It seems like they could have failed to exist. Therefore, there is an explanation of this fact. It is a form of argument from universalcausation. Evolutionary debunking arguments move from a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our moral beliefs to a skeptical conclusion about those beliefs. It attempts to prove the existence of a necessary being and infer that this being is God. No specific God is supported by the argument and the attributes of God cannot be inferred. Stack Exchange network consists of 182 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.. Visit Stack Exchange they are contingent. It is impossible for a chain of causes of this kind to go on to infinity. It may sound as though efficient cause is simply another name for material cause. Necesarry existence presupposes eternal existence. So, for example, we might reason: If all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal. There doesn't seem to be a possible answer to the question of why things are ultimately the way they are. 3: Therefore, God exists (not P). Since the universe doesn't have to exist, its existence must be grounded in a transcendent, necessary being, which is plausibly identified as God. there is no contingency), it does not follow that everything taken together has an explanation to it. Read the first premise again. Answer (1 of 17): Can Kalam cosmological argument really be debunked? We, in theory, trace particles from the present backward, ultimately to the plasma of the early universe and to the quantum fluctuation. 3. 3. Okay, well maybe quarks arent necessarily existent. You would naturally wonder how the ball came to be there. As noted earlier, all evidence for premise 1 consists of material causes. 1, pp. First, it shows that moral objectivists cannot explain the reliability of our moral judgments and thus strengthens moral debunking arguments. In order to save premise 2 and ergo the arguments conclusion, well need to show that the universe does require an external cause for its existence. In this way, although rhetoric viewed across time is entirely contingent and includes a broader definition, rhetoric taken moment-by-moment is much more narrow and excludes both the necessary and the impossible. That is the only conclusion maximally congruent with our experience. His disjunctive syllogism is a hand-waving distraction from this reality. Most people probably never notice Craigs guileful shift from material to immaterial causes. Leibniz argument doesnt depend on proving that the universe had a beginning. The Contingency Argument For Gods Existence. For example, I depend on my parents, and now on the air, and on food, and so on. There are two types of things recognized by philosophers that are immaterial: abstract objects (such as numbers, sets, or other mathematical entities) or unembodied minds. Looking far back in time, everything would be non-existent by chance and that "everything non-existent" state could not kick start history. Original Blog Source:http://bit.ly/2te1kFa. Using definition 1, to say B is contingent is to say that we couldnt predict with confidence the identity or existence of its causal antecedents. This is the first philosophical question I ever remember asking myself. Its logical legerdemain. How can you tell the difference between Christianity and a scam? From (1) These objects may exist or may not exist, i.e. That would be a valid argument. It cannot exist inside of something that doesnt exist yet. You must investigate how the terms in the argument are used. By contrast, the conclusion of The Moral Argument does follow from the 2 premises because the argument is in the form of modus tollens. First of all, I should say, we know that there are at least some beings in the world which do not contain in themselves the reason for their existence. While a house may have been created, it was built out of pre-existing matter. We could just call it The non-spatial, immaterial, unimaginably powerful, necesarilly existent Mind behind the universe. It makes no sense to cry out, Ooh, I found a material cause! The reason for the existence of the universe may have ceased to exist a long time ago. Kreefts scenario makes sense when speaking of books, but it falls apart when he implies that existence is borrowed from past existences, as though existence were a commodity. He stipulates that premise 1 refers to efficient causes, a concept introduced by Aristotle. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning. This string of contingent events cant trace out endlessly. Ghazali formulates his argument very simply: "Every being which begins has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning.". The claim that the reason for the existence of a contingent universe must be a God is a non sequitur. Of course, if someone wanted to resort to some crazy idea like solipsism (the view that you are the only thing that exists, and the entire universe and everything you experience are projections of your own mind), that doesnt get you out of this premise. Kreefts analogy surreptitiously transfigures this mystery about why anything exists into a presumption that there had to be a first cause. Posts: 7568 Threads: 20 Joined: July 26, 2013 Reputation: 54 #161. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. Premise 2 says, If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. Note that Craig has substituted the term God for immaterial cause. When challenged on the legitimacy of this substitution, Craig shrugs that these two terms are equivalent. I have chosen the word legerdemain, drawing a comparison of Craigs argument to a magicians trick, because his argument, like many magicians tricks, incorporates clever distraction. Does the skeptic want us to buy into the notion that all of the quarks in the universehave toexist? Home God Does Truth Matter? The great German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz argued that there must be a necessarily existent being which explains the existence of everything else. 2. In this section we'll treat the "universe" as signifying not the Cosmos as a whole, but rather merely a part of a greater existence. If this is so, there would exist nothing that could bring anything into existence. Objects are better understood to be in flux or transition to other objects. 