1h 29min 35sec:
Braxton:
what you brought tonight is philosophy and history and I think philosophy does reliably get us two answers and I've given you philosophical arguments but I haven't heard and it's not that you haven't said things about them you have and I've enjoyed it but I don't think you've said anything substantive to really deal with especially the Kalam cosmological argument so or the case that begins with the Kalam
Matt
oh I did the substantive thing is that even if you concluded that the universe that next one it must have an explanation for its existence or must have a cause for its existence what do you know about that cause and how do you know it and whenever when you or anybody else has presented the case it is a list of assertions
Braxton:
well can I answer so if it's if it's the cause of all nature coming into existence then that would be if nature is space-time matter then the cause would have to be if your nature can't come before nature to cause nature
Matt
how do you know that
Braxton
well because it's nature that we're trying to explain
Matt
okay how do you know it's not a different nature
Braxton
well it could be but then you have I said all contiguous physical reality so what we would have is you would still have to have a cause for that nature coming into existence it would just mean you haven't gone back far enough yeah so what I would say then is the cause would have is you would still have to have a cause for that nature coming into existence it would just mean you haven't gone back far enough yeah so what I would say then is the cause would have to be a spaceless timeless non material cause what requires and how is that an assertion so I'm sorry it's your question
Matt
the fact that I'm fine with the notion that people intuitively reach the conclusion that whatever caused the universe is apart from the universe but actually that sure apart from our local presentation of the universe Sagan use the word cosmos because the universe is a terrible word when you're talking about multiverse is else and even attendant conflict so the cosmos is everything there is ever was irrespective of time or anything else so if the local presentation of the universe had to have some cause then the only thing that I can that I can know about that is that it seems to be the case that it couldn't have been our universe it caused itself so there must be something else yeah what that something else is or needs to be I have no idea because I have no way to investigate it I have no other universes to compare this to you
Braxton
'll notice that in my opening statements I specified that I'm talking about our local representation multiverses vacuum models whatever you want to bring up and it can't be past infinite for reasons that I'm happy to defend and I know you say oh I just don't think we can know and I'm saying whatever comes before all of that that we can call Sagan's Cosmos which is a Greek word that means the world but Sagan's Cosmos all of that whatever comes before isn't that but I see
Matt
what's the case that it needs to be an agent
Braxton
so there's a couple of reasons why it has to be an agent, first of all, an agent would have causal powers now that doesn't that's not the insistence that's not necessary but that's not the end of the story also you have types of causation right so event event causation would be if I took this water ball model and threw it at the moderator and the microphone fell out of his hand that's an event that caused another event and I won't do that but then there's State State causation which is like a frozen pond where you have a log resting on the top of that pond this stay is causing this other state what you would have with the beginning of the universe is state event causation you would go from a state of timeless nothingness to an events the beginning of the universe the only thing that makes sense of that is agent causation
Matt
okay just an assertion that that's the only thing you can think of
Braxton
it's not the only it's not just that it's the only thing I can think of and lastly I'll say this it would have to have libertarian free will and the reason would and the reason it would is because there was no prior determinism to lead to that event and what sorts of things have liberty and freedom agents do all right well one thing I am certain of obvious it's obvious that intellect causes people to lose their hair and all the brain food just makes the hair go away give a give a round of applause to our presenters when they'll be a great job
5 Easy Steps to refute naturalismhttps://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1877-easy-steps-to-refute-naturalismEither the cosmos(1) had no beginning, or(2) it had a beginning.(1) If the cosmos had no beginning, then there must be an infinite series of past events. However, it is impossible to traverse an actual infinite. Therefore, the universe cannot be infinitely old. Besides that, If the cosmos was infinitely old, it would have reached maximum entropy a long, long, time ago. Since it has not reached maximum entropy, it cannot be infinitely old without violating the second law of thermodynamics.(2) If the cosmos had a beginning, then it must have come from (A) nothing or (B) something.2.A. Although physicists such as Krauss and Hawking talk about "the universe creating itself from nothing," they are using the word "nothing" to mean the vacuum energy, which is not a true nothing. To be more precise, being cannot emerge from non-being. 2.B. If the entire cosmos came from something, that thing must transcend our cosmos, that is, it must exist beyond the limits of our space/time continuum. We may call it the First Cause.There are things that come into existence.Everything that begins to exist is caused to come into being by something else.There can not be an endless series of past causes.You cannot reach now by making one addition to time after another from eternity.Nor can something come to exist from absolutely nothingTherefore there is a necessary first cause that did not come into existence.In other words, the first cause has always existed.The scientific and philosophical evidence that we do possess speaks loudly and clearly to the existence of an independent, eternal, self-existent Mind that created this Universe and everything within it.
