinking.

I'm glad you commented on this, because I didn't want to without being completely up to date on current cosmology. This is why I am mainly focused on point 4 (personal creator etc.) because even if 1-3 were true 4 doesn't follow at all.

How would you compare his cosmological arguments for god to those using abiogenesis from a scientific standpoint. Those seem to rely on picking a subject that a) there is little empirical knowledge about, b) there is no real consensus on details among the scientific community and c) lay people have no real hope of comprehending the underlying mechanisms behind any of the current hypotheses and will thus be inclined to take his word for it when he says they can't be true.

From there all you need is a false dichotomy where one choice is incomprehensible nonsense to 95% of the audience and the other side is the god they have based their existence on.

Those are pretty much the final 2 gaps in the god of the gaps argument, maybe consciousness also. The entire concept of arguing like this makes no sense and is pretty much inherently stupid or dishonest. Lets talk about the subjects we understand the least and from that draw huge sweeping conclusions that turn out to actually be obvious !!!! It is mind boggling that anybody takes these arguments seriously.

Happily, I reject the argument right at premise #1, which saves me having to read the rest. Under some definitions of "begins to exist", I instead accept the premise and reject premise 2, that the universe began to exist.

One interesting way to argue the situation is that nothing in the universe "begins to exist". Since energy cannot be created nor destroyed, all that happens in the universe is that energy is transmuted from one form to another. So an actual creation event is completely unknown to us.

Edit:

This. The idea that "everything that begins to exist has a cause" is nothing but an extrapolation from a "common sense" model of the universe. Craig's riposte to rejecting this premise, to the effect that "if things can come into effect uncaused, we would expect to see things pop into existence all the time" is incredibly juvenile, and along the lines of "if things don't have a defined position and momentum, then we should expect to see everyday objects jump haphazardly around the room". Extrapolation from everyday experience is not a good guide for metaphysical absolutes.

You seemed to understand Craig's reasoning, which you quoted, about why the cause of the universe can't be impersonal and eternal.

You don't seem to understand the difference between science and philosophy. You are like Dawkins who said theology is a subject about nothing. I've seen this same gap in understanding in many science types. That's why people like Dawkins seem so idiotic when they attempt philosophy or theology.

I thought you got Craig's reasoning on this. The dichotomy between personal and impersonal seems undeniable. You have a third category? And the freedom of the personal is what makes it personal, because if the personal agent is controlled by deterministic, mechanical causes then the real cause isn't personal, but the overarching, impersonal determinism.

You take a position contrary to most. Hume and Mackie thought that it is absurd to believe that something begins to exist without a cause. Of course, the premise can't be proved but it is not only plausible, but much more plausible than its contrary.


Craig's "riposte" was just an illustration of why premise 1 is intuitive. Your comparison to random movement is a fallacy of composition, not unlike your previous argument that the universe doesn't have the characteristics of its parts. Further, even if particles do begin to exist without a cause (as I understand it, far from settled in science), they don't do so in the same way as the big bang - Craig's illustration applies here to particles - we don't see big bangs happening randomly and often. If the universe is eternal and big bangs happen uncaused, why don't they do so often?

Edit: I should explain what I meant by the fallacy.
You make this analogy:

Parts jump around randomly but their wholes don't.
Therefore
Parts begin to exist uncaused even though their wholes don't.

This shows nothing about the kalam however because even if parts move randomly it is CORRECT to say their wholes don't and therefore the random movement doesn't affect the whole. The same can be said of uncaused beginnings. Even if particles begin uncaused they have no effect at the macro level - but the big bang certainly did.

I've never really read Dawkins. Is there any way for me to understand Craig's argument other than turning off my brain? This isn't a philosophical concept like free will that science can't even talk about. This is about physical features of our universe. His argument is crap. Just ask an intelligent theist, a person could easily believe in god and still see that his argument is crap.

The cosmological argument dates at least from Aristotle. The kalam version was constructed by Muslim theologians in the Middle Ages.

They very well could. All we know is that in our 100 billion (or whatever) light year universe there seems to have been a single big bang in 14 billion years. We have no idea how common they are outside this region of space time.

Flat out wrong. Black holes radiate away to nothing because of "uncaused" particle creation near the event horizon. It doesn't get more macro than that.

And...... Typically these arguments are rejected if they contradict modern science not the other way around. There are tons of stories about eclipses happening because a dragon eats the sun that you likely reject.