1. Im thinking about getting a tattoo that says that. X was either caused to exist by something that exists outside of and prior to X or X exists out of a necessity of its own nature (I.e its non-existence is impossible and it depends on nothing outside of itself to bring it into or keep it in existence). If this chain of borrowing never reaches a beginning with someone who possesses the book, then no one can possess the book. If God exists, then the premise applies to Him as well. In this case the answer would be something like "Yes, and it is otherwise!". Something had to make the first move, and that. For The Contingency Argument to succeed, all that needs to be true is that the universe is contingent. Thus, the dichotomy posed in (A1) between existing due to their nature or due to an external cause is a false one - things exist as they do due to both their nature and the nature of other things, due to the nature of Nature. There's a deep problem lurking in the background of the fine-tuning argument, which rests on two factual claims. Since I found this abundance of material causes, there must be an immaterial cause!, Craig, after relying solely on material causes to establish premise 1, suddenly switches to immaterial causes in premise 2, without alerting his audience that hes made this switch. The Cosmological Argument is one of the classical proofs of God's existence. They justarethe basic units of matter. My writing differs from Aquinass writing not only in volume, but also in tone. As we think about this big ole world we live in, none of the things that it consists of seem to exist necessarily. Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God (from 2 and 4). Kant reduces both contingency and necessity to mere mental forms or categories under which the mind views the world of phenomena but which it has no means of . Sometimes its referred to as The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument, the reason why it is called that is that the argument was first formulated by the mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Either way, youd never take seriously the notion that the ball just existed there with no explanation for why it existed or how it came to be there. This is an informal fallacy known as begging the question. You would probably think I was being purposely deceitful. The philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong puts it this way: to avoid begging the question, ones reason to believe the premise must be independent of both (a) ones belief in the conclusion and also (b) ones reason to believe the conclusion.[10]. If the core logical problems with this argument are a bit difficult to handle, try to consider all the less desirable aspects of the universe that must, according to this argument, also have been fine-tuned. Required fields are marked *. But maybe that assumption is wrong. The Fifth Way: The Argument From Harmony States how nature is governed. [6] Though Craig claims (falsely, I would argue) that he has arguments that prove the immaterial cause is a personal god, substituting God for immaterial still renders the form of his argument invalid. If God exists, He cannot not exist. Can Atheism Account for Objective Morality? It goes something like this[1]: A1 is extremely doubtful, especially as applied to the collection of what exists. This argument is appealing because it pretends to wholly dismiss people's reasoning capabilities based on their environmental influences in childhood. In conclusion, the idea that every thing that exists has an explanation for its existence is completely unfounded. If this is so there must be first cause and the Cosmological argument provides one. The rule against equivocation prohibits speakers from tricking listeners by surreptitiously switching between alternate meanings of a word that has multiple meanings. As youd expect, people unschooled in physics are more apt to find Kreefts book-borrower analogy persuasive. We cant infer immaterial causes from having observed only material causes. contradictions). Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. However, abstract objects cannot produce any effects. This means that because the cause is non-spatial, it is therefore non-material. This supporting argument takes a form philosophers label as a disjunctive syllogism. This proposal just simply doesnt work. 2. Answer (1 of 7): > Q: How can we debunk the argument from contingency for the existence of God? Craig is speaking of the Kalm argument, not contingency argument, but the objections and defenses largely overlap. William Lane Craig uses a different tactic by making it a premise (which is unsupported or based on circular reasoning): This argument assumes that the cause of the universe is still in existence. For if it was possible, then our universe will not really "exist", instead it will only be a virtual world without any foundation in the reality underlying it. The argument from contingency goes like this: All things that begin to exist are contingent on a its creator or process To avoid an infinite regress you need a necessary first cause (or mover) That first cause is god There are many forms of this argument. So if the atheist wants to deny the conclusion, he has to say that one of the three premises is false. (As an aside, if we replace the term A with God, we see that if God is inevitable, then everything else further down the causal chain must also be inevitable.). Craigs approach, if adopted by a door-to-door salesman, would be classified by the legal profession as a bait and switch scam. Since the universe had an absolute beginning, it cannot exist by a necessity of its own nature. My thesis, then, is to argue in support of the kalam cosmological argument, but also to argue against Craig's claim that it must be dependent on the A-theory of time, the result of which will be a more general Having established that there must be necessary objects, the argument moves to consider causes of necessary objects. Premise 2 refers to what is known as the Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact (abbreviated BCCF) in philosophy of religion. 