I question whether you are equivocating on your concept of nothing because you've yet to present one. Nothingness is far more elusive than you might think it is.

But even setting that aside, I can also accept both P1 and P2 while constructing a situation in which C1 fails using a construction that's vaguely similar to the ones used in Zeno's paradox of motion.

Suppose at time t = 1 there is something (thus satisfying P2). Call that thing s_1 (something at time 1). That something must have come from something else, which we will call s_0.1 (something at time 0.1). But something must precede that, s_0.01. And something else must precede that, s_0.001. And we can continue this regression infinitely. And yet this construction shows that you are unable to properly conclude that something existed at time t = 0. We can track backwards this way "forever" (whatever that even means) and never get an affirmative statement about s_0's existence.

In other words, it's possible to start with something existing now, and then trace backwards in time, but not prove that something has always existed.

Kalam is traditionally structured around the concept of "things that began to exist." It's not constructed around a concept of a "nothing" and a "something." That question is sidestepped by simply beginning with the collection of objects that began to exist.

So I don't really see any deficiencies for Kalam with regards to "something" and "nothing."

---
Edit: With regards to Kalam, I usually understand it in the following form:

P1) Everything that began to exist has a cause.
P2) The universe began to exist.
C) The universe has a cause.

Under this framework, I don't see how your argument addresses anything. Specifically, you are arguing against P2 by concluding that the universe always existed, and all they would have to do is say in reply is that scientists have calculated an age for the universe. And then I don't really know what you're trying to accomplish anymore with your argument.

----

You're welcome to it, but (as with many arguments you put forward) I don't think you're accomplishing what you think you're accomplishing. As I said, you've done nothing to advance an argument and you haven't even posited something that meaningfully challenges the position you're arguing against. In what sense can you argue that the word salad of "energy that changes form over time" isn't just you munging up the concept of God?

If nothing is defined as the absence of something – while accepting P1) – it follows that @t=0 is indeed something. You have just shown that the method of tracing back time does: “not prove that something has always existed.”


That said, speaking of nothing in any metaphysical sense, is quite clearly, non-sense. Or nothing sense

Actually watching people fumble to obtain a working definition of nothing might be a fun thread.. If I may try to steer it

Your argument doesn't affect the OP argument at all since the whole point of it is that the universe is the special exception to the rule that 'every something comes from something else'. This is no different to the theistic claim that god is an exception to that too, a claim which itself supports the idea that it's possible to have exceptions.

If it's not possible to have exceptions, then god can't be offfered as a way to resolve the problem of the infinite regress, and neither can the eternal existence of the universe, and the OP argument is unsound. Or, as I said, you can try to explain why it's more likely that a God can be a special exception but the universe itself can't be. Or you can try to define 'nothing' and 'something' in ways which cause problems for the OP argument without causing problems for the theistic support for 'the universe began to exist' because 'something can't come from nothing' claim.


As I explained, P2 of the Kalam is supported by the claim that 'something can't come from nothing', and it's that, that the OP argument addresses. My personal view is that the egenral discussion is bogged down in this ''what is nothing' and 'what is something' rabbit hole and the OP argument neatly sidesteps that, or it forces everyone to agree on definitions so that theists can argue confidently that 'something can't come from nothing'.


"The first law of thermodynamics, also known as Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another" So, suggesting that the universe has always existed in the form of energy that changes form over time (consistent with the big bang theory and everything else we observe etc) is not a 'word salad'. But you can call the 'something' 'the universe' if that works better for you, it makes no difference to me or to the OP argument.

The theists that argue that 'something can't come nothing' seem to be quite clear on what 'nothing' means. I'm happy to use their definition and do that in the OP argument.


Be my guest, please. I'm not sure how useful it will be though as this is the issue I'm trying to sidestep. However, there is a benefit to me of attempting to define nothing because I do have a goal here, and it's simply to see if there's a way to defeat the OP argument without simultaneously causing problems for some of the arguments for God, specifically those that use the claim that 'since something can't come from nothing, the only possible explanation for the existence of the universe is a god, since nothing else could be the exception to the rule that 'everything that exists has a cause''.

Nothing could be more fun, right?

