Talk:Kalam cosmological argument

message: As it currently stands it presents the argument as if it a valid logical argument which it definitely is not. It downplays the refutations of it as if it is just matter of discourse..
This article is nothing but a theist preaching.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.234.39.188 (talk) 07:35, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I couldn't agree more. It should be made clear that this is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_theology and hence "occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the supernatural"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology. The fact that Craig Lane used that syllogism in debates with physicists helped blur the lines and this article in its present form is not helping either. Xavatar (talk) 10:31, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

text: I agree too. Veverve (talk) 13:33, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

text: IMO this page should end up merged into Cosmological_argument#Kalām_cosmological_argument if there's anything of theological value to be salvaged (not my domain). The reference to Western Philosophy in the introduction seems very misleading to me: Theology is not Philosophy but this gives the "argument" a different kind of luster. Xavatar (talk) 14:04, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: In the list of objections/counter-arguments against the KCA what seems to miss is the argument that the infinite progression of time is not an "actual infinity" (the past and future moment do not exist, only the ever ongoing now), but hasn't any notorious and recent philosopher elaborated that claim? An "actual infinity of things" is a contradiction, but as regards to time, such an infinity is not the case as the infinite moments in time do NOT occur "at the same time" (exactly because of what time IS).
I only know of this argument made by F. Engels in the Anti-Dühring, in which Dühring made a similar claim as the KCA, arguing for the begin of time. Duhring stole the argument from Kant (Critique of Pure Reason), but Kant showed that both sides (an absolute begin of time and time without begin) would lead to a contradiction.
Could that be added (Engels/Anti-Dühring chapt. Philosophy of nature. Space and time.) as a source and providing (in brief) that counter argument? (of course, a more recent argument arguing for the same position made by some contemporary philosopher would be preferred...)
R.heusdens (talk) 20:47, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infinite/beginningless progression of time is not an "actual infinite" 

message: FYI - Aquinas is not engaged in the Kalam argument. There is a great deal of Thomistic literature establishing that Aquinas is arguing against hierarchically ordered causes rather than the temporally ordered causes of the Kalam.  William Lane Craig specifically notes that the Kalam argument was opposed by Aquinas and supported by Bonaventure. Just because an argument involves an argument against infinite regress does not make it a Kalam argument. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.173.79.189 (talk) 16:56, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Aquinas not engaged in the Kalam argument

message: I understand this is more anecdotal, and "popularist" type of evidence, against those who have tried to argue against the Kalam cosmological argument, but Dawkins was "very famously" known for becoming paranoid, and accusing the ABC of "setting the crowd up", and them "clearly being biased" when having a somewhat pseudo-debate on the ABC program against Cardinal Pell. When Dawkins asked the crowd "What are you laughing about?", Pell famously replied, "I think they find it funny that you're trying to define - NOTHING!" 129.180.147.130 (talk) 07:59, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Dawkins getting "laughed at" for trying to define "nothing"

message: This may well be notable, but the article as it stood clearly tried to "borrow" notablility from medieval philosophy. 
The term and concept of a "Kalam cosmological argument" is due to Craig and originates in the 1990s. THis is to be disambiguated from "the cosmological argument in the Ilm al-Kalam tradition".
Confusingly, the medieval topic was called "the Kalam cosmological argument" in the 1950s, and Craig has apparently borrowed the term from there. There is still a clear difference between discussing the medieval argument and proposing your own "Kalam cosmological argument" loosely inspired by medieval tradition. --dab (𒁳) 09:12, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Notablility and scope issues

message: Ok, I think I see what is going on here. 
The Kalām Cosmological Argument is the title of a 1979 book by Craig. 
In origin, Craig refers to the medieval argument and gives an exposition of his own understanding and interpretations. 
Henceforward, Kalam Cosmological Argument became a kind of proper noun that ceased to have any direct reference to medieval Islamic thought. It is even abbreviated KCA and it always refers to Craig and his opinions.
 
