William Lane Craig has done much in recent years to develop and defend what’s now known as the kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God. The core of the argument runs as follows:
- Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
As it stands this argument won’t get one all the way to full-blown monotheism, but if it is sound, then naturalism is in serious trouble, for the natural universe would have been shown to be contingent and to owe its existence to an apparently transcendent cause.
The crucial premise is the second one, for it’s not obvious why the universe must have had a beginning. Here Craig offers four arguments – two philosophical, and two scientific. The latter two involve appeals to the Big Bang theory and to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I’m not going to get into those right now. What I’m interested in are the two philosophical arguments.
The first argument contends that actually infinite collections of actually existing things are impossible. (An actually infinite collection is one which can be put into one-to-one correspondence with one of its proper subsets, e.g., the set of natural numbers can be put into 1-1 correspondence with the set of even numbers.) Why? Without going into the details, Craig basically argues that actually infinite collections of actually existing things would generate all sorts of logical paradoxes and for that reason have to be barred from any coherent ontology. The relevance of this to the beginning of the universe is as follows:
- If the universe has no beginning, then an actually infinite number of events has elapsed.
- If an actually infinite number of events has elapsed, then there is an actually infinite collection of existing things (i.e., past events).
- But actually infinite collections of existing things are impossible.
- Therefore, it is false that an actually infinite number of events has elapsed.
- Therefore, the universe has a beginning.
One worry about this argument premise 2, for if one holds to the version of the A-theory of time known as presentism, then past events simply don’t exist anymore, so it’s not clear why the elapsing of time would entail that there is an actually infinite collection of existing things. On the other hand, if the B-theory of time or any of the versions of the A-theory that retain past facts (e.g., the ‘growing block’ theory or the ‘moving spotlight’ theory), and if the universe has no beginning, then it follows straightaway that there is an actually infinite collection of existing things. It seems, then, that this philosophical argument for the second premise of the kalam argument must presuppose the falsity of presentism, ironic since Craig is a staunch defender of presentism.
The second philosophical argument for premise two of the kalam argument contends that an actually infinite collection cannot be sequentially run through or traversed by a series of finite steps. Here’s a straightforward formulation of the argument.
- If the universe had no beginning, then an actually infinite collection would have been sequentially tranversed by a series of finite steps.
- But it is impossible to sequentially traverse an actually infinite collection by a series of finite steps.
- Therefore, the universe had a beginning.
Premise 2 can be defended as follows. If the universe had no beginning, then an actually infinite number of events has elapsed prior to now. The collections of negative numbers ending in zero {…, -3, -2, -1, 0} is an actually infinite collection. Since actually infinite collections can be put into 1-1 correspondence, let’s pair up the series of past events with the series of negative numbers ending in zero. To suppose, then, that the actually infinite collection of past events has been traversed in step-wise fashion is to suppose that it’s possible to get from -ā to 0 one number at a time. But that’s impossible, since -ā+1 = -ā. Hence, one could never arrive at 0 or the present moment.
Now, I think this is a pretty good argument, but here again, one’s view on the nature of time makes a big difference. Why? Well, if one is a B-theorist, then there is no such thing as the ‘flow’ or passage of time. All the events that ever have or will exist exist (tenselessly). So if the past is infinite, then there timelessly exists a completed actually infinite collection of past events. The collection isn’t formed successively in finite steps because it’s not formed at all – it’s just there. On the other hand, if one is an A-theorist (of any sort), then this argument seems pretty compelling because then one would have to somehow run through or form an actually infinite collection by successive finite addition. It seems, then, that this philosophical argument for the second premise of the kalam argument must presuppose the falsity of the B-theory of time.
Finally, since only non-presentists are likely to find the first argument compelling, and since only A-theorists are likely to find the second argument compelling, only non-presentist, A-theorists are likely to find both arguments compelling. To my knowledge, no discussions of the kalam argument to date have noticed these connections.
If an actual infinite series of past events could not have elapsed by now, which is a compelling argument, how could an actual infinite series of past thoughts of an infinite being have passed by now?
i.e. If the universe had to have a beginning, then a personal, rational being would have had to have a beginning to that being’s thoughts. And before that being started it’s actual, finite series of thoughts, what was it doing?
