William Lane Craig versus Rosenberg (part 6)

My series on the February 2013 debate between William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg:

1. The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument
2. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
3. The Applicability of Mathematics to the Physical World
4. The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life
5. Intentional States of Consciousness in the World
6. Objective Moral Values and Duties in the World
7. The Historical Facts about Jesus of Nazareth
8. God can be Personally Known and Experienced
9. Arguments Against Naturalism
10. The Argument from Evil
11. Wrap-Up

Introduction

In February 2013 atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg debated Christian philosopher William Lane Craig over whether faith in God is reasonable (debate begins at around 17:14). I’ve mentioned before the reason why William Lane Craig wins debates, and since this debate is a good example of how not to debate William Lane Craig, I have been going through some of what Rosenberg did wrong and how he could have done a lot better. One happy benefit from this is that in so doing I’ll also be refuting William Lane Craig’s arguments. In this entry I’ll address Craig’s moral argument for God.

Objective Moral Values and Duties in the World

In the debate Craig gives the following argument:

1. Objective moral values and duties exist.
2. But if God did not exist, then objective moral values and duties would not exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

What Rosenberg did

Around 48:49, Rosenberg starts his rebuttal against the moral argument. Rosenberg brings up Euthyphro dilemma, which doesn’t attack either premise of the moral argument Craig actually gave. The Euthyphro objection is an argument against the idea that only God can underwrite human values, but no premise of the argument assumes this. The Euthyphro objection doesn’t refute premise 2 here, since even Rosenberg agrees with premise 2 (he believes atheism + background knowledge = objective moral values and duties probably don’t exist). Remarkably, Rosenberg doesn’t attack either premise of the argument at all. That’s right, Rosenberg never disputes any premise of the argument in the entire debate.

Craig doesn’t call him out on this, perhaps because he believes that God does underwrite objective morality and to save time he thought he’d kill two birds with stone and simply attack the Euthyphro dilemma (thereby defending the moral argument and his belief that God grounds morality) by presenting a third alternative to the dilemma (1:10:39). Still, Craig does point out that Rosenberg agrees with him on premise 2 at 1:29:14 and re-affirms premise 1, and notes that the conclusion follows from premises 1 and 2. Rosenberg had no response to this.

One problem with Rosenberg’s Euthyphro objection, other than the fact that it doesn’t attack Craig’s argument, is that Craig has repeatedly given a third alternative in his writings and talks. One might argue that Craig’s third alternative is unsatisfactory in some way, but the point is that Rosenberg was completely unprepared for Craig’s rebuttal. If you are going to use the Euthyphro dilemma against Craig in a debate, you should at least be prepared for the “third alternative” response.

Craig’s moral argument is deductively valid (the conclusion follows from the premises) even if it is unsound (where soundness = validity + true premises), which makes Rosenberg’s main failure with the argument worth repeating: Rosenberg never disputes a premise of the moral argument in the entire debate. This is almost unconscionable once one realizes that a false premise is the only way Craig’s moral argument could fail to be sound.

What Rosenberg should have done

Even if Rosenberg agrees with premise 2, he could have attacked the justification Craig gave for premise 2. Craig claimed that walking into an elementary school and shooting boys, girls, and teachers is morally wrong before asserting, “on a naturalistic worldview, there’s nothing really wrong with this.” Two things: (1) naturalism does not equal atheism; (2) naturalism by itself doesn’t say either way whether moral wrongness exists. I attacked premise 2 (and premise 1) already in my series on the moral argument and William Lane Craig. Craig presented a deductively valid moral argument for God; it should be common sense that the way to refute a deductively valid argument for God is to attack the premises, but apparently it isn’t, not even to a philosopher of Rosenberg’s caliber.

William Lane Craig versus Rosenberg (part 5)

My series on the February 2013 debate between William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg:

1. The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument
2. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
3. The Applicability of Mathematics to the Physical World
4. The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life
5. Intentional States of Consciousness in the World
6. Objective Moral Values and Duties in the World
7. The Historical Facts about Jesus of Nazareth
8. God can be Personally Known and Experienced
9. Arguments Against Naturalism
10. The Argument from Evil
11. Wrap-Up

Introduction

In February 2013 atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg debated Christian philosopher William Lane Craig over whether faith in God is reasonable (debate begins at around 17:14). I’ve mentioned before the reason why William Lane Craig wins debates, and since this debate is a good example of how not to debate William Lane Craig, I have been going through some of what Rosenberg did wrong and how he could have done a lot better. One happy benefit from this is that in so doing I’ll also be refuting William Lane Craig’s arguments. In this entry I’ll address Craig’s argument from intentional states of consciousness.

