The Case Against The Kalam

The Case
against
the Kalam
by
Jonathan
Giardina
2019 by Jonathan Giardina
Creative Commons
All of the material has been previously released

in some form. Aside from fixing one typo, some
corrections to punctuation, changes to format,
and additions to endnotes, the material is
identical to previous versions.
DISCLAIMER: Due to amateurism, some of the

sources are probably not quoted correctly.
None of the errors change the meaning, but
they matter for anyone who may want to use a
quote found here. Unfortunately, I am almost
certain that there are parentheses in places
where there ought to be brackets. Instead of
hunting down and checking every source, I left
the text alone. Bible quotations are probably
from the KJV unless otherwise noted.
2
Table of Contents
5 "The Case against the Kalam" (originally

published in Stubborn Credulity, 16 & 17)
9 "Learning Science from Creationists"

(originally published in Stubborn Credulity, 29 -
31)
Appendix (originally published in Stubborn

Credulity, 152 & 153)
18 "Infinity Redux" (originally published in

Stubborn Credulity, 36 - 39)
25 "Boycott Hilbert's Hotel" (originally

published in Stubborn Credulity, 40 - 43)
33 "Infinity Redux Reloaded" (originally

37 "The Curious Case of Tristram Shandy"

(originally published in Stubborn Credulity, 51 -
56)
48 "Dr. Craig's Library" (originally

published in Stubborn Credulity, 57 - 60)
3
Appendix: "Infinity and the Past" Diagram
(originally published 3/16/2019 on the Stubborn
Credulity blog)
56 "Conjuring Contradictions" (originally

59 "Speculations on Time" (originally

published 7/3/2019 on the Stubborn Credulity
blog)
61 "Unreasonable Faith?" (originally

blog)
72 "The Scourge of the Kalam Argument"

(originally published 7/31/2019 on the Stubborn
Credulity blog)
79 "'Forget the Old Bluffer'" (originally

blog)
Appendix (originally published in Stubborn

Credulity, 160 - 164)
117 Works Cited & Index
4
The Case against the Kalam1
According to the apologist William Lane

Craig, the early Christian and Muslim scholars
"pointed out that absurdities would result if you
were to have an actually infinite number of
things. … Since an infinite past would involve an
actually infinite number of events, then the past
simply can't be infinite." Craig is equivocating
here. Although an event may be a thing in the
conceptual sense, it's not a thing in the physical
sense. For example, he said, "Substitute 'past
events' for 'marbles,' and you can see the
absurdity that would result."2 He's assuming
that it's legitimate to substitute events for
marbles. Is it? Things have properties that
events don't have. As one philosopher
explained,
[P]ast events are not movable. Unlike the

guests in a hotel, who can leave their rooms,
past events are absolutely inseparable from
their respective temporal locations. Once an
event has occurred at a particular time, it can't
be "moved" to some other time.3
5
Craig talked about adding and subtracting using
infinity ("infinity minus infinity"4), but, in this
case, arithmetic doesn't make sense. As Paul
Davies pointed out, "infinity itself is clearly not
a number, or anything like it."5 If it's not a
number, how can we use it for addition and
subtraction?
In his classic book Anti-Dühring,

Friedrich Engels answered a writer who argued
that "an infinite past series of worlds is
impossible…" As he rebutted, he made some
important observations about infinity. He
noticed that infinity is a series of numbers and
that "the one from which we begin to count the
series, the point from which we proceed to
measure the line―that this is any one within
the series, that it is any one of the points within
the line, so that where we place the starting
point does not make any difference to the line
or to the series." You can't add to or subtract
from infinity; you're just moving the starting
point and the starting point is arbitrary.
6
Engels brought up the issue of "the
infinite series which has been counted." He
wrote,
We shall be in a position to examine this more

closely as soon as Herr Dühring has performed
for us the clever trick of counting the series.
When he has completed the task of counting
from - ∞ (minus infinity) to 0, then let him
come again. It is certainly obvious that, at
whatever point he begins to count, he will leave
behind him an infinite series and with it, the
task which he was to fulfil.
Engels could've argued that you can't count

from minus infinity to any number because,
again, infinity isn't a number. He followed the
excerpted passage by commenting that "the
infinity which has an end but no beginning is
neither more nor less infinite than that which
has a beginning but no end."6 If the latter is
possible, why isn't the former?7 According to
Victor Stenger, "if we use the realist physicist's
operational definition of time as the number of
ticks on a clock, then we can have a
denumerable infinity of time in the past as well
7
as the future. That is, we can think of time as a
counting process that can continue indefinitely
into the future or the past."8
8
Learning Science from Creationists
According to Norman Geisler,

