Welcome to Tuesday Morning Apologetics (TMA). We’re talking about the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA):
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Last week I talked about a philosophical argument called, “The Impossibility of Forming an Actually Infinite Collection of Things by Adding One Member after Another”. In that post I explained why I don’t think it’s an argument that can support the second premise of the KCA. And the reason for that is because I’m convinced that the B-Theory of Time more accurately describes how the physical world is constituted.
I also mentioned last week that I still think that Traversing the Infinite poses interesting challenges to a purely Naturalistic view of reality. At this point I think it would be useful to talk a little bit about how I think Reality is constituted. Below I’ve provided a diagram to help kinda visualize what I’m talking about. This is important because these things impact how I think about these arguments.
From my perspective, reality is constituted in the following way:
God is represented by the white background which is intended to extend beyond the edges of the picture and that’s why this diagram doesn’t have a border. The ovals do not represent “holes” in the white background. The ovals are simply meant to represent things that are distinct from the white background but still rest on it. Similar to how the walls and roof of a house rest on its foundation. Or when you glue bits of colored paper onto other sheets of colored paper. They kinda... Stack. Anyway... The white background is meant to indicate that God is the ground of Reality. Not only that, but God, ultimately, is "Reality". Nothing is more "real" than God. The two ovals indicate aspects of reality that are created and sustained by God. So, they now coexist with God as part of His being. Though they are distinct from God, they have no independent existence apart from Him.
When I say "Naturalism" (or physicalism) I’m talking about a worldview which believes that the black oval (The Physical World) is all that exists. There is no Spiritual World and there is no God (at least not the kind of God in my diagram). They think that the black circle by itself fully describes reality. Personally, the reason I reject that worldview is because there's no way to physically prove that there is nothing beyond the Physical World. Science is completely useless for that. However, I think there’s good reasons to believe that the physical world is not all there is. You can read one of my reasons in this post.
And now I think it's a good time to present some more reasons.
Someone commented on my first post for the IAINT and said,
“Any finite interval contains infinitely many events, tho.”
And, personally, I have no problem with this… in principle. It could be the case that there are an actually infinite number of events between any two hours or minutes or days or months or seconds. It doesn’t matter what the units of measurement is for the finite interval. Here’s the thing, I start to have problems when it comes to the idea that there is an actual infinite AND we actually traverse it (1). To me, that’s like saying that it actually is possible to count to infinity. But that, by definition, is impossible (2).
Part of the reason for why "counting" is relevant here is based on what Time actually is. Time is change. If there is no change then there is no Time. Each event is followed by the next event and then the next event and so on in chronological order. Just like counting.
For Finite-Interval-1 there exists Event-1. And Event-1 is followed by Event-2, then Event-3, then Event-4 and then Event-5 and onward to infinity until we move on to the following finite interval (Finite-Interval-2) and then the counting repeats. But how is it possible to move on to the next Finite-Interval when there is no end/limit to the Events? The answer is,
"It's not possible."
An alternative answer I've heard is that you could simply count faster. If the Finite-Interval is one second then you simply count infinity Events per second. Easy. Unfortunately, speed provides absolutely no answer here. It's not a matter of the time segments being infinitely small and therefore they go by infinitely fast. The problem lies in the fact that there is no end to the Events. It's impossible to ever get to Finite-Interval-2 because of the nature of the infinite itself.
And... the problems don't end there.
But to see what more there is, you'll have to wait until next week.
It's kinda interesting. When I was in Kindergarten, a classmate told me that his older brother had counted to infinity. Twice. What about you? Have you ever counted to infinity? Perhaps we do it every second of our lives. Or maybe there's an alternative explanation. I'd love to hear what you think!
NOTES:
Traverse - travel across or through.
Infinite - limitless or endless in space, extent, or size; impossible to measure or calculate. Infinity - a number greater than any assignable quantity or countable number.
Very good. I especially liked how God is the foundation of reality. Very easy to understand, and I agree with it.