Alan, I think you gave up too easily on the use of the Kalam on the B-theory of time. Imagining all events as a DFA with no start state, q0, and no final state, qf, and a “moving block, moving spotlight” currently on state qi, what state, qi, are we at right now? We can’t be at any actual state, qi, now because we had to get there from state q(i-1), and there from q(i-2). Same problem. With an infinite series of events currently existing, ala the B-theory, we can’t be here, now. Our “moving block/moving spotlight” can’t move by adding 1 to -infinity, successively.
Alan: ā¦if one holds to the version of the A-theory of time known as presentism, then past events simply don’t exist anymore, so it’s not clear why the elapsing of time would entail that there is an actually infinite collection of existing things.
Tom: Consider your paper about Godās memories being the present truthmakers for past-tense props. True, on presentism all past moments or events, -1, -2, -3, and so forth, donāt exist, arenāt real. But I donāt think this is an escape from Craigās argument. For on your view there is for each non-existent past event an existent divine memory, M1, M2, M3, and so forth–Godās actual memories of every past event. If the past is temporally eternal, then the divine memory would constitute an infinte collection of actually existing things, would they not?
Tom
While I recognize the impossibility of, say, writing down every odd number and actually finishing the task, Iām still a bit suspicious of the objection. Donāt we recognize an actual infinite when we divide some length into halves ad infinitum? You can get from here to the wall 4 feet away. You first have to traverse half the distance, 2 feet. Then you have to traverse half that distance, 1 foot, then half that distance, 6 inches, and so forth. Mathematically can we not infinitely divide the actual space left each time? Doesnāt this mean the actual space of, say, 1 foot, is a collection of an infinite number of halves? Iām not a mathematician, but it looks like it to me. So mathematically we should never be able to reach the wall. But we do reach the wall.
This is usually just brushed aside as unlike the problem of actual infinites, but I donāt see how itās unlike it. Are there or are there not an infinite number of halves that divide up any lenth?
Tom
TOM: then the divine memory would constitute an infinte collection of actually existing things, would they not?
HammsBear: That’s the problem I think. If an actual infinite collection cannot exist, then neither can God’s memory contain an actual infinite collection.
Using the impossibility of an actual infinite to prove the universe had a beginning (and that time started) could be used to prove God’s thoughts/memories had a beginning as well.
Tom: Are there or are there not an infinite number of halves that divide up any lenth?
HammsBear: Since space is discrete at the quantum level, on the planck scale, something like 10^-66, there is a finite number of halves dividing up any length.
Hammsbear: Using the impossibility of an actual infinite to prove the universe had a beginning (and that time started) could be used to prove God’s thoughts/memories had a beginning as well.
Tom: Had a temporal beginning, yes. But that wouldnāt rule out Godās existing atemporally sans creation (I donāt think) as sentient and relational. But it would mean adjusting to an atemporal understanding of Trinitarian relations (sans creation).
Another way we might be able to posit a temporally eternal past and avoid Godās memories constituting an actual infinite would be to say Godās memories of the eternal past are in fact ONE in number. Sounds weird I know. But if every sans creational divine āeventā is identical, the same as the preceding divine event, that is, if God sans creation is an unchanging actualization of loving relationality, then what happens at -1, -2, -3 and so on, is the same. Father, Son, and Spirit would, by definition and with respect to one another, be all they can be in terms of the sort of loving relationality that defines Godās being and which is the only thing happening. And God is happening. Heās not a cosmic stuff shirt so to speak. Itās just that sans creation God is the same event happening. The upshot of this would be: there arenāt an infinite number of different memories. Thereās one memory of what God unchangingly has been.
Does it work? I dunno.
A finite number of halves? Interesting.
Tom
OK, so God can’t be temporally eternal because that would entail an impossibility–an actual infinite.
