As another outcome of my recent debate with Andrew Loke (see We Should Reject Even the First Premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument and What If We Reimagine ‘Nothing’ as a Field-State?) I have here engaged to debate a professor of philosophy, Dr. Carlo Alvaro, on the subject of the Kalam Cosmological Argument again, because of his unique perspective: previously I have only debated Christian or Muslim defenders of it (as with Andrew Loke and, most recently before that, Wallace Marshall; and long ago, Hassanain Rajabali); but Dr. Alvaro is neither.
Alvaro is coming from the perspective of a Deist, who does not believe God involves himself in our world or fates at all; he therefore is not defending the Kalam out of any emotional or religious need to (for example, in The “Heaven Ab Initio” Argument from Evil Alvaro argues against there being any kind of heaven-making God). He has no faith-based reason to need any god to exist, and he readily allows that any deity that does exist may be severely limited in what it can do at all, much less for us; he merely sees some kind of aloof deity as the best explanation of existence for genuinely philosophical reasons, not apologetical. Which makes him a far more objective a defender of the KCA than any I have met heretofore.
About the Debaters
Readers here will already know me or can glean the rest from my About page, but in short, my career has always had two tracks: history and philosophy. My doctorate crosses both fields. I have a Ph.D. in the history of philosophy, and multiple peer-reviewed publications on the subject of philosophy (per my cv). And I have been debating and writing on that subject for thirty years, with a concerted (indeed, veritably religious) aim of developing a reasonable, evidence-based worldview. Indeed, my book on this, Sense and Goodness without God, is in need of an update or sequel, which I am working on this year.
Dr. Carlo Alvaro is an author and philosophy professor at New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York. He regularly lectures at the Fashion Institute of Technology, St. John’s University (New York City), and St. Joseph’s University (New York). He is a virtue ethicist and a proponent of ethical veganism based on virtue-ethical principles. Dr. Alvaro also works in the fields of philosophy of religion. Although Alvaro is not a theist and does not identify with any religious traditions, in his most recent work, Deism: A Rational Journey from Disbelief to the Existence of God (2021), he defends the existence of a deistic god.
About the Debate
Dr. Alvaro and I will follow the same procedure I have deployed to good success several times before: Alvaro will begin with an opening statement. Which is now provided below. I will then reply in a following post. And he in turn. And so on until we both decide to conclude, which may result in six to twelve entries altogether. But each entry will be limited to 1100 words (not counting citations or bibliography), so you can follow our reasoning step-by-step. There will be no deadlines or assigned pace—so we can each research our next entry before submitting it, and ensure as careful a wording as possible.
Comments on each of the entries in this debate series are open to anyone who submits polite and relevant remarks. Patreon patrons retain the privilege of their comments publishing immediately (email me if your posts are not clearing; I have to manually add new patrons to the whitelist). Everyone else’s comments will wait in a moderation queue that I will have to check and clear every few days (and it can be days, so have patience). Do feel free to comment. But please make your remarks polite, relevant, and informed. And do not expect too much of our time. Dr. Alvaro is no doubt an even busier fellow than I am.
Remember, too, that he and I will be posting an organized reply to each entry ourselves. So you don’t have to engage Dr. Alvaro or me in debate. Comments will be most productive if they ask for clarification on something or otherwise enhance the entry already provided, or aid in our developing the ones to come. Actual rebuttals can await our next formal entry. Likewise remember we are doing this in small parts on a word limit, so not every issue can be addressed in each entry. Points that need developing or defense may get that development or defense in future entries.
I will also be maintaining here an index to the whole debate, which will be updated as entries are published. But generally, after reading each entry, you can follow the link at the bottom of it to read the next—which link will go live when that respective entry is published, which can take days or weeks depending on our schedules. You can then follow the debate serially that way.
Index to the Debate
- Dr. Alvaro’s Presentation of the the Kalām Cosmological Argument
- Dr. Carrier’s First Reply to Alvaro
- Dr. Alvaro’s First Reply to Carrier
- Dr. Carrier’s Second Reply to Alvaro
- Dr. Alvaro’s Second Reply to Carrier
- Dr. Carrier’s Third Reply to Alvaro
- Dr. Alvaro’s Third Reply to Carrier
- Dr. Carrier’s Closing Statement
- Dr. Alvaro’s Closing Statement
Dr. Alvaro’s Presentation of the the Kalām Cosmological Argument
Dr. Alvaro Describes His Background
A few years ago (2021), I published an article in the Heythrop Journal titled “Atheism as an Extreme Rejection of Rational Evidence for the Existence of God.” That article is intended, as the title suggests, as a refutation of atheism. However, I would like to emphasize from the get-go that I am not (and cannot be) a religious or spiritual person of any sort. I mention this because my article defends on an old argument, of which theists are fond, known as the Kalām Cosmological Argument (henceforth Kalām). In my article, I use this ancient piece of reasoning to show that, because of its resilient argumentative power, atheist are rejecting powerful reasons that support the existence of a creator of the universe, which I call god with lowercase “g”. I also defend a version of Kalām in my recent book Deism: A Rational Journey from Disbelief to the Existence of God (2021). As the subtitle of my book might suggest, I started as an atheist and ended up as a believer—but not a religious one. Rather, I am now convinced that there exists a god that brought the universe into being. Although I base such a conclusion on a number of arguments, I must confess (no pun intended) that it was Kalām in particular that made me jump over to the believer side of the intellectual fence.
Dr. Alvaro Presents His Argument
An important premise is necessary at the outset. I am a philosopher. I have dedicated my life to studying philosophy and thinking about philosophical problems. Certainly, philosophical problems often concern and intertwine with science. But I am not a scientist and, therefore, concerning the scientific aspects of Kalām, I defer such questions to scientists. I mention this because I noticed that in similar debates, the debaters often get bogged down over which scientific theory or theorist is correct.
Now let me explain why I am so persuaded by Kalām by explaining the argument. The way I have presented the argument is in a deductive form as follows:
From these premises
- (1) All things that begin to exist came into existence by something else.
