That then raises the question of what counts as “a physical object.” Is spacetime a physical object? Quantum fields? Photons? Patterns of arrangement? Etc.

I don’t think (though I could be wrong, as the conclusion of this debate revealed that Alvaro was not an honest operator so we can’t trust his self-reports) that Alvaro meant by “something else” strictly “objects” in any limiting sense. He just meant any physical state of affairs (however structured). Hence, he would grant an empty point of spacetime was “something.” He would just want to insist that you then need to explain where that “something” came from. That’s challengeable. But the real problem for him is that then “God” is something and thus a thing needing a cause. He never really got around to explaining how God escapes the rule but nothing else does.

There are too many confusions here.

That there is a time in Indonesia is well supported by data. That is the proper analogy. By contrast, we have no corresponding data supporting P2.

The analogous case would be “is there a time in Brigadoon” when we have no evidence there even is a Brigadoon so as to have a time.

P2 is therefore not true. It “might” be true, but that isn’t what P2 says (P2 is not “maybe existence had a beginning”). In a formal syllogism the premise has to be true as stated. Otherwise it is literally false and the argument is formally unsound (as distinct from invalid).

Meanwhile, I never challenged P1’s meaning. So which objects it would apply to is not something we debated here. I agree it has semantic problems like you suggest (even more than those you mention), and I have debated them elsewhere (just not with Alvaro). So we can’t hold Alvaro to an unreasonable standard: he won’t have replied here to an argument that wasn’t made here.

My argument against P1, which Alvaro never answered, is that P1 cannot apply to itself (it cannot be that the rule described by P1 governed the beginning of that rule), so P1 is not logically necessary, and is therefore contingent, and therefore needs to be brought about by some prior state of affairs (whether temporal or existential), and therefore at least one thing (P1 itself) violates P1. Therefore P1 is literally false (in the terms required by a formal syllogism).

“No data for a beginning means no data for P2. Therefore we do not know P2 is true.”

No. No data means “no data collected BY US”. It doesn’t mean that there’s not “information”; it means we haven’t collected that information, thus have formed no set of data.

I have no data on what time it is in Indonesia right now. But, that doesn’t mean there isn’t, therefore, any “time” in Indonesia. It just means I haven’t looked for the information and formulated a data set from it.

I can’t believe you would come up with “No data fore a beginning means no data for P2”. That’s just mind-boggling.

The REASON we have no data for the Very Beginning (as Lederman put it) is because it’s IMPOSSIBLE to go back before time to collect it. We don’t know what was there, before time. You don’t know, I don’t know, scientists don’t know.

Therefore, whatever preceded the Big Bang can only be a mindless-yet-eternal process, or, something mindful-yet-eternal.

Now, as to P1 itself: “Everything that BEGINS to exist has a cause”.

If the universe is eternal, then, it didn’t BEGIN to exist. If “God” is eternal, then “God” didn’t BEGIN to exist.

The Kalam argument is talking about what WE perceive as something that has “come into existence”. We ourselves cannot possibly perceive “existence” in any other way than by OUR OBSERVATIONS. So FOR US, in OUR OBSERVATIONS, we cannot POSSIBLY KNOW of ANYTHING that “comes into existence” except those things we can observe as “being existent” – which can only mean “existent TO US”.

If there is a failure to the Kalam argument, it is that P1 doesn’t “spell out” what is meant by “existence”. It proceeds from the assumption that the only things we can know the existence of are things we observe.

Hence, P2 says simply “the universe began to exist”. This is referring to the universe which we CAN observe – which is the one we live in. We can’t KNOW that there are other universes, because they can’t be observed by us, and will never be observable by us. We cannot go faster than the speed of light such that we could ever get outside our own universe in order to observe some other (supposed) universe elsewhere.

So, the Kalam argument DOES have weaknesses unless we decide to limit ourselves to what can be observed by us – which means – establish-able by science. If we go off on “theoreticals”, saying “this mode.. ” or “this set of calculations…” to attempt to “prove” that there are indeed other universes, then, we’re just off in La-La-Land at that point. And, for a person who believes models somehow “proves” anything at all, well, that person will have a problem with Kalam…

Virtual particles do not refute P1 (Alvaro makes this point in his peer-reviewed paper we were debating, linked in the description in the first entry to this debate) because they have contingent properties (only certain particles can spontaneously form, only in certain ways, and only by certain rules), and therefore something is causing them in the ontological (not deterministic) sense. Same for an expanding vacuum (Alvaro only used the virtual particle example, but the same logic applies).

Another way to put it: P1 says “All things that begin to exist came into existence by something else,” and therefore it says “The laws governing virtual particles and vacuum expansion came into existence by something else—if they began to exist.”