I've already asked you once to please post on topic. If you want to have a discussion about evidence for god/supernatural etc, start a new thread about that and I'll be happy to join it.

Wow.

Ok, let's summarize:

This is what you claimed. When asked about it, you dodge like a child.

Guess you 100% agree that theism negates itself through lack of testable evidence. But I suggest you wait until your senpai wakes up and explains the world for you .

So i've blocked this guy ^^ for the moment, he wasn't going to stop and if I want to have conversations like that I have facebook...

Translation: I had a big mouth but when called out, I prefer to run away.

Is that the superior and logical debating tactic Aaaaaaaron taught you?

So you're openly conceding you're making a special pleading on your own behalf? That's not a good sign.

Sort of, but not quite. The claim that the universe began to exist and the claim that God did not begin to exist are structurally and functionally two different things. For example, if cosmology were to have discovered that there was no big bang, or if one were to accept other hypotheses about the "beginning" of the universe, then the universe may also have been a thing that did not begin to exist. But science does not point us in that direction.

Again, I find it puzzling how you want to try to argue a non-scientific perspective here. I'm not saying you can't, but I am saying that you've got work to do if you do want to argue that.

Except that exceptions are possible. Your argument seems rather incoherent at this point, *given* that scientific evidence points in favor of a "beginning" of the universe. I don't know why this is an argument you're trying to win when winning kind of means throwing science away.

No. P2 is the claim that "the universe began to exist." It's not necessarily premised by "something can't come from nothing" (though I can concede that some forms do take that route). This can be taken as a scientific observation. In the way that we understand time, we can trace backwards to something that has the appearance of being a "beginning" of the universe. It's a bit more complicated than that (see below), because it's more like we're saying "the universe as we understand it to be, complete with the laws that we think are in operation, seems to have existed continuously from a certain moment in the past until now."

You're welcome to hold personal views. That you have a personal view of a matter does not either strengthen or weaken a non-existent argument. Very few of your arguments are ever as "neat" as you think they are. I believe this is a result of you often not taking enough time to fully understand what the other side is arguing, so that you think you can just quickly come up with something cogent in response to it.

A good bulk of argumentation of this type is knowing what the other side is doing.

One of your ongoing struggles is that you think you understand something that you don't understand. It makes it hard for you to accurately assess the strength of your argument.

https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com...s_bigbang.html

Do you think I'm guilty of special pleading? If so, why?

You find it puzzling because you've never accepted my claims that I've changed. The OP argument is a tool, nothing more. If it can shown to be unsound, I'll abandon it. I will argue for it though, it's a good way to test it and imporve my own undertanding of the issue.

On the issue though, the Big Bang is not evidence of the universe starting to exist. It's evidence of a big bang. At most you could claim that it's evidence of the universe changing it's form because what we can't do is prove that there was nothing before it. In any case, it's not useful to this discussion, there's a reason why I've never tried to use it to prove anything, it's that it doesn't.


My bolding. No it doesn't, see above. It's your efforts to fathom my motivations and have them reconcile with what you think I think that's causing your confusion. Maybe stop doing that, they're irrelevant to whether or not the argument has any merit.

Ok, yes, I was imprecise here. P2 is the claim that "the universe began to exist." and the Big Bang is offered as that beginning and the problem for atheists start when they claim that it came from nothing, and theists counter that 'something cannot come from nothing'.

However, the OP argument shows that the universe has in fact always existed, and one possible explanation for the Big Bang is that the substance of the universe changes form over time, including the periods where time doesn't even exist. (Do you really want to go there? I don't....)


Save me the time, if you don't mind, can you point to the passage that proves beyond any doubt that nothing (As defined by theists to show that a god is necessary) existed prior to the Big Bang?

Yes. You made a special exception.

Are you saying you "win" because you make an argument as bad as the other side? I just don't understand what you're saying.

I did prove that it was unsound. More specifically, I proved it was invalid. I gave you an explicit demonstration of how you can have a system in which every object has a preceding, but you cannot trace preceding objects back in time to an arbitrary previous time period. It was constructed in a way that was bounded.

You're welcome to go that route if you choose. But I would strongly suggest you tighten up your language a bit. The problem is that you explicitly cited a model that is understood to not apply. So you gained nothing from that argument.