Since the 2000s, Craig's argument seems to have crept into the "Intelligent Design" debate and it is now a proper noun referring to a thing in the arsenal of creationist apologetics and is discussed almost entirely within that context. 
Now, on Wikipedia, people begin to research the term Kalam and try to re-establish a direct connection to medieval theology. It is of course childish to discuss medieval "proofs of God" by reference to quantum indeterminacy or modern cosmology, as the point of such medieval "proofs" was not convincing atheists or arguing for the existence of God against agnostic scientism, their point was to meditate on the nature of one's conception of God, in order to arrive at a better understanding of what was admitted to be beyond human understanding from the outset. 
So de-facto and under WP:UCN, "KCA" is a matter of the modern debate between theism and atheism and it is completely detached from medieval thought. The article should reflect this. 
This goes even so far that some people "abbreviate" the term to "the Kalam argument", which is of course nonsense. The thing is called "the cosmological argument", and the Kalam was only put there by Craig to say he was giving special attention to the development of the cosmological argument in early Islamic theology. --dab (𒁳) 10:13, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: terminological problems

message: Is it unclear to me why an off-topic label was added for Barker's passages. He is clearly talking about this subject of this article. Perhaps another label was intended? Also, the invisible explanation added in the text points to an apparent dichotomy between two ideas in the article. But inclusion of Barker's material does not rely on an adjudication of other ideas within the article. That discussion can happen separately. If there is no further explanation regarding the "off topic" piece in a few days, I'll remove the tag. Airborne84 (talk) 09:10, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Barker states that he relied on Michael Martin  for these passages, who is not a layman in philosophical terms. As for your second sentence, the discussion of whether or not God is the only candidate for "not beginning to exist" is simply part of the logical discussion of the argument which Barker (and Martin) assert results in a logical fallacy. As another editor supported the inclusion in an earlier discussion, a consensus change is necessary to remove the material. Airborne84 (talk) 00:03, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Off-topic label 

message: I integrated some text that was added after Barker's commentary into one main paragraph. It's fair to include contrasting material, to an extent, to something like this or it may appear to some readers that Craig hasn't addressed an area that he might have. But we need to be careful here. For example, if each section of the article ends with Craig, and appears to be repeatedly concluding "here is why all the objections above don't matter," the article will merit a POV tag as more of an essay than an encyclopedia article. 
Next, Barker's note about the wording of the first premise is focused on the words begins to. He notes this as an addition to the older cosmological argument that "Everything that exists has a cause". The origin of Craig's first premise as drawn from the original version of the cosmological argument is not apparently relevant then regarding Barker's comment, and leads to a WP:SYNTH problem. However, I didn't remove the entry about the origin of Craig's premise as it is still encyclopedic. I moved it to the section on premise 1.  
Finally, the third sentence already exists elsewhere in the article. It does not need to be listed twice. Thanks. Airborne84 (talk) 07:49, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apparent rebuttals to Barker's commentary 

message: From a philosophical point of view, ignoring physics and quantum mechanics the argument is interesting because of the human intuition that there is a reason why any collection of things are as they are, external from collection of things themselves. Starting with this position by applying induction this is clearly impossible.
What is deeply troubling troubling is that the negation of this statement is that collections of things do not need a reason to exist. Why aren't pink elephants popping into existence all the time if they do not need a reason to exist?
However adding a removing God has no effect on the argument.
The weaker argument is that everything that exists in time has a cause, and that things that are outside time do not need a cause. This premise seems inherently arbitrary, self serving and unsatisfactory. But taking it at face value, the Kalam argument can still be refuted.
Objects within the space time continuum need a cause because they exist in time. But consider the space time continuum as a whole. It is not within its own time dimension. It has a time dimension as part of it, but it is not within its own space time continuum.
Then either it exists in another time dimension, or it is timeless. If timeless it does not need a cause from the premise. If it is within a time dimension the argument may be applied inductively.
Therefore the space time continuum does not need a cause.  Therefore the existence of the space time continuum and everything within it does not require the existence of a God to explain its existence.
Thepigdog (talk) 12:36, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how any of this has anything to do with the article. Quantum physics doesn't give us something from nothing, but something from something else. The argument you just gave (that things need a cause only if they exist within the space time continuum) is your own opinion, which is irrelevant to a Wikipedia article.--TMD Talk Page. 20:26, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. At the talk page we focus on improving the article through the use of reliable sources. Please use other forums for discussion about the topic itself. Thanks. Airborne84 (talk) 20:34, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

text: The argument is sound. The only point is that you would need a reference to such a refutation/argument (not your own argument, but published work), so I agree we can not just add that just based on the argument alone. Can you provide a valid reference?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by R.heusdens (talk • contribs) 19:57, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Refutation 

message: I readded some passages from Michael Martin (a reliable source) that were properly sourced, but removed for reasons that appear to be personal objections to Martin's ideas. Please discuss here before removing properly sourced material from reliable sources, especially on articles where there are likely biases involved on both sides and collective edits like this which push the article toward one point of view simultaneously move the article away from Wikipedia's policy on Neutral Point of View. 
Regarding the edit on Martin's passage that was stated to be vague and without detail, we can certainly list Martin's objections. When I added the passages, I thought paraphrasing them was best since it would have added a lot of wording to the paragraph to list Martin's notes on this. But I can certainly add the details, in the main text or in a footnote if it gets too wordy. (For that matter, so can other editors.) Summarily deleting the passage is not the best way to go based on the NPOV concern I noted above. Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 14:07, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Readding criticism of Craig's position 

