An Objection to Kalam Cosmological Argument
First, let's read the argument:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its beginning
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its beginning
This argument is discussed in good detail here. So what is my objection to this argument? The second premise is not the only scenario as one can also say that the material has existed since the beginning of time. To elaborate let's consider the current state of the universe to be S(t) which by the state I mean the configuration of material at a given time. The state of the universe at the former time is then S(t-1) etc. until we reach the beginning of time S(0). I claim that this state is related to the configuration of some sort of material at the beginning of time. So, the second premise is not the only scenario unless one answers my objection. Therefore, the argument does not follow.
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its beginning
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its beginning
This argument is discussed in good detail here. So what is my objection to this argument? The second premise is not the only scenario as one can also say that the material has existed since the beginning of time. To elaborate let's consider the current state of the universe to be S(t) which by the state I mean the configuration of material at a given time. The state of the universe at the former time is then S(t-1) etc. until we reach the beginning of time S(0). I claim that this state is related to the configuration of some sort of material at the beginning of time. So, the second premise is not the only scenario unless one answers my objection. Therefore, the argument does not follow.
Comments (64)
It's sort of like proving the Earth rests on a turtle since anything that holds something up must itself be held up by something. The model worked back in the day, but is today about as naive as the Kalam thing.
So premise 1 is a premise that only applies to objects IN the universe, and even then it isn't necessarily true except under fully deterministic interpretations of physics.
Premise 2 totally goes against the consensus view among cosmologists where time and space are contained by the universe instead of the other way around. Such a model does exist, and it necessarily denies things predicted by the prevailing view such as the big bang or black holes.
Quoting MoK
The universe is not posited to have been built from 'material'. Any material did not show up on the scene until several epochs beyond the big bang.
So we're in agreement about the lack of soundness of the argument, but for different reasons.
Nothing caused the the universe to come into existence? How does that work?
I have one argument for nothing to something is impossible which I discussed it in this thread. The argument got refined in the final forms as following:
My argument:
P1) Time is needed for change
P2) Nothing to something needs a change in nothing
P3) There is no time in nothing
C1) Therefore, change in nothing is not possible (From P1 and P3)
C2) Therefore, nothing to something is not possible (from P2 and C1)
Bob Rose's argument:
P1: If an entity is the pure negation of all possible existence, then it cannot be subjected to temporality.
P2: Nothing is the pure negation of all possible existence.
C1: Therefore, nothing cannot be subjected to temporality.
P3: Change requires temporality.
P4: Nothing cannot be subjected to temporality.
C2: Therefore, nothing cannot be subjected to change.
P5: Nothing becoming something requires change.
P6: Nothing cannot be subjected to change.
C3: Therefore, nothing cannot be subjected to becoming
So I think that the first premise stands.
Quoting noAxioms
Actually I was aware of that problem as well but I wanted to discuss it in another thread. Time is needed for a thing to begin to exist since the thing does not exist at a point and then exists.
Quoting noAxioms
Do mind to provide a link to such models? I studied cosmology around 20 years ago and I am very rusty now.
Quoting noAxioms
We still don't have the quantum gravity theory and that was why I hesitated to discuss Big Bang. Otherwise, I agree with you.
Quoting noAxioms
Cool.
First of all, if S(t) can be predicted from S(t-1) ... S(0) then the theory T for this system is complete. Non-trivial systems do not have a complete theory. For example, the theory for the system of the natural numbers (PA) is not complete.
Secondly, theory T is axiomatic, which means that every single one of its rules has no further explanation in terms of deeper underlying rules. So, even if we had a copy of theory T with all its rules, we would still not understand why it is there, just by looking at it. Just like PA has no ulterior logical explanation, by its very nature, T does not have one either.
Hence, from within the universe, you cannot figure out why the universe exists. Just staring at the universe or just staring at its theory (which we do not even have) won't help.
Similarly, a fish swimming in the ocean, no matter how smart, will never be able to figure out why the ocean exists. Staring at its surroundings in the ocean or even staring at the ultimate theory of the ocean won't help either.
