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William Lane Craig is WRONG?! That There Can Be No Defensible Version of the Kalam On a B-Theory Of Time

12/6/2012

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I have long been puzzled about Craig's insistence that the Kalam can only be defended if an A-theory of time is correct.  But then, all was made clear when I read his book, Time and Eternity.  In his section on theological arguments for an A-theory of time relating to a robust version of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, he says (my words, not his) that on a B-theory of time, there never was, and indeed, there cannot be a state of affairs of God existing alone without the universe.  Did you catch that?  Craig equates a B-theory of time with a past eternal universe.   That is, any scientific model of the universe that postulated an absolute origin of time, space, matter, and energy would in fact have to kowtow to the metaphysical implications of a B-theory. Why is this wrong?  Even though all events are equally real and static (future eternal) in the universe on a B-theory, that doesn’t necessitate the claim that the entire ‘block’ did not have an absolute beginning of time. This sounds kinda crazy actually because it would mean that something like the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem could be overturned by a B-theory of time?!   So, there could be a state of affairs with God existing alone without the universe, and then 'boom,' God creates physical time (whether the nature of that time is captured correctly by an A or B theory).  So, all we have to do then is translate the language of tensed talk that Craig employs into the language of tenseless talk:

1) Every event has either an indeterministic or deterministic cause.
-Most people who say QM implies some events are uncaused mean there are events that have no deterministic cause; but if some believe that “indeterministic cause” is an oxymoron, then they really mean it just poofs into existence. However, when you press them on this last point, they usually are willing to say that the ‘poofing’ must obey certain rules involving the probability of what poofs when.--Brad Dowden (editor of IEP).
-All of Craig's 3 points he usually makes to defend the first premise of the kalam can be used here as well.

2) The universe began to exist.
-There is strong scientific evidence that the universe had an absolute beginning.
-I don't see that the B-theory of time has any implication, one way or the other, about whether the universe is past eternal (John Earman).
-I am not sure if Craig's philosophical arguments against the metaphysical possibility of a past eternal universe can be used here as well.

3) The beginning of the universe was an event.
-One response to Grünbaum's objection is to opt for broader notions of “event” and “cause.” We might broaden the notion of “event” by removing the requirement that it must be relational, taking place in a space-time context. In the Big Bang the space-time universe commences and then continues to exist in time measurable subsequent to the initiating singularity (Silk 2001, 456). Thus, one might consider the Big Bang as either the event of the commencing of the universe or else a state in which “any two points in the observable universe were arbitrarily close together” (Silk 2001, 63). As such, one might inquire why there was this initial state of the universe in the finite past. Likewise, one need not require that causation embody the Humean condition of temporal priority, but may treat causation conditionally, or perhaps even, as traditionally, a relation of production. Any causal statement about the universe would have to be expressed atemporally, but for the theist this presents no problem provided that God is conceived atemporally and sense can be made of atemporal causation.

Furthermore, suppose that the Big Bang singularity is not an event. Then, by this same reasoning that events only arise from other events, subsequent so-called events cannot be the effect of that singularity. If they were, they would not be events either. This result that there are no events is absurd.

-See the following article by Craig:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/a-response-to-grunbaum-on-creation-and-big-bang-cosmology

-See the following article on instantaneous change: http://www.davidsoderberg.co.uk/

4) The universe has either an indeterministic or deterministic cause.

5) The universe does not have a deterministic cause.
-Given that the universe began to exist, I don't see how it could have a deterministic cause in the sense of being causally determined.  "Causal determinism (hereafter, simply “determinism”) is the thesis that the course of the future is entirely determined by the conjunction of the past and the laws of nature." Kevin Timpe IEP


6) Therefore, the universe has an indeterministic cause.
-All of Craig's reflections on what it means to be the cause of the universe can be used here.

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God, Time, and Relativity

10/21/2012

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The God Particle (Higgs Boson)

7/12/2012

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Dr. Craig discussed this amazing discovery and analyzes Michio Kaku's commentary. Does this discovery somehow disprove God?  Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-god-particle#ixzz20R59zjce
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Solid Empirical Evidence That Supports An A-theory Over a B-Theory

5/7/2012

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gtr_supports_an_a-theory.docx
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A Tentative Empirical Vindication Of The A-Theory Over The B-Theory by William Lane Craig

5/7/2012

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2 Audio Responses by William Lane Craig to the PBS Special: The Fabric Of The Cosmos

5/7/2012

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Program Description: "The Fabric of the Cosmos," a four-hour series based on the book by renowned physicist and author Brian Greene, takes us to the frontiers of physics to see how scientists are piecing together the most complete picture yet of space, time, and the universe. With each step, audiences will discover that just beneath the surface of our everyday experience lies a world we’d hardly recognize—a startling world far stranger and more wondrous than anyone expected.