message: The opening of the Historical background section currently reads: 
:The Kalam cosmological argument is based on the concept of the prime-mover, introduced by Aristotle, and entered early Christian or Neoplatonist philosophy in Late Antiquity, being developed by John Philoponus. 
I'm wondering if that's the intended meaning or if it actually should be:
:The Kalam cosmological argument is based on the concept of the prime-mover, introduced by Aristotle and which entered early Christian or Neoplatonist philosophy in Late Antiquity, being developed by John Philoponus. 
In other words, exactly what is being said to have "entered early Christian thought ... in Late Antiquity"? The Kalam CG itself, or the concept of the prime mover? If it's the former, the sentence doesn't need changed. But then the next sentence could do with fixing because it is referring to "the concept" (i.e. of the prime mover).
Sleety Dribble (talk) 23:07, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need clarification on opening of Historical background 

message: I've reverted the deletion of passages by Martin again. This time the editor deleted the material under the rationale of "cleanup". I see the tag, and it's fine to discuss splitting the historical and modern ideas apart. However, deleting a properly sourced response from a WP:RS to the modern argument of Craig, while leaving Craig's modern argument in the article, is not "cleanup". It's introducing POV into the article. 
If we are going to move the modern ideas into a separate article, it all needs to move versus deleting passages from one side of the debate. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:04, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Continued deletion of Martin material 

message: I intend to create new section on kalam cosmological argument in Islamic philosophy.--m,sharaf (talk) 08:57, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good! --Airborne84 (talk) 19:52, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: new section

message: The continued deletion of properly sourced material from Martin is getting tiresome. One significant revision to the article (which another editor reverted because of a formatting issue) reworked some of the material in the article, but deleted outright (again) the below paragraph from Martin. 
:In his book, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification,  Michael Martin states:  "Even if the universe has a beginning in time, in the light of recently proposed cosmological theories this beginning may be uncaused. Despite Craig's claim that theories postulating that the universe 'could pop into existence uncaused' are incapable of 'sincere affirmation,' such similar theories are in fact being taken seriously by scientists"
Please discuss before deleting properly sourced material from Martin, or any of the sources in the article. I could explain again why, but if an explanation is needed, please see above. Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 09:14, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: No information has been deleted. It was  relocated to a more appropriate section in accordance with a pre-existing agreement that the article should be re-organised. Please actually read the article ("...I haven't re-read the article") and talk page (the deletions prior to this were discussed here) to avoid making unfounded claims and needlessly creating new subsections here. Thank you.31.55.127.252 (talk) 14:05, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Continued deletion of Martin material, again 

message: Just come across this complete nonsense, POV, article clearly written by a disciple of thy holiness Craig. If in the event axioms 1, 2 were true, and 3 of the basic argument followed, it is trivially obvious that this would in no way imply that a personal, necessarily *conscious* by definition creator was the cause. One simply postulates that some inanimate, non conscious extra-existential physical process of extra-existential mass-energy, that has ALWAYS existed generated this universe. It is quite impossible to conclude from the Kalam assumptions that any "creator" must be conscious. Without consciousness, no god. Period. Indeed, a problem with an evolutionary explanation of sentient beings is that it is not clear exactly what advantage consciousness actually achieves. Behavior still appears to be explainable without the necessity of awareness at all. I may have a go at updating the article on the matter, but I don't have the time to get into endless reverts.
A second fundamental, fatal flaw is the assumption that in a completly empty universe, that mass-energy can not spontaneously appear. It is only laws of physics that "prevent" actions happening. For example, limit to velocities to that of light, conservation of energy and so forth. However, laws of physical are simply relations and definitions between mass-energy.  With no mass-energy, there are no laws of physics. Period. An empty universe therefore has no constraints as to its behavior. The question that is to be asked is, "what prevents mass energy spontaneously appearing in an empty universe", not "what creates mass energy".    
 Kevin Aylward 20:49, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:NOTFORUM. If you have sources which discuss the subject, please incorporate them.   — Jess· Δ♥ 23:05, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trivial Refutation 

