The Sci-Phi Show: Hourglass Universe vs The Kalam Argument

[@ellyam991]

This video felt like a mental workout in a good sense. I'll have to do 10 more reps of it before understanding everything that was said

[@daniellinford9643]

I very highly recommend reading David Albert's book Time and Chance, as well as Huw Price and Richard Corry's anthology Causation, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited.

[@PhilHalper1]

glad you liked it , and hope repeated views will be helpful

[@dohpam1ne]

The Kalam is a fascinating argument- not because it's remotely compelling, but because it provides a great opportunity for physicists to explain exactly how laypeople have wildly misunderstood what physics means by a "beginning".

[@martinklein5663]

I what to see Dan Linford debating Kalam with WLC on Capturing Christianity...that would be interesting

[@CosmoPhiloPharmaco]

Very nice! Thanks for all participants for sharing their time and knowledge with us for free!

[@PhilHalper1]

you are welcome, thanks for your comment

[@andystewart9701]

Fascinating discussion! This is a great series. Thank you for such great content!

[@PhilHalper1]

you are welcome

[@dr.h8r]

This series is sweet as tbf, keep up the good work 👍

[@PhilHalper1]

thanks

[@0The0Web0]

Alex and Dan again, great. Always enjoyable and very interesting to follow their explanations and illustrations

[@PhilHalper1]

thanks

[@daniellinford9643]

We’re the co-hosts on this series! So you’ll see a lot of us in the future. :)

[@0The0Web0]

@@daniellinford9643 I'll be back 😊👍

[@daniellinford9643]

@@0The0Web0 Glad to hear it!

[@sussekind9717]

I'm chomping at the bit with anticipation!

[@PhilHalper1]

thanks

[@graladue]

Kalaam is necessarily circular. It *starts* with "All things that began to exist must have a cause" which is asserting in the answer to the question it is asking.

[@daniellinford9643]

That's not the first premise. The first premise states that anything that begins to exist has a cause. The first premise, alone, does not entail that the universe began to exist. So, the Kalam is not circular. Nonetheless, the Kalam is question begging -- in the sense that the argument assumes a controversial view about causation that is not necessarily shared by those who deny the argument's conclusion.

[@graladue]

@@daniellinford9643 that’s a weak distinction for Kalaam to hang its hat on. It is asking “Did the universe have a cause?”, then begins with the first statement. The problem is there is no way to *demonstrate* that all things *within* the universe have an actual cause. Worse, we can’t then demonstrate that what applies to things *within the universe* also applies to the universe that contains them, and that long before we get to whether the universe has a beginning. At best it is an assertion that it answers the question when it does not do so.

[@graladue]

And all this before we get to the reality that we *have never seen anything begin to exist* . We have *only* ever observed transformations of existent things into *other existent things* . So the best that Kalaam could actually manage to extrapolate (incorrectly) is that the universe must therefore *also* be a transformation from a previously existent thing.

[@siviwejavu8827]

Good discussion. Always enjoy Alex, such a lucid thinker.

[@PhilHalper1]

thanks

[@Ryba125]

Perfect guests!

[@PhilHalper1]

thanks

[@Ryba125]

@@PhilHalper1 It's nice to see some heavyweight giving new points, will you make a video on the argument from dependence or related dawah arguments?

[@PhilHalper1]

@@Ryba125 when you saw arguments from dependence, do you mean like contingency arguments?

[@Ryba125]

@@PhilHalper1 Somewhat, but more focused on the chain that compose everyday objects (crops need sun, sun need hydrogen, hydrogen need quarks...) and the causes of the limits (why something is 1cm and red and not 5cm and blue). They usually posit [favorite god]'s mind as the source and definer.

