William Lane Craig argues that the universe (and time with it) began to exist, and he marshals several arguments to that end. Immanuel Kant, however, contends that the question of whether time began or not cannot be answered. He tries to show this by arguing both sides of the question:<\/p>\n
Part I: Time Has a Beginning<\/u><\/span>
1. If there is no beginning of time, then at any given moment an actually infinite series of successive states would have elapsed. (premise)
2. But it is impossible for an actually infinite series of successive states to elapse. (premise)
3. Hence, there must be a beginning of time. (from 1 & 2)<\/p>\nPart II: Time Has No Beginning<\/u><\/span>
4. It is impossible for anything to begin without an elapse of time. (premise)
5. Hence, if time began, then there would have to be a time before time. (from 4)
6. But it is impossible for there to be a time before time. (premise)
7. Hence, it is impossible for there to be a beginning of time. (from 5 & 6)
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nKant’s first argument parallels one of Craig’s arguments for the beginning of the universe. The second argument results in the opposite conclusion. Kant himself thought that these two arguments were equally good, and, therefore, that the question of the beginning of time was beyond the bounds of human reason.<\/p>\n
Is Kant right that these arguments are equally good? Or are they equally bad? Can Craig consistently defend the first argument while rejecting the second? If so, how might he be able to pull that off? Or does the second argument refute the kalam?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
William Lane Craig argues that the universe (and time with it) began to exist, and he marshals several arguments to that end. Immanuel Kant, however, contends that the question of whether time began or not cannot be answered. He tries to show this by arguing both sides of the question: Part I: Time Has a\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}