Intentional States of Consciousness in the World

As Craig says in the debate, “intentionality is the property of being about something or of something,” being a kind of object-directedness of our thoughts. Craig gives the examples of thinking about his summer vacation and thinking of his wife. Craig’s argument in the debate is this:

1. If God did not exist, intentional states of consciousness would not exist.
2. But intentional states of consciousness do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

What Rosenberg did

Rosenberg did pretty much nothing to attack this argument. At least, not in the sense of denying a premise (Craig’s argument may be unsound, but the conclusion does follow from the premises, and for the argument to be unsound there needs to be a false premise). He says a little bit about somewhat indirectly at 1:16:13 to 1:18:26, but he doesn’t directly attack the argument. Rosenberg does say the question of intentionality has nothing interesting to do with theism or atheism, but this is almost disingenuous because Rosenberg himself believes the following equation is true:

Atheism

+

background knowledge

=

intentional states of consciousness do not exist

As such, he does accept the first premise of the argument, even if atheism doesn’t (directly) imply that there are no intentional states of consciousness. It should be noted that Rosenberg thinks it is science that implies the view that intentional states of consciousness do not exist, but Rosenberg also believes science implies atheism. At any rate, Rosenberg does accept the first premise as a result of accepting the above equation (whether he realizes it or not), and I fear he may have given a somewhat misleading impression to the contrary when he said states of intentionality have nothing interesting to do with atheism/theism, because someone might be given the impression that Rosenberg doesn’t accept the first premise when in fact he does. It also seems that if theism were true, it would be more likely that states of intentionality would exist (God would have them if nothing else) than on Rosenberg’s atheistic worldview, especially since an omnipotent God would have the power to create finite minds possessing intentional states. While I believe states of intentionality can also fit into an atheistic worldview, I think Craig is likewise right about states of intentionality fitting into a theistic worldview (at 1:28:38).

This is not to say that the first premise is true or justified; I’m only pointing out that Rosenberg agrees with the first premise and that he might be giving a false impression to the contrary. I should point out that Rosenberg’s particular atheistic worldview is not the only sort of atheistic worldview, and plenty of atheists would disagree with Rosenberg about the truth of the equation and would disagree with premise 1.

What Rosenberg should have done

Rosenberg accepts the first premise of Craig’s argument but denies the second. It is noteworthy that he never attacked the premise of Craig’s argument he believed to be false! He spoke of it and claimed that science supported his views, but he never really went on to make a real argument that science supports the falsity of premise 2. Craig’s argument is sound if both premises are true; if Rosenberg believes premise 1 is justifiably true, wouldn’t it make sense for him to attack the premise he think is false? It would seem so, but then why didn’t he? Perhaps Rosenberg didn’t do so because argument for the falsity of the second premise would take too much time, or perhaps Rosenberg believed (knew?) the audience would not find any of his arguments persuasive even though he personally finds them persuasive. Either way, Rosenberg was in a pretty tough spot if he was to maintain his belief in the first premise.

So what could he have done in that situation? He could have said something like this:

I don’t believe it is atheism per se that implies intentional states don’t exist, but rather our background knowledge, especially science, that implies intentional states don’t exist. But because whether I’m right about what our background knowledge implies about this is not the subject of tonight’s debate, and because I could be wrong about what our background knowledge implies, I’ll play devil’s advocate here so you can better judge for yourselves whether we’re justified in thinking that atheism plus background knowledge implies that we don’t have intentional states.

At this point, he could have challenged Craig’s justification for the first premise and continued to hammer Craig’s failed attempts in justifying the first premise throughout the debate. I myself would have immediately gone after premise 1 (I suspect most atheists would). Craig doesn’t give much of an argument for premise 1 apart from asserting with little justification that material objects don’t have material states of consciousness. But that seems a bit question begging, since a typical physicalist (one who believes that physical reality is all there is) would point to brains as a counterexample. True, most material objects don’t have consciousness, but perhaps consciousness is an emergent property of certain bits of matter, similar to how wetness emerges from hydrogen and oxygen at room temperature when neither hydrogen nor oxygen at room temperature have the property of wetness. Rosenberg could have pointed out that some philosophers see consciousness as an emergent property.