The first principles of ontology per the imperatives of logic manifestly evince that God must be. Only the abandonment of rationality imagines that it makes sense to conclude that existence can arise from nonexistence, that an infinite regress of causative events is possible, that actual infinities are possible or that the effect of a mechanical cause is not given from eternity. 1. Something cannot come into existence from absolutely nothing.2. The universe had a beginning, therefore, it had a cause.3. The present moment cannot be reached by adding individual events together from eternity.4. The second law of thermodynamics refutes the hypothesis of an eternal universe.5. Therefore an eternal & necessary first cause is the best explanation of our existence.6. An agent endowed with free will can have a determination in a timeless dimension to operate causally at a (first) moment of time and thereby to produce a temporally first effect.If the beginning of the universe was caused, that cause is either personal or impersonal. Since that cause created matter, space, and time, It had to be immaterial and exist in a timeless dimension. The only immaterial things we know of being able to cause something into being are conscient minds which are able to make decisions. Therefore, the cause must be personal. So there must have been a decision to cause the beginning of the universe's beginning. Only the God of the Bible is described with the following characteristics:
• Supernatural in nature (as He exists outside of His creation)
• Incredibly powerful (to have created all that is known)
• Eternal (self-existent, as He exists outside of time and space)
• Omnipresent (He created space and is not limited by it)
• Timeless and changeless (He created time)
• Immaterial (because He transcends space)
• Personal (the impersonal can’t create personality)
• Necessary (as everything else depends on Him)
• Infinite and singular (as you cannot have two infinites)
• Diverse yet has unity (as all multiplicity implies a prior singularity)
• Intelligent (supremely, to create everything)
• Purposeful (as He deliberately created everything)
• Moral (no moral law can exist without a lawgiver)
• Caring (or no moral laws would have been given)
Chance of chance doing *anything* is ZERO. It has no ontological status; it can do *nothing*. Chance is not a "thing". Its just a number to describe probabilities.
What makes more sense:
1. To believe that God used his eternal power ( energy ), created the universe, space, time and the Higgs field, which gave rise to matter, or
2. that absolutely nothing which is the absence of ANYTHING magically started our Universe or a Multiverse, which by trial and error created ours, or oscillating Universes, or that it suddenly created a vacuum, upon which virtual particles began to pop up, and somehow, for no reason created quarks, up's and down's, and an electric charge of the proton which is exactly equal and the opposite of the electric charge on the electron, despite the proton being nearly 2000 times more massive? and then finely tuned gravity and dark energy to a precision of one out of 10^123, and provided the exactly correct expansion rate of the universe, to permit a universe to expand, but at the same time to clump gas to form stars, planets, and life?
“It’s a whole lot easier to believe Genesis 1:1:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. and made the physical universe and life, rather than it is to believe that nothing took nothing and made everything.”
The famed atheist Bertrand Russell notoriously said:
“If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause.” But it’s not true that everything must have a cause. Only that which begins to exist must have a cause. And herein God is perched up in a category of His own.
Some try to substitute God as first cause by claiming that energy was always there, eternally, stored in a singularity, and caused the universe into being by a quantum fluctuation event. Planck regarded matter/energy as derivative from consciousness. What would be the contrary? Consciousness derivative from energy. If it were so, over an unknown length of time, energy would have become cognitive and self-aware, even learning the how's and why's of becoming other perceivable forms. It would gain perception, thinking, free will, moral judgment, and memory. Einstein recognized the absurdity of this claim. He
described the "gulf' that logically separates the concrete world of hard objects on the one hand from the abstract world of ideas on the other. A small part of the materialists problem is that hard objects are never observed spontaneously to transform themselves (on their own recognizance) into abstract ideas.W.L.Craig writes : The only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time.The universe requires a cause because it had a beginning … God, unlike the universe, had no beginning, so doesn’t need a cause. In addition, Einstein’s general relativity, which has much experimental support, shows that time is linked to matter and space. So time itself would have begun along with matter and space. Since God, by definition, is the creator of the whole universe, he is the creator of time. Therefore He is not limited by the time dimension He created, so has no beginning in time.