[@PhilHalper1]

@@Ryba125 thanks , will look into that . MAybe related to Dan boks on existential inertia

[@ryancounts8131]

Just stumbled onto your channel Phil. I knew I'd enjoy Alex's insight about the subject, Dan discussing all the possible theories was enlightening as well. Great discussion. Not that I fully understand the material. I was wondering why most philosophy which approaches the Kalam discusses it in a manner of cause and effect instead of allowance and imitations? Alex briefly brought this up. Hopefully I can map this out coherently. If there wasn't anything except that which is logically necessary, than there would be a finite set of limitations about what could happen, spontainiously or not. With every thing that comes into existence would than set more of a limitation on what can happen. I'm thinking of this problem not that the universe was caused, but there weren't limitations to prevent it. I open this to anyone who feels they have a stable grasp on the topic and is open to helping me understand. Am splitting hairs here? Am I looking at this like the glass is either half full or empty, or is there any legitimacy in my question.

[@PhilHalper1]

Thanks for your comment and I hope you like the rest of the content on this channel. Alex, Dan and I just recorded a new show which will be released this week, so look out for that. I think the language of cause and effect is traditional in philosophy and is familiar to most people, and this is why it's deployed. Just my take.

[@ryancounts8131]

@@PhilHalper1 I'm binging your channel so I'll definitely keep a watchful eye for your new content.

[@PhilHalper1]

@@ryancounts8131 thanks and enjoy

[@claudiaarjangi4914]

Coolest conversation, & coolest vids. 😁 🤔 I've always wondered if forward time, "just happened" to "fall" forward, when the very first movement "fell" in this particular direction, by random chance. So that pushed each subsequent movement/ interaction along, all pushing forward in time. So , if you could have a "place" where no interactions happened for a "while", ( in the far, ALMOST completely homogenous, future ), the direction of time, by chance, might "fall" either way, "forward", from there. ( Even “overwriting“ all of our current spacetime & everything.) But probably not "just happening" in the "middle" of an already directioned universe. 😁🌏☮️

[@PhilHalper1]

thanks

[@dearthfunk9604]

Awesome! great Vid

[@PhilHalper1]

thanks

[@HarryNicNicholas]

i think you bring home the point that you guys and science in general are looking at the situation and trying to understand it's workings, whereas craig is starting with god and trying to explain how "god did it". and craig is making up all the attributes that his god requires, craig hasn't had a talk with god and got this stuff first hand, also even if you were omniscient yourself, how would you test someone (god) else? another complicated show, well done.

[@PhilHalper1]

thanks

[@frankshifreen]

always great stuff from Phil Halper

[@quantenmoi]

As a side note, a 400lb (180kg) raging tiger popping into existence represents 3793 x 1-megaton hydrogen bombs worth of the rest energy that would need to be accounted for somehow. Well, if we assume the air transforms into the tiger rather than being displaced, we can shave off almost 4 hydrogen bombs. However, a little shock wave from displaced air would be the least of our worries. 😂

[@DeconvertedMan]

One minor suggestion is to put the names of who is talking under each person because I forgot who is who. The person on the far left however speaks like a teacher who knows his stuff and is easy to follow.

[@PhilHalper1]

thanks

[@daniellinford9643]

I’m on the far left. Alex is in the middle. Phil is on the right.

[@DeconvertedMan]

@@daniellinford9643 You spoke well. :) thanks! Also oh no politics...! ... get it cuss far left... I'll be over here if you need anything... :D

[@daniellinford9643]

@@DeconvertedMan Glad you enjoyed it!

[@magister.mortran]

Time results from quantum mechanics. Isn't this obvious? If the world has a specific state, it is the past; if it is a superposition of many possible states, it is the future. And the transition between both is the present.

[@PhilHalper1]

there are a diversity of views about this in physics as Im aware

[@daniellinford9643]

Right, some people have proposed that the direction of time has an explanation in terms of wavefunction collapse. David Albert -- who introduced the Mentaculus -- discusses that view in the same book where he discusses the Mentaculus, i.e., Time and Chance. Albert finds the GRW interpretation -- on which there is wavefunction collapse -- an appealing view. I don't. In any case, if the direction of time does have a reductive explanation, perhaps in terms of quantum mechanics, then we're back on the first horn of the Interface Dilemma. If the direction of time does not have a reductive explanation, but somehow explains a distinction needed for quantum mechanics, then we're on the second horn of the dilemma.