Rosenberg could also have argued that at best intentional states of consciousness is an argument against the view that we are purely physical beings, and not so much an argument for theism (he did this to some degree, but he could have made the point clearer, perhaps by pointing out the existence of atheists who believe our minds have a nonphysical component). He could also have said we don’t really have any good reason to think that our nonphysical minds wouldn’t exist without an all-good, omnipotent, and omniscient deity. If we let magic into our worldview, why not favor the hypothesis of certain bits of matter being arranged in a certain way (as the human brain) creating a nonphysical mind instead of a magical deity creating nonphysical minds whenever the brain is formed? The developed human brain creating a nonphysical mind seems simpler than a magical deity creating nonphysical minds whenever it sees developed human brains. Rosenberg could have put forth this alternative hypothesis—even if he doesn’t believe himself—in playing devil’s advocate to further undermine the convincing force of Craig’s argument.

Though to be fair to Rosenberg, any attack on the truth or justification of the first premise would be problematic if wanted to maintain that atheism plus background knowledge implies that intentional states of consciousness don’t exist, because then he would still believe that Craig’s first premise is true and justified, even if the justification Rosenberg has isn’t quite the same as Craig’s. Craig was pretty quick to suggest or insinuate that Rosenberg agreed with the first premise (at 1:28:38) at which point Craig notes that intentional states fit into a theistic worldview in a way that it doesn’t fit in with atheism. Unfortunately, at least when it comes to Rosenberg’s atheistic worldview, he is right. Thus in my humble opinion, Rosenberg should have just given up on the “atheism + background information” equation I mentioned so that he could make a strong and honest attack on the first premise, since it would be a bit awkward to publically argue for the conclusion’s falsity by attacking a premise you yourself believe to be true and justified. Rosenberg probably wouldn’t like giving up on the first premise, but for good or ill it would be the best way to attack Craig’s argument. After all, the argument succeeds if all the premises are justifiably true, and attacking a premise while granting it is justifiably true has limited value in showing the argument to be unsound.

William Lane Craig versus Rosenberg (part 4)

My series on the February 2013 debate between William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg:

1. The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument
2. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
3. The Applicability of Mathematics to the Physical World
4. The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life
5. Intentional States of Consciousness in the World
6. Objective Moral Values and Duties in the World
7. The Historical Facts about Jesus of Nazareth
8. God can be Personally Known and Experienced
9. Arguments Against Naturalism
10. The Argument from Evil
11. Wrap-Up

Introduction

In February 2013 atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg debated Christian philosopher William Lane Craig over whether faith in God is reasonable (debate begins at around17:14). I’ve mentioned before the reason why William Lane Craig wins debates, and since this debate is a good example of how not to debate William Lane Craig, I have been going through some of what Rosenberg did wrong and how he could have done a lot better. One happy benefit from this is that in so doing I’ll also be refuting William Lane Craig’s arguments. In this entry I’ll address Craig’s fine-tuning argument.

The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life

Craig’s fine-tuning argument in the debate goes as follows:

1. The fine-tuning is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
3. Therefore, it is due to design.

What Rosenberg did

Rosenberg gives his rebuttal to this at around 45:34. Rosenberg says it would be “carbon chauvinism” (at around 46:05) to think that life couldn’t have evolved under different constants and quantities; perhaps different elements, such as germanium or silicon, could have done the job. While stuff like silicon-based life is popular in science fiction, there is reason to believe it is merely science fiction. To quote Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in page 157 their book The Grand Design

Though one might imagine “living” organisms such as intelligent computers produced from other elements, such as silicon, it is doubtful that life could have spontaneously evolved in the absence of carbon. The reasons for that of technical but have to do with the unique manner in which carbon bonds with other elements.

Craig didn’t respond this way in the debate (though he has in the past noted that silicon-based life wouldn’t work), but he took a different approach this time. Craig claimed is that not even matter or chemistry would have existed without certain fine-tuned conditions (1:10:10). Rosenberg had no reply to this.

One of Rosenberg’s rebuttals is the possibility (around 46:57) of the world ensemble explanation being true, where there are many universes with randomly varying constants and quantities to the point where it is probable that at least one of them would permit life. But in his opening statement (i.e. the first time he got up to speak) Craig says that

the odds of a life-permitting universe governed by our laws of nature are just so infinitesimal that they cannot be reasonably faced. Therefore the proponents of chance have been forced to postulate the existence of a world ensemble of other universes, preferably infinite in number and randomly ordered, so that life-permitting universes would appear by chance somewhere in the ensemble. Not only is this hypothesis to borrow Richard Dawkins’s phrase “An unparsimonious extravagance,” but it faces an insuperable objection. By far, most of the observable universes in a world ensemble would be a world in which a single brain fluctuates into existence out of the vacuum and observes its otherwise empty world. Thus if our world were just a random member of a world ensemble, we ought to be having observations like that. Since we don’t, that strongly disconfirms the world ensemble hypothesis, so chance is also not a good explanation.