creationists "can offer evidence that the
universe is not eternal…" For example, the
second law of thermodynamics. Geisler states it
in various ways:
1. The amount of usable energy in the universe

is decreasing
2. In a closed, isolated system, the amount of

usable energy is decreasing.
3. Left to themselves, things tend to disorder.
He concluded, "No matter which way it is

stated, this law shows that an eternal universe
would have run out of usable energy or reached
a state of total disorder. Since it has not, it must
have had a beginning."9 Earlier, Geisler stated
his case in much the same way: "[I]f the
universe is 'running down' then it must have
had a beginning."10
Physicists now understand that the

universe is not in a state of total disorder
9
because it is expanding. As Stenger explained,
"An expanding volume has continually
increasing room for disorder, that is, entropy.
So it becomes possible for local pockets of
order to form at the expense of disorder
elsewhere."11 Creationists can no longer point
out the fact that the universe is not in state of
total chaos and then conclude that the universe
had a beginning. The universe is not "static,"12
as it was believed to be in the nineteenth
century. If it was, then, assuming finite energy
and no creation of energy, the "heat death"
would have taken place by now unless the
universe was created a finite time ago.
As for what caused or preceded the

expansion, we can't know. According to
Stenger, we "can never know what went on
before the Planck time. … The universe may
have been created supernaturally, but I think I
have shown that those who believe this cannot
call upon the first and second laws of
thermodynamics to bolster their belief.
Supernatural creation is not suggested, much
less required by any basic physical principles."13
Long before Geisler drew his conclusions, C. S.
10
Lewis used the second law of thermodynamics
to argue that the universe was designed:
Disorganization and chance is continually

increasing. There will come a time, not infinitely
remote, when (the universe) will be wholly run
down or wholly disorganized, and science
knows of no possible return from that state.
There must have been a time, not infinitely
remote, in the past when it was wound up,
though science knows of no winding-up
process.14
Lewis compared the universe to Humpty

Dumpty, an orderly being, therefore
presupposing his conclusion that the universe
started out orderly. Stenger disagreed. He
wrote,
At the Planck Time, the entropy of the universe

was maximum. As the universe expanded, its
maximum allowable entropy, given by the
entropy of a black hole of the same size, grew
far faster than that of its main components. …
The universe can become more disorderly as a
whole while it develops order in its various
11
parts. … [T]he Second Law of Thermodynamics
is nothing more than the statement that events
happen on average in the direction of their
most likely occurrences; so the order that
resulted after the Big Bang is not some highly
improbable miracle but just the way the dice
fell.15
According to Heinz Pagels, the "law of entropy

increase may apply to the universe as a whole
because the universe may be a closed system.
Eventually it too may fall into ruin, a 'heat
death' in which the stars burn out and matter is
scattered over the endless reaches of space―a
mess with no one to straighten it out."16
Another scientist, Carl Sagan, reinforced Pagels
when, during a lecture, he said, "It's by no
means clear, by the way, that the Second Law of
Thermodynamics applies to the universe as
whole, because it is an experiential law, and we
don't have experience with the universe as a
whole."17 It needs to be emphasized that the
second law says that for any closed system "the
entropy always increases. A system will always
change from a less probable configuration to a
more probable configuration."18 That's all. The
12
second law doesn't tell you what the universe
would look like if it wasn't created
supernaturally. E. A. Milne cast doubt on the
validity of the apologist's argument when he
pointed out that "we have no means for
assessing change of entropy for the whole
universe. … [W]e can calculate such a change
for 'closed systems' with something outside
them but the universe ex hypothesi has nothing
(physical) outside it."19 Even if we conceded
that the universe was a closed system, it's not a
closed system of constant volume. Even if that
distinction didn't matter, "we don't know
enough about the so-called 'early' universe to
say just how far back the second law reaches. …
The most we are therefore entitled to conclude
is that the history of entropy has a beginning."20
Even if we conceded that the second law was
always valid, there is still the possibility that
"usable energy," while decreasing in the
observable universe, is, in fact, infinite in the
larger cosmos.21 If that is the case, then it would
never necessarily run out. Until we can rule that
possibility out, we can't assume that it was
magically created. Conclusion: Even after we
13
concede all of the above, "the entropy
argument is capable only of demonstrating the
existence of some primitive energy source."22
NOTE: See the Tristram Shandy chapter for a

purely philosophical argument from entropy.
14
Appendix
"…the Second Law proves, as certainly as

