Thank you. That’s a valuable contribution here.

Indeed, I will be citing that one myself from now on!

I know that Dr Alvaro is not following these posts anymore but I will leave here a link to a very good refutation of the claim that “actual/real infinities are logically absurd and can’t exist in reality” which Dr Alvaro presented here and is in my experience a common point argued by theists as well. It’s written by mathematician Timothy Chow (a Christian FWIW) who considers it fatal to the KCA:
https://timothychow.net/kalam-final.pdf

“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.”

Dr. Carrier responded:

“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-

“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.”

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.

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.

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”?

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.)

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!

Thanks for the clarification.

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.