Craig said this before Rosenberg gave his world ensemble response, and he had no rebuttal at all to what Craig said here.

What Rosenberg should have done

Craig says:

Physical necessity is not, however, a plausible explanation because the finely-tuned constants and quantities are independent of the laws of nature. Therefore, they are not physically necessary.

Suppose it’s true that there is no physical necessity that we are at this moment aware of that controls the constants and quantities being what they are. How does this show that there isn’t any such physical necessity? Since we are far more intimately aware of physical necessities and have no experience with magical deities, why shouldn’t we posit a hitherto unknown variety of physical necessity and favor this explanation over a hitherto unknown magical deity designing the universe? Rosenberg could have brought up this objection, but instead he raised an objection that Craig already addressed.

William Lane Craig versus Rosenberg (part 3)

My series on the February 2013 debate between William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg:

1. The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument
2. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
3. The Applicability of Mathematics to the Physical World
4. The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life
5. Intentional States of Consciousness in the World
6. Objective Moral Values and Duties in the World
7. The Historical Facts about Jesus of Nazareth
8. God can be Personally Known and Experienced
9. Arguments Against Naturalism
10. The Argument from Evil
11. Wrap-Up

Introduction

In February 2013 atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg debated Christian philosopher William Lane Craig over whether faith in God is reasonable (debate begins at around 17:14). I’ve mentioned before the reason why William Lane Craig wins debates, and since this debate is a good example of how not to debate William Lane Craig, I have been going through some of what Rosenberg did wrong and how he could have done a lot better. One happy benefit from this is that in so doing I’ll also be refuting William Lane Craig’s arguments. In this entry I’ll address Craig’s argument from the applicability of mathematics to the physical world.

The Applicability of Mathematics to the Physical World

Craig’s argument in the debate goes like this:

1. If God did not exist, the applicability of mathematics to the physical world would be a happy coincidence.
2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence.
3. Therefore, God exists.

What Rosenberg did

He talks about this at 1:18:26 and seems to dispute premise 1, noting that there are indefinitely many mathematical objects and indefinitely many mathematical functions relating these objects. He says it’s an argument from ignorance that this range of functions and objects that is so small so as to require divine authority to make it come out that way. I think what he was saying here is that the range of mathematics is so vast and the objects and functions that usefully apply to our world is so small, that it’s not really much of a coincidence that mathematics would apply to our world (though I think he could have made this point more clearly).

What Rosenberg should have done

One way to respond is to attack is premise 2. Why on earth should we believe that it is not a happy coincidence? Happy coincidences happen all the time! It was only though chance events that brought about my own existence, for example. Am I to assume that every alleged happy coincidence is really a product of God or some other designing intelligence? Why can’t fortunate events of chance happen? At least, why think that isn’t the case here given how often happy coincidences occur?

Craig says that in Rosenberg’s book, Rosenberg says that naturalism does not tolerate cosmic coincidences. He doesn’t really have much of an argument beyond this for premise 2. This is a very bad argument, in part because there doesn’t seem to be any reason to believe Rosenberg is right here (assuming Craig did not quote him out of context). Rosenberg should have retracted or qualified his statement and said something like, “Happy coincidences happen all the time, and Craig has given us no reason to believe a happy coincidence isn’t what happened here.” Another reason Craig’s argument is a poor one is because this isn’t a theism versus naturalism debate but a theism versus atheism one. Atheism and naturalism aren’t the same thing. Rosenberg should have pointed this out too.

Craig also asserts that on naturalism there is no explanation for the “uncanny” applicability of mathematics to the physical world. Again, naturalism isn’t the same thing as atheism, but another question needs to be raised: why think it is that “uncanny” in the first place? It seems that having a physical reality describable by some sort of mathematics would apply for any consistently operating physical reality. We could think of such a universe like a computer program that has a set of rules for how the universe consistently operates and to predict what would happen. Programs of course rely on binary code in conjunction with certain mathematical operations on said binary code, and so any consistently operating physical reality would inevitably be describable by some sort of mathematics. So the applicability of math to physical reality isn’t nearly as remarkable as Craig seems to think. This is another point Rosenberg could have made but didn’t.

In fairness, Rosenberg did seem to try to mitigate the “happy coincidences” claim (in the way that I described), but the point could have been argued more clearly and much more effectively, e.g. noting that some sort of mathematics would apply for any consistently operating physical reality.