science can prove anything whatever, that the
universe had a beginning. Similarly, the First
Law shows that the universe could not have
begun itself. The total quantity of energy in the
universe is a constant, but the quantity of
available energy is decreasing. Therefore, as we
go backward in time, the available energy
would have been progressively greater until,
finally, we would reach the beginning point,
where available energy equaled total energy.
Time could go back no further than this. At this
point both energy and time must have come
into existence. Since energy could not create
itself, the most scientific and logical conclusion
to which we could possibly come is that: 'In the
beginning, God create the heaven and the
earth.'"23
Assessment: The apologists are so prejudiced

toward magical creation that they miss the
possibility that as we go back in time we reach a
point where available energy is injected, not
created. Perhaps the energy was always there
15
and is infinite. Then time would have no
beginning. Neither would the universe. The first
law of thermodynamics doesn't forbid these
possibilities. The second law does if and only if
the apologists are accurately stating it and
"universe" is defined as the entire physical
world. If the available energy in the entire
physical world is, indeed, decreasing, then it's
not infinite. However, there is no logical reason
why this must be. If science is all about
observation and experiment, then to deduce a
scientific law about the entire cosmos, one
would have to observe the entire cosmos. No
man has done this. Therefore, no one can
deduce a scientific law about the entire cosmos.
Even if the apologist can find someone with the
right credentials who is willing to make a
sweeping claim about the entire physical world,
this is merely an appeal to authority. The
bottom line is that no human has seen but the
tiniest fraction of existence. For this reason,
there are certain matters (many of them) that,
in spite of what any mortal might say, science
cannot, for the moment, have an opinion on.
16
Even if the second law does say that the
available energy in the cosmos is decreasing
and that the law was based on a bona fide
observation of all physical existence, the law
doesn't tell us that it's always been decreasing.
If the second law only "took effect" a finite time
ago then all we observe is consistent with finite
available energy. That possibility, however, is
only a fallback position. The theist has no
problem with God having infinite energy. Any
rule that says that the cosmos can't have
infinite energy while God can is ad hoc.
17
Infinity Redux
Engels quoted Dühring as saying that

"an infinite number of causes which must
already have succeeded one another is
inconceivable, just because it presupposes that
the uncountable has been counted."24 It is
impossible, according to some philosophers, to
traverse the infinite; the infinite is by definition
untraversable. J. P. Moreland is of this opinion.
He said, "If (the past) were infinite, then to
come to the present moment, one would have
had to have traversed an actual infinite to get
here, which is impossible."25 Using the same
reasoning, William Lane Craig claimed that "if
the series of past events were beginningless,
the present event could not have occurred,
which is absurd."26 Engels gave us the beginning
of a rebuttal. He noted,
Eternity in time, infinity in space, mean from

the start, and in the simple meaning of the
words, that there is no end in any direction,
neither forwards nor backwards, upwards or
downwards, to the right or to the left. This
infinity is something quite different from that of
18
an infinite series, for the latter always starts out
from one, with one first term.
An infinite series, as Engels defined it is, indeed,

untraversable. However, if the past is
beginningless then the "infinity of a series" has
been completed.
Recall what Stenger explained about

time; it is "the count of ticks on a clock."27
When we forget that, we fall into error. As
Engels explained,
As applied to time, the infinite line or series of

units in both directions has a certain figurative
meaning. But if we think of time as something
counted from one forward, or as a line starting
from a definite point, we imply in advance that
time has a beginning; we put forward as a
presupposition precisely what we are to
prove.28
It's impossible to traverse the infinite only if

time has a beginning. If an apologist says it's
impossible to traverse the infinite, then he is
assuming that time has a beginning. As Wallace
Matson explained,
19
[I]t is only impossible to run through an infinite
series in a finite time. Probably what accounts
for the plausibility of the argument is the
supposition that if the causal series had no
beginning, then some event must have occurred
infinitely long ago―in the sense that the
number of hours between that event and (say)
the bombing of Hiroshima is not a finite
number, however large. But the conception of
an infinite series does not entail that there
should be any two given members of that series
that are not a finite distance apart in the series;
on the contrary, the series of integers is infinite,
although the difference between any two given
integers is always finite. All that is required for a
causal series to be infinite is that however
remote two events in the series may be from
each other, there are other events remoter
still.29
Dühring wrote, "The infinity of a series