- (2) The universe is something that began to exist.
it necessarily follows,
- (3) The universe came into existence by something else.
The argument is formally valid. The question is whether the premises are true. Let’s discuss each premise.
Note that premise (1) says “all things that begin to exist…” This does not exclude the possibility that there might be eternal or beginningless things. And by “things” I mean material objects, such as pizza or furniture, or immaterial ones, such as desires or numbers. Also, note that those things that are not eternal, things that begin to exist, come into existence by something else. Some of those things, like pizzas, chairs, etc., come into existence from the rearrangement of preexisting material; others, like desires or square roots, come into existence without any material. The bottom line is that all those things that are not eternal, whether they are immaterial like numbers or material like computers, are brought into existence by something else.
Now why do I believe that premise (1) is true? Obviously, I am a finite being and, as such, most certainly, there exist truths and facts about the universe that are beyond the ken of my finite mind. In philosophy (likewise in science) everything is controversial. Ideally, we want 100% certainty, but in philosophy (and in science) we learn early on that we seldom, if ever, have certainty. But the premises of a sound or a cogent philosophical argument need not be 100% certain to be true. In most cases, the point is to demonstrate that a premise is more plausibly true than its negation. In this case, there are powerful reasons to believe that premise (1) is most certainly true but weak reasons to believe that (1) is false.
What are these powerful reasons? Well, in the first place, I think that the denial of premise (1) is a very hard pill to swallow. There is zero evidence that any of the members of the class of things that begin to exist came into existence by nothing—and no, quantum physics does not prove that! To deny (1) is to accept the absurd possibility that at least one of the members of the class of things that come into existence can come into existence by nothing. In short, science tells us that (1) is true, and logic tells us that out of nothing, nothing comes. Therefore, I believe that (1) is more plausibly true than its denial.
Premise (2) is the crux of the problem. I argue that there are scientific reasons to believe that the universe came into existence. But it is important to understand that scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe is not essential to my argument. It is, as it were, the cherry on top of the philosophical cake. Also, I am not impressed with the recent alternative cosmological models. And I think that the big bang model is still the preferred model for good reasons. With regard to the big bang, those who deny that the universe came into existence, typically, either argue (a) that there are alternative models or (b) that the big bang does not prove that there was no prior state before it.
About (a) while I am not qualified to comment on them, I understand that all the alternative models to the big bang are as interesting as they are extravagant and, to this day, unsubstantiated. About (b) at this point of the discussion I will say that that’s exactly what the big bang theory proves, that time, space, and energy came into being about 13.7 billion years ago.
Cosmogony aside, I argue that philosophical arguments are persuasive enough, unaided by science, to show that the universe is not, and cannot be, eternal. In fact, considering our precarious scientific understanding, I prefer to talk about philosophical arguments. And I think that the truth of (2) can be established independently from scientific argumentation. I do not have a lot of space allotted here; so, I will articulate the details of these arguments in my next response.
To give a brief description, the first argument is that the universe cannot be eternal in the past because if it were, the universe would be a collection that has an actually infinite number of events. But actual infinity is only a feature of mathematics not of reality. The best evidence of this is the absurd nature of actual infinity and its absurd implications (which I will be glad to explain in my next entry). Thus, actual infinity does not exist. Therefore, the universe is finite.
The second argument is rather simple. Actual infinity cannot be formed by successive addition. In a nutshell, any finite number plus one will always produce another finite number.
And the third argument is that if the universe were beginningless, it would be impossible for the present to exist. Consider an analogy. Imagine for the sake of argument that the Empire State Building in Manhattan had a staircase to infinity with an actually infinite number of steps ending up in the main lobby. Suppose that you are standing at the end of the staircase and a person walks down and says to you, “It was tough, alright, but I did it!” “You did what?”, you reply. And the person says, “I walked all the way down from infinity.” For (maybe not so) obvious reasons, this is impossible. And if it is impossible, by the same token it is impossible that the universe is infinite in the past and yet here we are.
Does the foregoing prove that a god or God exists? No, at least not directly. But that is not the conclusion of Kalām. Rather, the conclusion eliminates some typical atheistic assumptions, e.g., that the universe is self-made or, at any rate, that it is uncaused, and that the universe is eternal—and a host of other absurdities. The conclusion is that the universe came into existence by something else. That “something else” becomes the starting point of an interesting analysis that reveals to us that the “something else” in question must be a being rather than an object or a law or a force—a being endowed with considerable power and freedom to bring the universe into being, which I call god (again, with a lowercase “g”).
-:-
Thus is a refreshing argument. I’ve always fellt like from a philisophical standpoint the “Does God Exist” debate should always start here. Disregard any/all apologetic ideas (theological baggage) of what a “God” must be like, and reduce it to the minimum requirements for a Deity (intelligent designer) to exist.
I agree. I used a similar approach in a lecture once to show that Galen presents a far more rational theological conception of God than any Christian or Muslim has ever done. Because he intimates that we can only infer the interests and abilities of God from observation, not decide what they are first and try to rationalize how they fit observation.
So, for example, he explains deformed fetuses as accidents in construction during gestation, and says this proves God is fallible—he is simply not capable of ensuring a perfect assembly every time, and can only do the best he can. Galen contrasts this with “Christians” who say God can make a horse “out of ashes,” and points out that such an ability does not comport with observation. It does not seem that, in fact, God can do such a thing.
Likewise the design of the human body. Galen was unaware of evolution by natural selection (just natural selection, maybe; but nothing he says on that point survives), and so he used the design of the human body as evidence for intelligent design, but observed as well all the imperfections of that body (vulnerable nervous systems, awkwardly constructed eyelashes), and concludes that this entails God is limited by the material available and how it can be arranged.
That evinces an empirical theism that modern theism has completely abandoned. Defenses of God now tend to work entirely the wrong way around: start with what you want to be true, then try to explain away all the evidence to fit that. It’s literally antiscientific.
You talk about facing the data of experience without prejudice, and yet your argument against the perfection of God is based on the premise that the ultimate goal of divinity is to create, here and now, a perfect human body according to your ideal of what a perfect human body should be. That is, you deny that there are higher ends than this, you assume that all ends deemed good are compatible in the order of the universe, and you recklessly claim that God is imperfect for not achieving, here and now, something that you consider optimal.