William Lane Craig versus Rosenberg (part 2)

My series on the February 2013 debate between William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg:

1. The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument
2. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
3. The Applicability of Mathematics to the Physical World
4. The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life
5. Intentional States of Consciousness in the World
6. Objective Moral Values and Duties in the World
7. The Historical Facts about Jesus of Nazareth
8. God can be Personally Known and Experienced
9. Arguments Against Naturalism
10. The Argument from Evil
11. Wrap-Up

Introduction

In part 1 of the series I showed the Leibnizian cosmological argument William Lane Craig, how Rosenberg responded, and how Rosenberg should have responded. In this entry of the series I’ll over the kalam cosmological argument in the debate.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The kalam cosmological argument (KCA) Craig gave in the debate went as follows:

1. The universe began to exist.
2. If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a transcendent cause.
3. Therefore, the universe has a transcendent cause.

What Rosenberg did

In the debate (42:22) he notes that

there are 2,000 members of the National Academy of Sciences. The most important body of the most distinguished scientists in the United States of which four are faculty here at Purdue and two...the two Nobel Prize winners in chemistry of course are both members of the National Academy of Science. Of these 2,000 people, 95% of them are atheists. And the percentage for the physicists is even higher. What do these people know about physics that Dr. Craig doesn’t know? Is it a coincidence that this number of the members of the National Academy of Science are unbelievers? I think it isn't, and I think it requires us to take with a certain lack of confidence, the claims that Dr. Craig makes about science.

Unfortunately what the survey really shows is these scientists disagree with Craig on a philosophical claim (whether atheism is true), and it doesn’t say what scientific claim, if any, these scientists think Craig is mistaken about.

Yes, Craig uses science in his arguments, but the survey doesn’t tell us whether the atheist scientists disagree with the scientific or the philosophical aspects of the arguments, and it’s quite possible for scientists to agree with the scientific claims but disagree about the theological implications of said science. For example, one of Craig’s arguments in this debate is arguing for theism from the applicability of mathematics to the physical world. No sane physicist would disagree with Craig about the scientific claim here (i.e. the applicability of mathematics to the physical world; mathematics clearly is applicable in physics) even if they would disagree with the theological implications of the mathematical order present in physical reality.

Or to use an example more applicable to the KCA, in pages 176-177 of Many Worlds in One Alexander Vilenkin stated quite emphatically the scientific case for the beginning of the universe is strong (in which case he would agree with Craig’s scientific claim that the universe has a beginning), but nonetheless says that this beginning being a proof of God’s existence is “far too simplistic” and gives further comments that suggest he would disagree with Craig about the theological implications of the universe beginning to exist.

So merely pointing out that a bunch of scientists are atheists wouldn’t quite refute the scientific claims Craig made here. If however Rosenberg said something like this (and there were statistics to back this up):

The most important body of the most distinguished scientists in the United States is the National Academy of Science, of which there are over 2,000 members. Over 95% of the physicists there believe that there is insufficient scientific evidence for a beginning of the universe.

The big difference here is that we have scientists in a relevant field disagreeing with Craig about a scientific matter (whether the scientific evidence favors a beginning of the universe) rather than merely a philosophical one (whether God exists). This would be a great rebuttal to Craig’s KCA, but unfortunately he didn’t make it (though to be fair to Rosenberg, perhaps such statistics weren’t available).

Now Rosenberg does try to controvert Craig’s KCA premise 2 with the uranium-238 atom thing, but as I explained earlier, this just doesn’t work. One should also note that the “anything that begins to exist” claim includes material causes as well as efficient causes. (The material cause is the stuff from which something is made out of and the efficient cause is the one that produces an effect; e.g. when Michelangelo created the marble statue David, Michelangelo is the efficient cause and the marble is the material cause). Since the alpha particle is stuff from the uranium-238 atom, the alpha particle clearly has a material cause even if it could be said to have no efficient cause (though by my lights there is an efficient cause, albeit an indeterministic one). There may be no cause for the different results of the two physically identical uranium-238 atoms, where one emits an alpha particle and the other doesn’t, but the alpha particle itself still has a cause. From around 45:11:

For Dr. Craig to insist on the arguments that rest on the claim that every event had a cause, that had to have brought it into being, is just bluff.

Craig however has made it clear in his writings and his talks that this is precisely what the first premise of the KCA does not claim. A brief Google search of the Reasonable Faith website (William Lane Craig’s main Christian apologetics website) for “every event has cause” reveals William Lane Craig saying things like, “Notice that I might add that this premise doesn’t say that every event has a cause” and Craig clearing up someone else’s apparent confusion that the first premise of the KCA commits us to believing that every event has a cause. Indeed, both of these pages were the top two results of the Google search I did. Rosenberg should have researched better than he did.