The idea that God created the heavens and the earth, is a belief. By merely by staring at the heavens and the earth, this belief can neither be logically justified nor logically rejected. This belief has spiritual origins that transcend logic. That is why I am not particularly fond of the Kalam Cosmological Argument either.
Interesting. I didn't know that.
Quoting Wayfarer
How ethical issues are related to the origin of the universe?
In this thread, I am not interested to discuss whether different states predicate other states later. What I am interested is that these states have existed since the beginning of time.
Quoting Tarskian
What is PA? Why the theory for the system of natural number is incomplete?
Quoting Tarskian
We may one day be able to explain why reality behaves like this.
Quoting Tarskian
I would say that we have to be open to the situation. We may be able to explain things given our intellectual power. We are evolving creatures so even if we cannot explain things now we may be able to explain things in future when we are evolved well.
Quoting Tarskian
Yes, that is a belief and you have the right to accept it. Are you in favor of the creation of things from nothing? If yes, I have an argument against it. You can find the argument here.
PA is short for Peano Arithmetic theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms
It is the most common theory of the natural numbers. Most true statements about the natural numbers are not provable from PA. Therefore, PA is incomplete.
If a system is incomplete, then it has unprovable truths. An unprovable truth is an inexplicable truth. The existence of such fundamentally inexplicable truths has nothing to do with our own evolution in terms of understanding. There simply does not exist a justification for such truth. The natural numbers is a system with fundamentally inexplicable truths.
No, 'nothing' cannot be a cause. I don't posit that the universe is the sort of thing that 'came into existence', something that only describes objects within our universe, such as a raindrop. Treating the universe as an object is a category error.
Time isn't something that began to exist. It is simply a dimension of our universe, per consensus view. Time is contained by the universe, not the other way around.
Quoting MoKPhysics very much supports uncaused events, but even such events are not from nothing. I don't think anybody is pushing a stance of something from nothing, except as a straw man alternative to whatever it is they actually are evangelizing. Craig regularly commits such a fallacy.
For temporal change, sure. There are other kinds of change that don't involve time. e.g. 'The air pressure changes with altitude'.
'nothing' isn't even really a defined thing, so the conclusion is more meaningless than impossible.
Bob also seems to treat the universe as something subject to temporality, that is, something contained by time. This model was outdated over a century ago.
If you want to eliminate the alternative to your pet idea, at least knock down the consensus view of things instead of the straw man 6th century one.
Just so. Hence the category error.
Here's the main one, perhaps the first one to generalize LET theory to include gravity. It was published almost a century after Einstein generalized his Special relativity theory.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45904833_Black_Holes_or_Frozen_Stars_A_Viable_Theory_of_Gravity_without_BlackHoles
It is an absolute theory, with the universe contained by time, hence absolute time. All the premises of special relativity are denied, and different premises are used.
Maybe not an object, but the universe certainly exists, so what caused it to exist? The only way around that I can see is to say it's eternal.
For the Christian, the fact that we are created 'imago dei' and return to the source of being at the time of death is fundamental to their faith. Life is regulated according to that belief, and according to the Biblical maxims and commandments. Whereas naturalism sees h.sapiens as the consequence of physical evolutionary processes that happen to have given rise to this particular species. They are very different attitudes and outlooks.
Existence is fairly well defined for an object. An object has a location and duration. An object is contained by both space and time, and it doing this constitutes 'existence'. The universe is a different category, and it does not exist in space (except to those who naively posit the a big bang as an explosion of stuff into pre-existing empty space), and it exists in time only to those that posit it to do so, which makes the existence of the universe a problem to those that hold that view. But that's not the only alternative. The prevailing view is that the universe is contain by neither space nor time and is thus not to be treated as an ordinary object To say it exists requires a very different definition of 'exists', and I'm not impressed with the utility of any of the definitions I've seen attempted.
Similarly, some (Platonists?) suggest that the natural numbers exist. That requires a different definition of 'exists' else one can meaningfully ask where their location is, and when/how they came into existence. If they are not temporal objects (if they were, they'd change over time), then why does the universe have to be? What difference does it make if the natural numbers exist or if they don't? It certainly makes a difference for an object, but the natural numbers are not objects. There are those that don't suggest that numbers meaningfully exist, and yet they are no less capable of counting their toes.