message: Should we really include the argument from Dawkins? He's not a philosopher and it shows. The quote is quite long on the page, mostly being a summary of Aquinas, but the substance of it is facile, resting upon a bald assertion of the invalidity of a prime mover, followed by another bald assertion about a prime mover not needing *any* of the properties of God (!). Here it is for convenience:
Richard Dawkins stated in The God Delusion when referring to cosmological argument's "The five ‘proofs’ asserted by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century don’t prove anything, and are easily—though I hesitate to say so, given his eminence—exposed as vacuous. The first three are just different ways of saying the same thing, and they can be considered together. All involve an infinite regress —the answer to a question raises a prior question, and so on ad infinitum.
:1. The Unmoved Mover. Nothing moves without a prior mover. This leads us to a regress, from which the only escape is God. Something had to make the first move, and that something we call God.
:2. The Uncaused Cause. Nothing is caused by itself. Every effect has a prior cause, and again we are pushed back into regress. This has to be terminated by a first cause, which we call God.
:3. The Cosmological Argument. There must have been a time when no physical things existed. But, since physical things exist now, there must have been something non-physical to bring them into existence, and that something we call God.
All three of these arguments rely upon the idea of a regress and invoke God to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress. Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts." 
··gracefool 💬 14:31, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Dawkins pretty much just echoes or references Aristotle and Agrippa the Skeptic on infinite regresses here. There's nothing bad to the argument simply because Dawkins puts it into modern, everyday language. --2003:71:4F4B:6341:9D19:EB09:25D5:3B6 (talk) 15:26, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dawkins quote 

message: I inadvertently pressed enter while editing the edit summary.  Instead of making a null edit I'll complete it here: the edit I reverted also altered a quote.  —PaleoNeonate – 08:48, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  My recent revert 

message: Hi, I am interested in bringing this article up to GA-status. To achieve this, I think the article needs to describe the argument in more depth, and have more varied inline citations. If someone with expertise in this subject could edit this article to help get the necessary citations in place as well as display the argument more clearly in the article, it would be of great help. I have tried to edit the lede to summarize the argument.--HalMartin (talk) 13:44, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improvements that need to be made to this article 

message: Robynthehode told me if I disagreed with my edits not being an improvement to take them to the talk page. I feel like the lede should summarize the kalam cosmological argument. I've also heard Dr. Craig talk about the argument "having theological significance" I feel like this should be in the article too, alas I can't find the source for that statement.--HalMartin (talk) 16:12, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for coming to the talk page. I also think the lede needs some work to conform to MOS:LEAD but the number of edits you did in a row made it hard to agree to or revert just one or two. The lede is meant to be a summary of the article but doesn't need to repeat the detail that the article goes into on the subject. Maybe we can both suggest changes here first then make them if we agree. I can't see that the reference of 'having theological significance' needs to be in the lede and if in the article it will need context and a citation. Robynthehode (talk) 22:24, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  First of all, thanks for the quick response. Second of all, I agree that the lede "needs some work to conform to MOS:LEAD". I think that it should give a formal presentation of the argument, and some more background info on its history. That way, the history section wouldn't stray from the topic of the article, plus, Dr. Craig has talked about the history of this argument when he presents it.--HalMartin (talk) 14:09, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  What I feel should be improved in this article 

message: The Kalaam is an ancient argument with numerous counterapologetics and defenses that date back for centuries. Why is this article so heavily weighted on William Lane Craig?  And why are no counterapologetics included in the article? It seems very one-sided.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.246.28.117 (talk) 20:20, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Swarms of Craig fans cause both. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:27, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I certainly agree there should be more coverage of how other people through history have tackled this argument. I've tried to add some hyperlinks (as I note under the heading below this section) to try and make clear how this ancient argument was developed. As far as criticism, I agree, more could be added. Kant is not discussed, for example.--Phil of rel (talk) 18:54, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is this article so singularly focused on the opinions of William Lane Craig?  

message: I hope we can start to remove the box saying that the section may stray from the topic of the article. I believe people will now be able to see more clearly where current philosophy gets this argument from.--Phil of rel (talk) 01:00, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  I've tried to add a little more info in the "Historical background" section 

message: As far as I understand it, Craig argues that actual infinities are only metaphysically impossible. Therefore I find it strange that someone is cited claiming they are logically possible. It doesn't really address the claim, which is that infinity is impossible in the real world. Ever since Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke, there has been a distinction between what is metaphysically possible and what is logically possible.--Phil of rel (talk) 22:16, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distinction between metaphysical impossibility and logical impossibility 

message: An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect :Cosmological argument in Islamic philosophy and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at  until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  Steel1943 (talk) 18:26, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Cosmological argument in Islamic philosophy" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]]