Craig argues then that God is atemporal sans creation and becomes temporal with the choice to create a temporal world. But how’s that really possible? How’s an atemporal, absolutely unchanging God choose to create, choose to change modes of existence? How’s he get off the dime, so to speak? I don’t see how an atemporal God could possibly change? I don’t see that Craig’s alternative is at all possible. Seems that a contingent choice to create would require time as a prerequisite. Time would have to be the medium/context in which such a choice is made.
So if God can’t be temporally eternal, and if he can’t be atemporal sans creation and abandon this mode of existence for a temporal with the choice to create, then what’s the alternative? The process notion of a necessary God-world relationship doesn’t solve anything because you still have a temporal past.
So what…God doesn’t exist?
Tom
I don’t buy Craig’s ‘God is atemporal sans creation’ argument either. If God is a personality and thought requires state and state changes, imho, the conclusion is that God has always been temporal. Eternally temporal.
As elegant as the Kalam Kosmological Argument is, I don’t see how it can’t be applied to God as well. But I’m probably missing something simple.
Remember Iconoclast’s recommendation of “Three Roads to Quantum Gravy”?
See http://www.weburbia.com/pg/discrete.htm for discreteness in space/time.
(Alan, I am not sure if this thread is specifically for your students. Hopefully it is not, and you can accept my comments.)
HammsBear and Tom, there was a discussion on the possibility of traversing the infinite over at Philosophy, etc that might interest you both.
Tom, the argument that traversing any distance would mean having to traverse a half of a half of a half, ad infinitum, simply begs the question because it presupposes that space is infinitely divided rather than just infinitely divisible.
Also, it is not clear why time needs to be a prerequisite for an action which might cause time to come into being. That seems to suggest that finite time is logically, or at least actually, impossible, which I don’t think is the case. Moreover, it seems to do so through an argument predicated on backwards causation wherein every moment of time (including the so-called “first instance of time”) necessitates a prior moment of time (which would actually make a “first instance of time” impossible). Again, that seems to make finite time an impossibility, which I don’t think is the case.
don jr: Moreover, it seems to do so through an argument predicated on backwards causation wherein every moment of time (including the so-called “first instance of time”) necessitates a prior moment of time
HammsBear: You’re confusing states with state changes. If an unnecessary object exists, that necessitates a prior creator of that object. Moving from the state of a creator and no object to the state of the object and the creator via the state change “creates object” is a sequence and the measurement of the duration of that sequence is described as “time”.
Time has never been “created”. It’s just a description of change.
Iām assuming a Christian theistic worldview where some persons spend eternity in heaven and possess libertarian freedom in some respects.
Since the future is infinite, the number of possible futures is equally infinite. How can we then say that at any given point in time God knows all truths about these possible worlds? That would amount to an actual infinite, an infinite set of actually existing things (propositions about the future). It is no objection that the temporally eternal future is a potential infinite. Yes, with respect to movement of time, the future is potentially infinite. Possible worlds extending into the future are not actually existing things, and the future has not actually been traversed.
But the truths that ānowā describe those possible futures, grounded in present reality, are actually existing things. Given presentism, it is ānowā true or false that such and such might occur in a million years, etc., and similar propositions ānowā exist for each possible future.
So the set of truths describing all the possible events of the potentially infinite future is not itself a potential infinite, not for those who affirm divine omniscience. For those who affirm Godās omniscience at all points in time AND who believe that for anything that occurs it was true at all times prior to its occurring that it āmightā occur AND who believe time and events will continue into the future forever, there is at every point in time a set of truths describing those possible futures our world faces. Since time continues infinitely, the possible worlds are infinite. But then so are the truths describing them.
We would object, for example, on the basis of the impossibility of an actual infinite, that anyone could write down each truth describing a possible future on a piece of paper and ever finish the task. Why? Because there is no end to the set of truths describing possible futures. But omniscience (for those of us who believe God is temporal, is a temporal knower) = knowledge at any given point in time of all truths. But the set of all truths is an infinite set. Godās conscious contemplation of them at any given point in time would constitute an infinite set of actually existing/contemplated things.
