Why is there anything at all? (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 19:56 (5797 days ago) @ Curtis

Curtis has summarized the Kalam Cosmological Argument for us as follows:
Premise 1: The universe had a beginning
Premise 2: The beginning event of the universe was caused
Premise 3: The cause for the beginning event was personal - My reservations are the same as those outlined in my posting of 21 May at 10.50, when you originally raised this subject. I'll leave the scientific discussion to the scientists, but go back over the rest. - No problem with Premise 1. I can happily accept the Big Bang as the beginning of our universe. We have no way of knowing if anything did or did not precede it. - No problem for me with Premise 2 (despite George's objection, 8 June at 13.06). - Definite problems with Premise 3, but let me stress that I accept all its implications as a possibility. The reservations: 1) We can't know if there is a prime cause. Evidence of design (agreed) could be the result of accident plus natural laws. Difficult to believe, but no more difficult than a supreme, conscious intelligence that sprang from nowhere or, alternatively, has always been there and we shouldn't ask how it got there. 2) If there is/was a designer that "willed the creation event", what is its nature? By this I mean two things: its form (material, what we call "spirit", some kind of life totally unknown to us?) and its character (does it have feelings, does it care etc.?). There is a huge gap between the concept of intelligent design and that of a "personal" God, though it might be helpful to know exactly what the term means to you. If I may quote Matt's illuminating posting under Code, Information, and Design (8 June at 20.43), we can only "guess (or use other fancy scientific words for guessing) at causes". - You guess that there is a personal God, George guesses that there is nothing but the natural laws, David Turell guesses that there is some kind of intelligence but we cannot ascribe any qualities to it. Matt again: "each of us will choose to believe whatever we want, according to our understanding." He tells us that over 50% of the world's population believe in a God figure, and only 2% are atheist (10% agnostic). I don't know who went round with the clipboard, but hats off to him. When Georgiopolous Galluponides (only kidding) conducted an opinion poll 2500 years ago asking if the world was flat, he got a 100% positive response. "Guesses" change as new observations are made, and who knows what observations will be made in 50, 500, or 5000 years' time? Matt says "I don't want to bash anyone because I want to spend my time pursuing truth." I certainly don't want to bash the Kalam Cosmological Argument, because it might be dead right. But it might be dead wrong, and I'm not guessing either way.