The misuse of science by William Lane Craig and othe Christian apologists.

[Rational Gaze]

The true irony is he fails to adequately address ALL of these points and more anywhere. If you believe so please cite him.

I have already mentioned two works that adequately address all of the points raised in this thread "and more". If you're too lazy to read Craig's printed work, then that is your problem but not mine, and certainly not Craig's. As it stands, I have referenced two works: The Kalam Cosmological Argument from The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology and On Non-Singular Spacetimes and the Beginning of the Universe from Scientific Approaches to the Philosophy of Religion

I'd recommend:
William Lane Craig and James D. Sinclair, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, from William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, Wiley-Blackwell, (2009)
William Lane Craig and James D. Sinclair, On Non-Singular Spacetimes and the Beginning of the Universe, from Yujin Nagasawa, Scientific Approaches to the Philosophy of Religion Palgrave-McMillan, (2012)

Of course, I question whether or not you have an adequate enough grasp of the subject to even debate it, since the way you construe these points and your 'answers' to people's responses to them in this thread are odd to say the least.

[Rational Gaze]

The reason the energy-density of the universe is close to zero is because that is simply the way it is.

What a delightful non-answer that in no way addresses the improbability of the energy-density of the universe possessing the value that it does, and that in no way answers the teleological argument in an way.

The three choices to explain instances of fine-tuning are: necessity, chance, or design. So, if the answer is not design, it has to be chance or necessity. Of course, the chance hypothesis is extremely epistemically improbable (this is equally true under multiverse hypotheses as it is under single universe hypotheses), and I am not aware of anybody who accepts the necessity hypothesis.

[MaxVel]

I think that last bit is the issue here. Evidence points to our contiguous spacetime reality having a begining at the Big Bang, but we have no idea what exists outside and before that. It could be God, it could be some kind of multiverse. There is certainly no reason to suppose that whatever it is is conscious or intelligent of gives a hoot about us.

I that last sentence is false. Craig briefly gives a reason at the end of the article I cited. Maybe it's not a good reason, or one that you find convincing, but no reason at all...? Nah.

[MaxVel]

Methodological Naturalism cannot include philosophical/theological beliefs and assumptions that cannot be objectively falsified by the objective methods in terms of as theories and hypothesis

Then your whole thread is misconceived. Methodological Naturalism as you have presented it, is not the correct tool for judging the value of a metaphysical argument.

Change in wording in this case does not change the problem. 'IF' here adds nothing. This does negate the possibility that our universe and all possible universes have 'beginnings' of natural causes.

Read the paragraph that immediately follows Craig's modified premise 1 (1').

If he is proposing that our universe comprises all of the continuous space/time reality that exists presents a problem, because first it cannot be falsified, and science has determined objectively that the Quantum World does not compromise a space/time reality.

He's defining his terms, not making a claim about what does or doesn't exist. From what you've said here, I don't see how the 'Quantum World' is at all relevant. It looks like you've neither read, nor understood, the article I cited. Par for the course, with you.

[MaxVel]

Of course, I question whether or not you have an adequate enough grasp of the subject to even debate it, since the way you construe these points and your 'answers' to people's responses to them in this thread are odd to say the least.

And there it is. Thread winner.

My scientific observations have shown that this thread is following a pattern typical of many Shunyadragon threads.

He posts a compliant about some 'apologetic argument' and how wrong he thinks it is

He gets corrected about his misunderstandings of the argument in the first few posts

He complains about how it's 'not scientific' and cites some amateur-level references, which only reinforce his misunderstandings, and which he doesn't really grasp anyway - but at least they're 'science'!

Other posters begin an intelligent discussion about the real issues involved. At least some of them know what they're talking about, unlike Shunya.

Shunya posts on about how people are 'ignoring the science', refusing to address his misapprehensions, and 'Bob, Duck, and Weave' make an appearance

Other posters continue their discussion, and learn something new and worthwhile, just not from Shunya.

[The Pixie]

... The same thing applies to the multiverse. You need a spaceless, timeless cause to evade the problem of an infinite regress, but an unconscious timeless entity could never enter into time. Whereas a conscious timeless entity could freely will to enter into time (which is what WLC argues online, in print, and in debates.

What is the reasoning behind this? Both that a unconscious timeless entity could not, and a conscious one could?

Because that is the crux of the matter.

[The Pixie]

The irony with this post is that the energy-density of the universe being close to zero is part of the fine-tuning evidence appealed to in current versions of the teleological argument. The expected value of the cosmological argument is between 10⁵³ to 10¹²⁰ times larger than the maximum life-permitting range of the cosmological constant.