We might respond to this by saying God knows infinites by knowing what ādefinesā the set, like the set of all odd numbers. You canāt actually contain every member of this set. You canāt write them all down and draw a circle around them. So does God at t1 actually know, actually contemplate every odd number? That seems impossible, since Godās knowledge would then constitute an infinite set of actually existing things. Itās no weakness in God per se. Itās just the incoherence of the claim that every odd number is in its discreteness contemplated by one consciousness. But if God knows all odd numbers not by holding them in conscious contemplation at any given time, but by knowing what ādefinesā a member of the set of odd numbers, then we escape an actual infinite. In this sense God can then āgo toā any odd number he wants to and contemplate it on the basis of knowing what an odd number is. And surely God can do this pretty fast.
Two problems however:
1) This seems to entail discursive capabilities in God. And traditionally theists affirming omniscience have argued Godās knowledge is exhaustively intuitive. God knows. He doesnāt discursively reason from truth1 to truth2. That would entail ignorance of truth2 for however slight a span of time and so undermine omniscience. So weāre traditionally denied Godās knowledge is ever discursive.
2) It seems impossible to treat the set of truths describing possible futures they way we treat the set of all odd numbers. The members of the latter set are clearly all governed by one and the same definition. But the set of truths describing possible choices and events cannot be governed by one uniform definition. They cannot be known as discrete propositions by knowing some overarching ādefinitionā of what a choice is, or what an event is, or what love is, or what freedom is. How then can God at t1 hold in conscious contemplation an infinite number of propositions positing what heaven might/might not be like at t3milion, t3millionand1, t3millionand2, and so forth into eternity? He canāt IF the notion of an infinite set of actually existing things is incoherent.
So it seems that the same argument that supposedly supports Craigs argument for a temporally finite past undermines the possibility of belief in an omniscient God AND a temporally eternal future.
Tom
Basically the argument goes like this (might need adjusting, but you get the drift):
P1 Omniscience entails knowledge of all truths.
P2 āAll truthsā constitutes a collection of actually existing things, the ‘set of all truths’.
P3 The number of truths that exist is infinite; like the set of all odd numbers, it has no end.
P4 The ‘set of all truths’ is an infinite set (from P2 and P3).
P4 Divine omniscience at any time t would constitute an infinite collection of actually existing things, the ‘set of all truths’.
P5 It is impossible to have an infinite collection of actually existing things.
Concl: Therefore, omniscience is logically impossible.
It’s possible to conceive abstractly of infinite sets. We TALK about the set of all numbers, etc. But we can’t actually produce them, say, by writing them down, recording them on a CD, OR (and this is important) by consciously contemplating them all (which omnisicence would seem to require).
Again, the fact that the temporally eternal future is only a potential infinite doesn’t at all affect this argument. Craig argues that a temporally eternal past is impossible because it entails an actual infinite. In this case an actual infinite collection of temporal moments experienced by God. Craig might think this is the end of the story. But the problem only begins there, because even though the temporally eternal future is only a potential future, it entails an actual infinite, that set of truths (at any time t) describing all the future possible worlds. The worlds are potential worlds (possible worlds), but the truths describing them are not potential truths. They’re ACTUALLY EXISTING THINGS, and consciously knowing them would constitute an infinite collection of actually existing things.
Omnisicnece is logically impossible.
What d’ya think?
Tom
tom: So it seems that the same argument that supposedly supports Craigs argument for a temporally finite past undermines the possibility of belief in an omniscient God AND a temporally eternal future.
HammsBear: That’s what I said initially. It seems that using the argument against an actual infinite to prove the universe had a beginning could also be used against God’s knowlege.
If one holds to the correspondence theory of truth, wouldn’t one have to throw infinite out because you cannot correspond it to anything real?
As for “knowing all future possibilities”, here’s where I’m at currently:
If I know what two numbers WILL come up on the next dice roll, that qualifies as future knowlege, imho. It’s discrete, discriminatory and definite.
If I know all possible combinations of numbers that MIGHT appear on the dice, that doesn’t seem to have the same quality of future knowlege. It’s comprehensive and hence indefinite.
I’m hedging my bets.