It does, but that would require you to understand that as time approaches the start of the big bang, the things we think we understand kind of fall apart. It's hard for you to be meaningfully talking about "before the big bang" because your intuitive sense of "time" may not even apply.

And it's relevant because you're claiming you're picking apart an argument somewhere that uses this as a premise. So if you can't talk with enough precision about that premise, then it's not at all clear that you're adequately prepared to criticize it.

Except that I have shown it's invalid, so...

I'd like to see you try to go there. The reason is that you're assuming you know something, and by avoiding thinking deeply about it, you're denying yourself the opportunity to discover your ignorance.

So here we go: What do you mean by "periods where time doesn't even exist"?

That's not a claim that's worth defending. I've never claimed to prove anything "beyond any doubt" because that's not something I think I need to prove to point out the errors in your argument. I don't need an affirmative proof of the opposite conclusion for there to be flaws in your argument.

You're the one offering a positive argument that the universe has always existed. You're the one who wants to understand that argument more deeply for pedagogical purposes. So why not focus your energy and effort there?

I've given you an explicit demonstration of your argument being invalid. I've pointed to a layman-level description of why it is you can't argue that the First Law of Thermodynamics tells you anything about what happens as you work backwards and approach the big bang. I've even offered you Aristotle as a person whose thoughts mirror yours to expand your understanding of the idea.

I'm just saying that if you're going to claim that the universe has no beginning, you've got a lot of work to do, and it's much more than you think it is. All you've done so far is try to insist that you're right without addressing the substance of anything put forward.

It resolves the infinite regress issue and it meets a condition that was created by (the) theists that argue that 'something can't come from nothing', so surely it makes more sense than positing a being that we can't prove exists, that has powers that as far as we know don't exist, in order to explain the existence of itself, to resolve the infinite regress?


Maybe because you think I'm trying 'to 'win' and I'm not, and again, my motivations don't change anything about the argument.

No you haven't, you gave an argument that showed something has to come from something else, and I explained that the universe is an exception to that rule. If you're certain that it contains a logical fallacy, then the same logical fallacy applies to the Kalam (Because of the reliance of P2 on the truth of the claim that 'something can't come from nothing') and are you not showing that to be unsound too?


Well, I try to 'tighten' my language but I don't always do that well. But, wrt the Big Bang, it doesn't prove that universe had a beginning, or that the Big Bang itself is that beginning, does it. And given that the OP argument shows that the universe had no beginning, the Big Bang is irrelevant to this discussion unless you're using it to prove that the universe had a beginning, and I don't think that you can do that.

Like I said, I don't want to go there because my understanding of the physics is not sufficient, but it's also irrelevant because claims that time only began once the right conditions existed for it to begin don't change that time could have existed before... it's a rabbit hole, I think we gain nothing from going down it.


In it's form, the argument is valid, so I'm really not sure what you're claiming here.


Nope, not going there. It's not useful to the argument and it's a endless rabbit hole where both of us wil end up faced with the limits of our knowledge of theoretical physics. You would have to be Stephen Hawking for me to even consider discussing this and you're not, and it wouldn't help anyway since I wouldn't be able to understand what he was saying. Physics just doesn't have anything to do with this, the existence of the universe is a special exception to everything we understand.


On the contrary, it's the only claim that matters. If you can't definitively show that it's not possible that there was something before the big Bang, then my claim that the universe has always existed remains internally and externally consistent. It's the only role the Big Bang plays in this discussion.

The argument relies on that there can be an exception to the rule that 'something can only come from something else'. I think that's where you should be focussing your attention.

LOL. You're clearly not even paying attention to yourself. I accused you of a special pleading. I quoted you calling it a "special exception." And your response is, "But it resolves an issue if I do that!"

No, your argument doesn't automatically "make more sense" simply because you believe it to be true. Welcome back to the world of intellectual bias.

So you're trying to make a worse argument than the other side? Because I think you did succeed in doing that. Your argument is intellectually worse because you are taking scientific concepts and screwing them up, as opposed to the religious argument, which is at least consistent within its own perspective.

No. I showed how to take *your* premises MB-P1 and MB-P2 and show that your conclusion MB-C is does not necessarily happen. (MB just separates your argument from Kalam.)