I am trying to understand what you mean here. What does the "value of the cosmological argument" mean? I am wondering if you meant "value of the cosmological constant"?

Are you saying that the fine-tuning argument predicts zero mass-energy? Can you talk me through the reasoning for that? I am wondering if this is really a prediction, or a post hoc rationalisation.

What do you think it is ironic here? My basic point still stands; if the universe is due to "quantum fluctuation", then far from being highly improbably, a zero mass-energy is a certainty.

[The Pixie]

I judge it "unreasonable" because we never observe quantum fluctuations to give rise to things existing more than an extremely small fraction of a second. For a quantum fluctuation to give rise to a 13.7 billion year old universe seems ridiculous. Yes, it is theoretically possible, but this is similar to the unreasonable theoretical situations posed in a statistical mechanics class (e.g. The vanishingly small possibility that the air molecules in a room will randomly assemble all of the hot or cold molecules in one location, causing something to spontaneously combust or freeze; or the vanishingly small possibility that the molecules in a glass of water will all randomly have an upward velocity at the same instant, causing the water to jump out of the glass).

Ah, then I misunderstood what you thought was unreasonable; I thought you meant the zero mass-energy.

Yes, quantum fluctuations in this universe give rise to extremely small events, and certainly could not give rise to a whole universe. But we are talking about something happening outside the universe. We have no idea what is there, what the laws are. We just do not know. I do not see that as a reason to invoke God.

[The Pixie]

I that last sentence is false. Craig briefly gives a reason at the end of the article I cited. Maybe it's not a good reason, or one that you find convincing, but no reason at all...? Nah.

My bad.

So what does Craig say? from that link:

"Ghazali maintained that the answer to this problem is that the First Cause must be a personal being endowed with freedom of the will. His creating the universe is a free act which is independent of any prior determining conditions. So his act of creating can be something spontaneous and new. Freedom of the will enables one to get an effect with a beginning from a permanent, timeless cause. Thus, we are brought not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe but to its Personal Creator."

Craig seems to be relying on the authority of Ghazali here. I wonder if Ghazali was familiar with the phenomenon of quantum fluctuation?

Elsewhere in the article Craig says:

"Hilbert’s Hotel is absurd. Since nothing hangs on the illustration’s involving a hotel, the argument can be generalized to show that the existence of an actually infinite number of things is absurd."

I find that a curious claim, when real science seriously considers that the universe could be infinite in science (eg here). Infinite is counter-intuitive, but that does not mean it does not exist; it is not absurd.

[shunyadragon]

[QUOTE=Kbertsche;359212]Did you look at the reference that I provided? It is mainstream physics, from a mainstream physics journal (as opposed to a watered-down and oversimplified layman-level description).

???When did I promise such a thing???
For the nature of quantum mechanics, see a good quantum mechanics textbook. But the "formation of universes" is more philosophy than science. Perhaps some of the proposals can be falsified, but so far as I know most of these ideas are not testable and not falsifiable.

As far as you know?!?!? what qualifications do you have to 'know' this. Statements that the physics and cosmology of the origins of universes are 'philosophy' is unfounded. The current subject is based on Craig's assertion that science supports his philosophical/theological Kalam Cosmological arguments. The bottom line that needs to be responded to is that any theory of absolute beginnings proposed by Craig cannot be falsified nor determined as viable by the objective methods of science.

In the highlighted above you seem to have the view that something can concluded as true or false by the objective scientific methods, and this a naive layman's view.

It is not a promise anyone made. It was the statement of impossibility that you made and did not back up.You total ignorance of the Physics and Cosmology of models for the possible origins of our universe and all possible universes. The models are indeed subject to the falsification of theories and hypothesis of scientific methods. Some models have of course been found faulty by these methods and discarded like early cyclic models, but the models are constantly evolving based on new knowledge. The String Theory of universes originating from Quantum fluctuations is only one model, and is subject to change, and of course falsification if no longer found to be a viable model, but your statement of 'impossibility' is unsubstantiated. A more recent model describes universes forming from the collapse of black holes as a form of cyclic/bounce. The following paper describes the process of evolving models from differetn scientisats over time that develop models for the origins of universes.