That’s exactly the kind of antiscientific thinking I’m criticizing.
You just made all that up, in order to get the evidence to fit your preconceptions about God.
Galen is doing it right. The fact is, a God could have done away with nerves altogether, so, no brain damage, no broken necks, no chronic pain disorders; our ability to reason and make choices then always runs reliably and cannot be physically damaged or impaired; etc. That’s a fact. Not a supposition or a theory.
So we have only two logical possibilities, if a God is in any way responsible: God did not want to do any of those good things for us (and therefore “God is not good” in any meaningful sense; he is Mengele, and wants to cripple and terrify and torment us and not help us be our best selves); or God could not do any of those things for us. Galen correctly chooses the second as the most defensible theory (as the former lacks an explanation of why he did anything at all, much less “the best that could be done” with the materials and means available).
That is correct inductive reasoning.
You can go at this and say “maybe God isn’t good in this sense, and has instead completely bizarre and alien intentions we cannot fathom, and a morality wholly unlike ours.” But you have no evidence for that position, and it explains nothing (not even why the human body is designed as best as it can be given the means observably available), and is circular (because with such a theory, you could explain literally any state of affairs as in agreement with God, which makes “God” useless as a predictive model of anything, and thus you can never know whether such a God exists or not).
Galen is thus doing it rationally. You are doing it irrationally.
That’s the very difference I was pointing out.
It’s obvious that you are not free from the biases you attribute to others. You say that God could have created us in a different way to eliminate certain diseases. Aren’t you assuming with that a life without diseases is an ideal that a good god is obliged to pursue? For the same reason, and since an omnipotent god could have made us immortal, shouldn’t we blame him for making us mortal, an accusation we could make without needing to delve into specific details of our anatomy? Again, this would involve assuming that living this earthly life eternally is an optimal end that we should expect from an optimal creator. Do you realize that these ends you presuppose as universally good and ethically indisputable are far from being so?
Christian ethics has no difficulty in explaining how a world where diseases, pain, and death exist is compatible with a good god. It does not take as a given, as you do, that a life without diseases is an optimal life. On the contrary, it postulates that an optimal life is one without vice or where vice is effectively combated by will. Nor does it believe that an eternal earthly life is desirable, but rather it aspires to an eternal supernatural life.
Accusing God of causing unnecessary suffering to his creatures is a futile rhetorical exercise. The life of finite beings entails suffering to a greater or lesser degree. A world without pain or frustration would be a world without limitations and obstacles, where we would all be victorious before even entering the fray, and moral evil would be as impossible as a square circle. Therefore, if we accept that God cannot create perfect beings (since only God is perfect) and that imperfection brings about some metaphysical evil and the possibility of moral evil, what sense does it make to discuss whether the suffering inherent in imperfection should reach only a certain degree, beyond which it becomes suboptimal? Who are we, akin to worms in cheese, to determine what is the minimum permissible amount of suffering, considering the order of the universe and moral ends?
Moreover, with what arguments will we defend that a universe with less pain or more pleasure would be better than ours? Isn’t that making God a utilitarian? When we judge men, we do not call them good or bad based on the pain or pleasure they have experienced, but on whether they have been just and virtuous, which can only be decided if we have a clear notion of what their duty is. Now, can we determine what God’s duty is in the same way we know what man’s duty is? First of all, God owes nothing to anyone, because he is the absolute being. He is not bound to create us by a law external to him. It is his own nature that inclines him to spread good through creation. However, it is expected of a morally omnipotent being to create beings with moral capacity, to preserve them despite their limitations and eventual death, and to reward them based on how they have performed in life. This is the minimum we can expect from God, and this is precisely what we believe about him. Everything else is superfluous and gratuitous.
You are just continuing to repeat the same folly.
You are making your theory fit the evidence rather than asking what theory the evidence actually implies.
You can whine all you want about how maybe God has alien morals radically different from ours. But there is no evidence for that guy. And it destroys every religion current (which require God to be properly moral in the humanly understood sense). So it’s a useless avenue of speculation.
Since you seem disturbed and triggered by the Argument from Evil, which is not the subject being discussed here, you should read my analytical review of James Sterba (Is a Good God Logically Impossible?), and then read Sterba. You’ll stand corrected on every point. But I suspect you won’t bother. Evasion and wordwalls are more likely your modus.
I have defined moral good as being synonymous with justice and virtue, even when they entail pain and adversities, whereas you, following utilitarianism, seem to link it to the greatest pleasure and the least pain for the majority. My definition aligns with Socratic morality, which is also Stoic and Christian. Isn’t it a ridiculous witticism to call it “alien morals”?
It helps weigh the intellectual credibility of atheism that, as we are told, its most powerful argument against the existence of God is the ghostly “presence of evil.” This supposed demonstration of the non-existence of a supreme being uses the following premises:
1) If what is perceived by humans as evil is not prevented by God, then God does not exist or is not good or omnipotent.
2) What is perceived by humans as evil is not prevented by God.
3) Therefore, God does not exist or is not good or omnipotent.
Which, in practice, amounts to saying that, since today I got a pimple, God does not exist or suffers from fatal imperfections. To avoid revealing this absurdity and to reinforce their thesis, the atheist brings up fatal diseases, natural disasters and famines, when, if the argument were sound, a mere pimple would suffice. But, since it is not, no calamity has the power to invalidate God, as long as it is man who qualifies it as such.
The reason for the absolute ineptitude of this way of reasoning is that it attempts to deduce an objective fact (i.e. God is either evil or impotent) from a mere subjective consideration (“I perceive this as evil”), failing miserably in its task, since an evil, unlike God, is never so for everyone or forever.
No, you have redefined justice and virtue in such a way as to be devoid of compassion, aid-to-the-disadvantaged, and even human rights. That is an alien morality, thoroughly unhuman.
And you only did that to “force” the evidence to fit your theory. Which is backwards logic. Irrational.