The issue boils down to a problem to a realist: How does one explain the reality of whatever one asserts to be real? Shorter but less rigorous version: Why is there something and not nothing? Positing a creator doesn't solve the problem; it only regresses it.
Not my problem. I abandoned realism for pretty much the unanswerability of such questions.
There are multiple meanings to that word.
Dictionary version: Lasting forever, without beginning or end.
Philosophy version: Eternalism: That time is contained by the universe, and is bounded at one end just like North is bounded on Earth. This is opposed to time that flows, and the universe is contained in that flowing time.
I'm loosely guessing that you're using the former definition, that there is no bound to time in either direction. The theory I linked above presumes a model something like that, but the big bang has to be discarded. There is a half-empirical test for the view. Half because one can prove the consensus view to ones self, but not to others, similar to proving an afterlife. You have to go through a 1-way door. If you survive that, you cannot communicate your findings to the other side of the door.
This is highly likely to be the case. Makes for some really interesting Philosophy Club debates.
I think you would only say that if you put the creator on the same ontological level as the created. But according to classical theology, the creator is not a temporally first event in a sequence of events, or an entity that pre-exists other entities, but is of an altogether different nature. So a creator is not simply another instance of the kind of beings that you're seeking to account for. This was something explicit in classical theology up until the late medieval period. For example, Aquinas advocated 'analogical' knowledge of the Creator, meaning that what we say of the Creator is only true by way of analogy.
You're on the right track with your musings about the nature of number, as they are ontologically distinguishable from temporal objects. As you say, they don't begin and end in time, and they're not composed from particles. The way I view it is that numbers are real but not existent. They're not things in the sense that tables and chairs are, but you and I both know what they are, and we need some degree of numerical literacy to successfully navigate the world. But in the common lexicon, there isn't a word which expresses the different ways in which such items as numbers, logical principles, and phenomenal objects exist. That sense of the reality of abstract objects was very much stock-in-trade for scholastic realists such as Aquinas. But modern thought tends to 'flatten' these gradations in the nature of being, such that only what exists is considered real, with number and the like being relegated to the inter-subjective domain.
I think it is perhaps discussed in modal metaphysics although I've never been able to get my head around contemporary modal metaphysics.
I didn't mean mathematical truth when I said we may one day explain reality. I mean we may be able to explain why physical laws are like this and not the other ways.
Thanks for writing. I see what you mean.
I mean temporal change.
Quoting noAxioms
By nothing I mean no material, no space, no time,...
Quoting noAxioms
I read the manuscript once last night and I found it very interesting. I have to read a couple of more times to understand it well. Just out of curiosity, where was the manuscript published, and how many citations does it have?
If physical reality has a formal theory, then its model/interpretation may contain inexplicable truths in a similar way as the system of the natural numbers does.
I am talking about fundamentally inexplicable truths for which you can actually prove that they are inexplicable.
For the natural numbers, we can prove the existence of inexplicable truths, prove why they are fundamentally inexplicable, and we even have examples.
Maybe. For now, we don't know why physical laws are like this.
The physical laws that we know, are not an axiomatic theory.
They are a collection of stubborn observable patterns. They just say that a particular pattern should be there, but not why it is there.
A formal axiomatic system for the physical universe would be much nicer to have, but it would still not explain itself.
Such theory would only allow to explain from it. It would be the same situation as for the theory of the natural numbers, PA. We can explain from PA but not the why of PA.
The ultimate why cannot be answered by means of rationality.
I see and I agree.
Quoting MoKThere's plenty left when those are eliminated. The natural numbers for one...
Don't know the 'where'. Probably heavily cited by the absolutist crowd, but all that is sort of fringe. They've been waiting for a generalization of LET for an awful long time.
Quoting MoKThe weak anthropic principle does a fair task of explaining why physical laws are like this.
The natural numbers are not a thing.
Quoting noAxioms
Thanks for mentioning it. I googled it and have some stuff to read.
What caused the material to exist since the beginning of time? If there is no prior cause, then it is uncaused. Something that is uncaused has no prior reason for its existence. But then, what is to prevent something uncaused that is also finite? There is no logical difference between the two.