… never can be completed by means of a
successive synthesis." If time has no beginning,
however, an "infinity of a series" has been
completed. Why couldn't it be completed by
successive addition? Unwittingly, J. P. Moreland
20
supplied us with a hint. He wrote that if there
were no beginning, then "reaching the present
would be like counting to zero from negative
infinity." Notice that Moreland never argued
that if God was beginningless, then God
reaching the present would be like counting
from negative infinity to zero. If we understand
that infinity is not a number, then the sophistry
is apparent. We can't start with negative infinity
and then add one to get a larger number. You
can't add a number to a non-number. William
Lane Craig pointed out that counting to zero
from negative infinity "is like trying to jump out
of a bottomless pit."30 All Craig did here was
point out that one impossible task is like
another impossible task. They were on to
something, however, when they brought up
counting. As Quentin Smith explained,
[W]hat we can or cannot do given our empirical

limitations is not essentially relevant to the
issue of whether it is logically possible to
enumerate the series of past events in
accordance with the negative number series. It
may be the case that we must start at - I and
can only count some ways backwards, but a
21
logically possible counter could have been
counting at every moment in the past in the
order in which the past events occurred.31
Of course, if we ignore the red herring

about whether we can synthesize an infinite
series and, instead, focus on whether such a
series can be synthesized, then the answer is
clear. (If you think I'm attacking a straw man,
I'm not. In a debate, Moreland actually said, "It
would be impossible to traverse the past going
backward in your mind."32) If we can agree that
"an actual infinity can be constructed by
successive addition if the successive addition is
beginningless," then it is apparent that the
apologists beg the question. To suppose that an
actual infinity cannot be constructed by
successive addition is to assume the past has a
beginning.33 If we only focus on integers, it is
simply wrong that "no one can conceive the
possibility of (an infinite series of negative
numbers) being written down." Dühring was
right under one restriction: Although an infinite
series "can never be completely synthesized in a
finite time, it can be completely synthesized in
an infinite time."34
22
The present is just a point on the
timeline. According to George H. Smith,
There is no reason why a succession of changes

cannot proceed infinitely into the past. As long
as we remember that existence had no
beginning in time, there is no problem in
grasping that change, a natural corollary of
existence, had no beginning as well. … From the
fact that causal series extend infinitely into the
past, it follows that we cannot assign sequential
numbers to each causal process. But it does not
follow from this that causality cannot occur. The
issue of numerical designations is irrelevant to
causality.35
Of course, the theologians could rebut that it is

not causality that they are concerned with, but
change. Change, according to some, had a
beginning. Prior to the beginning of change,
nothing but a changeless, quiescent God
existed―this God being an unembodied mind
who is determined from eternity past to create
the universe from nothing using will alone. I
mention these teachings not to refute them but
so that the reader will understand what,
23
according to my understanding, he will have to
resort to if he accepts the conclusions of
theologians like Craig and Moreland. According
to Moreland, "if there was no beginning, the
past could have never been exhaustively
traversed to reach the present."36 Using
Moreland's "logic," the past could never have
been exhaustively traversed by God to reach
the Big Bang. The con man trick here is that
when Moreland wrote "no beginning," he
meant "a beginning infinitely long ago."37
24
Boycott Hilbert's Hotel
A student remarked to William Lane

Craig that if Hilbert's Hotel existed, then "it
would have to have a sign posted outside: No
Vacancy - Guests Welcome." I hope to show
that the student should be grateful for his
anonymity: "[I]f he thinks to bowl them
[opposing views] out by convicting those who
hold them of some obvious absurdity, it will
probably be a mark of his own shallowness."38
As we'll see, Craig uses Hilbert's Hotel to prove
that "[a]n actual infinite number of things
cannot exist." As he tells the story,
[L]et us imagine a hotel with an infinite number

of rooms and suppose … that all the rooms are
occupied. There is not a single vacant room
throughout the entire infinite hotel. Now
suppose a new guest shows up, asking for a
room. "But of course!" says the proprietor, and
he immediately shifts the person in room #1
into room #2, the person in room #2 into room
#3, the person in room #3 into room #4, and so
on, out to infinity. As a result of these room
25
changes, room #1 now becomes vacant and the
new guest gratefully checks in.
According to Craig, "[i]f an actually infinite

number of things could exist, this would spawn
all sorts of absurdities."39 Would or could?
Perhaps, it is the co-existing of multiple actual
infinites that causes the problem. I am in debt
to Graham Oppy for observing that "[a]t most, it
seems that one might suppose that these
puzzles show that there cannot be certain kinds
of actual infinites; but one could hardly suppose
that these puzzles show that there cannot be
actual infinites of any kind."40 In spite of the
actual infinites, in the real world, there
wouldn't be a problem because information
can't travel faster than the speed of light. Only a
finite number of people would get the message
about the room reassignments. It's arbitrary to
single out the actual infinite when faster-than-
light travel is also an essential element in the
Hilbert Hotel story. One could just as arbitrarily
declare that if faster-than-light travel existed, it
would (not could) lead to all sorts of absurdities
and conclude that faster-than-light travel is
something that just exists in our heads. The
26
fallacy should be apparent. It's not one
element, but multiple elements in combination
that are allegedly causing problems.
Certainly, a hotel like the one in the