Brian Greene is going to let you in on a secret: We've all been deceived. Our perceptions of time and space have led us astray. Much of what we thought we knew about our universe—that the past has already happened and the future is yet to be, that space is just an empty void, that our universe is the only universe that exists—just might be wrong.

Interweaving provocative theories, experiments, and stories with crystal-clear explanations and imaginative metaphors like those that defined the groundbreaking and highly acclaimed series "The Elegant Universe," "The Fabric of the Cosmos" aims to be the most compelling, visual, and comprehensive picture of modern physics ever seen on television.

Part 1:
Part 2:
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Wes Morriston's Objection

1/18/2012

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Here is Morriston's objection:

Bill's second argument for saying that the cause of the universe must be personal implicitly assumes that there can be only two types of cause – free personal agents who can exist without causing things they are free to cause, and impersonal sufficient conditions that cannot exist without producing their effects. Given this assumption, Bill argues that an impersonal eternal cause could have only an eternal effect. Since he thinks the universe must have a beginning, he concludes that the cause of the universe can only have been an eternal personal agent who freely chose "to create the world in time."

I'll make just two quick points about this. The first concerns Bill's example of a cause that is eternal and impersonal. It's actually an example of a temporal cause that has no beginning! If water had always already been around and had always already had a temperature below zero centigrade, it would always already have been frozen. But on Bill's view, God is not eternal in that sense, since that would involve beginningless temporal duration of just the sort that Bill believes to be impossible.

Here is my second point. Assume that God is eternal, all-knowing, and all-powerful, and that He decides to create the universe. It follows that God's decision to create must be as eternal as He is. Given God's omnipotence, His eternal decision to create must be sufficient for the existence of the universe. By the logic of Bill's argument, then, we should conclude that the universe is just as eternal as God's decision to create it. Clearly, something has gone
wrong.

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3 Ways to Harmonize an A-theory with Special Relativity

1/17/2012

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1) Distinguish metaphysical time from physical (clock) time and maintain that the latter is a bare abstraction from metaphysical time, which has the feature of temporal becoming, and that this abstraction is useful for scientific purposes, even if B-theorteic in nature, 2) relativize temporal becoming to reference frames, just as is done with simultaneity, 3) select a privileged reference frame to define the time in which objective becoming occurs, most plausibly the cosmic time, which serves as the time parameter for hypersurfaces of homogeneity in space-time in the GTR. 
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Is the notion of a Timeless Person Incoherent?

12/27/2011

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Divine Timelessness and Personhood

William Lane Craig

Detractors of the doctrine of divine timelessness argue that
    1. God is timeless
and
    2. God is personal
are broadly logically incompatible on the basis of the following necessarily true premises
    3. If God is timeless, He does not exemplify properties x, y, z
    4. If God does not exemplify properties x, y, z, He is not personal
where x, y, z are replaced by certain specified properties.

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How Can The Trinity Be Timeless, and Yet Personally Interrelated?

12/27/2011

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People often have difficulty seeing the coherence of the position held by some Christian thinkers that God is timeless sans creation, but is inherently personal (tri-presonal in fact).  The answer lies in a term that harkens back to the church fathers.  Perichoresis is a term in Christian theology that refers to the mutual inter-penetration and indwelling within the threefold nature of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Moreover, the persons of the Trinity share mutual love, knowledge, and volition. 

Moreover, in order to answer the question of how the Trinity could be timeless and yet inherently personal, we have to briefly  discuss changelessness, and timeless, in addition to perichoresis.  On a relational view of time, there is no time without events, or changes occuring.  Thus, if the Trinity exists changelessly prior to creation, there wouldn't be any before, or after, there wouldn't be time. What the question is really about then is whether personal relations can be conceived of as exisitng changelessly and timelessly.  Well, why not?

Recall that according to the classic doctrine of perichoresis, the three persons of the Trinity share mutual love, knowledge, and will. Take love. William Lane Craig writes,

"Why can’t two persons love each other changelessly? I don’t find this at all conceptually difficult. I just don’t see any difficulty in there being unconditional, positive regard and even emotional attachment between two unchanging persons. Again, it doesn’t take any time to know something. So two persons could know each other intimately and thoroughly without changing. And volition: two unchanging persons can will the same thing in a changeless way. Change just doesn’t seem necessary for two persons to relate in the way perichoresis requires."

Notice that our finite human relations occur in time, and while they are good, they would probably become unfulling in light of eternity.  But God (the Trinity) is utterly different.  God is infinite goodness and love, and had no lack in Himself, or yearning for fulfillment because the Trinity was itself somehow unfulfilling.  In fact, it is unthinkable that any member of the Trinity would become bored with another member.  This is why creation, like salvation, is an act of grace whereby God invites finite creatures into the greatest conceivable good, which is fellowship with the members of the Trinity. WOW!

Additionally, some Christian philosophers such as Gary DeWeese have defended the notion that the Trinity exists in a metaphysical time that is devoid of any intrinsic metric.

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