Also, you're not "explaining" anything about the universe. You're simply asserting it. Your argument at this point is mostly circular. The universe has always existed because you claim the universe has always existed.

No. The statement K-P2 does *not* rely on "something can't come from nothing." It relies on the question of whether something began to exist.

If I say "modern cosmology sets the age of the universe at 13.8 billion years" would you say that this assertion is consistent with "the universe has always existed" or "the universe never actually began"?

Whatever it is that happened 13.7 billion years ago is the beginning of the universe as we understand it to be. Whatever you want to assert about whatever it is the universe was at a time that we have zero understanding is up to you, but you're the one who is going to have to do the work to explaining what you mean by it.

There's a difference between "has no beginning" and "has always existed." Again, it's a language thing. The presentation I gave you DOES show that you can have something with no beginning while *also* showing that you are unable to track backwards to an arbitrary point in time.

Again, I don't need to "prove" anything to show that your argument is flawed. Basically, you're not looking at your argument on its own merits. And that's why you don't know what's going on.

You keep avoiding issues with your argument by calling them "rabbit holes." Your position seems to be that as long as you remain ignorant about physics, then you can use physics language to defend your statement without making errors.

LOL -- Stubborn ignorance. Tell me why my construction fails:

---

First, you're *CLEARLY* making a special pleading here.

Second, my point is that your statement is utter gibberish. We're not even testing physics here. We're testing your use of language. The phrase "periods where time doesn't even exist" is meaningless babbling. You're just saying words with no meaningful associated concept. You might as well just admit that you're creating a God-concept.

You might as just throw away your argument and say "The universe has always existed. PROVE ME WRONG!!!!!"

It doesn't need any more attention. I've already called it out as a special pleading. There's literally nothing more to say about it.

You're really bad at this. You would benefit from taking a good 10 minutes to actually read what I've written and think carefully about it. Set aside your defensive reflex that assumes that you're definitely right all the time. Your argument is not valid, you're not being coherent right now, and you're basically just talking yourself in circles nonsensically.

So, a lot of what you're saying here relies on the idea that the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe, and that is unknowable. Are you familiar with the idea of the 'Big Bounce', multiple Big Bangs? I have no issue with their having been a BB, or that it happened approx 13.8 bilion years ago, it doesn't change anything about the OP argument at all. That there was a BB is not incompatible with the universe having always existed.

Kalam P2 doesn't explicitly state that 'something can't come from nothing' but it does claim that the universe had a beginning, and it's considered a 'beginning' because before that beginning there was nothing, and 'since something cannot come from nothing' some agent must be the cause, and that's god. So yes, it relies entirely on 'something can not come from nothing'.

The form of the OP argument (which is not mine by the way and I'm only telling you that because you started calling the premises MB-P1 etc) is logically valid, so your claim that's it's invalid is incorrect. Perhaps you mean something else by invalid?

The special pleading only becomes an issue when we take the conclusion of the argument and ask 'but how is it possible for something not to have a cause of itself'? And at that point I invoke the same reason as the Kalam/cosmological argument - because it does, it's simply an intrinsic property of that thing. If God can exist for ever, the principle that something can exist for ever is now established. ok.

So, we now have two possible explanations for the existence of the universe, one is that a god made it, the other is that it's always existed. This is a movement away from the claim made by (some) theists that god is 'the only reasonable explanation' (Reasonable faith, WLC etc). Clearly he's not. So now the onus is on those theists to show why a god that has simply always existed without a cause of itself, is a better explanation for the existence of the universe than that the universe itself has simply always existed without a cause of itself.

No. I'm not saying it's unknowable. I'm saying that at this time, our models and concepts break down. This doesn't mean that we can't know or will never know. It just means that we don't know.

Yes. But I'm not aware of anyone making much progress on that theory. I know it's a model that people have been trying to make work for decades.

It points in a particular direction that you will need to be able to articulate against if you're going to take that position.

But really, you're making this stupidly convoluted. You are simply asserting that the universe has no beginning. It's a bare assertion, and if you would just accept it as such then you don't have any issues any more.

All of your problems arise from you trying to say that you've used some sort of argumentation to support your position. You haven't. You're just repeating your assertion over and over again.