[@quantenmoi]

The problem with this view is every “specific state” is a superposition as well. Take photon absorption in a double-slit experiment. The photon is emitted from a specific atom and then is in a superposition of many states between the source, slits, and detector. It transfers its energy to a specific electron in a specific atom in the detector. However, both the electron and the atom have wavefunctions that are themselves superpositions of various states. The same was true for the atom that emitted the photon in the first place. In fact, there is no first place. You can never find a “specific state” that definitively represents any past state, or future state for that matter.

[@daniellinford9643]

@@quantenmoi You are, of course, right, but I think what they have in mind is the idea that the wavefunction collapses to an eigenstate in some preferred basis. Of course, the problem is then that (1) it’s controversial whether there are such collapses and (2) there’s no reason to think that there is a preferred basis.

[@quantenmoi]

@@daniellinford9643 Hi Dan, thanks for your reply! I might be missing a crucial point here, but I don't see how a wavefunction collapse model naturally results in asymmetry. Each step in my example would have a wavefunction collapse. The electron wavefunction collapses upon emission and the photon wavefunction collapses upon absorption. But the same emitter atom could just as well absorb the photon. So, it seems that any collapse "mechanism" should also be entirely reversible. The only way I can imagine the process being irreversible is if, say, the detector side has a much deeper reservoir of available states than the emitter side. In other words, it has a much higher probability of the particle wavefunction decohering. Hence, we're back to entropy explaining the arrow of time. No?

[@HarryNicNicholas]

44:20 surely raging tigers DO pop into existence all the time, but, some assembly is required. the "ingredients" pop into and out of existence, just not in the right place or time. 46:00 interesting cos i have thought this about time travel, if you move to a different time, what happens to the space you now occupy, the universe had a certain mass, now it has that mass plus your mass - surely this is some impediment to time travel? and there is also a "hole" where you were. lol, i just had the thought, dark matter is time travelers.

[@PhilHalper1]

good points

[@paigemcloughlin4905]

as someone mildly invested in a deity that would be an argument I would use. Interesting.

[@paigemcloughlin4905]

I mean could it be a little like Godel building an axiomatic system based on zero and then successors to get the naturals and then generate the rest of mathematics in the same way set theory generates it. I dunno I am metaphorically speaking.

[@paigemcloughlin4905]

Oh wow the mentaculus I remember David Albert talking about this.

[@daniellinford9643]

Sorry, what argument are you referring to?

[@paigemcloughlin4905]

@@daniellinford9643 just a constructivist argument the cosmological start of the big bang was like the empty set in like a von Neumann construction in set theory. I believe what I believe but I find this topic fascinating.

[@paigemcloughlin4905]

I dunno I am just spitballing ideas

[@DeconvertedMan]

I had watched the world science video where they talked about the idea of "hourglass universe". It is a pretty cool idea. The bottom line for the KCA is that it makes the fallacy of composition. The idea of "start" also is not really right as far as I understand it - that is, there is no time before there was a universe - something that is really hard for me to wrap my head around. I'm wondering if anyone has a computer program of some sort that shows what we know about the universe unfolding and that you could put in ideas to see how they would play out - or is there to many unknowns to be able to make such a simulation? (or do we have way to much data to put into such a simulation?) such a thing would let us see what happens if you change the "tuned" constraints that people mention (electron charge, gravitational constant). Then it would play out in some other way. My guess is that the cosmologists use math that is way beyond me to do the models that are talked about when they mention models of the universe - in my mind I hear "models" and think of some computer simulation. :D One problem that I think we are not addressing is the darn heat death of the universe, we only have a trillion+++ years to figure that out, what's the hold up? ;)

[@PhilHalper1]

do you have a link to that World Science Video? don't recall them doing it . Poeple have simulated the evolution in certna schemes like LQC and they find a bounce.