There was no cause for the material at the beginning of time.
Quoting Philosophim
Correct.
Quoting Philosophim
Correct.
Quoting Philosophim
Why should it be finite?
Quoting Philosophim
I cannot follow why.
Why should it not? Its uncaused. Something uncaused has no reason for being. Which also means it has no reason for NOT being.
Quoting MoK
Think about the previous statement carefully. If there's no reason for something existing, then there's no reason that it has to have existed infinitely. Now take something finite that has no reason for its existence. If there's no reason for something existing, then there's no reason that it has to have existed infinitely.
Meaning something that is unexplained would exist, and we would know it exists by its being. But there would be no prior reason for its explanation beyond its simple being. Meaning, if something exists in this world that is unexplained, there is no reason why it should have existed finitely or infinitely.
There is no explanation for physical laws, generally. Physical laws can serve as the basis for the explanations for all manner of things, but why they are as they are is not something explained by science.
This premise is self-contradictory.
If what you mean by "whatever begins to exist" is that there are certain whatevers that "begin" in a creation ex nihilo sort of way, i.e. something from nothing, then you've violated the other condition of this premise, which is that every whatever "has a cause."
That is, you are saying in a single breath that some things just come to be without a cause but all things have a cause.
This contradiction becomes more evident when you seek to locate the elusive first uncaused cause (i.e. God). That is, this argument doesn't lead you to finding God, but it leads you to realizing that even God fails to meet your conditions because God is a whatever that must also have a cause because you told me everything has a cause.
The error is in the logic. Premise one is necessarily false. For there to be an uncaused cause, you must state that some whatevers are not caused, which would then allow for the universe to be one of those whatevers.
Quoting Wayfarer
I stand by my statement. Your assertion notwithstanding, how does the weak anthropic principle (or the strong for that matter) not explain why they are as they are? If they were not as they are, there'd be no observers to glean the suboptimal choice of laws.
Quoting MoK
Neither is the universe.
There are 'things' in this universe seemingly without a cause (proof lacking). Unruh radiation is a fine example, predicted a long way back, and seemingly finally detected recently.
Quoting Philosophim
This seems to have evaded the question. Sure, if it lacks a reason for being, it equally lacks a reason for not being. The question was where 'finite' was somehow relevant to that statement.
The intention was not to evade. The intention was to point out there if there is no reason for something infinite to exist, there can equally be no reason for something finite to exist. If something exists without prior reason, then it exists apart from any necessity of being. If it is, it is. And if something infinite can exist without prior reason, there is nothing to rule out something that is finite that exists without a prior reason.
All I take from the 'anthropic principle' is that the evolutionary sequence which we understand from science doesn't begin with the beginning of life on earth, but can be traced back to the origin of the universe. And that given everything now known about the nature of the physical universe, it would have been far more likely that it would not have given rise to complex matter and organic life, and that there's no reason why it should have. So it's not a matter of chance or happenstance. That is by no means a proof of God or anything else, but it is a good reason not to look to science for an alternative, as science treats the 'laws of nature' as given, which indeed they are.
For objects, something where 'exists' is a meaningful property, well, most objects have a sort of necessity of being, which is basic classical causality. There's for instance no avoiding the existence of the crater if the meteor is to hit there. The necessity goes away if you step outside of classical physics.
But we're not talking about objects here, we're talking about other stuff where 'exists' isn't really defined at all. The universe existing has about as much pragmatic meaning as the integers existing. We're quite capable of working with either regardless of the fact of the matter, if 'fact' can be used to describe something not really meaningful.
Quoting WayfarerI don't see where evolution comes into play. I mean, are we talking about some sort of natural selection of laws of physics? That's not the anthropic principle that I know.
This statement essentially says that if the dice were rolled but the once, the odds of hitting our settings is essentially nil. True that. So the dice are not rolled but the once. Unbounded rolls are part of the chaotic inflationary theory of cosmology, with countless bubbles of spacetime with random properties are generated from a single structure. Only the ones with exact optimal settings (the odds against has an insane number of zeroes) are suitable for generating a mind capable of gleaning the nature of the structure.