4: Therefore, The universe has an explanation of its existence. It's the second fact that is responsible for the resurrection of the design . 1) All small parts of the universe began to exist i.e. [7] A formal fallacy is an error in the logic of an argument that is visible in the form of the argument: how the arguments premises and conclusion are laid out. The BCCF is generally taken to be the totality of all contingent beings or the logical conjunction of all contingent facts. bunking arguments in Joyce's function and Street's contingency versions to moral realism, understood as the metaethical theory according to which . It is actually quite easy to refute the Kalam Cosmological Argument, and here is how it is done: P1. You see, according to physicists, matter consists of teensy weensy particles called quarks. Everything in our world are just different arrangements of these quarks. Counter Arguments to the attempts to use the Cosmological or Kalam Cosmological Argument. They engage with the public to spread Catholicism. Maybe the explanation for the universes existence is that exists by a nature of its own existence.. The Argument from Motion: Evident to our senses in motionthe movement from actuality to potentiality. Things are the specific way they are due to no cause, they are truly contingent (albeit under certain constraints, such as on-average conservation of energy and momentum and so on). Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1 and 3). Him not existing is impossible. That all things except the first cause has an explanation to its cause. I remember lying in bed at night when I was about 6 years old, and I asked and pondered this very question. You may recognize this claim (that everything must have a cause) as an implicit appeal to the principle of sufficient reason, debunked in Chapter 1 of Religion Refuted. The apparent tension between these two definitions of contingency is resolved by recognizing definition 1 as speaking in epistemic rather than ontological terms. It was first clearly formulated by St. Anselm in his Proslogion (1077-78); a later famous version is given by Ren Descartes. But that does not seem to be a satisfactory answer to why the universe exists in this cyclical form to begin with - could it not have been otherwise? The difference would be only a matter of scale and complexity. [8] William Lane Craig, Objections So Bad I Couldnt Have Made Them Up (Worst Objections to Kalm Cosmological Argument), posted 2/2/2012. TheoristLloyd Bitzermakes five assumptions about rhetoric in his bookRhetoric, Philosophy, and Literature: An Exploration. argument relies on a controversial view of time, the argument in my view carries an unnecessary burden of proof on behalf of the A-theory. Anselm began with the concept of God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived. The flock of friars called Dominicans were founded by the Spanish priest Saint Dominic de Guzman in France to preach against heresy. Aquinas, a member of this order, spent most of his life writing an estimated 8 to 11 million words. A2 is simply incorrect, as we can imagine a wide assortment of possible explanations. Craig engages in precisely this sort of wordplay. If the cause is responsible for spaces existence, it cannot be inside of space. And the fine-tuning argument is no exception. Whatever is moved is moved by something else. Rhetoric is a method for inquiring into and communicating about the contingent. In essence, the argument attempts to address the question "Why are things the way they are?", or more generally "Why is there something instead of nothing?" It goes something like this [1] : In a valid deductive argument, the conclusion is derived by combining the logic of the various premises. Not every being can be contingent, because contingent beings cannot cause themselves Contingent things require a reason for their existence, Therefore the universe has a reason for its existence, The reason for the existence of the universe is God. The arguments premises are: 1: Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause). In this mindframe, all things that exist do so since it was in the nature of their antecedents to spawn them (or change into them, or so on). The term efficient cause is broad enough to encompass both material and immaterial causes. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics | 0 comments. His non-existence is logically impossible. If an object can be non-existent and tends to be corrupted, each object sometimes does not exist. It should be noted, however, that science does not currently provide us with good answers to the above questions. The Ball just exists inexplicably you would either think he was crazy or was joking around. Just because observable objects within the universe are contingent, this does not show that the universe itself is contingent (this claim would commit the fallacy of composition). However, this is arguably a false statement and a hasty generalization. This is related to the issue of free will, the feeling that we could have chosen differently; but also to a more general intuition that things could have been different. Something is "necessary" if it could not possibly have failed to exist. Leibniz's argument from contingency is one of the most popular cosmological arguments in philosophy of religion. Why does anything at all exist? Aquinas observed that, in nature, there were things with contingent existences. Definition 2 emphasizes the inevitability of the entity given the presence of its cause. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence(either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause). Contemporary scholars argue that if rhetoric is merely about the contingent, it automatically excludes that which is either necessary or impossible. In a sense, the argument is based on the tendency of objects not to exist. For The Contingency Argument to succeed, all that needs to be true is that the universe is contingent. Objects are mental constructs: the material of an object is more fundamental. reason why this or that has happened. Based on our experience, the materials in the universe continued to exist, in various forms. In other words, individual objects "tend not to exist". Extrapolating outside the relevant domain is an error well-understood by statisticians studying phenomena within the natural realm. A cosmological argument, in natural theology, is an argument which claims that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, explanation, change, motion, contingency, dependency, or finitude with respect to the universe or some totality of objects. I am very proud to announce that I co-wrote a paper with Tim Hsiao on the Contingency Argument for God's existence that just got accepted into The Heythrop Journal (forthcoming). React 3 Reply Craig defends himself from the charge of circular reasoning by protesting that all deductive arguments are circular, In a deductive argument, the conclusion is implicit in the premises.[9] Craigs contention that all deductive arguments are circular is false. Contingent beings, therefore, are insufficient to account for the existence of contingent beings: there must exist anecessarybeing whose non-existence is an impossibility, and from which the existence of all contingent beings is derived. It follows from this that the universe does not exist by a necessity of its own nature. This follows logically from premises 1 and 3. In other words, God would have a Creator and we would have a Heavenly Grandfather. 2.1 Contingency and transiency does not imply the past non-existence of everything 2.2 Assumption that an infinite regress cannot happen 2.3 Natural processes are not ruled out 2.4 No specific God is supported by the argument 2.5 Proof by logic 2.6 Objects may spontaneously come into existence 3 Variant: The universe is contingent Our ignorance in this regard does not justify our concluding that B must, might, or couldnt happen. This is an unsupported premise. It is immediately clear from this formulation that (A2) is wrong. 2. According to Michael Martin, the cosmological arguments presented by Craig, Bruce Reichenbach, and Richard Swinburne are "among the most sophisticated and well argued in contemporary theological philosophy". His statement that a deductive conclusion is implicit in the premises is accurate but irrelevant. They don't arrive at their goal by chance but by purpose. [1] A friar dresses in a cloak, much like a monk, but friars dont stay tucked away in monasteries. This scenario is easily refuted though, because it's trivially self-defeating. Craig is pulling a fast one. His point would be valid if existence and non-existence of objects was random and the universe had finite material. Even if the said quarks were arranged in such a way as to resemble our universe identically, it still wouldnt be the same universe because the quarks comrprising it would be different quarks. The theologian William Lane Craig presents a version of Wilhelm Leibnizs contingency argument as follows:[5]+. [3] Contents 1 Form of the argument 2 Historical background 3 Contemporary discourse 3.1 Premise one: "Whatever begins to exist has a cause." Now, we dont have to call this cause God if that makes the atheist feel uncomfortable. Natural objects tend to have been generated and have a tendency/possibility to be corrupted. Inphilosophyandlogic,contingencyis the status ofpropositionsthat are neither true under every possiblevaluation (i.e. They operate in the same way as to meet perfection. The necessary is that which either must be done or will inevitably be done. The theologian William Lane Craig presents a version of Wilhelm Leibniz's contingency argument as follows: [5] + Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. Alexander Pruss formulates the argument as follows: Every contingent fact has an explanation. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. Natural processes are not ruled out. But it actually makes sense when you think about it. That seems incontrovertible. One is that a life-conducive universe exists. But thats not the only type of explanation there is. To say that an entity is contingent can be interpreted to mean (1) the entity is physically possible but not necessary, or (2) the entity is causally dependent on something outside itself. To see the point, think of your house. Contingent objects require something that exists to bring it into existence. See, for example, J.B. Hartle's accessible exposition on how several coexistent classical worlds are braided out of the single quantum reality. The sufficient reason is found in a substance which is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself.. There are some pretty clear reasons why we wouldnt want to embrace this alternative. The debate between gun control proponents and gun owners wages on, but there are some valid points that debunk the arguments to continue current gun policy. For every difference in our world there must correspond a difference in the lower, underlying reality (if there is one). 2. Even if it was founded, this would not imply that everything (existence) has an explanation for its existence, which seems to be a logical impossibility. /u/Zh3sh1re posted: Debunking the Cosmological argument, aka the "Contingency" Argument. Craig denies equivocating between material and immaterial causes, saying that he meant efficient causes all along. It breaks his argument. Consider how it is fine-tuned to grow into a red giant . This inquiry does not yield certain knowledge, but only opinion. Yet premise 4 presumes that the natural realm itself must (via premise 1) have an explanation as well. The argument is an posteriori argument, and the conclusion is not claimed to follow with certainty. Weakness: Inconsistent notion of necessary being. Congress convenes to discuss problems, different solutions to those problems, and the consequences of each solution. It seems like all of these things didnt have to exist. *Objection: Does God Have An Explanation Of His Existence? Moreover, we have powerful scientific evidence that not only could the universe have failed to exist, but there was a time when it actually did not in fact exist.