So one can challenge this by pointing out that we do not know that “the laws governing virtual particles and vacuum expansion” began to exist (they could be past eternal or logically necessary and thus “eternal” in his own sense); and even if they did, we do not know what is necessary to have brought them about or even if anything is necessary to bring them about (they could be a product of random spontaneous events ungoverned by any contingent physics—but some other logically necessary physics, such as the Lincoln-Wasser model I explicated in my nothing-field-state article).

In neither case can we cite established science as directly proving the point, because science has not solved either of these questions (we do not have any evidence the past is finite or not finite; and we do not have any evidence yet as to what logically necessary physics, if any, underlies all of reality). But science has many plausible hypotheses in these respects (perfectly coherent first-cause models lacking deities; perfectly coherent past-eternal models; and perfectly coherent spontaneous generation models; and even perfectly coherent ontological necessity models, e.g. see Superstring Theory as Metaphysical Atheism). These are all (or follow from) peer-reviewed, published theories by expert cosmological scientists. So one cannot say “these things are not possible,” and therefore one cannot sustain P1 or P2 on present scientific evidence: the present state of the field rejects both.

Dr Carrier, I have wondered why one cannot cite examples from physics that refute P1? I) Virtual particles which are stochastical and causeless coming into existence ii) the spontaneous creation of new vacuum with its energy state in intergalactic space. These are not only without prior states bringing them into being, they are also the only examples of new creation ( apart from the universe) as all else is just transformation of pre-existing stuff. Genuinely curious why this argument is not used.

Whether there can be a zero time point is a point of contention (it entails actual infinitesimals, which are actual infinities). But either way the outcome is the same: if Alvaro rejects zero-points, then his position entails the smallest initial point of time is nonzero (a time quantum and thus a “first time”); if he accepts zero-points, then his position still entails there is a first point of time. So either way, there is a first point of time. In contradistinction to a past eternality which is defined as lacking any such thing (zero-point or otherwise).

I’m not sure what you are asking. Symmetry is just a description of conservation. That’s a tautology. Meanwhile symmetry breaking is also a fundamental feature of modern physics. So this tells us nothing about what will be the case in all possible conditions. What remains symmetrical is contingent (dependent on local physics), not necessary (true for all possible physics, i.e. all possible worlds, not just this one).

See The Role of Symmetry in Fundamental Physics, particularly the section on partial and broken symmetries.

If you want a more meaningful explanation of why conservation laws will always emerge from random background states see my discussion of this very point in All the Laws of Thermodynamics Are Inevitable. If you want a scientific explanation of why and when such symmetries will not hold (and thus conservation laws no longer apply) see my discussion of the Lincoln-Wasser model in What If We Reimagine ‘Nothing’ as a Field-State? (their paper is also linked therein).

In short, universes with symmetries by definition have conserved properties; but which symmetries form is contingently decided (at, possibly, an initial inflation event, i.e. a Big Bang, when a universe “crystalizes” as it cools). States prior to forming any fixed symmetries are ungoverned by symmetries and thus will experience random (“spontaneous”) symmetry breaking; but that will in turn “lock in” some symmetries against others, crystalizing a universe. Some such outcomes are stable enough to then produce a Wong-Hazen cascade, and thus life, and thus observers. Hence why we are here, in a universe abundant in the needed symmetries (and thus conservation).

But even that might be an emergent artifact of randomization without any actual fixed law of conservation, i.e. the appearance of conservation of energy at our scale may be a byproduct of the Law of Large Numbers and regression to the mean, and not a fundamental property. Hence my article on quantum thermodynamics (and the above cited article’s point about apparent or partial, i.e. accidental rather than fundamental, symmetries).

I disagree. It seems to me that the distinction is relevant to Dr. Alvaro’s argument, which appears to me to hinge on there being a minimal moment. Otherwise his premise “(2) The universe is something that began to exist” falls apart. He can’t say that the universe began to exist at the zero time point, if time is isomorphic to the positive reals, because the universe did not exist at all at the zero time point.

From the Wikipedia entry on Noether’s Theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem):

“Noether’s theorem states that every continuous symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces has a corresponding conservation law.”

“… if a physical process exhibits the same outcomes regardless of place or time, then its Lagrangian is symmetric under continuous translations in space and time respectively: by Noether’s theorem, these symmetries account for the conservation laws of linear momentum and energy within this system, respectively.”

Conservation laws and symmetries are two sides of the same coin. If you have one, then you have the other. If I am reading it right, conservation of energy in our universe means that our physical laws work the same way at all times. Conservation of linear momentum means that our physical laws work the same at all locations in the universe.