On balance of probability, there is a God.

In this second outing, I hope to show why Pro’s argument (the Kalam Cosmological argument, or KCA) fails. The first two reasons will show the KCA does not show that God exists. The second two reasons will show the KCA is unsound. The KCA is inapposite as the ‘God’ shown is not morally perfect Even if the timeless cause of the universe is this timeless spaceless all powerful agency, none of this shows the attribute of moral perfection. Such a creator could be morally ambivalent or malevolent. So we could accept every single claim PRO has made, and still find the resolution unsupported. The KCA is inapposite as there is no good case for any of the divine attributes PRO tries to move from ‘cause of the universe’ established by the argument to God. He doesn’t offer any argument, but quotes both Contradiction and Matt Slick approvingly. Sadly, they don’t offer any argument either: both quoted paragraphs are rambling, inchoate with non-sequiturs, and of poor philosophical quality. I shall reconstruct the assertions they sort-of imply, and show them to be inscrutable or false. Transcendent of space and time Both Contradiction and Matt Slick argue that the cause (whatever it was) must be ‘outside time and space’. I agree that the ‘spark’ that set off the universe would have to be without temporal-spatial index (I have no idea what “transcend space and time means”), but that wouldn’t mean it would remain this timeless spaceless object afterwards. The ‘cause of the universe’ could cease to exist, for example. Really powerful Both writers make gestures that the cause must be ‘immensely powerful’ to make a universe. Not so: the cause of the universe may only be able to cause the universe, and be completely impotent thereafter. Moreover, it might just be the ‘spark’ that kicks it off, with the ‘power’ of universe generation undertaken by some prior laws of physics. Regardless of the semantics over ‘power’, it is clear that there is no guarantee the abilities the cause of the universe has corresponds with the abilities God is supposed to have. So showing the universe was caused does not prove there is a causal factor with remotely God-like power. Personal Contradiction asserts “Hence, because there are no prior determining conditions, the cause of the universe must be personal and uncaused, for how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect?” I cannot see how we leap from “no prior determination” to “must be personal agency”, and I don’t see why personal beings have a monopoly on being timeless causes to temporal effects (indeed, personal causes suffer considerable explanatory penalty given agency is temporally indexed, which doesn’t jive with immutability or timelessness). At any rate, there is no substantiation why this cause of the universe need be a personal being, or a mind, or whatever else. It may just be a quirk of the aether. Non-determinate Contradiction seems to believe that without antecedent determining conditions (as we’re ‘before’ the cause of the universe), this cause is outside the purview of science. Au contraire: our best science currently has instantaneous causation (non-locality in quantum physics), and who knows, it maybe there’ll be retrograde causation too. At least in principle the ‘before the universe’ physics would be wholly determinate and may even be tractable to us. You might want to say ‘but there can’t be any physical laws’ prior to the universe, but that ain’t necessarily so. For all we know the laws of physics are metaphysically necessary, and obtain in all possible worlds, even those ‘causally pre-universe’. And maybe these laws will specify the (atemporal) mechanics of universe generation ‘ex nihilo’. We have seen the cause of the universe shown by the KCA need not even be anything like a God. Due to these, PROs case fails to support the existence of God even if his only argument – the KCA – is sound. Why the KCA is wrong: B-theory There are two main schools of thought in philosophy of time.[1] One is A-theory: only the present exists, and the future will come into existence, and the past has existed. On this theory the second premise of the KCA (“The universe began to exist”) makes sense. The other option is B-theory, which says both past, present and future all exist (in a 4d or n+1d block), and the present is just the current image seen on progression through this block, no more real than those before or after. On this view, although it makes sense to say the universe had a past space-time boundary, it does not make sense to say it ‘began to exist’: our 4d block ‘always was’, metaphysically speaking. Craig and Sinclair agree: From start to finish, the kalam cosmological argument is predicated upon the A-Theory of time. On a B-Theory of time, the universe does not in fact come into being or become actual at the Big Bang; it just exists tenselessly as a four-dimensional space-time block that is finitely extended in the earlier than direction. If time is tenseless, then the universe never really comes into being, and, therefore, the quest for a cause of its coming into being is misconceived.[2] The problem for the KCA is that most experts think B-theory right and A-theory wrong. Almost all physicists are B-theorists, as the majority of philosophers of physics.[3] Until PRO provides warrant to think the preponderance of expert opinion is wrong, we should follow them and reject A theory, and consequently the second premise of the KCA. Some further support for B-theory. What is happening on Pluto when I snap my fingers? Thanks to special relativity, the answer depends on your frame of reference with respect to me. B-theorists can easily accommodate this, but A theorists seem obliged to say there is a ‘correct’ answer as only a given point of time exists across the universe at any instant, and so demand a privileged frame of reference. Yet this requires various contrivances unnecessary on a B-theory view.[4] Why the KCA is wrong: Iterating to infinity If there are a past-infinite ensemble of causal events, then there is no first cause of the universe, in the same way there is no ‘first’ negative integer. Note this does not demand an infinite past duration of the universe – we can ‘cram in’ the infinite number of causal events hyperbolically, for example. So PRO’s labour to show the universe is past infinite does not defeat this objection PRO asserts that “we know an actually infinite set of things cannot exist”. There are several groups who disagree: Platonists about numbers posit infinitely many actual things, and various theories of physics (like many worlds) also propose an infinite array of physical objects. Given it isn’t obvious these views are wrong, PRO’s assertion should be rejected. Here’s a map of the objections (sorry for using one big picture, but the internet kept spitting at me if I used more than one picture): PRO’s case is both inapposite and unsound, and should not be accepted. [1] See Mctaggart, J M E. (1908) The unreality of time. Mind vol. 17 pp.457-73 [2] Craig, W L. and Sinclair, J D. (2009) The Kalam Cosmological Argument. pp. 183-184 In Craig, W L and Moreland, J P. (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford. [3] See the Philpapers Survey here: http://philpapers.org.... Note that B theorists outnumber A theorists 2:1 generally, and this ratio increases when considering relevant specialists. [4] See Balashov, Y. and Janssen, M (2002) Presentism and Relativity: A critical notice. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science vol. 54 pp. 327-346