This is part of a series debunking Lee Strobel’s video, “Case for a Creator”. View the rest of the series here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 3
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78Sk2NPiK58[/youtube]
At 2:50, Craig states the “Kalam Cosmological Argument”:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
The problem is that at 1:44, Craig himself said that time came into existence with the rest of the universe!
Let me explain why this is a problem: The universe has existed as long as time has existed: Time came into existence with the universe. Nothing can occur “before” the universe existed, because “before” depends on time. Without time, there can be no “before”.
Time is a VERY complicated subject when we start talking about physics. Take three synchronized atomic clocks. Put one on a plane flying east around the globe, put one on a plane going west around the globe, and leave on at the airport. When you bring all three clocks back together after their journey, they will differ by specific, tiny fractions of a second, due to the phenomenon known as Relativity. As you approach the speed of light, time slows down for you while it continues normally for everyone else. But you don’t experience it slowing down: from your standpoint, everyone else would appear to be speeding up. Gravity also has an inverse effect on time, and if we’re assuming a singularity approaching infinite density, we can assume that the passage of time would approach zero.
A physicist has few problems with the “variable” nature of time. I can’t say the same about the average philosopher or layperson. I don’t know enough to speak very intelligently on the subject, but I do know that a philosophy that ignores these facts is, at best, incomplete, and at worst, completely wrong. The Kalam Argument ignores this fact, so we cannot rely on it without further scrutiny.
5:10 or so, another short break, and we move into an interview with Robin Collins (Philosopher with degrees in mathematics and physics)
Collins’ first argument is that the laws of physics are “balanced on a razor’s edge” and that if these laws were ANY different, life would be impossible.
Douglas Adams offered a simple challenge to this:
imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’
The puddle formed in the way it did because of the nature of the hole. Similarly, life formed the way it did because of the nature of the environment. Evolutionary processes pressure creatures into adapting to the environment, not surviving in spite of it. If the environment changes significantly, those creatures that cannot survive in the new environment die off, while those that can adapt will thrive. If the change isn’t enough to kill off less adapted organisms, it is insignificant with respect to those organisms.
The rest of part 3 reiterates this argument from improbability.