Source: http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Parallel%20Universes/Texts/the_black_hole_origin_theory_of_the_universe_frontiers_of_s.htm

Victor Stenger, a professor of physics at the University of Hawaii, writes in chapter thirteen of his book, TIMELESS REALITY: SYMMETRY, SIMPLICITY AND MULTIPLE UNIVERSES [Prometheus, 2000]] that:

"Philosopher Quentin Smith [in 1990] and physicist Lee Smolin [in992, 1997] have independently suggested a mechanism for the evolution of universes by natural selection. They propose a multi-universe scenario in which each universe is the residue of an exploding black hole that was previously formed in another universe".

In this paper, I shall evaluate my [1990] theory, Smolin's [1992] and [1997] theory, and shall argue that both my ideas and Smolin's ideas suffer irreparable defects that requires a third version of the cosmological natural selection to be developed. I develop this third version in the last section of this paper.

The most basic assumption of my theory is the physicist's Arthur Vilenkin's suggestion in his article in The Physical Review D, "Has Physical Cosmology Become Metaphysics?" Arthur Vilenkin invented the modern theory of quantum gravity in [1982] and in later papers (along with Hartle and Hawking [1983], leading to thousands (not merley hundreds) of articles published on this subject in physics journals. Roughly, the idea is that there are now and will be many competing cosmological theories, all of which are both observationally equivalent and underdetermined by the observational evidence. One reason for thinking this is that crucial observational tests will pertain to the Planck era, whose smallness and whose nature preclude it from being observed. The decision between cosmological theories will from now on have to be based on theoretical criteria such as explanatory power, conservativeness and parsimony. Thus my present theory leads to no new predictions but (like all other current cosmological theories, such as Hawking's, Linde's and Vilenkin's, merely predicts all the previously known observational data. I assume no complete and definitive theory of quantum gravity will be developed, merely proposals for parts of such a theory or proposals for theses that approximate such a theory. We have the Hartle-Hawking proposal, the Vilenkin propsal, and numerous proposals of string theory, superstring theory, Membrane theory, etc. I assume (I of course cannot prove this assumption, since I cannot forsee the future) that the era of hard science in physical cosmology is over (if there ever was such an era--perhaps the observations leading to the belief we live in a Friemandman universe in the late 1920s was an era of apparent, hard, cosmological science). I do not agree with the many physicists who think we should remain silent until a "hard science" quantum gravity theory is developed. From now on (I assume) cosmology is a metaphysical subject to be addressed by both physicists and philosophers.

In conformity with this assumption, I shall develop a new cosmological theory that leads to no new predictions but merely has explanatory power and conservativeness in its favor (and lack of parsimony as its main weakness). The enormous gain in explanatory power, I believe, outweighs the loss of parsimony, especially when we add to this fact the close adherence to the criterion of conservativeness (changes one's basic theories as little as possible). The basic question now is not "which theory is most highly confirmed by the observational evidence?" but "which theory is the most plausible on theoretical grounds?" My challenge is to show that the great increase in explanatory power plausibly outweighs the great loss of parsimony.

I would be happy for my basic assumption to be proven wrong by the advent of a new era of "hard science" in physical cosmology, but I see insufficient evidence that such an era is either upon us or is just over the horizon. (In addition to Vilenkin's article, Tim Maudlin's very plausible 1994 article in The Journal of Philosophy may be interpreted in a way that supports my assumption.)

© Copyright Original Source

[shunyadragon]

Then your whole thread is misconceived. Methodological Naturalism as you have presented it, is not the correct tool for judging the value of a metaphysical argument.

Craig claims that science supports his assertion that our universe has an absolute beginning in his Kalam Cosmological argument. The foundation of science is Methodological Naturalism. If Craig claims that his argument is only based a metaphysical argument ok, but that is not the case.

Read the paragraph that immediately follows Craig's modified premise 1 (1').

It is not the premise that is the issue. It is the claim by Craig that science supports his argument.

He's defining his terms, not making a claim about what does or doesn't exist. From what you've said here, I don't see how the 'Quantum World' is at all relevant. It looks like you've neither read, nor understood, the article I cited. Par for the course, with you.