There is then no evidence for your theory, and could not be even in principle, because you could thus excuse away any horror with this method, and therefore can never tell if the God you imagine exists at all.
So go read the material I directed you to. And then comment there.
I don’t think the argument is formally valid. How do we know that premise one is true? We don’t. What does “begin to exist” mean anyway? This goes against the Law of Conservation of Energy. Things don’t get created.
The idea that things “begin to exist” is a human failure, just like the idea that there would something before the start of time. Just as there cannot be something colder than absolute zero (matter in total immobility) there cannot be anything and in particular no creation event before the start of space-time.
For the same reason we don’t know that premise two is valid. Outside of space-time, things such as cause and consequence have no meaning and therefore the universe does not need to have a starting point. The insistence of theists and deists to insert an exterior cause is a failure of imagination and failure at understanding modern physics.
Patrick, be aware, “formal validity” only refers to the structure of the argument, irrespective of the truth of its premises.
The question of whether the premises are true is formally called soundness, not validity.
An argument can be valid but not sound. Or it can be sound (which requires that it also be valid).
See the IEP entry on this or watch the really good Khan Academy intro tutorial on deductive logic.
Alvaro’s argument most definitely is valid in this formal sense.
Which is why the only way to question it is to challenge its soundness, i.e. question its premises, just as you have in mind.
Thanks for the clarification.
I think there is a confusion here. Perhaps you are not familiar with formal deductive logic. In logic, an argument is formally valid when given the premises, the conclusion necessarily follows. Conversely, an argument is sound if and only if the argument is deductively valid and the premises are all true.
My personal view is that when we try to establish God with logic, then God becomes contingent to logic. Which is circular. Secondly if God is proved logically then logic is a necessity and superior to God which is against the concept that God is the creator and was created by logic. Just my views.
I don’t understand your point, Thomas.
First, Alvaro’s point is that God is contingent to logic, because everything must be; logic’s existence and governance of all states of affairs is logically necessary. That is not a circular argument; it’s a proper tautology.
Second, Alvaro is not arguing for traditional theism, so his position is unaffected by any charge of logic being “superior” in any sense. His deity does not have to be above logic or superior to anything. That his deity is constrained by logic is in fact Alvaro’s theory.
Third, you seem to be stumbling on the semantics of the word “created.” If all you mean by Alvaro’s deity being “created” by logic is that logic entails the existence of his God, that’s exactly Alvaro’s theory. If you instead mean something like, there was a time when there was no deity, “then” logic “created” God, that is not Alvaro’s theory.
To the contrary, Alvaro’s theory is (as I understand it) that God is not even a thing in time at all, so there was never “a time” before him such that he had to be “created.” Its existence is simply a fixed eternal fact of reality—and not in the traditional theistic sense: Alvaro holds that God is not in time so as to even be here with us now: God does not have a stream of consciousness; it has no thoughts; it is not observing us; it knows nothing of our affairs and we will never be able to communicate with it. God does nothing—literally nothing—but the one thing it did do: cause existence. God remains a static crystal after that. No change. No thought. No awareness. No action. Nothing.
The only reason Dr. Alvaro believes this thing once existed is that it is (so far as he can fathom) the only thing that can explain why the world we observe exists at all. And that is the function of his version of the Kalam. This God performs no other function for him. Hence Alvaro is not defending any religion here; God is not an entity he can have any relationship with or that can ever have dictated any holy books to anyone.
So Alvaro’s position is unaffected by arguments such as yours. He is not defending an incoherent theism whereby God has to be superior to everything and must have special powers defying logic. Alvaro is taking a truly deistic position: God is as limited by logic and physics as everything else; and does not have any role to play in human life (now or beyond).
Precisely. Unfortunately, as a result of that failure of imagination, they wouldn’t even be able to process the very idea that their imagination has failed because it would require their imagination to suddenly start working so as not to fail at being able to imagine how it could have or has in fact failed. Sigh.
If I understand you, Peter, you mean to say that “arguments from lack of imagination” are fallacious because we cannot know that the limits of our imagination correspond to the limits of reality.
I agree.
But this does create a conundrum: we need to solve the problem of how we can get someone who cannot imagine a conclusion (and therefore cannot understand the conclusion and therefore cannot be expected to believe the conclusion) to nevertheless see that a conclusion is correct.
That is hard. But if we want to gain a consensus or corroboration for any conclusion, and a community’s lack of imagination stands in the way, we have to remove that obstacle somehow. It is a challenging communication problem, but one we cannot ignore.
This: “But actual infinity is only a feature of mathematics not of reality.”
And this: “others, like desires or square roots, come into existence without any material. ”
Square roots are a “feature of mathematics not of reality”. So are the results of mathematics “real” or not?
This is such an odd question. Look, 3 – 4 = – 1. The result is – 1. Is “- 1” real or not?
No. -1 is not real…in reality. It’s real…conceptually. There might be ‘real’ objects in the universe characterized by -1 but they are not -1 even if that is the only property that fully describes them.
Words are useless.
Sir, that something else, that you call ‘g’od…is it real? Does it exist? Did it begin to exist? I’m not sure how you can answer any of these questions without special pleading and/or equivocating on the definitions of ‘real’, ‘exist’, and ‘begin’.
If I have 2 standing waves that are perfectly cancelling each other and by doing so I’m unable to see the result whatsoever, is that ‘something’ or ‘nothing’?
Peter, please moderate your tone a bit in your comments (treat this occasion like a formal academic setting).
As to the point, you would need to identify precisely where the equivocation fallacy is in Alvaro’s presentation. It might not be clear yet that it is there, since he has only made one presentation and won’t be able to expand until we get further into these questions in the debate. So I think Alvaro may be having a hard time understanding where you are coming from at this point.
It might also be moot.
Consider:
Whether there are things that don’t come into existence in the sense that they are logically necessary and thus always exist when anything exists might not have any relevance to this debate.
Alvaro could say those things lack relevant causal powers. Mathematics, sans substantiation, cannot have caused the universe; there needs to be a physically substantive cause. Which cause may indeed be subject to mathematics, in the sense of the logical necessities it entails, but math still cannot by itself “do” anything; the mathematical facts need to be realized in some physical form in order to have physical effects.