Just so. The strong principle is, where the settings are deliberate, which implies ID, but I'm suggesting the weak principle where the settings are natural and not a violation of probability.
This is highly speculative. We don't know if a multiverse exists, how many universes it contains, or what kinds of universes they are.
https://bigthink.com/13-8/multiverse-no-evidence/
So?
Quoting Philosophim
Why?
Quoting Philosophim
I am not saying that the universe in its initial state was infinite. It could be finite or infinite.
:100: :up:
They claim that God didn't begin to exist but exists.
Quoting Hanover
I agree with what you stated. But here it seems that you object to the second premise, not the first one.
Are you an idealist?
Quoting noAxioms
What Unruh radiation has to do with our debate?
Right, you are describing something that exists with prior reason. Why does the crater exist? Because a meteor landed there two days ago.
Quoting noAxioms
Exists is to be. To not exist, is not to be. That's all that's meant by it. For something to have a prior reason for its existence, is to have prior causality. If something has no prior reason for its existence, then the reason for its existence is 'that it exists'. This is an uncaused existence.
Then we agree!
:up:
But I do not agree. It cannot go from finite to infinite. There's no scaling that would do that. For one, it would be transitioning at some moment from having a size to not having one.
Quoting RogueAI
Highly? No. Speculative, yes, but all cosmological origin ideas are. This one is the one and only counter to the fine tuning argument, the only known alternative to what actually IS a highly speculative (woo) argument.
Quoting Wayfarer
Your personal aversion to the universe being larger than you like is a natural anthropocentric one, and every time a proposal was made that the universe was larger, it was resisted for this same reason, and later accepted. Chaotic inflationary theory is a theory of one structure, only a tiny portion to which we have empirical access.
Any 'anything possible happens', not just anything, and not just 'might'. It isn't a theory of true randomness like Copenhagen or something.
You're asserted the irrationality of the view, but have not explained how a theory with such explanatory power is irrational. Only that you find it distasteful, which is not rational grounds for rejecting a theory.
Quoting MoK
Much easier to say the universe exists. That cuts out one regression step.
No, God is dragged in not as an explanation of anything, but as an excuse to attempt to rationalize religion.
Quoting MoKNo. I try not to identify as an anything-ist, since being such a thing come with an attitude that other views are not to be considered.
I have fewest issues with a relational view, but wouldn't go so far as to call myself a relationalist.
Quoting MoK
It is an example of real material that is not caused, at least under non-deterministic interpretations of QM.
Quoting Philosophim
I know what the word literally means, but it isn't clear if 'to be' applies to natural numbers for instance. The natural numbers are quite useful regardless of when they actually 'are' or not. That's what I mean by 'to be' not being clearly defined or meaningful to things that are not objects. I was seeking that clarification, and you didn't clarify. Answer the question for the natural numbers. We can go from there
I don't think the (theological) fine-tuning argument needs such a counter, because I don't believe it works. There is a related (and somewhat controversial) issue of "naturalness" of fundamental constants in cosmology, for which anthropic selection considerations might offer a valid solution. But perhaps all this is for another topic.
What explanatory power? In a Scientific American cover story on the Multiverse, we read the following:
[quote=DOES THE MULTIVERSE REALLY EXIST? (cover story). By: Ellis, George F. R. Scientific American. Aug 2011, Vol. 305 Issue 2, p38-43. 6p.]
Fundamental constants are finely tuned for life. A remarkable fact about our universe is that physical constants have just the right values needed to allow for complex structures, including living things. Steven Weinberg, Martin Rees, Leonard Susskind and others contend that an exotic multiverse provides a tidy explanation for this apparent coincidence: if all possible values occur in a large enough collection of universes, then viable ones for life will surely be found somewhere. This reasoning has been applied, in particular, to explaining the density of the dark energy that is speeding up the expansion of the universe today. [/quote]
So the possibility of infinite universes is a 'tidier explanation' than a higher intelligence. Just who is finding what 'distasteful', I wonder. (Oh, and note the call out to 'dark matter', the existence of which is also a matter of conjecture.)
In any case, I am by no means a William Lane Craig admirer, although there are Christian philosophers I do admire, including David Bentley Hart and Keith Ward.