No. This is just you rambling like the fool that you are.

KP2 ("The universe began to exist.") is the assertion that the universe began to exist. It doesn't need to argue anything about the "before the universe" period. The Kalam argument is consistent with the idea that a quantum fluctuation caused the universe to exist.

What you're attempting to criticize is in the conclusion (KC: "The universe has a cause.") Because it's here where you have to get into defining what the cause of the universe existing is. And that's where the argument of the existence of God begins and where you have the something cannot come from nothing argument.

<sigh> I don't care whose argument it is. I used your name because you're the one who presented it and you're the one trying to defend it.

I have shown that MB-P1 and MB-P2 do not imply MB-C. You have failed to address the argument twice now. The first time, you went off on some other direction using a special pleading that had nothing to do with the argument. This time, you just ignored it.

Yes. You can just say "Nuh-uh. Infinite universe. Boom. STFU and sit down, theist."

The point here is that you ADMIT you're making a special pleading. You are making an argument that is just as bad as the people you want to argue against. The argument you presented in OP has no bearing on this at all, and since it seems you've learned nothing from it, it appears to have been a complete waste of your time. Congratulations.

Edit: This also shows that your special pleading doesn't address the argument I constructed, as the argument I constructed relies on MB-P1 and MB-P2 and shows that MB-C doesn't follow. I don't care what you do with your conclusion if you can't get me there from your assumptions.

Here is your OP:

Based on what you've argued and presented so far, here is a representation of the meat of your OP after stripping away the garbage.

I'm not 'simply asserting that the universe has always existed', it's the only logical explanation if it's true that something cannot come from nothing. And since the something must have always existed, it has no beginning and therefore needs no creator.

So, no god required.

I don't how the universe could always have existed but since I need to explain how there could always have been something, I'm going to just claim that it's an intrinsic property of the universe to have always existed.

Also, I don't think you really understand the Kalam argument if you can't understand how it relies on 'something cannot come from nothing'. Have a read - https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writ...alam-argument/ Note WLC's response, especially where he says:

And the OP argument isn't 'as bad' as the Kalam, unless you think the Kalam argument is bad? It simply uses the same claim that something can have always existed. You haven't really dealt with it other than just calling it special pleading, do you have something more effective?

There's a difference between "the only conclusion I will accept" and "the only logical conclusion." You seem utterly incapable of growing intellectually beyond this point. You just cannot separate yourself from the conclusion you want, and it's making you a worse thinker.

You have again ignored the argument I've presented. It shows that it's not true that something must always have existed given assumptions MB-P1 and MB-P2. Can you finally talk about the actual argument and get rid of the rest of the crap?

You'll notice a couple things:

1) You're demonstrating that you don't understand because you've been criticizing K-P2 and he's talking about K-P1.
2) He's claiming "metaphysical intuition" but then also presents two other arguments for why believes K-P1. This is separates it from logical dependency. You do not *NEED* to have it to argue in favor of K-P1.
3) You're right that I'm wrong about it being bottled up in moving forward from the conclusion.

They're both pretty bad to me. I don't know why you're so obsessed with it.

No. Your argument is not "something can have always existed." You are asserting something stronger than possibility. Also, you've literally repeated the phrase "special exception."

What more do I actually need? You're making a special pleading for the universe. You might as well be saying god-did-it.

So, you're not going to acknowledge that you said:

That is wrong (unless of course you're saying that it doesn't contain those exact words, but that would be pedantry beyond belief...). It entirely relies on the claim that something cannot come from nothing'.

WLC goes even further to say:

Ok. Let's not doubt it then (I'd like to think that I'm a rational person), let's assume it true for the sale of argument. In light of your new understanding of the Kalam, and understanding now the relevance and importance of the claim being made that 'something cannot come from nothing' can you now see how the OP argument assumes the truth of that claim, and then shows that there can never have been nothing? What else could the conclusion be?

There are only three elements to this, nothing, something, and God, and frankly, I wouldn't class god as 'nothing' would you? So god is 'something' and that means that the OP is still sound, if there is a God, then there has always been something.