What Rosenberg should have done

Craig claims that the scientific evidence favors his view that the universe had a beginning, but as I mentioned in my rebutttal of the kalam cosmological argument, the notion that the universe began to exist is something that scientists dispute, and I noted that physicist Sean Carrol believes the universe probably did not have a beginning. Disputing the scientific grounds of Craig’s claim was one way Rosenberg could have gone.

Suppose though we grant for sake of argument that according to the sort of physics we are familiar with, the universe has a finite past. If we all knew this to be true, I would then agree with Craig that the cause of the universe would have to be something that works at least somewhat differently than the laws of physics we are familiar with. But then why does it have to be a magical deity? Why couldn’t it be some other sort of physical reality, especially when positing another sort of physical thing as the cause is far less extravagant than a magical deity? There is simply no good reason to favor a “transcendent, personal cause” (i.e. a supernatural deity that uses magic to create the universe) over a physical reality that operates according to natural physical laws, even if as a timeless physical reality the physics it uses is somewhat different from what we humans in time have experience with.

William Lane Craig versus Rosenberg

My series on the February 2013 debate between William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg:

1. The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument
2. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
3. The Applicability of Mathematics to the Physical World
4. The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life
5. Intentional States of Consciousness in the World
6. Objective Moral Values and Duties in the World
7. The Historical Facts about Jesus of Nazareth
8. God can be Personally Known and Experienced
9. Arguments Against Naturalism
10. The Argument from Evil
11. Wrap-Up

Introduction

Last month atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg debated Christian philosopher William Lane Craig over whether faith in God is reasonable (debate begins at around 17:14). I’ve mentioned before the reason why William Lane Craig wins debates, and since this debate is a good example of how not to debate William Lane Craig, I’ll go through some of what Rosenberg did wrong and how he could have done a lot better. First up I’ll go through Craig’s arguments and Rosenberg’s inadequate rebuttals, staring with the Leibnizian cosmological argument (LCA), leaving the other arguments for future blog entries.

The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument

The LCA Craig gave in this debate was this:

1. Every contingent thing has an explanation of its existence.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is a transcendent, personal being.
3. The universe is a contingent thing.
4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1, 3).
5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe is a transcendent, personal being (from 2, 4).

By “the universe” Craig says the means “all of space-time reality.” Premise 1 is a version of something called the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). Craig believes that a transcendent personal cause is responsible for the universe’s existence. In advancing this argument Craig is also advancing an explanation for why anything at all exists.

What Rosenberg did

Unfortunately Rosenberg doesn’t attack the actual PSR Craig uses in the debate. To quote him at around 43:09:

many of the arguments that Dr. Craig gave tonight and which he has given repeatedly in the past, rest on the first cause argument, an argument that goes back certainly to St. Thomas Aquinas and probably to Aristotle. It rests on, of course, the principle of sufficient reason; the principle that everything that exists must have a cause.

He then goes on to attack this version of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), a principle that Craig never uses in the entire debate. While this also ties into the kalam cosmological argument (KCA), a version which says “anything that begins to exist has a cause,” I’ll deal with it here since Rosenberg explicitly invokes the term “principle of sufficient reason.”

His “counterexample” to the PSR is that given two physically identical uranium-238 atoms, one of them will emit an alpha particle and the other won’t, and there is no cause for the difference between the two.

Suppose we accept that the uranium-238 atom bringing about an alpha particle is uncaused in the sense that it is indeterministic (identical physical conditions could have produced different outcomes). There are two problems here. First, with respect to the KCA, we still have an (albeit indeterministic) cause for the alpha particle: the uranium-238 atom. Second, with respect to the LCA, there’s an obvious explanation to the alpha particle’s existence: the uranium-238 atom emitted it (even if it did so spontaneously and randomly). Not only did Rosenberg fail to provide a counterexample to the PSR Craig actually used, Rosenberg failed to make any sort of argument against Craig’s actual PSR.

Remarkably, even after Craig said he wasn’t using the PSR Rosenberg described, Rosenberg still seemed to act as if the distorted version of PSR was part of Craig’s view all along (see 1:32:57 onward). The upshot is that Rosenberg never really attacks Craig’s version of the LCA, and Craig can rightfully point out (as he did in 1:26:54) that there has been no response to this argument. Rosenberg’s failure here is egregious enough to be worth repeating: he never responds to this major argument for theism!