story is absurd, but is it absurd because it has
an infinite number of rooms or is it absurd
because it has an infinite number of rooms and
an infinite number of people? Generally
speaking, "[t]he supposed absurdities of a
Hilbert's Hotel do not follow merely from its
infinity, but rather from what happens when
infinity is combined with other features of this
imaginary hotel." A hotel with a finite number
of rooms could also have a sign like "No
Vacancy - Guest Welcome" if it was
(mis)managed in a certain way. Let's consider
another hotel. This hotel has five rooms and all
of them are occupied by passive automatons. If
another passive automaton wants to check in,
then I, the proprietor, eject a passive
automaton from his room and the automaton
who just arrived occupies it. While Hilbert's
Hotel inconveniences an infinite number of
guests, this hotel only leaves one automaton
out on the street. What makes Hilbert's Hotel
27
odd is that "even if the hotel were full, space
could still be found for more guests without
kicking anyone out." Otherwise, the mechanics
of the two scenarios are the same―a room is
available because a room is vacated. Once we
grapple with the mundane fact that "the
properties of the infinite are simply different
from those of the finite," the paradoxes (we can
hope) should be tolerable.41 According to Craig's
friend J. P. Moreland, infinity plus or minus any
number is still infinity.42 When you add to a
finite number you have a larger number. When
you add to infinity you don't have a larger
number: "[R]emoving or adding any number of
elements from or to the set [any set containing
an infinite number of elements] leaves its total
size unchanged."43 If more guests check into the
hotel, there are still infinite guests, and in the
beginning of the example, it was established
that there are enough rooms for infinite guests.
Even if there was a problem here, "a lack of
actual physical infinities (of stuff) need not
preclude the existence of an actual temporal
infinity. That is, the Universe could actually
potentially exist eternally even if it cannot
28
include an infinite quantity of anything."44
Craig's assertion that "if an actual infinite
number of things [events] is possible, then a
hotel with an actually infinite number of rooms
must be possible"45 isn't convincing.
Craig gives another example that merits

our attention. He wrote,
Suppose the guests in rooms #1, #3, #5…. check

out. In this case an infinite number of people
has left the hotel, and half the rooms are now
empty. … Suppose that the persons in rooms
#4, #5, #6… checked out. At a single stroke the
hotel would be virtually emptied. … [Y]et it
would remain true that the same number of
guests checked out this time as when the guests
in rooms #1, #3, #5… checked out! In both cases
we subtracted the identical number of guests
from the identical number guests and yet did
not arrive at an identical result. 46
It needs to be recognized that in this example,

we are talking about a number of guests. Really,
we're dealing with a number of numbers since
each guest can be represented by his room
29
number. Although Craig uses the word
"subtraction," it should be clear that there is no
subtraction taking place.47 We're not
subtracting an infinite number from an infinite
number; in both cases we're removing an
infinite number of numbers from the set.
There's more than one way to remove an
infinite number of numbers from the set. If you
do it one way, you get results different from
when you do it another way. See Figure 1.
30
Figure 1
In an earlier version of Craig's commentary, he

wrote, "Suppose the guests in rooms ## 1, 3, 5, .
31
. . check out. In this case an infinite number of
people have left the hotel, but according to the
mathematicians there are no less people in the
hotel―but don't talk to that laundry woman!"48
The laundry woman still has infinite guests to
tend to. Why must we avoid talking to her?
32
Infinity Redux Reloaded
Philoponus, a Christian theologian who

lived in the sixth century, argued that the
eternity of the universe "would imply an infinite
number of past motions that is continually
being increased. But an infinite cannot be
added to."49 It must be emphasized at the
outset that "when the sets are infinitely
extended intuition misleads us."50 Once again,
Engels provides us with indispensable analysis:
[I]f the end is left out, the beginning just

becomes the end―the one end which the series
has; and vice versa. … Because in mathematics
it is necessary to start from definite, finite terms
in order to reach the indefinite, the infinite, all
mathematical series, positive or negative, must
start from I…51
If the beginning is left out, the end becomes the

beginning. It is logically invalid to add to infinity.
"Adding to infinity" would really be just moving
the starting point, and the starting point is
arbitrary. Also, adding to infinity would mean
adding a number to a non-number which is
33
clearly absurd. Infinity might not lead to
absurdities as long as we realize that it's a series
of numbers and that the starting point is
arbitrary. Starting an infinite series at a
different point doesn't make it longer. An
endless series will be endless whether we start
today, tomorrow or a billion years from now. If
we turn a timeline 180°, it's clear that a
beginningless series is beginningless no matter
when we end it. If an endless series is an infinite
one then a beginningless series is also infinite. If
one can exist, why can't the other?
Another argument that stems from

