3) If everything needs a cause, then what caused God?
This objection misconstrues the first premise which actually says that everything that BEGINS to
exist requires a cause, not that everything needs a cause. Indeed, as the asymmetrical timeless
cause of the universe, God would never have began to exist, and so not only wouldn't require a
cause, but couldn't have a cause. This isn't special pleading in the case of God either, since
atheists have typically said that if the universe were eternal, then it would be uncaused.
4) If an actual infinite number of things couldn't exist, then neither could God since He is
infinite.
This objection equivocates on the term infinite. God isn't composed of an infinite number of
things; indeed, infinity isn't even an attribute of God, it is a catch all term for His superlative
attributes. As a non-physical being, god isn't composed of parts, and the set of His proeprties is
finite {omniscient, omnipotent, personal, necessary, etc}. When we say that God is infinite then,
it isn't denoting a quantitative number of things in God, but rather, we are speaking qualitatively
of His attributes. So, God isn't just powerful, but all-powerful, not just good, but perfectly good,
etc.
5) Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause is only true of things IN the universe, but not
necessarily true OF the universe itself.
This objection commits the taxi-cab fallacy where someone relies on a principle in all releavnt
areas except where that prinicple implies the falsehood of one's belief. Moreover, this first
premise isn't a physical prinicple or law, like the law of gravity that only applies to the universe
as a physical system once that system exists. Rather, this premise is a metaphysical principle
that says being cannot come from non-being without an efficient cause and this kind of
metaphysical principle applies to reality qua reality whether physical, or non-physical.
Secondly, this objection doesn't account for why we do not observe other universes and things
popping in and out of being in our own universe.
6) Premise 1 is only supported by intuition, but intuitions aren't always reliable, and we don't
even know what an intuition is.
I have a number of points to make about this objection. First of all, simply because our intuitions
aren't infallible doesn't mean that they can't provide us with prima facie support. So, what the
objector would have to show is that are intuitions are actually unreliable, not that they are
fallible. Moreover, where our intuitions have gone wrong in the history of thought is in the
domain of physical priniciples, but I do not know of any of our intuitions about metaphysical
principles which the first premise exhibits that have shown to be wrong. So the first premise
does seem to have prima facie support from our intuitions. However, even if your epistemology
is strictly empiricist (although such an epistemology is self-defeating, and to restrictive), the first
premise is completely supported by our experience of the world as well! The last point about
there being non current scientific or conceptually pin downed description of what intuition is, has
a false assumption, namely:
We can't know some faculty of reason is reliable unless we have a complete or approximately
complete account of it's nature and the mechanisms thereof.
Before we had a scientific description seeing and hearing, we sure knew that seeing and hearing
were generally reliable. The same is true of intuition.
7) Doesn't quantum mechanics teach us that things can come into being without a cause?
William Lane Craig says: Virtual particles don't arise from nothing. "They are fluctuations of
the energy in the vacuum that have indeterminate causes. The quantum vacuum is not nothing. It
is a roiling sea of energy. The German philosopher of science Bernulf Kanitscheider emphasizes
that in so-called quantum creation events we're dealing with "a causal process leading from a
primordial substratum with a rich physical structure to a materialized substratum of the vacuum.
Admittedly this process is not deterministic, it includes that weak kind of causal dependence
peculiar to every quantum mechanical process" (Bernulf Kanitscheider, "Does Physical
Cosmology Transcend the Limits of Naturalistic Reasoning?" in Studies on Mario Bunge's
"Treatise," ed. Weingartner and G. J. W. Doen [Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990], pp. 346-74). "
8) To say that an actually infinite number of things cannot exist is disproved by modern set
theory; get with the times.
Response: What modern set theory shows is that if you adopt certain axioms and rules you can
speak of actual infinities in a universe of discourse that is internally self-consistent, but this does
nothing to show that an actually infinite number of things actually exists because they could be
useful fictions, conventions, formal rule language games, etc. In other words, simply because
something is strictly logically possible, it doesn’t mean that it is also metaphysically possible.