Your neglecting the fact that Craig claims that science supports his argument. The following is the classic example of Craig taking selective reference from 'some' scientist to claim science supports his assertions. If Craig's argument was totally a metaphysical argument he would not make these selective assumptions concerning the science of the origins of the universe.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lane_Craig

One of Craig's contributions to the kalam cosmological argument is his reference to astrophysics in support of the universe's beginning, namely the expansion of the universe and thermodynamics.[30]

Craig says that the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric Big Bang model predicts a cosmic singularity, which marks the origin of the universe in the finite past.[31] Craig says that competing models which do not imply an origin of the universe have either proved to be untenable (such as the steady state model and vacuum fluctuation models) or implied the beginning of the universe they were designed to avoid (oscillating models, inflationary models, quantum gravity models). Craig says that the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem of 2003 requires that any universe which has on average been in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal.[32]

Craig believes that recent discoveries about the expansion of the universe and relativity theory support his view that thermodynamic properties of the universe show it is not eternal.[33][34] Craig says that postulating a multiverse of worlds in varying thermodynamic states encounters the problem of Boltzmann brains—that it becomes highly probable for any observer that the universe is only an illusion of his own brain, a solipsistic conclusion Craig says no rational person would embrace.[35]

Based on these arguments, Craig concludes that the premise that the universe began to exist is more plausible than not, and conjoined with premise 1, the beginning of the universe implies the existence of a cause. Craig claims that, due to its nature, the cause must be an uncaused, beginningless, changeless, timeless, spaceless, immaterial being of enormous power, which he refers to as God.[36]

© Copyright Original Source

[shunyadragon]

What a delightful non-answer that in no way addresses the improbability of the energy-density of the universe possessing the value that it does, and that in no way answers the teleological argument in an way.

The three choices to explain instances of fine-tuning are: necessity, chance, or design. So, if the answer is not design, it has to be chance or necessity. Of course, the chance hypothesis is extremely epistemically improbable (this is equally true under multiverse hypotheses as it is under single universe hypotheses), and I am not aware of anybody who accepts the necessity hypothesis.

The necessity is simply that the values are product of the underlying laws of nature, which is very possible. The high lighted above problem with 'chance' is it is a naive layman's concept and not the basis for anything in science. The theological claim of 'Intelligent Design' of course a theological assertion, and has no basis in a falsifiable theory nor hypothesis, and is basically laugh out of any legitimate consideration in science.

[Rational Gaze]

I am trying to understand what you mean here. What does the "value of the cosmological argument" mean? I am wondering if you meant "value of the cosmological constant"?

Are you saying that the fine-tuning argument predicts zero mass-energy? Can you talk me through the reasoning for that? I am wondering if this is really a prediction, or a post hoc rationalisation.

What do you think it is ironic here? My basic point still stands; if the universe is due to "quantum fluctuation", then far from being highly improbably, a zero mass-energy is a certainty.

Derp, yeah. My bad. I meant cosmological constant. Brain fart.

I mean that the value of the cosmological constant being having the value that it does is far more epistemically probable under the design hypothesis than under the chance or necessity hypotheses. I don't know if that qualifies as a 'prediction' in the scientific sense, however.

[Rational Gaze]

The necessity is simply that the values are product of the underlying laws of nature, which is very possible. The high lighted above problem with 'chance' is it is a naive layman's concept and not the basis for anything in science. The theological claim of 'Intelligent Design' of course a theological assertion, and has no basis in a falsifiable theory nor hypothesis, and is basically laugh out of any legitimate consideration in science.

This is a circular argument. You are claiming that the fine-tuning of the universe, which involves the laws of physics themselves being fine-tuned to some degree, and constants whose value are not determined by physical laws, are the result of the laws of physics. However, even if we grant this absurd scenario, in order for their to be physical laws, there needs to be some kind of physical reality prior to the big bang. Physical objects require physical space to exist, but space began to exist. Unless we suppose a multiverse hypothesis, which in both the cosmological and teleological arguments, merely pushes the question back one step.

[shunyadragon]

This is a circular argument. You are claiming that the fine-tuning of the universe, which involves the laws of physics themselves being fine-tuned to some degree, and constants whose value are not determined by physical laws, are the result of the laws of physics. However, even if we grant this absurd scenario, in order for their to be physical laws, there needs to be some kind of physical reality prior to the big bang. Physical objects require physical space to exist, but space began to exist. Unless we suppose a multiverse hypothesis, which in both the cosmological and teleological arguments, merely pushes the question back one step.

Not a circular argument at all from the scientific perspective. There is nothing wrong with the falsified possibility that multiverses exist, because this is by far the consensus of contemporary scientists.

The highlighted above simply refers to the space/time of our universe, and neither infers nor demonstrates the nature of the origins of our universe and our greater cosmos that our universe is a part of.

It is most definitely 'begging the question' or a circular argument to conclude that ID is demonstrated because of the nature of the constants of our universe. There is no falsifiable thesis nor hypothesis that would justify this conclusion.