Philoponus is "[t]he argument from the finitude
of motion, time, and temporal objects: motion
cannot be from eternity, for an infinite
temporal regress of motions is impossible, since
finite parts can never add up to an infinite
whole…"52 Again, Engels's comments seem
appropriate; he observed, "it is a contradiction
that an infinity is composed of nothing but
finites, and yet this is the case."53 Because
Engels was influenced by Hegel, I am not sure
what he meant by "contradiction".54
34
Al-Ghazali, an Islamic theologian,
thought that he had found insurmountable
problems with the position that the past had no
beginning. He taught that "the series of
temporal phenomena cannot regress infinitely."
His arguments involved "the problem of having
an infinite composed of finite particulars."55 To
paraphrase, he taught that the number of
events must be either odd or even. His
teaching, however, is invalid because an
"infinite number" is not an actual number.
Ghazali would rebut, supposedly, that the
infinite is a totality made of units. I see no
problem with that. Conceding that the infinite
has something in common with a finite number
doesn't mean that operations (division,
subtraction, addition, etc.) that can be
performed on a finite number can be
performed on the infinite. For example, one
couldn't divide infinity by two. To do so would
imply that there is a halfway point, and clearly
that makes no sense. As James A. Lindsay
explained, "Anywhere we choose to pick (a
halfway point) has finitely many numbers below
and infinitely many above."56 Since the infinite
35
is not a number, it makes no sense to ask
whether it is odd or even. Similarly, if there are
infinitely many x's, it makes no sense to talk
about the number of x's.
36
The Curious Case of Tristram Shandy57
Tristram Shandy "has been writing (his

autobiography) from eternity past at the rate of
one day per year." (It takes him a year to record
the events of a day.) William Lane Craig asked,
"[I]f the series of past events is an actual infinite
… why did Tristram Shandy not finish his
autobiography yesterday―or the day before,
since by then an infinite series of events had
already elapsed?" It's puzzling why he asked
that question because in the preceding
paragraph he wrote that Shandy "could not yet
have written today's events down." He didn't
finish his autobiography yesterday because he's
still alive today and has at least one more year
of work ahead of him. Craig claimed, "No
matter how far along the series of past events
one regresses, Tristram Shandy would have
already completed his autobiography."
According to Craig, he would have because "at
any point an actual infinite sequence of events
would have transpired and the book would
have already been completed." How could he
finish the book? On the previous page Craig
observed that Shandy "could never finish (the
37
book), for every day of writing generates
another year of work."58 If time is "what you
measure on a clock,"59 it's difficult to see what
bearing any of these stories has on whether
time had a beginning. According to Craig, "the
(Shandy) story … tells us … that an actually
infinite temporal regress is absurd."60 On the
contrary, it was Craig's analysis that author
William Poundstone deemed to be "ridiculous".
He asked, "How could Shandy have chronicled
yesterday's events already, when it should have
taken him a whole year?"61
J. P. Moreland reproduced the Shandy

story. He wrote,
If he lives an actually infinite number of days, he

will allegedly be able to complete his
autobiography. This is because the set of all the
days in his life can be put into one-to-one
correspondence with the set of all his years. But
does this really make sense?62
Of course, it doesn't. Shandy, presumably, can't

write about his future. If he could write about
his future then on day -365 he could start
38
writing about day -1, on day -730 he could start
writing about day -2 and so on. This logical
possibility is all academic, however, because
people who write autobiographies don't know
the future before it happens. Furthermore, if
time had no beginning then there is no non-
arbitrary way to determine which day is day -1.
Even if it was conceded that the Tristram
Shandy scenario led to absurdities, it would, at
best, demonstrate that temporal existence had
a beginning. Philosophers are not unanimous
about the implications. For example, Graham
Oppy: "[i]t seems to me that one is entitled to
suggest that perhaps the universe itself is 'an
eternal and uncaused being'. I do not see how
there can be a principled way of allowing that
God has this property and yet the universe
cannot have it. ('The universe exists
changelessly and timelessly with an eternal
determination to become a temporal world.'
Sounds fine to me!)"63 (There is more on the
God concept getting special treatment below.)
We certainly can't embrace Craig's position
merely because the alternatives make us
uncomfortable; Craig admitted that even his
39
position "may be mysterious."64 It would be
most unprincipled to insist that only God can be
mysterious! It could be argued that God being
the cause of time is worse than mysterious. As
B. C. Johnson noticed, "It certainly would
appear that the existence of time is necessary
to the functioning of causality. A cause
precedes its effect in time."65
Mr. Shandy doesn't make an