[@daniellinford9643]

In this context, a model is a mathematical model. Of course, a mathematical model can also be simulated on a computer. People have created python packages for doing General Relativistic calculations, such as EinsteinPy. I don’t think there’s one user friendly program that will allow you to simulate all of the different scenarios discussed by cosmologists, but some of the very simple models (eg, de sitter space) are easy enough.

[@DeconvertedMan]

@@PhilHalper1 I think I might have been recalling "Was the Big Bang the Beginning? Reimagining Time in a Cyclic Universe"

[@DeconvertedMan]

@@daniellinford9643 I would love to see it done, visualizing these ideas would really help! Plus it would be fun if someone had a program with dials to play with I'm willing to be that fine tuning would soon go out the window with such a program :D

[@daniellinford9643]

@@DeconvertedMan I think it would likely be too big of a project to make an app that could display all of the cosmological models currently under consideration in a user friendly way. However, a more narrow project - for example, an app that displayed FLRW models in a browser window - might be easier to accomplish. I might give that some thought this weekend.

[@levi5073]

No idea what you're talking about, but please just debate craig, because then we can see what his objection is, which makes it easier for dummies like me to understand. Thanks

[@PhilHalper1]

Alex has debated Craig, Justin Brierley tried to organize a debate between Craig and myself but Craig refused. Im sure Dan would be up for it but you'd have to ask him .

[@daniellinford9643]

I haven’t been invited to debate Craig. In any case, I don’t think live debates are a good way to figure out which side has the better case. Craig can always write a reply to my articles. From what I understand, Craig is going to be replying to me in his upcoming book on systematic theology.

[@ancientfoglet9600]

So to avoid us having an infinite set of events happening we need this metaphysical god-time that is also not continuous. Assuming god-time exists we would expect that most events happen to end up in a state that has a non-rational relation to god time, which in my imagination defies the reason for having a god time in the first place. So god needs some kind of mechanism that allows him to micro-manage every quantum in the universe to stay in line - which would in turn violate special relativity, no? Sorry, I'm probably babbling nonsense, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around these topics. So in short: I would REALLY appreciate a separate episode about time theories and simultaneity and the possible implications thereof on causality.

[@dr.h8r]

I know Dan reads the comments so hopefully I can summon him with this one - I’ve recently been toying with a kind of anti-cosmological argument a long these lines: if ex nihilo creation is possible it seems the only type in town is acausal, since the negation seems to imply incoherence. We can consider nothing (the absence of anything) as either a noun or a quantifier. As a noun, this reifies nothing into something which God needs to causally act on, but a) nothing isn’t something & b) by definition there’s literally no thing/relata for God to causally effect violating the causal relation. As a quantifier, we’d have to say something like “for all things x God causes x to become y”, but since there’s no thing to quantify over instead we seem to be saying “God didn’t cause anything to become something” which trivially entails God didn’t cause anything, again violating the causal relation. Of course, when I say nothing is the absence of anything I’m excluding God & God could cause things within Godself, but clearly that’s not what’s in dispute. We want to say God engaged in some causal act with something external to God in some sense to produce everything, but I just don’t understand how that works conceptually exactly. At least with acausal ex nihilo origins we can cache that out without reifying nothing into something & it’s unproblematic quantifier-wise. I think the heart of the issue is trying to treat nothing as a causal relata, which can’t be done. Quintin Smith, Scott Clifton, & Felipe Leon make similar moves in response to the KCA so I’m piggybacking off them a bit but fleshing out the semantics more generically. If the theist accepts this objection they’d need to revise Gods relation to creation quite significantly, but that seems difficult to do without damaging cosmological arguments. They’d have to embrace either 1. a kind of parallelism where God just occasions creation with no causal import or 2. ex materia creation but then you have parsimony & interaction worries or 3. ex deos creation which seems to imply a form of pantheism/panentheism/theistic idealism all of which have their own issues. Anyway, would appreciate the engagement if he reads this.

