God this must be a joke.
No, no, no, no. Don't make a mockery of his arguments.
The argument in question is the comsological argument. Let's state it formally:
- Whatever begins to exist has a cause
- The universe began to exist
- Therefore, the universe has a cause
No reason to call the cause god.
When in doubt, learn to read; no mention of God has been made in the argument
1) Premise 1 is commonsencical. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. If you deny premise 1, then you'd have to explain why just anything doesn't come into existence randomly. In other words: if premise one were true, then one would expect anything to randomly come into existence; spontaneously existing objects (let's hope you don't deny premise 1, as this would mean that we're dealing with a special type of looney).
No one is denying that something happened in order for the universe to begin it's current state, .notice I said current state. As the Big Bang theory does not state the universe came from nothing. It doesn't Craig is willfully ignorant as I'm sure he has been corrected.
Just where, oh, where did I mention Big Bang?
2) This is a given. The universe began to exist. This is a fact. An overwhelming amount of comsological evidence and simple philosophy (namely, out of nothing, nothing comes) assure us this is true.
Big bang theory does not claim from nothing.
Again, no appeal to the Big Bang theory has been made.
Any physicist with any semblance of repute and self-respect will agree to this. Denying this given reveals that you are either scientifically ignorant or too blinded by pride or emotion to conceed this fact, in light of the complications it imparts on an atheistic worldview.
How the shit does the Big bang impart complications on atheism, if anything it would bolster it. Also there is no such thing as an "atheistic worldview", not believing in god is not a worldview. You can be an atheist and believe the big bang never happened or we live on a disc supported by a turtle. Atheist = lack of a belief in a god/gods...period.
In response to red: An absolute beginning, which is
unavoidable, presents an enormous problem to the atheist, given that they believe in no supernatural or, to use H's perfect phrasing, "extrauniversal" entity that transcends the laws of physics and obviously space, matter, time and energy. In other words, the atheist would have to somehow explain, if the absolute beginning of space, time, matter and energy is given (which all points to "yes, it is given"), how the universe came into existence from utter non-existence (absence of space, time, energy and matter) through naturalistic means. In other words, the atheist would be cornered on the issue and would have to appeal to space, time, energy and matter to explain their own existence (ie: space, time, energy and matter caused themselves to come into existence), which is a patently and embarrassingly ludicrous claim.
In response to green: trust me, not believing in (a) God is a worldview. Maybe you don't even know what a worldview is. That's what dictionaries are useful for.
In response to yellow: Utterly embarrassing and nonsensical statement.
In response to blue: You can rebel against two thousand years of tradition and against a series of long dead atheists whose intellect surpass your own all you like, but atheism - like it or not - has traditionally mean the assertion that no God exists. Atheism = God does not exist. Atheism =/= lack of belief in God. Unfortunately, many atheists have gotten away in the recent years to redefine it as lack of belief merely to save themselves from the burden of proof that is placed on them if they accept the traditional definition of "God does not exist". Don't bother starting an argument here. I have zero interest in finding out what El Jonno
thinks atheism should mean.
(neat color coding, huh)
Why personal and fruther explication from the man himself? I direct you here: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8429
Notice that no mention of God was made in the argument or post; this is mere comsology and basic reasoning.
First I must point out lolz " I am no longer an atheist but now a humbled agnostic"
Another useless and silly comment
this cause is itself uncaused, beginningless
He pulls this out of his ass, just bald assumptions.
Clearly you are not capable of following a basic premise;
if space, matter, energy and time came into existence (in other words began to exist) then it follows logically that the cause for the universe must be transcendent of space, time, energy, matter and therefore is at least timeless, immaterial, and omnipotent. This a logically sound argument. If the conditions that if time, space, energy and matter began to exist are hypothetically accepted, the conclusion that whatever caused space, time, energy and matter to come into being, the
only logical conclusion would be that the cause for their coming to existence is independent of these qualities (time, energy, matter, space - restating them just for clarity and to prevent any possible evasion of the logical conclusion). There is no squirming away from this conclusion. The conclusion
cannot be rejected.
So a changeless state must be a timeless state. Even on a non-relational view of time, time could at best be an undifferentiated time in which literally nothing happened; no change occurs. Third, its spacelessness. Anything that exists in space must be temporal, as it undergoes at least extrinsic change in relation to the things around it. So our cause must transcend space and time, at least sans the universe.
What? That's like fish saying fish saying "our master must trancend water!". Just because there is a localized area of space that we at the moment cannot measure beyond does not mean the universe was created by a timeless being.
Another comment that displays both misunderstanding of the premises and of cosmological matters yet also seeks to offend simultaneously.
This rejoinder is futile because if the initial cosmological singularity is a physical state of affairs, as you think, then it is the first state of the universe (its initial boundary point) and, hence, began to exist a finite time ago. It cannot have come into being out of nothing, as you agree. So there must be a transcendent cause of the first state of the universe. Here my second argument, borrowed from Swinburne, for the personhood of the first cause becomes relevant. As I explain, there are two types of causal explanation: scientific explanations in terms of laws and initial conditions and personal explanations in terms of agents and their volitions. . . . Now a first state of the universe cannot have a scientific explanation, since there is nothing before it, and therefore it cannot be accounted for in terms of laws operating on initial conditions. It can only be accounted for in terms of an agent and his volitions, a personal explanation (Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, pp. 192-3)
Big bang does not say it began from nothing.. I feel like a broken record. I'm not reading any more of this. I've gotten half way through and all he does is misrepresent cosmology and jump to conclusions.
There wasn't even a mention of Big Bang in the quote! If you feel like a broken record, that's because you are! The points in the quote were completely ignored. Instead, you just chose to repeat a meaningless and unsubstantiated claim that "the Big Bang does not say it began from nothing" while the it doesn't even apply to the topic that is being discussed!
Your post was light on the reasoning and arguments but heavy on the ad hominem. This is the kind of useless offal of psuedo-philosophical and psuedo-rational objections and arguments that define the intellectually bankrupt New Atheism movement.
This coming from someone who follows a quote-mining charlaton. Craig needs to stop lying about science to prepetuate his own career of being an expert in lies[/color]. It's funny how you claim us to be intellectually bankrupt when we have most of the leading scientist on our side and they are speaking out more and more.
If you are going to offend the man without reason to, do it properly. It's charlatan. Not "charlaton".