There are other arguments against the Kalam Kosmological argument but I don’t remember them hence either I didn’t understand them or they weren’t very compelling.
tom: P3 The number of truths that exist is infinite
HammsBear: With truths needing to be grounded in reality, wouldn’t the set of all truths be mundanely finite? Future truths cannot be grounded and past truths may be currently grounded or the grounds of their truth may have passed ‘out of scope’?
HammsBear, could you try restating your response. I’m sorry; I just couldn’t follow what you were saying or how it related to the particular statement of mine to which you were responding.
Tom, that is very intriguing. But why think that there exists a “set of truths”? (See here and here.) Furthermore, it doesn’t seem to be necessary that God’s knowledge be comprised of propositionally distinct truths; it could be intuitively non-propositional, as argued here (see, within the first post, the short section entitled “Critique”); this is also the view that Craig holds in regards to God’s knowledge, so it is compatible with his kalam cosmological argument. Craig says (in his Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology),
William Alston has recently defended the view that God’s knowledge is non-propositional in nature. His is a simple, intuitive knowledge that embraces all truth. Finite creatures break up the whole of what God knows into propositions which they know. But the fact that God’s simple intuition can be broken down into a potentially infinite number of propositions does not entail that what God knows is an actually infinite number of propositions which he knows. In the same way one can admit potential infinites of extendibility or divisibility without entailing actual infinities of positions of extension or division.
As an aside, if all else fails one could simply concede the possible existence of actual infinites yet maintain that if they exist they cannot be traversed, which would preclude their existence in time and space and would require their transcending both of those domains. One could also maintain that since they are actual infinites they cannot be formed potentially or through succession but would have to be formed or simply exist in totality, which, most plausibly, would require them to necessarily exist. After all that, that would still leave knowledge of the set of all truths, if that knowledge is necessarily held, as a possibility, which would leave omniscience unscathed.
don jr: HammsBear, could you try restating your response. I’m sorry; I just couldn’t follow what you were saying or how it related to the particular statement of mine to which you were responding.
HammsBear: For starters, reading the definition of “backwards causation” I don’t see what you stated. An unnecessary creation necessitating a prior creator isn’t ‘backwards causation’.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-backwards/
Second, time is not a creation, it’s a description of state changes. As soon as there’s a change in states, there is an ordered sequence of states and duration/time can be used to describe that.
Same with “love”. The trinity are “loving” each other. Is “love” an object they created? No, it’s a description of what they’re doing.
HB: If I know what two numbers WILL come up on the next dice roll, that qualifies as future knowlege, imho. It’s discrete, discriminatory and definite. If I know all possible combinations of numbers that MIGHT appear on the dice, that doesn’t seem to have the same quality of future knowlege. It’s comprehensive and hence indefinite.
Tom: I donāt see how knowledge of the truth āthe dice might turn up six on the next rollā stating a logically possible future doesnāt count as discrete and discriminatory knowledge. Itās seems as discrete as any other truth. And it discriminates with regard to the other possible futures/rolls.
HB: With truths needing to be grounded in reality, wouldn’t the set of all truths be mundanely finite?
Tom: Well, if actuality delimits possibility, then among realityās attributes are dispositions or tendencies to become this or that in the future. Those dispositional realities are present realities (features of some actual reality). But theyāre āopenā to becoming this or that. The question is what āthisā and āthatā refer to. To what do these dispositional realities and tendencies inherent in any reality tend? Well, they tend to possibilities no doubt. And possibilities of course will always outnumber actualities. One actuality may face more than one possibility with regard to its future becoming.
HB: Future truths cannot be grounded and past truths may be currently grounded or the grounds of their truth may have passed ‘out of scope’?
Tom: As a presentist Iād ground all propositional truth in the present, including past- and future-tense propositions. Alan has a good paper on this on his site.
————–
Don: But why think that there exists a “set of truths”?
Tom: There are truths. And if there are truths, we can conceive of them in sets. By āsetā I just mean an abstract way of referring to a class or category of somethingācars, people, animals, rocksā¦or propositions. We donāt have to use the word āsetā. I could say āif the number of truths is infiniteā¦ā instead of āif the set of truths is infinite….ā Weāre still talking about one sort of thing and how many of them there are, right?
