- Jason
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
I agree with DanielCC comments but wanted to add something related to religious experience.
Religious experiences for the most part are personal ones and people can say that they are subjective, which is why they are something that I personally do not bring into a conversation. I can tell you that I have had 3 major life altering religious experiences but they only happened after I gave my life to Jesus not before. They facilitated me to strengthen my faith not to begin it. I only share these experiences with people of christian faith and those who know my background since these experiences are heavily intertwined into my personal life. I think that they would have little to no impact on people who do not already have faith in Jesus Christ.
- KevinScharp
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
DanielCC wrote:
How many of you are interested in / moved by the "no actual infinite" considerations that are often part of defending versions of the cosmological argument?
No Actual Infinite (or, to go for a weaker thesis, No Actually Instantiated Infinite) is only relevant in the case of the Kalam Cosmological Argument though.
What I will say as an aside about the Kalam Argument is I think one would have an easier time defending the use of Hilbert's Hotel scenarios as intuitive arguments against such an infinite from a B-Theoretical standpoint, on such there may be said to be a much closer analogy between Time and Space. It's amusing how Craig himself was forced to admit the Kalam Argument could be run on a B-Theory (despite famously saying it couldn't in one of his earlier lectures mainly because of his dislike for B-Theories).
Agreed on Kalam -- I loved that back-peddle too.
However, I don't think the Hilbert Hotel arguments turn on any views about space or time, but I could easily be wrong about that. I've thought a bit about how to reformulate the entire argument using transfinite set theory instead of the actual/potential infinite concepts. I view the latter as equivalent to causation but worse. The reformulation uses 'there is a collection of actual items (or items belonging to the actual world) that has cardinality at least aleph0' instead of 'there is an actual infinite'. I think once one reformulates the argument, it turns on various metaphysical assumptions -- including assumptions about mereology (i.e., parts / wholes). I should say that it was in conversations with a graduate student at OSU that prompted me to think about it this way.
- KevinScharp
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
I agree with DanielCC comments but wanted to add something related to religious experience.
Religious experiences for the most part are personal ones and people can say that they are subjective, which is why they are something that I personally do not bring into a conversation. I can tell you that I have had 3 major life altering religious experiences but they only happened after I gave my life to Jesus not before. They facilitated me to strengthen my faith not to begin it. I only share these experiences with people of christian faith and those who know my background since these experiences are heavily intertwined into my personal life. I think that they would have little to no impact on people who do not already have faith in Jesus Christ.
Thanks for this -- I find that really interesting and insightful. I'm sad I can't hear about the experiences, but I certainly understand keeping things private. I do want to know whether you, now, consider the experiences to be first in terms of justification for your belief that God exists. That is, if you come to the conclusion that all the arguments for the existence of God are no good at all, then would you still believe based on your experience? And could you ever conceive of anything that would convince you that your religious experiences were not veridical? Could anything ever make you even doubt them?
- KevinScharp
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
Our intuitions about them can easily be led astray
True, but we can counter that with good philosophy, metaphysics and good old common sense
for example, that causation is transitive—if a causes b and b causes c then a causes c. But it’s easy to come up with counterexamples to this—a hiker sees a boulder bouncing toward her and ducks to avoid it. The threat of the boulder caused her to duck and her ducking caused her to survive but the threat of the boulder didn’t cause her to survive
Here I would like to say that in giving the hiker example all you did was show that causation is not transitive in all cases. I agree that transitive causation may seem intuitive but we have other principles (e.g act and potency) that can help guide us in the right direction. The reason why transitive causation does not work in the hiker example is because the boulder cannot actualize any potential that it possesses to cause the hiker to survive. So in order for A causes B and B causes C then A causes C to be true then A must possess the potential at least that it can “transfer” to C.
Right, but my point was that one might be pretty certain that causation is transitive even after thinking about it for a while by considering the matter apriori -- that is by reasoning with principles that seem to be constitutive of causation. That causation is transitive is a principle like this as are principles used in the cosmological arguments (note that Craig mentioned in his most recent Defenders podcast that his confidence level in the latter is 100%). I'm saying that even if some principle is constitutive of causation, it can turn out to be false. Ex: transitivity. The principle of causality is too.
Moreover, there are other principles about causation that seem to go against this argument—causes are governed by natural laws, causes and effects are events, causes precede their effects. None of these is compatible with God’s agency causing the universe.