[@daniellinford9643]

Hey there. You are right that one way to think about creating something involves creating something out of pre-existing materials. Theologians and Christian philosophers generally think that God did not create the universe out of pre-existing materials. The trouble is that - as Felipe Leon points out - it’s unclear whether it’s coherent to create without creating from pre-existing materials.

[@dr.h8r]

Yo, cheers for the reply, I guess we’re in agreement then, but i was wondering if you had any pushback in mind, because the objections I’m aware of (specifically from the likes of Craig) seem to either a) collapse into the quantifier move which entails violating the causal relation or b) just straight up burden shifting (“well, you explain acausal ex nihilo causation without reifying nothing”) which, ironically, is constitutive of the objection - and even more ironically, exactly what the proponent of the CA commits themselves to. I’m wondering if there’s any sort of quantifier-shift fallacy going on that I’m not privy to (and I’m sure if there is Craig has identified it numerous times in Alex’s blog 😉)

[@daniellinford9643]

@@dr.h8r I don’t think there’s any problem here at the purely logical level. At the purely logical level, we just have a two-place relation, ie, there exists an x and there’s a y such that x is God, y is the universe, and x created y. That is, Ex. Ey. (x=G)&(y=U)&(xCy). There’s no contradiction involved and so Craig is safe on a logical level. There is potentially a metaphysical problem for Craig here. He needs to tell us how it could be that God created the universe without using any pre-existing materials.

[@dr.h8r]

So there’s 2 things I’m driving at here; 1. The two-place relation makes sense with respect to ex materia creation but doesn’t on ex nihilo creation, and for that reason the metaphysical worry seems to imply a logical issue. It’s trying to treat nothing as a relata when it can’t be - both affirming & denying nothing as a relata. Another angle of approaching this is something like a non-reflexive relation necessarily entails at least 2 distinct relatas, but since nothing isn’t a relata, God creating ex nihilo can’t be a two-place relation which the CA-opponent is trying to affirm. I know what you’re saying is syntactically Craig is safe, but when you plug in the content of the variables the syntax seems to break down. It’s no longer a two-place relation, it’s just a single entity - but they’re committing themselves to saying it’s a single non-reflexive relation, which is nonsensical. To put it simply, it just seems straightforwardly contradictory to say God caused nothing to become something because there needs to be something for God to engage in a causal relation with to be causative at all given causation is a dependency relation. 2. When I object that “God didn’t create out of any pre-existing material (or immaterial or out of Godself) just entails God didn’t create at all”, does that entailment hold? That was the quantifier business. Because it seems like it does given considerations above & we’ve exhausted the logical space for what it could mean for God creating ex nihilo.

[@daniellinford9643]

@@dr.h8r So, I suggested that we write "God creates the universe" as Ex.Ey.(x=G)&(x=U)&(xCy). In that case, there is a two place relation, but the entities in the two-place relation are God and the universe. On Craig's view, presumably both entities exist, and so we're not trying to quantify over nothingness as if it were an existent entity. I think what you have in mind is really a three place relation expressing the idea that God created the universe from some z. If z = nothing, we end up with nonsense. The trouble here is that you are not correctly expressing the idea of creation from nothing. There does turn out to be a way of expressing "God created the universe from nothing" that avoids a purely logical issue. That is, we can say that there exists an x, there exists y, such that x is God, y is the universe, x created y, and for all z, it's not the case that y was created from z.