As an idealist, I sympathize with your claim the universe might not "exist", and therefore, doesn't have to have a cause (I may be summarizing your claim terribly, feel free to correct me), but I also recognize that to most people, that's a very "wooish" take on things.
The old principle of plenitude, to the rescue. Given enough universes, one's got to produce intelligence. Given enough monkeys with typewriters... Typewriters went out of style before a monkey could even produce a two syllable word. I imagine the same thing will happen to the multiverse.
Quoting MoK
They can't claim that because it violates premise #1, which was my point.
Premise #1 is:
Quoting MoK
...you'll get a Philosophy Forum :lol:
What is that? There is no selecting going on in Chaotic inflationary theory, or as part of the anthropic principle.
Earth is a tiny target in the cosmos, and yet there is a meteor crater in Arizona. Strong anthropic principle says the rock was deliberately aimed. Weak anthropic principle says there are a lot of rocks out there, the vast majority of which miss altogether, but a small percentage hit.
Discount the principle altogether and you get: There was but the one rock, and it was just an incredible chance that it managed to hit right next to the visitor center like that
The initial ID argument concerned biology, which was asserted to be the work of design, but the weight of evidence for evolution was too hard to deflect. So lately they go for the tuning of the cosmological constants. For example, why are there 3 macroscopic spatial dimensions and 1 macroscopic temporal one? Most of the other random chances get different numbers than those.
Wayfarer discounts the 'lot of rocks' view since if it was true, anything might get hit.
Apologies for ragging on your tastes, Wayfarer, but they're not based on rational reasoning, only on the comfort of a small fish wanting a small pond. But people used to deny other planets, then other star systems, other galaxies, and then more beyond our furthest sight. Each time, big won over us-centrism. My bets are on the 'big', that each level is only a tiny part of something even bigger, especially when it has explanitory powers.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverYes, that's kind of it. The collected works of Shakespeare are encoded in the binary encoding of pi. So what? The point was to encode an observer that can glean that it's part of pi or that it was typed by monkeys. In that sense, we need a better analogy.
Quoting RogueAII don't say it doesn't exist. I say that it isn't meaningfully defined to say that a non-object exists or not.
OK, it appears that our personal chunk of spacetime (this infinite size swath of 4D place with the constants the way we find them) is something sprung from the greater inflationary ... stuff.
There is no time as we know it, but something spawns all these separate things we call universes. It's all one big structure. That has to be if there are to be a lot of other small universes with different spacetimes and suboptimal tunings. But buying into that single regress doesn't explain the reality of that larger structure. Hence I balk at the sort of realism which says that non-object things like that meaningfully exist.
To me, a rock exists, but only because I am causally effected by the rock. Those other 'universes' don't exist to me for the same reason: They don't have a causal effect on me. Ditto for alternate histories of Earth per MWI. MWI says those worlds all exist, but it uses a realist definition of existence.
For pragmatic purposes, I define existence as a relation, not a property. Treating it as a property is to assert a counterfactual, and while I cannot disprove counterfactuals, all sorts of hoops must be jumped through to attempt to solve all the problems that come up by positing them, and that effort stands in in contrast to 'simple but large'.
Quoting WayfarerWell, one universe (the greater structure, or which our spacetime is but a tiny part), but vast enough to exceed your comfort level. And no, I don't say that it 'exist' since 1) what does that even mean? and 2) the existence of the prime thing seems to lack any rational explanation.
Quoting Wayfarer
They called out dark energy. Dark matter slows the expansion of the universe.
I didn't in any way see how dark energy density was in any way special in this context. Sure, it's one of the tunable constants, but just one of them. Could observers evolve with a different value for that constant? Definitely, but how different? There are some constants where only a tiny change in like the 30th digit would preclude observers.
Quoting Hanover
Don't think it was a violation. P1 says something about 'whatever begins to exist', but a claim that God didn't begin to exist expiicitly exempts itself from P1.
Quoting noAxioms
If "whatever" doesn't mean everything, but only something, then the conclusion:
Quoting MoK
does not follow.
That is, if you can ad hoc remove those things you don't want to have a beginning, you can remove the universe as well.