I do not see how you can say that natural laws or events are not compatible with God causing the universe. What other explanation do you have for it?
What I'm saying is that there are other very plausible sounding principles of causation like the following:
1. If X causes Y, then there is a natural law that covers this causal relation.
2. If X causes Y, then X and Y are events.
3. If X causes Y, then X precedes Y.
If any of these are true, then God didn't cause the universe to come into existence. So one can use apriori principles to defend cosmological conclusions and one can use them to attack cosmological conclusions. Those of us who think that the concept of causation is defective or problematic aren't surprised by this. The apriori principles for causation are incompatible with one another. As such, one has to take care in using outside normal situations. And the cosmological argument's setting is way outside normal situations.
Causation is not a conceptual tool of advanced scientific theories. For example, in the statement of Quantum Mechanics, the word ‘cause’ doesn't appear at all, nor does it in the statement of general relativity. Instead, what you have is a complicated mathematical structure (e.g., an infinite dimensional, separable, Hilbert space that has inner products—this is a particular kind of object commonly studied in the branch of mathematics called abstract algebra, one studies it typically as an advanced undergraduate in math or physics) and a way of interpreting it (e.g., various things that can be measured are associated with different aspects of the mathematical structure—e.g., time as an self-adjoint operator on the space). General relativity works the same way by applying tensor fields—a kind of mathematical structure studied in differential geometry, one studies it typically as a new graduate student in math or physics.
Even in general relativity and quantum field theory we are presupposing causality to work before we even begin any experiment in them. What causes spacetime to bend? what causes planets to move around their star or even a black hole? What causes virtual particles to come into and out of existence? All we are doing in any empirical science inquiry is to find out how things are working (i.e. processes used) and ultimately see what is “causing” them to work the way they do. So causality is of utmost importance.
Yes, you're right that you can formulate some of these issues in terms of cause and effect as you illustrate nicely. However, this terminology is optional. The theories aren't formulated using cause and effect vocabulary. And that's my point.
Very roughly, scientists observe the world, feed their measurements into a mathematical model, use the model to calculate predictions and then try to test those predictions. Using the concept of causation need not come into it.
Scientists observe the world which causes them to feed their measurements into a mathematical model which causes the model to calculate predictions which in turn causes scientists to test those predictions. I do not see how causation does not come into it.
Causation need not come into it because the scientific theories aren't formulated using cause and effect. You don't have to use these concepts to use these theories in scientific practice.
- KevinScharp
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
Instead, the point is that the concept of causation is dispensable in mature sciences that rely heavily on mathematical models. Using causes to make predictions turns out to be vastly less precise than using mathematical models. Remember, causal concepts by themselves provide much in the way of understanding or predictive power. Cause and effect aren’t scientific concepts. Moreover, causation isn’t just dispensable, it’s easy to show that using it all to reason about certain aspects of scientific theories leads one into contradictions. Causation, it turns out is part of a way of thinking about the world that dominated for a long time, but is now slowly being replaced by much more precise ways of thinking about the world.
The cause of how mathematical models even work is because mathematics emulates nature astoundingly and the effect of that is that it can make predictions. The inputs to these mathematical models become the cause of the predictions we make, because if we do not cause those inputs we will not be able to make the predictions. Ultimately these mathematical models (however accurately) are predicting either the cause or causes of what is occurring or predicting the effect(s) of a cause or causes based upon the measurements. That is what empirical science inquiry is all about.
“If a cause is sufficient to produce its effect, then if the cause is there, the effect must be there, too. For example, the cause of water’s freezing is the temperature’s being below 0 degrees Celsius. If the temperature has been below 0 degrees from eternity, then any water around would be frozen from eternity.” This is a perfect example of the imprecision of using the concepts of cause and effect to try to reason about the existence of anything much less gods or Christianity. The cause of water’s freezing is the temperature being below 0 degrees C. If a cause is sufficient to produce its effect then if the cause is there, the effect must be there. But anyone who takes an intro to chemistry class knows that water can be below 0 degrees C and still be water. In fact you can take liquid water down below -50C if you don’t allow crystals to form. You can also experience this supercooled water in the form of freezing rain. So although you might all nod your head and say “yeah, that sounds really obvious” when asked if having a temperature below 0C is the case of water’s freezing, it isn’t true. Or maybe it is true that that’s part of a cause or whatever
Firstly, as far as I know, WLC is not even talking about Christianity in the Kalam cosmological argument, so lets get that out of the way. That is not the purpose of the argument at all. The purpose of the argument is to show a First Cause who is timeless, spaceless, All Intelligent, All Powerful, Creator of the universe (if you do not want to call this God then that is another discussion altogether). Also as far as I can tell WLC is not even using science for his first premise, he is using science only to support his second premise. By the way we here are interested mostly in Aquinas five ways arguments with the second way (causation of existence) argument is something relevant to our discussion here.