Don: Furthermore, it doesn’t seem to be necessary that God’s knowledge be comprised of propositionally distinct truths; it could be intuitively non-propositionalā¦
Tom: I get the distinction between intuitive vs discursive knowledge, but I donāt understand knowledge of ‘a truth’ that is not propositional. Are you thinking that knowledge being intuitive counts against its being propositional? I donāt see the necessary connection there. May one not intuitively know the truth value of propositions? If so, then why think knowledge is non-propositional by virtue of being intuitive?
Would you say Godās knowledge is not at all propositional? Or that itās not necessarily propositional but may become propositional if God chooses to produce propositions from this intuitive ‘stuff’?
Don: ā¦this is also the view that Craig holds in regards to God’s knowledge, so it is compatible with his kalam cosmological argument.
Tom: Iāve read Craig (not this title though). But this is puzzling, because his Molinist argument rests on the timeless truth of propositions about what agents freely do in this or that situation. God determines which world to create based on such truths. So it seems strange for him to say Godās knowledge isnāt propositional.
I appreciate Alstonās comments, and Iām still thinking on this. Iām inclined to view Godās knowledge as intuitive as well. I just donāt see why this rules out the knowledge being propositional. That is, I donāt see the reason for having to move from āintuitiveā to ānon-propositional.ā
Tom
HB and Don, check this argument out: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/eric_sotnak/kalam.html
Tom
Don, re: Cantor’s problem. It’s always seemed to me that his is just a version of several self-referential paradoxes and not really problematic.
Tom
Tom: I donāt see how knowledge of the truth āthe dice might turn up six on the next rollā stating a logically possible future doesnāt count as discrete and discriminatory knowledge. Itās seems as discrete as any other truth. And it discriminates with regard to the other possible futures/rolls.
HammsBear: The next die roll WILL BE five is definite. The next die roll MIGHT be five is indefinite, imho.
It’s discrete for sure but combined with:
the next die roll MIGHT be one and
the next die roll MIGHT be two and
the next die roll MIGHT be three and
the next die roll MIGHT be four and
the next die roll MIGHT be six
doesn’t seem very discrete, imho.
Tom: Well, if actuality delimits possibility, then among realityās attributes are dispositions or tendencies to become this or that in the future. Those dispositional realities are present realities (features of some actual reality). But theyāre āopenā to becoming this or that.
HammsBear: Dispositional realities work only for present or near present events, imho. ‘I may do this in the future’ is a lot different from ‘I may have a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson who does this in the future’. Maybe my family line dies out half way there.
Do you differentiate between possibilities that are closer temporally than those that aren’t?
for example:
Mexico City MIGHT have an NFL team by 2020.
A subterranean city off the coast of Namibia MIGHT invent a game involving riding dolphins circa 3030.
tom: Don, re: Cantor’s problem. It’s always seemed to me that his is just a version of several self-referential paradoxes and not really problematic.
HammsBear: I think most paradoxes (paradoxi?) melt away once you use a meta-language to describe them.
tom: HB and Don, check this argument out: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/eric_sotnak/kalam.html
HammsBear: Thanx for that link. don jr’s quote of Alston didn’t make sense to me and I was going to ask him how you would verify you had an actual infinite set without being able to iterate through the set. The infidels paper gave a similar response.
HammsBear, I was objecting to Tom’s prior suggestion that in order for action to take place time needs to be present prior to the action (a “prerequisite” as he put it). The creation of time is an action, or, if you don’t like that terminology, time was created (through the first action). Therefore, the conclusion from the prior assumption would be that time cannot be created, nor have a beginning, because the creation of time (since it would be an action) requires the preexistence of time.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time right now to respond to anything else (I will later though), but the links I provided in my last comment explain why there can’t actually be a set of all truths.
(Aside: HammsBear, the quote I gave was from Craig, not Alston. It appears in the link that Tom cited as well.)
don jr: Therefore, the conclusion from the prior assumption would be that time cannot be created, nor have a beginning,
HammsBear: I wholeheartedly agree, ‘time’ cannot be created, nor have a beginning.