You can't say everything has a cause, so therefore the universe must have had an uncaused cause. The statement is self-contradictory.
If God can always have existed without a cause, then so can have the universe.
I think the principle of plenitude actually is important to Aquinas' version of the cosmological argument. Basically, if all existence is contingent existence (coming into being from a prior possibility), then it would be possible that there was a time with no existence. By the principle of plenitude, an endless amount of time prior to now would necessitate that there was a time prior to now when there was nothing. But if there was ever nothing, nothing could ever have come from that, so there would still be nothing. However there is something now. Therefore not all existence is contingent existence, and necessary existence is real.
Anthropic Principle is a particular case of an observation selection effect.
We didn't say that the universe went from finite to infinite.
Quoting noAxioms
We need a justification to exclude God.
Why does it violate premise #1?
That is my point. So, we are dealing with two scenarios here unless one does not exclude that the universe have existed since beginning of time one cannot conclude that God exists.
OK, with that I agree. It's no a selection as in natural selection, but rather selection as in selection bias. All of philosophy on this subject tends to be heavily biased as to how things are due to this extreme bias which is due to the strong correlation between observer and tuning.,
Quoting MoK
You kind of did:
Quoting MoK
By reference to an initial state, and by use of past tense, you imply that some time (the earliest time), it could have been finite, but that it isn't finite now. That requires, at some moment, a transition from finite to infinite.
The universe (our 4D spacetime) is considered to be infinite in all four dimensions, and bounded at one end of the time dimension. That universe, not being contained by time, does not undergo change. You may not like that consensus model (all the posts by most contributors to this topic presume a different model with the universe being an object contained by time), but if you're going to attempt some sort of logic finding fault with the something-from-nothing idea, one has to consider models other than the naive one that posits that. Else you get conclusions like this:
Quoting Hanover
Translation: If
Things (objects) can meaningfully 'have existed', being contained by time. Neither God nor the universe is such an object.
MoK makes this definition clear.
Quoting MoK
Quoting MoK
So MoK is talking about only 'things' (objects). The universe is not such a 'thing', so the conclusion from the OP is relevant only to objects, not the universe, per this restricted definition of 'nothing' to mean literally 'no thing'.
Apparently space and time (like objects, still parts of the universe, not something containing the universe) qualify as 'things'.
Question to all: Is anybody actually supporting the view of something from nothing, or supporting the Kalam argument that the prime thing exists in (some other kind of) unbounded time, for all of said unbounded time? It being contained by time, it supervenes on it, and the prime thing isn't supposed to supervene on something even more fundamental.
I ask this question because we all seem to be beating on a naive straw man argument for a god. I do totally agree Hanover's disassembly of the logic that the universe just 'being' is a simpler assertion than the indirection to the zero-evidence deity that is asserted to do the same thing. Adding the regression just makes the model more complicated, a violation of Occam.
I have an intuition which is rather difficult to articulate, but which revolves around the sense that there is a kind of infinitely fruitful nothingness at the centre of being. That is an intuition which is found in different forms in many schools of the perennial philosophy and properly philosophical (as distinct from popular) mysticism.
There is a Christian form, which I've found articulated in a post on Aquinas vs Intelligent Design. The author describes Aquinas' distinction between creation as 'a species of change' whereby something changes into something else. This is what he says that the Greek philosophers meant by their maxim 'nothing comes from nothing'. But, he points out, divine creation is of a completely different order to what the Greek philosophers might imagine:
Quoting Aquinas vs Intelligent Design
This also gives the lie to lot of atheist polemics, which concieve of the "first cause" as a kind of super-engineer or movie director, responsible for the literal construction of every particular (cf John Haldane's quip that 'the Lord has an inordinate fondness for beetles'.) It is why, for example, Richard Dawkins insists that whatever designed the universe must be more complex than the universe itself. The trouble with this argument is that the scientifically-inclined are so thoroughly immersed in their own anthropocentric project of attempting to reverse-engineer the universe and the origin of life that they are not equipped for any kind of insight into, or intuitive feel for, what the pre-modern cultures understood by the 'divine source of existence'. It's not a scientific concept at all.