Or again, this argument isn’t trying to prove that the idea of an actual infinite is a contradiction,
but rather that it is absurd, or metaphysically impossible. For example, it isn’t a strict
contradiction to say that a prime number can be a prime minister, but it is metaphysically absurd,
or to say that something comes into being uncaused out of nothing isn’t a contradiction, but it is
metaphysically absurd. However, when you subtract identical infinite quantities from each
other, contradictions are generated, and this is why subtraction and division are prohibited within
the universe of discourse of modern set theory.
9) Infinity is beyond us and we can’t grasp it; that is why these ‘problems’ arise.
Response: This objection is naïve. Infinite set theory is a highly developed and well understood
branch of mathematics. These paradoxes result not because we don’t understood the actual
infinite, but because we do!
10) If an actual infinite number of things could exist, then these paradoxes are precisely what we
would expect.
Response: The question isn’t whether something like Hilbert’s Hotel is an accurate description of
what an actual infinite would look like, the question is can such a hotel exist, and the answer is
no. Moreover, critics cannot bite the bullet with respect to the subtraction of guests from the
hotel because that does generate an actual contradiction.
11) If there cannot be an actual past, then there cannot be an infinite future.
Response: This equivocates on two types of infinity. The sense in which there cannot be an
infinite past is known as an actual infinite and the sense in which the future is infinite is known
as a potential infinite with the series of future events never ending, but never forming an actually
infinite number of events either.
12) In an infinite past, there is no starting event infinitely distant in the past. There is no
beginning point at all, but every event in the past is only a finite distance from the present. In the
negative number series there is no number that is minus infinitely, but every number you pick
there is only a finite distance to zero.
Response: This commits the fallacy of composition; which equates the property of a part of
thing with the whole having that property. Because every part of an elephant is light in weight
doesn’t imply that the elephant as a whole is light. Just because every finite part can be crossed
doesn’t mean that the whole can be traversed. The question isn’t how can any finite part of the
past be crossed, but it is how can the infinite whole be traversed.
13) How can you that the universe began to exist when the standard model is no longer taken as
correct?
Response: It is true that the standard model is based on Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity,
and that GTR breaks down as the universe shrinks down to subatomic proportions, or the Plank
time. Moreover, it is true that nobody knows how to wed GTR with quantum physics, or subatomic physics; and the expansion rate of the universe probably isn’t constant like it is in the
standard model (i.e. inflation). However, none of these adjustments need overturn the prediction
of a beginning of the universe. In fact, scores of theories (steady state, oscillating, vacuum
fluctuations, inflationary, ekpyrotic) have been proposed to try and overturn the absolute
beginning of the universe predicted on the standard model and none have succeeded. Thus, any
non-standard model which viable will include an absolute beginning to the universe, but that
they beginning may or may not have a beginning point. In either case, the universe will still
have a beginning in time, even if there isn’t a beginning point. In a sense the history of 20th
century cosmology can be seen as a series of failed attempts to try and avert the fundamental
prediction of the standard model which has given the laymen an unfortunate impression that
cosmology is very uncertain and always changing when in fact the failure of these other models
has only gone to establish the absolute beginning of our universe over the past 80 years. Indeed,
a watershed has been reached in 2003 with the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem which shows that
any universe which on average is in a state of cosmic expansion must have an absolute beginning
and this theorem is so powerful because it applies even if we never establish a quantum theory of
gravity and it even applies to higher-dimensional models, and multi-verse models as well.
14) 1960’s—Oscillating Universe model shows that the universe can expand and contract forever.