So the question of whether God is substantive enough to have causal effects is separated from the semantics of whether we call logically necessary truths “beginningless” or not, when those truths are wholly insubstantive and thus lack the ability to change the state of things by themselves.
Or Alvaro could say eternal things like mathematical truths do have causal powers. After all, if God is not a material, how does he have any causal powers so as to create the universe? And if God can do that without being substantive, are we now saying mathematics by itself could also have causal powers? And if they do, then why do we need God? Maybe we might have to conclude that Alvaro’s “first cause” could be just a mindless mathematical necessity, void of intelligence, categorically amoral, etc.
Or maybe there is some other avenue I am not thinking of here.
The point being: these questions cannot have been answered in only the first 1100 words of this debate. So you may need to be patient. And if exploring questions anyway, you should come at it from the angle of genuinely wanting to understand what Alvaro means and believes and why, rather than unnecessarily combatively.
The point that I was trying to make is that some “things” come into existence from preexisting material like houses. Other things, like thoughts, come into existence without pre-existing material. But the point is that thoughts and houses are brought into being BY something else.
What if we point out that thoughts come into being with pre-existing material (neurons) that are just organized and/or activate in different ways to create the signal of thoughts. So, a pre-existing material rearrangement.
Does mathematics exist on its own or is is brought into existence? And if so, how?
Dr. Alvaro writes:
“But I am not a scientist and, therefore, concerning the scientific aspects of Kalām, I defer such questions to scientists. I mention this because I noticed that in similar debates, the debaters often get bogged down over which scientific theory or theorist is correct.”
But then later in his argument he goes on to say “In short, science tells us that…”.
This gives the impression of someone that wants to science use (or their understanding of it) where they think it might support their position, but otherwise does not take serious interest in it.
Dr. Alvaro then goes on to state:
“I will say that that’s exactly what the big bang theory proves, that time, space, and energy came into being about 13.7 billion years ago.”
Incorrect. The actual observation is that our universe (as we now know it) is expanding. Scientists track that expansion (reverse engineering of sorts) going back about 13.7 billion years ago. The scientific evidence does NOT prove that the universe came into existence at that time. The evidence and theory only suggests that the universe began to expand at that point. We don’t know what existed or what happened prior to that.
Correct on all counts. Especially the last paragraph. The unfortunate reality here is that your point, much like a point that was made on the very first comment by another is that people just don’t get science or apparently don’t understand how it works, or is carried out, or corrected or what it even means to have a theory or to ‘know’ something.
It requires genuine study and understanding and I honestly have a hard time faulting people for this anymore. For example, I’ve had the pure luck of having an affinity for math and science and as engineer studied it in college through a master’s program. So it’s been part of my psyche since childhood. How are other people supposed to ‘get it’ if they haven’t had the same experience or anything remotely close to it (that’s a lot of people). It’s really genuinely harder than people think.
Dear sir, are you accusing me of being a hypocrite? I am the father of three children, a good husband, son, and according to my university and my students a great professor. Now I am here having a stimulating exchange with Dr. Carrier. From the tone of your message, I sense that you are trying to make me look stupid or inconsistent. I am sorry to have to say to you that this is not the way that debates ought to proceed in academia. Try to enjoy the show and refrain from attacking people. If you think you are smarter than I, feel free to ask Dr. Carrier to have you on for a debate. Or, even better, write a book, or write an article and have it published in some important philosophical journal (or scientific journal since you seem to know what is and what is not correct). All the best to you.
No one here is attacking you personally Dr. I apologize in advance if another post of mine may come off that way also. Everyone here has to remember we’re all as individuals standing in for ‘ideas’ or positions we hold. We cannot confuse that with who we are unless we insist that are very identity is wrapped up in the idea. Cheers and look forward to the formal and professional debate with you and Dr. Carrier.
I do not mean to be disrespectful, but how is this not “I don’t know, therefore god (small g, and all)?
Michael, I have several thoughts. First, if someone tried to convince me that God or a god exists by using the argument, “I don’t know, therefore god…”, like you, I would be disappointed. But you must understand that that’s not my argument. In fact, if you read very carefully my post, I specifically say that the conclusion of my argument is NOT that God exists. Second point, you must understand that I am not a theist, which means that I do not follow any religion, nor do I go to church or light candles. I assume that from the tone of your comment you are either an atheist or an agnostic? I might be wrong. But if I am right, please understand that I am not here to try to convince anybody and I am very sympathetic with atheism. Third point, I am what they call a professional philosopher. I have been studying philosophy for 40 years and have been teaching for 20. This is what I do, I think about things like this for a living. I study arguments and write about them and sometimes I find them convincing and other times I do not. Over the years I have considered many arguments for and against the existence of a god. As I mentioned in my introductory entry, the Kalam is the argument among many that really convinced me. However, My strong belief that there is a deistic god is the outcome of many arguments and lots of years thinking about it. If you, or Dr. Carrier or anybody else could make me change my mind and explain to me why I am wrong, I would be more than glad to change my mind. Finally, as I said to another commentator above, I have been in the academic world for so long that I am not used to the sort of comment/question that you made. An academic debate is an exchange of ideas at the highest possible intellectual level. No rolling eyes, no dismissive gestures, or any other disparaging remarks. I hope you enjoy the debate and learn something from it.
Dr. Alvaro
Thank you for your reply, Dr. Alvaro, but now that the debate is concluded, I would like to review this colloquy.
It seems to me that the essential problem is that Philosophy is mostly mental gymnastics and semantics. Reality is brute force. When one tries to gerrymander the philosophical “nothing” into the physics “nothing” that is doomed to failure. It is an equivocation. They are not the same “thing”, if you will. That, however, is the intent and purpose of the Kalam.
Physics says wait and see. Philosophy says no need. We have it all already; see, you, Dr. Alvaro proved it here.
I disagree.
By the way, does your lower case g god have any attributes in your conception of it? I can’t get over the lack of definition of your deist entity. If you can glean knowledge of its existence, tell me more about it and maybe I’ll agree that it’s not a simply a semantic stop to unknown/unknowable questions.