What Rosenberg should have done

When discussing the LCA Craig said:

Now there’s only one way I can think of to get a contingent universe from a necessarily existing cause, and that is if the cause is a personal agent who can freely choose to create a contingent reality. It therefore follows that the best explanation of the contingent universe is a transcendent personal being, which is what everybody means by “God.”

For the moment, let’s ignore that “the best explanation of the contingent universe is a transcendent personal being” doesn’t quite follow from “there’s only one way I can think of to get a contingent universe from a necessarily existing cause, and that is if the cause is a personal agent who can freely choose to create a contingent reality.” Craig’s argument from lack of imagination aside, it is simply false that a transcendent personal being who created the contingent universe is what everybody means by God. There’s also omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection—all “big three” attributes that are entirely missing from “what everybody means by ‘God.’” Remarkably, Rosenberg doesn’t put forth this objection at all.

That said, the conclusion of the “summarized” LCA is worrisome enough for the atheist. I’ve already attacked the LCA in my Rebutting the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument for God article, but I can summarize here. What Rosenberg should have done is attack the actual PSR that Craig used. Rosenberg could have argued, as I did in my article, that while contingent things that begin to exist require an explanation for their existence, contingent things that exist eternally need no explanation for their existence. As eternal things, they do not require any cause for their existence and their existence could quite plausibly be brute facts. This should be a pretty straightforward response, but Rosenberg messed up by attacking a pointless straw man.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Argument

One of the big marks William Lane Craig has made in philosophy of religion, for good or ill, is his revival of the kalam cosmological argument (KCA) in modern times. There are a number of ways to formulate the argument, but here is one of them:

1. If the universe began to exist, it has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause (from 1 and 2).

The proponent of the KCA then argues further that the cause of the universe must be (among other things) transcendent and personal. It should be noted that by “the universe” the argument refers to all of connected space-time reality. So if one thinks there was a physical reality prior to the big bang that caused the big bang to occur, that physical reality would also be part of “the universe” as the term is being used in this argument.

Those familiar with the KCA might wonder why I didn’t replace the first premise with “Anything that begins to exist has a cause,” since another well-known form of the argument is this:

1. Anything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe begins to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has cause.

In this case though I’m using a version of the first premise that doesn’t claim anything more than it needs to for the conclusion to follow. If one believes the universe began to exist, all one really needs to get to the conclusion is “If the universe began to exist, then it has a cause.” The claim that anything that begins to exist has a cause claims more than it needs to for the conclusion to follow.

First Premise

The “anything that begins to exist has a cause” claim is potentially misleading, and to help dispel some possible misunderstanding here I should first explain what a material cause and efficient cause is. A material cause is the stuff from which something is made out of, e.g. when Michelangelo created his famous marble sculpture David, marble is the material cause. The efficient cause is that which makes the effect, or more generally, brings something about. In the case of the David sculpture, the efficient cause is Michelangelo. The “anything that begins to exist has a cause” claim is saying, “It is not the case that something that begins to exist has no efficient cause and no material cause.” Something coming into being with no efficient cause and no material cause is said to come into being out of literally nothing. Theists have claimed that the universe popping into being uncaused out of nothing is absurd.

It might be tempting to object here and say the universe did come into being from nothing, but I would caution against this move. First, it’s completely unnecessary. The universe existing eternally is a viable option. Second, the idea that things don’t come into being from nothing has surprisingly strong support, on par with the best confirmed physical laws that astrophysics relies on (see an argument for that principle in Maverick Christian’s Anything that Begins to Exist Has a Cause article, and keep in mind that even Christians can be right about a few things).

Third, all atheists who would seriously consider the universe popping into being uncaused out of nothing should ask themselves: would we really abandon this principle in any other circumstance when we have no real evidence that it occurred? If I say an apartment popped into being uncaused out of nothing, would you believe me? What if I showed you a video of an apartment popping into being uncaused? Would you believe me then or think I had used some special effects? It would appear intellectually suspicious to immediately abandon our natural skepticism of things popping into being from nothing to avoid a creator of the universe, and as I said before, believing that the universe popped into being from nothing is completely unnecessary. We don’t have to resort to such extreme measures to refute the KCA.

The Second Premise

This is by far the most vulnerable premise, and the one worth attacking. While there are some scientists who think the evidence points to an absolute beginning of the universe (such as Alexander Vilenkin) there are others who disagree (for example, Sean Carrol believes the universe probably did not have a beginning). To be generous though, let us grant for sake of argument that the past is temporally finite and that some sort of first cause or other is needed. Because the past is finite, the first cause would have to be something outside of time. William Lane Craig, for example, believes that God is timeless sans the universe, but after God creates the universe God “enters into” time as a result of creating it.