[@Goat-e3g]

Didnt knew phil was jewish. Great video

[@PhilHalper1]

Thanks

[@Goat-e3g]

@@PhilHalper1 phil why don't you bring Geoff penignton, he made lot of contribution to information paradox

[@duran9664]

Kalam‼️⁉️ What does it mean ⁉️

[@PhilHalper1]

Its an argument for God. It goes like this Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

[@HarryNicNicholas]

@@PhilHalper1 everything that begins to exist has cooties. god might have begun to exist, no one knows. god probably has cooties. he had no parents to tell him to avoid girls with cooties, so there's a very good chance that yes, god has cooties.

[@ThePresident001]

​@PhilHalper1 Is it really fair to call it sn argument for God? All it argues for is a first cause.

[@PhilHalper1]

@@ThePresident001 in its first stage yes, but later stages argue for God as we discussed at the beginning of the video

[@daniellinford9643]

@@ThePresident001 The Kalam argument is usually understood to have two phases. In the first phase, it’s purportedly established that the universe has a cause. In the second, it’s purportedly established that the cause of the universe is God.

[@frankshifreen]

AREN’T ENTANGLED PARTICLES NOT BOUND BY SPEED OF LIGHT

[@PhilHalper1]

Their information is bound by the speed of light

[@daniellinford9643]

Quantum entanglement does not allow for the transfer of a signal faster than light. There are some interpretations of quantum mechanics -- like Bohemian mechanics -- in which, in some sense, there is superluminal signaling, but it's not observable by humans. For a more rigorous defense of the point I made about causation and the speed of light, see my book Existential Inertia and Classical Theistic Proofs, co-authored with Joe Schmid.

[@bryandraughn9830]

The hell??

[@frankshifreen]

THE WORLD IS NOT A SYLLOGISM

[@fanghur]

Honestly, I don't think it makes any sense to say that the universe 'began to exist' even under Craig's view. To me, saying that something began to exist implies the existence of a prior time in which the thing in question did not exist. I don't even know what it would mean to say that time itself 'began to exist' since there is no reference point. I think the absolute most that we could claim is that the universe simply has an earliest moment, and it simply doesn't make any sense to ask where that first moment came from. At least, not unless our own temporal universe is in some sense imbedded within some other larger temporal context that transcends the 'boundaries' of our own universe, but Craig outright denies that is the case. So frankly, I have absolutely no idea how to even make sense of what he believes on this issue. It seems like utter gibberish to me.

[@PhilHalper1]

I think it is better to say that the universe had its earliest moment on past finite models.

[@daniellinford9643]

Craig does sometimes allow that time preceded the universe. He says that God could have initiated time with the first succession of God’s thoughts or when God created the first angels. Of course, on that view, it becomes much less clear what the significance of (for example) Big Bang cosmology is supposed to be. Swinburne and Mullins would agree with you that the beginning of the universe requires a preceding time. And they think that there was a preceding time.

[@fanghur]

@@daniellinford9643 Craig would seem to fall prey to his own arguments in that case, wouldn't he? He would still need to say that God had an 'earliest moment of time', or else he'd need to abandon his arguments against the possibility of time being past infinite. Frankly, I've always found the way that Craig describes this to be flat-out incoherent. The idea that God 'started out' in a metaphysically timeless and static state and then somehow caused himself to become temporal by creating time? The way I like to think about it is that it would be a bit like a character existing in a paused movie choosing to unpause the movie and hence themselves from within. It seems to me that if it's even possible for something timeless to become temporal, which frankly I don't think it is, then it could only be through the actions of something else that is itself already temporal. Since I don't see how it's even coherent to say that something metaphysically changeless and static could *do* anything, let alone transition itself from timeless to temporal.

[@daniellinford9643]

@@fanghur I think Craig should say that there was an earliest moment in God's life and should also deny that God existed in a timeless state somehow "before" the beginning of time. And I think you are right that God cannot move from a timeless state into a temporal state. That's just incoherent, particularly on Craig's A-theoretic understanding of time. I've written a paper on this issue that we might cover in a future episode. It's called 'A Modal Condition for the Beginning of the Universe', published in Erkenntnis in 2022.