Secondly, the cause of water freezing is a combination of temperature and pressure but when I am talking generally I can say as an example that the cause of water freezing is temperature below 0 degrees and people will understand the meaning behind it but even in a scientific setting people will generally say the same pre-supposing the cause of pressure as being part of it. That is just the way people communicate, I do not want to spend time explaining people the exact science behind water freezing when I am talking about causality in general.
Thirdly, I do not think anyone is implying in any way that causality is totally deterministic. Contingent things in the world can be non-deterministic and that is fully compatible with causality.
The point is that causal talk is not very precise and totally inadequate for the uses of science, which is ultimately measured by predictive success.
Yeah, again the effect of predictive success is on the cause of the input in the mathematical model and that cause will only be imprecise and totally inadequate if the cause of the measurements were imprecise and inadequate.
Yes, you can formulate some of what happens in science in terms of cause and effect. I agree with you and I perhaps that might be very important for understanding various aspects of scientific practice. However, that is compatible with my main claim: cause and effect are not used to formulate many scientific theories -- especially those used to do cosmology, which is the topic of the cosmological argument.
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
What I'm saying is that there are other very plausible sounding principles of causation like the following:
1. If X causes Y, then there is a natural law that covers this causal relation.
2. If X causes Y, then X and Y are events.
3. If X causes Y, then X precedes Y.
One use these an alleged contradiction in these three principles to attack causal versions of the Cosmological Argument, but few defenders of that argument, and maybe even realists about causation as a whole would accept them. Point 2, although one WLC would be willing to endorse for the sake of the argument, would be opposed by those who hold an Agent/Substance as opposed to Event view of causation. Point 3 would be denied by virtually all defenders of the Cosmological Argument as well as others (Kant and perhaps Armstrong come to mind).
In both cases these stances are not motivated by independent metaphysical reasons and not a priori commitments to theism. In order to make the above objection stick the critic is going to have to turn his fire on these positions and their metaphysical backdrop itself.
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- KevinScharp
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
What I'm saying is that there are other very plausible sounding principles of causation like the following:
1. If X causes Y, then there is a natural law that covers this causal relation.
2. If X causes Y, then X and Y are events.
3. If X causes Y, then X precedes Y.One use these an alleged contradiction in these three principles to attack causal versions of the Cosmological Argument, but few defenders of that argument, and maybe even realists about causation as a whole would accept them. Point 2, although one WLC would be willing to endorse for the sake of the argument, would be opposed by those who hold an Agent/Substance as opposed to Event view of causation. Point 3 would be denied by virtually all defenders of the Cosmological Argument as well as others (Kant and perhaps Armstrong come to mind).
In both cases these stances are not motivated by independent metaphysical reasons and not a priori commitments to theism. In order to make the above objection stick the critic is going to have to turn his fire on these positions and their metaphysical backdrop itself.
I don't think so. You're missing my point -- I agree that defenders of cosmological arguments will tend to reject principles 1 2 and 3 as long as they realize the inconsistency. My point, however, is that these principles have the same status as the principle of causality that cosmological arguments use. They're all equally plausible and arguably constitutive of the concept of causation. And that undermines the justification for the principle of causality in cosmological arguments.
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
What I'm saying is that there are other very plausible sounding principles of causation like the following:
1. If X causes Y, then there is a natural law that covers this causal relation.
2. If X causes Y, then X and Y are events.
3. If X causes Y, then X precedes Y.One use these an alleged contradiction in these three principles to attack causal versions of the Cosmological Argument, but few defenders of that argument, and maybe even realists about causation as a whole would accept them. Point 2, although one WLC would be willing to endorse for the sake of the argument, would be opposed by those who hold an Agent/Substance as opposed to Event view of causation. Point 3 would be denied by virtually all defenders of the Cosmological Argument as well as others (Kant and perhaps Armstrong come to mind).