‘Time’ is not an object, it is neither created nor destroyed. It’s a description of the relationship between states.
Same with ‘personal’. It’s just a description of how God inter-relates.
Same with ‘love’. It just describes how He relates.
I find this all baffling, as usual. One of the premisses in the previous post was
2. But it is impossible to sequentially traverse an actually infinite collection by a series of finite steps.
Yes, surely. Indeed, you can cross out ‘sequentially’ and ‘actually’ and still that is true. One cannot make a finite
number of ‘steps’through any kind of infinite collection and step on every member of the collection. That’s built into
the meanings of ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’. So I don’t see the point of arguing for this premiss.
The one that seems to be doing the work is the assumption that an ‘actually’ infinite collection of things is
impossible. Why is that? Perhaps I missed Craig’s argument about this, but most mathematicians would disagree.
Also, note that we could assert a ‘potentially’ infinite number of points in time by saying that for every time in
the past, there was a previous time. Does Craig or anyone object to this idea?
On the traversal argument itself, this seems to involve one of the classic petitios against infinite series. Sure,
we cannot traverse an infinite period of traversal implies a starting and stopping point. But the notion of a
starting and stopping point is built into the notion of a finite series in the first place (Zorn’s lemma captures this,
or something like it).
D
HammsBear, that conclusion (“time can’t be created, nor have a beginning”) only follows given the prior assumption, which, I would argue, is a faulty assumption. Not only does that conclusion maintain that time can’t be created or have a beginning, it maintains that it can’t possibly be finite, not exist, and the like (depending on what sort of terminology you’re comfortable with). Philosophical arguments, however, such as Craig’s, strongly dispute that conclusion, as does scientific evidence, which also tends to suggest that time did have a beginning. Moreover, there’s no reason to regard the required assumption as true, and plenty reason to regard it as false (as I suggested in the last paragraph of my first post).
If time is a relation between states, then without the required (temporal) relations time doesn’t exist, just as without physical relations space doesn’t exist. (Note: In attempting to prove that time need exist, the assumption that temporal relations need exist just begs the question.) Whether you want to refer to time as a relation (which I would probably agree with) or an object (which I wouldn’t call it, nor ever referred to it as such) is really a minor detail. Saying that time was created is just a manner of speaking; it’s simply a way of saying that time is finite, had a beginning, began to exist, etc. When I (or anyone else for that matter) says that time was “created,” I’m not suggesting that some being when into a lab, finagled with a few test tubes, and eventually constructed an object we now refer to as time.
don jr, when there are no states, then obviously relationships between those states don’t “exist” either. So in the absence of God and anything else, there is no ‘temporal’ relationships, either.
That’s what I said, HammsBear. But I don’t see why you say in the absence of God too. It’s just in the absence of temporal relations that time doesn’t exist. Similarly, it’s not necessary that God (or anything not essentially spatial) cease to exist in the absence of space.
HammsBear: I was objecting to Tom’s prior suggestion that in order for action to take place time needs to be present prior to the action (a “prerequisite” as he put it). The creation of time is an action, or, if you don’t like that terminology, time was created (through the first action).
Tom: If it’s true that time is the requisite context or medium for any cause/effect event, then it would follow that the ‘creation of time’ is an impossibility. I’m not sure what the truth is. I’m just saying that offering the creation of time as an objection doesn’t get us much. How do you know time was created? The only possible evidence I can see is this whole impossibility of an actual infinite. Perhaps. But my intuitions (maybe it’s more than that but I don’t know) tell me the creation of time is just as nonesensical a notion as a temporally infinite past. So I’m screwed either way. I just don’t know how to adjudicate between the two poisons of a temporally eternal past and the apparently incoherent notion of the very creation of time. I don’t find the latter any more meaningful than the former. It’s all nonesense to me.
Tom
Tom, that statement you quoted was mine, not HammsBear’s. In the original comment I was addressing that remark to HammsBear. I did not mean to suggest that he said it.