Therefore, The God of the Bible fits the description of the cause and infers that He exists and is the best explanation of the cause of the universe.
https://www.gotquestions.org/correct-religion.html
Everything that has a beginning must have a cause; therefore, the universe had a cause and is not eternal. Because the only two sources of eternality are an eternal universe (denied by all current empirical evidence) or an eternal Creator, the only logical conclusion is that God exists. Answering the question of God’s existence in the affirmative rules out atheism as a valid belief system.Now, this conclusion says nothing about what kind of God exists, but amazingly enough, it does do one sweeping thing—it rules out all pantheistic religions. All pantheistic worldviews say that the universe is God and is eternal. And this assertion is false. So, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and all other pantheistic religions are ruled out as valid belief systems.Something cannot come into existence from absolutely nothing.
The universe had a beginning, therefore, it had a cause.
The present moment cannot be reached by adding individual events together from eternity.
The second law of thermodynamics refutes the hypothesis of an eternal universe.
Therefore an eternal & necessary first cause is the best explanation of our existence.
Premiss one of the Kalaam cosmological argument strikes me as relatively non-controversial. It is based on the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come out of nothing. Hence, any argument for the principle is apt to be less obvious than the principle itself. Even the great skeptic David Hume admitted that he never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something might come into existence without a cause; he only denied that one could prove the obviously true causal principle.29 With regard to the universe, if originally there were absolutely nothing-no God, no space, no time-, then how could the universe possibly come to exist? The truth of the principle ex nihilo, nihil fit is so obvious that I think we are justified in foregoing an elaborate defense of the argument's first premiss.
Nevertheless, some thinkers, exercised to avoid the theism implicit in this premiss within the present context, have felt driven to deny its truth. In order to avoid its theistic implications, Davies presents a scenario which, he confesses, "should not be taken too seriously," but which seems to have a powerful attraction for Davies.30 He has reference to a quantum theory of gravity according to which spacetime itself could spring uncaused into being out of absolutely nothing. While admitting that there is "still no satisfactory theory of quantum gravity," such a theory "would allow spacetime to be created and destroyed spontaneously and uncaused in the same way that particles are created and destroyed spontaneously and uncaused. The theory would entail a certain mathematically determined probability that, for instance, a blob of space would appear where none existed before. Thus, spacetime could pop out of nothingness as the result of a causeless quantum transition."31
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-existence-of-god-and-the-beginning-of-the-universe#ixzz4iUnHzkBy
It is based on the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come out of anything. Hence, any argument for the principle is apt to be less obvious than the principle itself. Even the great skeptic David Hume admitted that he never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something might come into existence without a cause; he only denied that one could prove the obviously true causal principle.29 With regard to the universe, if originally there were absolutely nothing-no God, no space, no time-, then how could the universe possibly come to exist? The truth of the principle ex nihilo, nihil fit is so obvious that I think we are justified in foregoing an elaborate defense of the argument's first premiss.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-existence-of-god-and-the-beginning-of-the-universe#ixzz4qEioKrXD
W.L.Craig: This, I think, makes good sense of the relationship of God and time. God is timeless without creation and temporal subsequent to creation. Having entered into time, He is not dependent upon finite velocity light signals or clock synchronization procedures for knowing what time it is. Rather, existing in absolute time, God is, as Newton proclaimed, the Lord God of dominion of His universe. In the words of St. Jude: "To the only God our savior through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever."
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/god-time-and-eternity1/
God must be causally, but not temporally, prior to the Big Bang. With the creation of the universe, time began, and God entered into time at the moment of creation in virtue of His real relations with the created order. It follows that God must, therefore, be timelesswithout the universe and temporal with the universe. 1http://www.reasonablefaith.org/timelessness-and-omnitemporality#ixzz4lILYz3mzIs God Outside of Time? Not according to the Bible. 1
Most Christian theologians join countless philosophers of the last 2,500 years in saying that God is outside of time. However, if the Scriptures teach that God Himself experiences change in sequence, that would indicate that God exists in time, in the present, with a past, and looking forward to a future. This would demonstrate that atemporality, that is, timelessness, is not a necessary attribute of deity. So here is an example of a biblical proof demonstrating that God has a "past" and therefore falsifying the claim that God is outside of time:
Before the foundation of the world (as the Bible puts it), God the Son was not also the Son of Man; but then He "became" flesh as "the Son of Man", and so God the Son remains eternally "the Man Jesus Christ" (1 Tim 2:5).
1. http://kgov.com/is-god-outside-of-time