In both cases these stances are not motivated by independent metaphysical reasons and not a priori commitments to theism. In order to make the above objection stick the critic is going to have to turn his fire on these positions and their metaphysical backdrop itself.I don't think so. You're missing my point -- I agree that defenders of cosmological arguments will tend to reject principles 1 2 and 3 as long as they realize the inconsistency. My point, however, is that these principles have the same status as the principle of causality that cosmological arguments use. They're all equally plausible and arguably constitutive of the concept of causation. And that undermines the justification for the principle of causality in cosmological arguments.
But neither the CA defender nor many realist causation theorists will accept they're at all plausible; in fact they will claim we have strong reasons to think them all false.
If you don’t mind me saying you seem to be working under the assumption that defenders of the CA will operate along the lines of WLC’s modus operandi in debates, that is to set forth a number of points as plausible e.g. acceptable to people with a wide range of differing metaphysical commitment, to which you will response that those points given above are just as plausible (at which point in a debate scenario the onus would shift to him to justify why his points are stronger).
That isn’t what most theistic metaphysicians, certainly not those from the older traditions, will do though. They will enter the dispute* with (according to them) strong independent reasons why their theory of causation is correct. If one wants to undermine the CA one has to challenge their arguments for the other aspects of their metaphysics e.g. their theory of causation, on which it depends.
*I’m using dispute as a neutral way of framing ‘debate’ in order to avoid confusion with debate as in timed debate scenarios of the kind WLC specialises in
- Due_Kindheartedness
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
Right, but my point was that one might be pretty certain that causation is transitive even after thinking about it for a while by considering the matter apriori -- that is by reasoning with principles that seem to be constitutive of causation. That causation is transitive is a principle like this as are principles used in the cosmological arguments (note that Craig mentioned in his most recent Defenders podcast that his confidence level in the latter is 100%). I'm saying that even if some principle is constitutive of causation, it can turn out to be false. Ex: transitivity. The principle of causality is too.
That goes for everything you're writing too. Unless you have a paper showing your arguments in computer-verifiable proof form, you're relying on intuition. Even Euclid reasoned with intuition, and it took over 1,900 years for others to figure out that the Axiom of Pasch was needed to formalize Euclidean geometry (meaning that he made a leap of logic in his proofs).
- Jason
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
Thanks for this -- I find that really interesting and insightful. I'm sad I can't hear about the experiences, but I certainly understand keeping things private. I do want to know whether you, now, consider the experiences to be first in terms of justification for your belief that God exists. That is, if you come to the conclusion that all the arguments for the existence of God are no good at all, then would you still believe based on your experience? And could you ever conceive of anything that would convince you that your religious experiences were not veridical? Could anything ever make you even doubt them?
No I do not consider them as first to justify belief in God, they are totally subjective at least in my case. As I said before they strengthened my faith in Jesus and hence in God. I already had justifications for faith in God years before I had my first experience. I, at least, have never seen nor heard of anyone, who just started to believe in God after only hearing stories about religious experiences. They normally are wrestling with some things for a while before they start to believe in God and religious experiences are only a small part of that process.
Yes, you're right that you can formulate some of these issues in terms of cause and effect as you illustrate nicely. However, this terminology is optional. The theories aren't formulated using cause and effect vocabulary. And that's my point.
Causation need not come into it because the scientific theories aren't formulated using cause and effect. You don't have to use these concepts to use these theories in scientific practice.
Yes, you can formulate some of what happens in science in terms of cause and effect. I agree with you and I perhaps that might be very important for understanding various aspects of scientific practice. However, that is compatible with my main claim: cause and effect are not used to formulate many scientific theories -- especially those used to do cosmology, which is the topic of the cosmological argument.
Just to answer all of these together, my point is not that the theories will contain cause and effect but that the theories pre-suppose cause and effect in them. There is no need to include everything you pre-suppose in the first place to build a theory.
As an example I will like to take something that you mentioned to Tomislav as follows.
First, Kinsler is not saying that causality is ubiquitous in physics -- in fact, he gives examples of physical theories that have no causal interpretation at all (F=ma is his example).
My physics is a little rusty (feel free to correct me if I am wrong) but F=ma shows the relationship with force(s), mass and acceleration but we could not even come to this conclusion if we did not pre-suppose cause and effect in it i.e. The force(s) are causing the mass to accelerate, which means that the relationship between force(s), mass and acceleration can only be empirically verified when there are force or forces (cause or causes) acting upon a mass whose effect is acceleration. So yes if you look at the formula as a stand alone there is no cause or effect but you need to look at what is being pre-supposed into it to see causality.