Saturday, January 30, 2016

Refuting the Kalam Cosmological Argument



I find it funny that the Kalam Cosmological Argument is based on Medieval Islamic thinking. It's never seemed at all convincing to me, and I doubt if it's ever convinced anyone. (The Christians and Muslims who use this argument already believe in their god.)

Certainly, this video does a good job of refuting it. But that's nothing new, either. What I particularly liked is his first point, that a god which is anything at all like the Christian 'God' wouldn't play hide-and-seek with people. If such a god existed, we wouldn't be debating it, since we wouldn't have to wonder.

The whole idea that you'd have to use some bizarre, and quite dubious, philosophical argument to demonstrate that your god exists pretty much demonstrates how implausible the whole thing is, right from the beginning. Of course, the argument itself is badly flawed, as well.

As I say, I suspect that the Kalam Cosmological Argument has never convinced anyone. William Lane Craig is popular with Christians because they think he sounds smart and is backing up what they already believe - almost always because they were raised to believe it - with philosophy. Obviously, they're not going to be very skeptical.

2 comments:

uchitrakar said...

Kalam cosmological argument, objective morality argument, fine tuning argument etc. are not actually necessary for proving the existence of God. Special theory of relativity is sufficient for that purpose.

So long special theory of relativity will be there, we will require no special pleading for proving the existence of God.

For this please see the links below:
https://sekharpal.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/is-fine-tuning-actually-required-for-proving-the-existence-of-god/
https://sekharpal.wordpress.com/2016/05/03/yes-there-is-a-god/
https://sekharpal.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/is-it-the-job-of-the-scientists-to-manufacture-truth-or-to-discover-it/

Bill Garthright said...

Sorry. If you think you can prove the existence of God, please make the argument here.

You can include links to back up your claims, if you wish, but don't just send me links to claims you make elsewhere.

I glanced at one of those. It was not even slightly persuasive. I'm not a physicist, and you aren't either, apparently.

Among other things, you seem to have missed the fact that a photon has no mass. (One of the reasons why physicists - the people who actually know about these things - don't agree with you?)

If you want to make an argument here, go right ahead. I'll consider it. But there's too much crazy stuff on the internet for me to waste time looking for it elsewhere.