This is why it is fallacious to think of the 'divine source of being' as simply an addition to the set of all existents, something else that exists, which is what makes it seem an infinite regress. But it is mistaken to place the divine source of being on the same ontological level as particular beings or the phenomenal universe. In actuality, the source of existence is not something that exists. 'Existence' is what 'the transcendent' is transcendent in relation to. This is the substance of an arcane Medieval text, The Periphyseon, composed by the scholar-monk John Scottus Eriugena in the middle of what we now call the Dark Ages.
[quote=SEP;https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/#FiveModeBeinNonBein] Eriugena [lists] five ways of interpreting the manner in which things may be said to exist or not to exist. According to the first mode, things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to exist, whereas anything which, through the excellence of its nature, transcends our faculties are said not to exist. According to this classification, God, because of his transcendence is said not to exist. He is nothingness through excellence (nihil per excellentiam).
The second mode of being and non-being is seen in the orders and differences of created natures (I.444a), whereby, if one level of nature is said to exist, those orders above or below it, are said not to exist:
For an affirmation concerning the lower (order) is a negation concerning the higher, and so too a negation concerning the lower (order) is an affirmation concerning the higher. ...
...This mode illustrates Eriugenas original way of dissolving the traditional Neoplatonic hierarchy of being into a dialectic of affirmation and negation: to assert one level is to deny the others. In other words, a particular level may be affirmed to be real by those on a lower or on the same level, but the one above it is thought not to be real in the same way. If humans are thought to exist in a certain way, then angels do not exist in that way.[/quote]
I don't expect this will be understood, but that's part of the point. The point being, a proper consideration of the question requires a grasp of an hierarchical ontology, that is, that there are levels and degrees of being and reality, which is the basis of the ancient mythology of the 'scala naturae' (also known as the great chain of being). This is why, in some of the contemporary materials I'm encountering an heirarchical ontology based on a revised neoplatonism is being considered. Vervaeke says one of the hallmarks of the modern mindset is a 'flat ontology' in which only sense-able existents are considered to be real. But seeing past that sense of what is real requires a completely different kind of understanding, not the accumulation of ever more facts about the dynamics of the Singularity.
(An amusing anecdote. It will be recalled that Georges Lemaître was both a Catholic priest and a cosmologist, and one of the original proponents of what is now called the 'big bang' theory. By the 1950's, when this idea had become somewhat grudgingly accepted by the scientific community, Pope Pius XII ventured the notion that Lemaître's theory might provide some validation of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. According to a source that I read, which I can't now find, Lemaître was embarrased by this, and prevailed upon the Pope's scientific advisor to request His Holiness desist from making such remarks in future. As Wikipedia puts it 'in relation to Catholic teaching on the origin of the Universe, Lemaître viewed his theory as neutral with neither a connection nor a contradiction of the Faith; as a devoted Catholic priest, Lemaître was opposed to mixing science with religion although he held that the two fields were not in conflict'. I which such reticence were more common amongst those who wish to utilise 'scientific reasoning' to base anti-religious polemics.)
I have an argument for the whole being limitless, which you can find here. My main problem however is that I don't have any argument to show that the whole is filled by material so there could be areas filled by material and others that are empty.
The universe is a collection of objects so OP applies to the universe.
I read all that, and understood it enough to glean the point, the avoidance of applying the rules of one sort of being to another. A list of the 5 levels would have been nice.
As for Lemaître's comment, it was the church's open declaration of conflict with science that originally drove me away from my church upbringing, to flee to places like this.
Quoting MoK
Not one for the cosmological principle then, eh? It is something assumed. We have limited sight distance. No light emitted more than about 6 GLY from here has ever reached us, but as far as we can see, it looks the same in every direction. The implication is that if you were on one of those other distant places we see, they'd also see the same stuff everywhere.
FWIW, there are places that are (relatively empty) and we can see them. The Dipole Repeller is such a place, it having negative gravity which flings any nearby galaxies away, same as would happen if you pulled up in one place on the rubber sheet analogy.
Quoting MoK
That doesn't change the universe into an object itself. The collection hasn't the properties of an object for instance (a center of mass just to name one).
I didn't say that the universe is an object.