appearance in Craig's magnum opus. Instead we
find this question: "Suppose we meet a man
who claims to have been counting down from
infinity and who is now finishing: …, -3, -2, -1, 0.
We could ask, why didn't he finish counting
yesterday or the day before or the year
before?"66 I wouldn't even get that far. I would
cry "Shenanigans!" No one can count down
from infinity because there is no number
infinity like there is a number one. As one
mathematician pointed out, the "Craigian use of
infinity … commits some of the errors typical of
people who conflate the idea of infinity with
actually being a number."67
40
According to Craig, the Tristram Shandy
paradox reveals that “even if the universe had
infinite energy, it would in infinite time come to
equilibrium; since at any point in the past
infinite time has elapsed, a beginningless
universe would have already reached
equilibrium.”68 The philosopher Graham Oppy
didn’t seem to agree. If we substitute energy
remaining for days remaining to plan in Oppy’s
example, we have what appears to be a valid
response to Craig:
Suppose, for example, that Tristram Shandy

takes one year to plan one day of his life. …
Suppose that, under the related scenario,
Tristram Shandy puts down his pen at time T.
Why does he put down his pen at time T, rather
than at some other time? Indeed, given that he
has had an infinite amount of past time, surely
we are entitled to the assumption that he ought
to have been in a position to put down his pen
at any earlier time (since, at any earlier time, it
would still be true that an infinite amount of
time had elapsed). … If we suppose that
Tristram Shandy won’t put down his pen until
his planning catches up with his life, then we
41
have an explanation of why he puts down his
pen at time T: It is because his writing has
always been converging on T that he puts down
his pen at T. (That is, at all times, it has been
true that, if Tristram Shandy sticks to his writing
schedule, then he will put down his pen at T,
having planned every moment of his life up
until T.) In order for him to put down his pen at
some other time T’, his writing would need to
have always been converging on that other
time. Given that his writing has always been
converging on T, the fact that he has been
writing from infinity past gives us no reason at
all to think that he ought to have been able to
lay down his pen at some earlier time T’.69
The days Shandy has left to plan correspond to

usable energy remaining. If Shandy’s writing can
always be converging on time T and not an
earlier time T’ then it seems reasonable that the
dreaded “heat death” could also be forever
converging on time T and not some earlier time
T’.
Craig wrote that “[s]ince the negative

numbers can be put into a one-to-one
42
correspondence with the series of, say, past
hours, someone counting from eternity would
have completed his countdown.” Would have
or could have? Wes Morriston only conceded
that someone could have finished. He wrote,
“Given beginningless time, our man has indeed
always already had enough time to complete his
count of all the negative numbers, but it does
not follow that he must have done so.”70 I
suspect that the paradox stems from the fact
that "if the world has no beginning in time, then
each moment is preceded by an infinite past."71
Regarding this feature, Morriston opined, "[I]t's
hard to see what the problem is supposed to
be."72 Craig thought that there was a problem.
He wrote, "[Mackie] thinks that the absurdities
are resolved by noting that for infinite groups
the axiom that the whole is greater than its part
does not hold, as it does for finite groups. But
far from being the solution, this is precisely the
problem."73 On the contrary, that property of
infinity does solve the paradoxes we encounter
here. As Quentin Smith noticed, "In regard to
past events, match those that have occurred at
some time t1 with all the negative numbers
43
greater than or equal to -10; this is an actually
infinite collection of past events. Then match
events that newly become past from t2 to t11
with the negative numbers less than -10; the
result is that an actually infinite collection of
past events has been added to from t2 to t11."74
Think of t11 as the time Shandy finishes counting
to zero. There is at least one puzzle where the
properties of the infinite do preclude a
solution―the "Thomson Lamp".75 (Mercy
requires that I don't expose you to it.) I think
I've shown that none of the puzzles that we
explore here rise to that level.
Craig’s student, John W. Loftus, also