But why does the first cause have to be a nonphysical personal being instead of some impersonal physical entity? The atheist could believe the physical universe is eternal in the following sense: the physical universe has a finite past but the first cause is some other sort of physical reality that caused the rest of the universe to come into being (perhaps at the moment of the big bang). Since the first cause would have to be timeless, we would have to commit ourselves to some sort of first cause that is radically different from what we temporal creatures have experienced. But there’s no good reason to favor a transcendent magical deity over some sort of physical reality as the first cause, and if forced to choose between the two surely the physical reality hypothesis is the less extravagant view.

William Lane Craig, naturally enough, would disagree about which of the two we should favor. To help avoid straw men I’ll quote from the horse’s mouth:

In fact, I think that it can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal Creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause? If the cause were simply a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions existing from eternity, then why would not the effect also exist from eternity? For example, if the cause of water's being frozen is the temperature's being below zero degrees, then if the temperature were below zero degrees from eternity, then any water present would be frozen from eternity. The only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time. For example, a man sitting from eternity may will to stand up; hence, a temporal effect may arise from an eternally existing agent. Indeed, the agent may will from eternity to create a temporal effect, so that no change in the agent need be conceived.

For the nonce, let’s ignore the possibility that the transcendent personal cause could have been many persons involved instead of a lone Creator. One problem with Craig’s argument is that the examples he is using involve the temporally everlasting sort of eternity rather than timeless eternity. I agree that it makes sense (or at least more sense) to posit a personal cause when dealing with an eternal cause with a temporal effect when the cause in question is temporally everlasting. But that isn’t the question here: the question is about whether a timelessly eternal physical cause (which we may presume is a timelessly eternal “mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions”) could not create a temporal effect.

A more charitable way to read Craig here is that he was just offering an analogy. Just as a temporally eternal personal cause can do the job whereas a temporally eternal mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions cannot, so too is a personal cause needed when the causal agency is timelessly eternal. But isn’t it the case that an omnipotent God’s will to create the universe would, when the personal agent is timelessly eternal, constitute a timelessly eternal set of necessary and sufficient conditions to create the universe, and thereby result in a co-eternal effect? Craig might say that a timelessly eternal personal agency can create a temporal effect in a way that’s analogous to the temporally eternal personal agent willing from eternity to create a temporal effect.

But it’s hard to see how the analogy holds. Notice that the mechanism can’t work the same way in the timelessly eternal case as it does in the temporally eternal case. In the temporally eternal case, the personal agent can say to himself throughout most of eternity past, “I will stand up at 7:30 a.m. on February 24, 2013” and as the time grows nearer think, “7:28 a.m., 7:29 a.m., at last, 7:30 a.m. on February 24, 2013! I will stand up now.” But when the personal agent is timelessly eternal, the personal agent can’t just traverse through time and wait for the right moment to occur to produce a temporal effect from an eternal willing of the effect, because time doesn’t even exist in the timelessly eternal state of affairs. The mechanism, if there is one, would have to be quite different. So what is this mechanism and why can’t a timelessly eternal physical cause not do it? The answer is at best unclear, and for this reason (if for no other reason) the KCA fails.

Conclusion

One form of the KCA:

1. If the universe began to exist, it has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause (from 1 and 2).

The first premise strikes me as reasonable. We have a natural skepticism for things popping into being uncaused out of nothing. For example, the typical atheist would disbelieve me if I said I saw an apartment popping into being uncaused out of nothing. Even if I provided a video of the event, the atheist would likely believe I had used special effects. It would seem intellectually suspicious if we abandoned such natural skepticism to avoid a creator of the universe, and fortunately such a maneuver is not needed to refute the KCA. The rational atheist can attack the second premise instead.

While there are some scientists who think the universe had a beginning, there are other scientists who don’t. Even if we grant that the universe has a finite past, the cause need not be a transcendent magical deity—a physical cause would work too. Indeed, when forced to choose between transcendent magical deity and some sort of physical reality as the first cause, the physical reality hypothesis is the less extravagant view. Craig has (at best) made an argument from a bad analogy that when it comes to eternal causal agencies, only a personal cause could create a temporal effect. It is at best unclear why this would be the case, and without any good reason to think this, the most reasonable view (if we had to posit a first cause) is the less extravagant physical cause.