Response: Actually, it has been shown that entropy is conserved from cycle to cycle; energy
isn’t completely conserved so any thermodynamic disorder will be conserved and continue to
accumulate from cycle to cycle. This entropy accumulation causes each cycle to be larger and
longer in duration than each successor so that as you trace the expansions back in time each
cycle gets smaller and smaller until one comes to a first oscillation and an absolute beginning of
the universe. In fact, since entropy is accumulating on each cycle, if the past were infinite we
should be observing an infinite amount of entropy. Based on the amount current amount of
entropy in our universe, the maximum number of cycles that our universe could have gone
through is 100 previous oscillations before you reach a first oscillation and a an absolute
beginning of the universe. Lastly, there is no known physics that would allow an oscillation to
bounce back after collapsing into a singularity (Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems).
15) Pocket Universe, which is part of a much wider reality (multi-verse), and each of these is
expanding even though the multi-verse as a whole didn’t begin. Thus, the second law of
thermodynamics might only apply to our universe whereas it may not apply to the multi-verse as
a whole.
Response: The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem demonstrates that the multi-verse itself would
have to have a beginning.
16) 1970’s--Vacuum fluctuation model’s say that there is a sort of mother womb that is itself
eternal in which baby universes are formed and these baby universes are expanding into this
great quantum mother vacuum in which it exists.
Objection: At any point in the quantum vacuum there is a non-zero probability that a universe
would form at that point by a quantum fluctuation; so given infinite past time universes will have
come into being at every point in the quantum vacuum, but then those universes will by now
have expanded as to fill the entire quantum vacuum coalesce and form one infinitely old and
large universe which contradicts observations of our finite universe. So, in light of this lethal
criticism, the mother vacuum would have to expanding as well, but then, the Borde-GuthVilenkin theorem applies to this model and shows that it must have an absolute beginning.
17) Perhaps black holes are really portals through which energy can tunnel to some other
unobservable universe and as the energy goes into the black-hole it goes through the wormhole
and is ejected into this other space-time region. Overtime, the wormhole gets thinner and thinner
until finally it pinches off and the baby universe becomes a separate entity in and of itself.
Perhaps this process has been going on from eternity universe.
Response: This theory contradicts the laws of sub-atomic physics. The information that goes
into a black-hole remains in our universe and cannot escape into another universe. Thus,
Hawking lost his bet with James P. and had to disappoint science fiction fans by admitting that it
is physically impossible for information to travel to some other unobservable universe and spawn
a baby-universe.
18) Why can’t the universe cause itself?
Response: This objection isn’t saying that the universe is eternal and so caused itself, but rather,
that the universe didn’t exist and then it created itself. But this is a self-contradiction since in
order to be create itself the universe would have to already exist, but then the universe would
have to already exist before it existed!
19) I don’t even understand what you mean when you say that an unembodied mind caused the
universe.
There are two kinds of explanations: 1) Scientific explanations which are given in terms of laws
and initial conditions; and 2) Personal explanations which are given in terms of an agent and her
volitions. Both of these are legitimate forms of explanations. But, in the case of the origin of the
universe, there cannot be a scientific explanation because there aren’t any laws of nature and
initial conditions that are antecedent to the origin of the universe because it is the first moment of
the universe itself.
For more comments on this See my blog under More Arguments Against Christian Theism / God
Doesn’t Have A Brain So He Doesn’t Exist
20) If one is a skeptic about intuitions, and thus is skeptical about one of the three points Craig
offers in support of premise 1 of the kalam, there is another formulation of that point that still
allows intuition to offer some support for premise 1 even if one is somewhat skeptical about the
reliability of our intuitions:
"Phenomenal conservatism: the way things seem serves as at least prima facie pro tanto
evidence for how things are. Therefore, if it seems to one that some causal or explanatory
principle involved in a cosmological argument is true, then one could thereby receive (perhaps)
sufficient support for the premise to accept it. I think William Lane Craig should take this route
in his defense of the causal premise in his kalam cosmological argument, as well as his defense
of a version of PSR in his Leibnizian cosmological argument (as opposed to his current "more
plausible than their denials" approach, which Morriston and others rightly point out as
inadequate)." [Taken from ex-apologist.]