I don’t understand the third objection to infinity.
If the staircase are infinite, how can the two guys be at the end of the staircase? Doesn’t the analogy suppose that infinity has a finite end?
One last question: it seems to me the analogy would say that if there is no end of the staircase, the person would just be in a loop and not have a past, present and future; but could I not say that while the staircases are infinite (beginningless), the person is finite (had a beginning) so he will experience past, present and future until he dies?
That may come up in the debate and Dr. Alvaro will have ample opportunity to answer then.
But to steel man the initial presentation: Dr. Alvaro has opened with a preponderance of evidence standard; so he is not merely saying “I don’t know x, therefore x” but is arguing “I am not sure of x, but I believe x is more probable than not because y.”
So his case is more substantive than a standard creationist’s God of the Gaps fallacy.
There is the question of how Alvaro derives the properties he claims for this God (e.g. its goodness, possession of intelligence, etc.), which has not been addressed in this opening (for want of word count, as he himself noted). But we will certainly be getting to that in coming entries.
Re: We do not know therefore god.
Mr Samuels, I tend to agree with you. In my view the main problem with the Kalam argument for the existence of god is its argument for two separate universes with separate ontologies and logic. There is one ontological system for our physical universe and a totally separate and different one for god and god’s universe. Thus we have a dualism problem akin to the mind-body problem but at a much souped up all encompassing level: god-physical universe problem if you will. As such, when our logical premise “nothing comes from nothing” breaks down at the ultimate cause then we adopt a totally different systemic logical premise that says but god has no cause and his universe in governed by laws totally different and, in fact, diametrically opposed to those governing the physical universe Truly Deus ex-machina saves the day!
You say that your argument “eliminates some typical atheistic assumptions, e.g., that the universe is self-made or, at any rate, that it is uncaused, and that the universe is eternal . . . .” I’d say that doesn’t get us very far because these “assumptions” are straw men. I don’t assume any of these things and I suspect many other atheists don’t either. Instead of assuming, I have questions, such as: Does our understanding of causality within the universe even apply to the origins of the universe itself?
Ginger, do note that many atheists (in fact, even serious cosmological scientists) do indeed explore the possibility of past-eternality (infinite universes precede ours), spontaneous (a-causal) cosmogenesis (although that can get into the semantics of what counts as a “cause”), and circular causation (e.g. Hawking’s nutshell cosmology is a “the universe caused itself” model of origins). So these are not straw men. They are real positions Alvaro must contend with.
And your question illustrates this: if causality does not “even apply to the origins of the universe itself” then you are proposing it could begin without a cause (spontaneous cosmogenesis) or never began (past-eternality) or (somehow) caused itself.
Because these are the only logical possibilities left.
This was the one correct point the creationist Bogardus made in his own case (see Is Science Impossible without God? The Argument of Tomas Bogardus).
What’s unclear to me at this point, but what I assume future entries will go into further, is why this isn’t effectively saying the exact same thing, just using the word “god” instead of “universe”. So far the opposition feels contrived.
Hopefully clarity will arise in subsequent entries. I challenge Alvaro on this point in my answer today.
Actually, what I said was “does our understanding of causality. . . .” Because the way causality normally works in our present universe may not explain how things worked at the origin of the universe. In our current universe, we have time and space — which are helpful for establishing cause and effect. But given that spacetime may well have originated with the Big Bang, our understanding of causality would seem to break down at that point, so it doesn’t make sense to assume it would operate as we see it today. Were there even laws of physics as we observe them now?
This is indeed my point in respect to his first premise (see today’s entry, up in a few minutes).
But that amounts to saying the same thing he is (that existence began without cause or was self-caused or didn’t even begin), so he is not straw manning your position. He is gainsaying it.
I guess I will start with the comment that I don’t really like the word atheism. I like the word non-believer especially since the word atheism came from theists originally as more of a slur. The reason why it is important is to get to the heart of the problem which is not that non-believers do not need to prove that there is a God especially one who is an all-powerful and all good designer. In this case we like the argument extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There is zero evidence. What it feels like is the argument is deflated by calling it god with small g. Once we have established the validity of god with small g then we can start to describe the nature of the Creator and move the discussion to God with big G.
Typically, that’s what non-believers are fighting against. For me it is a tough pill to swallow, regardless of the beauty of life, that we are stuck on this planet in a solar system, which, despite the myriad of possibilities of life on Mars, Europa or Titan, inhabitance outside of Earth looks pretty grim. Looking around the neighborhood our star is one of hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky way which is one galaxy in 100s of billions of galaxies. We are so far away it would take centuries to get to anything remotely possible as a substitute for our current living arrangements. No matter the number of stars and galaxies in a Universe which started about 13.7 billion years ago most of Universe is just empty space. And one day the Earth or Sun will blow up or perhaps a collision with another galaxy will not go so well. No matter what, it sure makes me think that this short life on this planet is rather precious.
So right now we are struggling with the problem of what happened before time. At one point in human history, we thought all the planets and stars revolved around the Earth. Up until the 1920s we thought the Milky Way was the entire Universe. Now we have realized that we are in a Universe that started 13.7 billion years ago (that number is being questioned now — some are positing 26 billion) and we would like to know what happened a millisecond before the Big Bang. Regardless of whether there is a god or not there are two things humans have trouble comprehending — how did we get something from nothing or if that didn’t happen how do things exist infinitely. Either way we seem to be stumped.
But! There is an answer. Yay! god with small g. So let’s just say we support the existence of a Creator by making up a class of things which are eternal and not material and then saying it exists (without the requirement of time and a beginning and an end) — two things which can’t be proven except that it is found likely because the alternative is so distasteful. Obviously, that helps us out a lot here with this great struggle.
The only questions I have are what is the nature of this creator, and why is the difficulty which comes from describing a Creator any less than the difficulty of describing the idea that something might come from nothing?
Then there must be a “god” to create the “god” that created the cosmos; then a “god” to create that “god”. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. If you try for a “god” without a creator… well you’ve no argument against, and must allow, an uncreated cosmos.
