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Originally Posted by John21
They could have left the page blank just for fun.
LOL.
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I just don't think it's saying anything different than the theists arguments but more near a sub-argument of theirs like Aristotle's Prime Mover argument.
MB's argument is sort of similar, but it's dissimilar in an important way.
MB's presentation is time-bound. That is, the only conclusion that can be reached is that if there exists something now, then there must have been something that existed before now. But you have no way to trace that backwards to any specific time. You just get "before." (He also referred to "periods where time doesn't exist" in Post #35, which would make everything fall apart because his argument is dependent upon time.)
The Prime Mover argument has the ability to trace back further because it isn't restricted with time-bound language. Instead, it uses ordinal language (first, second, third, etc.) to trace backwards. This means that you can move beyond "before" and get yourself all the way to "first." (Note that ordinal language does imply time in some sense if you reject backwards causality, so the use of ordinal language makes the statements stronger.)
The Kalam Cosmological argument is built on the Prime Mover argument, and so you're right to draw some parallels there. Here's SEP on the first mover in Aristotle's understanding:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-natphil/
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All this testifies to the exceptional status of the first movement, and behind it, of the first mover in the universe... [W]hat we hear in Metaphysics 12.6 is that the first mover moves as an object of love and striving, which comes perilously close to abandoning the claims of Physics bk. 8 to the effect that there is an unmoved mover serving as the efficient cause of the motions of the cosmos. Such doubts, however, should be dismissed. Aristotle is describing here in the terminology of his physics a supra-physical entity without which the universe could not function or persist. Small wonder if its mode of operation needs to subsume several different dimensions of physical causation.
The Kalam argument is structured around "things that began to exist have a cause" (with the universe being something that began to exist), and then the equivalent of the Prime Mover is "that which caused the universe to begin to exist." So it's similar, but still a little different and subject to slightly different questions. (For example, "Did the universe begin to exist?" I don't think this question has a good equivalent for the Prime Mover Argument.)
The Kalam argument also opens the door to asking more specifically about the nature of the thing that caused the universe to begin to exist (assuming that it did begin to exist). And in this way, it doesn't have to fit into Aristotle's natural philosophy for it to be addressed.