However, to say that something has always existed is to say that there's an exception to the idea that 'everything that exists has a cause'. And if there can be an exception, that exception might be something else, it might be the universe itself, an explanation that I find more compelling then needing to suggest a creator God to explain the creation of something that may not have needed to be created in the first place... because... special exceptions can exist.

I.e. Proposing an uncaused cause to explain the existence of something that you can't prove needed a cause because not everything needs a cause.

There are at least two other ways you could try to resolve this, I'm surprised you haven't tried them.

Are you illiterate or dishonest?

In my memory, the construction of the argument got to the conclusion that the universe was caused, and from there the claim is that nothing causes nothing, so that the cause cannot be nothing, which then makes the advancement towards the claim that God created the universe.

They both function in the same way. Craig just uses a different ordering than I remembered.

Incidentally, you seem to have inadvertently provided evidence of an accusation I've leveled against you many times. It appears to be true that you don't actually carefully read and respond to my posts. You just kind of assume you know what's being said, and then base your statement off of that.

This would explain why you're so capable of repeating the same wrong thing so many times, and why it is that you struggle so much to understand criticisms of your argumentation. And given how many other people have tried to explain your errors to you, I have no reason to believe I'm unique in that sense.

So, I provided a logically valid argument, which you claimed was invalid, and your counter argument included a premise that 'every something comes from something else', which can't be true if you're right that god has no cause of himself, so you provided an argument that you don't personally believe can be sound, and then you claimed my argument contained special pleading and agreed that the Kalam does as well since it's 'just as bad'.

You argued against what you personally believe and even though I'm using the same logic as the Kalam, and using a premsie the source of which is a theistic claim, you judged that I might as well be saying 'goddidit'.

Are you secretly an atheist Aaron?

No, you have not. You have still yet to address the demonstration that MB-P1 and MB-P2 does not imply MB-C (I think this is 5 times now?). That is the actual argument you're making, and it's not equivalent to Kalam. When you change the words, you usually end up changing the meaning. You don't seem bright enough to understand that.

It's still not the same premise, nor is is the same logic. You are mistaking an argument in favor of a premise for the premise itself. You also seem unable to separate the various elements of an argument, and so your muddled mess continues.

You are also in that place where you're assuming that because I believe X that I must believe every argument in favor of X. That's ludicrously stupid. You ought to know better by this point, but you clearly don't. An argument is not accepted or rejected on the basis of whether I agree with the conclusion. It's accepted or rejected on the basis of the argumentation itself.

The Kalam Cosmological argument isn't that good of an argument. At best it's hand-wavy and at worst it's wrong. (The weakness being particularly in the jump to defining the cause.) Your attempt to mirror it is much worse than you imagine, because you're actually not even presenting an argument. You're presenting a naked assertion in the guise of an argument. As I've already noted, your entire presentation still just boils down to the single sentence:

Your argument literally buys you nothing because it's flawed.

And I have asked you what else the conclusion could be, so you can show that the argument is invalid. Could it be 'there has been nothing'?

If something cannot come from nothing, and you believe that a god created the universe, then you need prove that there could ever have been nothing such that it was necessary to create the universe. And, since you can't prove that the universe had a beginning, in fact the best you have is the claim that 'every something comes from something else', a claim that you immediately undermine by claiming that there can be an exception to that... then really, you're struggling to show that we need a god in the first place when we can simply apply your own exception to the universe itself.

And you need to show that there could ever have been nothing but without relying on the claim that 'something cannot come from nothing'.

Confusing, given how many times you've accused me of being duplicitous or having secret motives but now you're saying that arguments stand or fall on their own merits, which of course would make my motives and what I personally believe... irrelevant.

Which is it Aaron?

What this conversation has made clear to me is that in your attempts to disprove my OP, you will offer arguments that you yourself either don't believe can ever be sound, or that undermine principles used by other arguments that you do accept. This kind of logical incoherence needs an explanation. Explain how you yourself are not guilty of special pleading in claiming that your god is an exception to your own rule of 'every something comes from something else'?


I would disagree, the OP argument caused you to undermine the Kalam and the principle of 'special exception' that you yourself rely on in order to believe in your God. That, has been the point of this thread from the get go and I must admit to having enjoyed watching you trying to disprove the OP without disproving your own beliefs in the process, especially given that you have other options available to you.