Please note that Alvaro is taking functionally the position that God is logically necessary, so God does not need a cause—because God does not exist in time at all (hence God no longer exists “around here”; he isn’t someone you can ever interact with; he doesn’t “have thoughts” about the ongoing affairs of men, or even know about them; etc.). Thus his argument is not subject to the regress fallacy.
The thing that rankles my amygdala concerning the Kalam is its unqualified language. Wouldn’t it be more palatable to render it as IF all things that began to exist came into existence by something else AND IF the universe is something that began to exist THEN POSSIBLY the universe came into existence by something else?
IMO, that kind of smooths over the rough edged “unsoundness” of the thing and allows skeptics to follow this debate unencumbered by the nagging requirement for empirical and scientific evidence in support of P1 & P2.
Frankly, I was taken aback by Dr. Alvaro’s taking offense at ou812invu’s pointing out something I also thought of when reading the O.S.
At the risk of sounding arrogant: I too am a loving father, devoted husband and respected practitioner of over 38 years in my chosen profession, but none of that makes any of my beliefs true. I think the Kalam is divisive garbage cooked up in the incubator of medieval views of the universe that should have had its obituary written during the enlightenment but for its Frankensteinian revivification by maddened Christian apologists.
But that’s just me.
I’m a Patron and read EVERY article Dr. C posts, often more than once. By necessity! And I know he requested we submit polite and relevant remarks, but I think I may bow out for this series and go spend my time reading articles at the Skeptical Inquirer, or perusing Bart Ehrman’s blog, or finally trying to understand Michael Huemer’s argument for souls. It’s a lot less….tense.
That’s what makes Alvaro worth engaging: he is persuaded by the Kalam despite having no pertinent beliefs encouraging him to be. I agree most defenses of the Kalam are more of a delusion or a con than sincere philosophy, because it is simply contrived by apologists. But Alvaro isn’t an apologist. In fact, he argues Christianity, and all traditional theisms, in fact any theism that imagines God is someone still around to interact with or to care about anything, is false.
So we should be interested in knowing why such a person as that still finds the Kalam convincing. It won’t be for the usual reasons. It is not motivated reasoning here. So it won’t be a delusion or a con this time. It can only be either correct or a mere error. And that is remarkably refreshing. It is quite rare to encounter such a state of affairs in any debate in the philosophy of religion.
On premise one, it occurs to me that the grammar of “by something else” may be more treacherous than first appears? If you open a bag of chips, you typically find the large pieces at the top of the bag and the fragments at the bottom. What “something else” brought this arrangement into existence? This particular example may be childish enough, but the principle that some phenomena can be fairly said to be emergent seems sound enough. The argument that the universe may be emergent from a process than a separate metaphysical or ontological entity with a discrete beginning does seem to provide more than weak reason for declaring premise one to be false.
The something else that arranged the chips is not just a different name for the same thing, thus not an infinite regress. Nor I think is it an undescribed entity or unstated hypothesis. God with a lower case g may be argued to be the latter, so maybe the positive case for premise one is not quite so strong?
On premise two, the more intense the gravitational field, the slower time passes than in a different reference frame with less intense gravity. Programmers for GPS satellites have to take into account not only their proper time due to their higher velocity but the difference due to the relative height above the center of the earth. The first slows time for the satellite, the second speeds it up, so to speak. If you were in the reference frame of the early universe, the beginning might appear to recede endlessly, due to this effect. (I have seen some claims that there is no gravitational force when the distances—spacetime intervals?— are small enough, but I’m not clear on whether that is an artifact of the mathematical or logical incompatibility of QM/QFT with general relativity or aprinciple of nature.) I suppose you could think of it as adding more and more mass/energy to less and less volume of spacetime. But the objection that there can’t be an actual infinite doesn’t seem to me to be quite as compelling if you can’t sum the supposedly finite quantity.
Or to put it another way, the beginning of the universe may be more like the edge of a rainstorm, which disappears when you look closely enough at it. Yet it is still a meaningful concept, I think. I suppose logically this is an example of the heap paradox. A resolution, like declaring a mass of objects constitutes a heap when it is large enough that it finds an angle of repose, that cannot compel agreement on logical grounds, may still be useful? Similarly, a universe that is eternal in the sense you could not (in a gedankenexperiment that is,) find the beginning of, is still useful?
Dr. Carrier wrote:
Interesting. Because is that is the case then I think it is a bit would be misleading for for him to be identy or someone to describe him as a “Deist” (someone that believes in a “Deity).
Beause in my mind a Deity is a still a conscious being, as it would have to be if one believes it created this Universe intentionally (i.e. intelligent design), or even if this Universe was created by mistake or as a byproduct of something else the Deity was busy doing (intentionally working doing).
But if he doesn’t content that his Deity is or ever was a conscious thing that could be real game changer for me.
Because now his “Deity” could end up being some other possibly mindless eternal agent (something like dark energy or dark matter) that could be the catalyst behind the cause (“creation”) of our Universe (assuming it was “caused” at some point).
In other words, if Dr. Alvaro doesn’t believe in a conscious “creator” of our Universe then he has no business arguing with Atheists, because is my mind he himself one. He is just an Atheist who believes that our Universe is not eternal, but came into existence by some unknown agent or force (which he has decided for whatever reason to refer to as a “Deity” of some kind).
I think you’ve confused two different things. Alvaro does believe god is a conscious being. What he denies is that that god is still around thinking or knowing things. His god exists (and thus thinks and makes a decision) only in one timeless moment of creation. The rest is a clockwork thereby set in motion, unmonitored, unaccompanied. See the links in my introduction to articles that illustrate his beliefs about this.
The question does still then remain (and I am raising it in today’s formal reply) as to why he thinks we can infer his first cause is not just another mindless mechanism, and thus not a god in any relevant sense.
Dr. Carrier, thanks for your comments on my other posts including the ones about being careful about tone. When I saw Dr. Alvaro’s response to others’ posts I immediately got the sense that he felt he was being ‘attacked’ and I pre-emptively apologized for earlier posts which would, in retrospect, could easily be understood to be combative.
That said, this post above of yours was the exact point of my posts. It is not at all clear, and again, we’re probably jumping the gun after one post, how this ‘g’od can be thought of as an agent if agency by definition would require sequences of one sort of another thereby demanding time. So how can it have a mind at all even for an instant except an instant so small it doesn’t even count as time. Kind of a pointless conception of god isn’t it?
Best thing about these debates is we learn very quickly that most of us, myself included, are not quite up to the task of doing this with the appropriate academic rigor as much as we’d like to inject ourselves into these conversations.
Thank you for all you do.
I appreciate all you said here.
And your question is a good one. Can we make sense of consciousness without time? I am inclined to think not. Hopefully this will come up (I have teed up the first step at least).
It’s also possible Alvaro has in mind not consciousness per se but in some sense just intelligence (something more like Aristotle’s God). But that also needs explicating.
Dr. Alvaro, I have three questions that I hope can help me understand your perspective better. Any comment is appreciated.
1) Do you believe in platonic forms (or some similar instantiation of concepts)? I may not be asking the precisely right question here, it has to do with things like numbers. In your view, do numbers “exist” separately from the conception of them?
2) What is your general view of consciousness? Does it come from the brain, but is a separate substance? Is it completely separate from the brain? Or is it a process/output of the brain?
3) What is your conception of events in regards to time? You mention that there cannot be an infinite line of events to get to the present. But if time itself is an emergent property that can be caused by quantum processes (and indeed some quantum equations do not require time), can something be “infinite” for a period when time does not exist, and time simply result from an otherwise timeless state?
Thank you for your opening arguments so far. This has been a very interesting read. Personally, I don’t think I am persuaded by your views on infinity, and so look forward to your further arguments to that end. Also, I don’t think the Big Bang model claims that everything “came into existence” 13.7 billion years ago. The Big Bang model seems to only explain expansion of an existing something (generally a singularity).
n.b. Keith is right about the current state of Big Bang science. I include a link in my formal reply today just to illustrate. But in brief, the original conception of the Big Bang singularity entailed a beginning to time, but quantum mechanics has since refuted that, and the original Hawking-Penrose theorem has been repudiated by both Hawking and Penrose.
Singularities of infinite density are now known to be impossible, and the traditional definition of singularity has been replaced with the broader concept of “geodesic incompleteness,” which can simply mean time in one timeline ends at a quantum threshold (where time becomes indistinct), which tells us nothing about whether any more time precedes that point.
Hence the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, as agreed by all three authors—Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin—does not even entail a beginning to existence, much less that it lies with our Big Bang, but that it entails a beginning only to classical spacetime.
The BGV in fact entails a vast preceding sequence of Big Bangs even in a classical model (as demonstrated by Susskind); and since singularities now are quantum, there is no “complete” classical timeline anyway. Thus any finite classical timeline (like Susskind’s model, where the BGV entails billions of prior Big Bangs before the BGV threshold is reached) can be preceded by a quantum state of time which in turn is preceded by another finite classical timeline, ad infinitum.
In today’s entry (to go live in a few minutes) I link to videos showing these men explaining this themselves.
Really looking forward to reading this debate, this is the best presentation of the Kalam I have seen and I’m interested to see further development of the points and the refutation of them. Particularly interested in the idea of something beginning to exist, can something be thought of beginning without time? If that thing is time itself then is it possible for it to begin? Another interesting point is the absurdity of infinity, couldn’t this be applied to god itself, then god must begin and we have an infinite regression of god’s. I hope these points will be expanded more during this discussion.
I agree. This is the best effort at defending the Kalam. It’s still not convincing, but at least now we are debating the substance of the argument and not apologetical handwaving.
Your question is also apt. Since it is logically impossible for something to exist before time (just as it is logically impossible for something to exist north of the north pole), there is an ontological problem with Alvaro’s proposed deity. But since he has yet to even describe much less defend that deity, we haven’t been able to get into how he thinks it can even work, much less exist. Things that do not exist in time do not exist at all (they “never existed”). It is incoherent to imagine existing “outside” time. I have made this point before, but it has yet to come up here.
That does not mean there isn’t a solution (e.g. one can frame the first cause as existing at a single time location, t=0, and thus avoid the “never existing” problem and the “can’t exist before t=0” problem). But I cannot speak for whether Dr. Alvaro will take that recourse.
(On the issue of whether a first point in time counts as “beginning,” since technically everything still then “always exists,” I did raise that in the Wanchick debate, but steel-manning Alvaro, I think he is using “begin” and cognates as simply code for time and thus reality being past finite, i.e. it simply refers to the contrary of a past infinity of time, and nothing more.)
Just catching up here, and looking forward to reading through the debate.
Dr Alvaro, did you mean to say “All things that begin to exist came into existence by something else” or rather “All things that begin to exist PROBABLY came into existence by something else”?
danielvicenteffe8da1d1 wrote:
Dr. Carrier responded:
-and-
One other problem I see with this approach by Christians is that they are inconsistent with it. When something good happens to someone (e.g. person gets healed from sickness, receives good news, gets rewarded financially, finds perfect parking spot) they attribute it to and give credit to God. “God is good!” and “Look what God did!”. They even tell us how God knows every hair on their head and there are specific versus in the Bible that tell us that Gog is concerned with out well being (human condition) and that he can provide comfort to us. In other words when things go right they are quick to make a direct correlation between the actions and caring of God and our earthly experience (human condition).
But those same Christians refuse to give blame to God when things go wrong. They try to tie it back to our actions somehow. But of course that isn’t always the case and certainly not with natural disasters that destroy whole civilizations including innocent children. In desperate they blame the accuser with “Who are you to question God?”. Or resort to some type of desperate religious/philosophical answer such as given here but fails for the reason explained by Dr. Carrier.
Once again the problem that I have is them wanting to have it both ways. Atheists are consistent from that standpoint. They would never give credit or blame do a God that doesn’t exist (for obvious reasons).
They will only blame God (mockingly outload) sometimes to prove a point to Christians.