disagreed with Craig:
… Craig’s basic problem is that he conflates

counting an infinite number of events with
counting all of them. An immortal being could
finish his beginningless task (…-5, -4, -3) and yet
not count all events (-2, -1, 0). This means that
an immortal being could finish counting down
to infinity (…-5, -4, -3) yet continue counting
events into the endless future (-2, -1, 0, 1, 2,
3…).76
44
Evidently, Craig is also conflating using up
infinite energy with using up all of it. A segment,
for lack of a better word, of an infinite
collection can also be an infinite collection. (To
be exact, "a proper subset of an infinite set can
be numerically equivalent to the set even
though there are members of the set that are
not members of the proper subset.")77 It’s
possible to go through an infinite without going
through the whole. If you start with three units
of energy, and this collection grows by one unit
every second, in an infinite time you will have
infinite energy in addition to the three units.
Direction shouldn’t matter; if we conceive a
process happening, we can conceive of it
happening in reverse. If you started (“started”?)
where we finished (“finished”?) in the last
example and passed through infinite time,
you’d go through infinite energy, but not all the
energy. We would end up where we started in
the last example―with three units of energy.
What makes this possible is the feature of the
infinite that Craig can't believe in: "[A]n infinite
set has a proper subset which has the same
number of members as the set itself. … [T]o my
45
mind, it is precisely this feature of infinite set
theory which, when translated into the realm of
the real, yields results which are perfectly
unbelievable."78 If there is an argument here, it
is The Argument from Personal Incredulity.79
One objection to Craig's ideas about

infinite energy is the plausible notion that if the
universe at some point in time contained
infinite energy, then it always had infinite
energy and will always have infinite energy.
Presumably, God can have infinite power
eternally. Why can't a similar condition be the
case for the universe? There are paradoxes
involved with the infinite running down. When
exactly would the universe have infinite energy
if it is really the case that it could go from
having infinite energy to reaching
"equilibrium"? At no point on the timeline
would the universe have infinite energy. No
matter what point we choose, there would
always be an earlier point when the universe
contained more energy. At the most, we could
say (to borrow a concept from calculus) that
infinite energy existed at the limits. (See Figure
46
2.) Whether or not that is coherent, I'm not
sure.
Figure 2
lim 𝑒 = ∞
𝑡→−∞
The limit of energy (e) as time (t) approaches

negative infinity (-∞) is infinity (∞).
47
Dr. Craig's Library
In order to demonstrate why an actual

infinite cannot exist, Craig asks us to imagine a
library with an infinite number of books:
Suppose … that each book in the library has a

number printed on its spine so as to create a
one-to-one correspondence with the natural
numbers. Because the collection is actually
infinite, this means that every possible natural
number is printed on some book. Therefore, it
would be impossible to add another book to its
library. For what would be the number of the
new book?80
An infinite number of books presupposes an

infinite amount of space in at least one
direction (South, for example). If there is space
in some other direction (North, West, East),
then build another shelf and give the book the
number B1. Graham Oppy arrived at a similar
conclusion: "[W]e could simply use a different
system of identification for the newly added
books. (For example, we might label the new
books: 'A1', 'A2', 'A3', ….)"81 The absurdity
48
derives from the fact that Craig's librarian can't
seem to figure this out. Furthermore, the
librarian could wipe the numbers off all the
books and then renumber them. If Craig says
you'll run out of numbers, he must explain why
you didn't run out of numbers for the original
infinite. Craig conceded that aleph zero (the
actual infinite) + I "reduces to (aleph zero)," and
he admitted that you can count the elements in
aleph zero.82 If it is objected that this process
leaves a book without a number, we must ask,
which one? The last one? There is no last one!
Of course, one of the assumptions in the
thought experiment is that you can count the
members in the original infinite. If we were
dealing with finites, you wouldn't accept it if
someone said that there are enough numbers
for these ten and then argued that there aren't
enough numbers for these other ten. Even if we
did run out of numbers, it's impossible to find
the end of an endless shelf. The unnumbered
book, evidently, could never be located anyway.
Even if Craig was correct, "on plausible
assumptions, there will be no way of relabeling
all the books in the library in finite time."83
49
If violating the "every possible" number
(emphasis in original) assumption is logically
permissible, then other options may be
available. Empirically, numbers are historically
contingent artifacts. They are what they are
because humans typically have ten fingers.84
Like the Sabbath, they were made for us, not us
for them. If we need to invent a new number,
it's intuitive to believe that we'll invent a new
number. The new number may actually be the
"different system of identification" that Oppy
wrote about. If that is the case, then I'm wrong,
but, perhaps, I'm just breaking with a
convention. (As we all know, the Romans used
letters of the alphabet as numbers.) Perhaps, if
an infinite collection existed, its elements would
have to be numbered like houses on a street:
"There could be an actual infinite such that only
some natural numbers are assigned to it, for
example, all odd numbers. This would enable
new members of the series to be added and
assigned even numbers."85
In another effort to prove his point,

Craig wrote,
50
Even the expression 'temporal regress' can be
misleading, for the events themselves are not
regressing in time; our thoughts regress in time
as we mentally survey past events. But the
series of events is itself progressing in time, that
is to say, the collection of all past events grows
progressively larger with each passing day.86
With this statement, Craig begged the question;

for only if the past is finite is the collection of
past events growing larger. As Quentin Smith
explained,
At t2 there is a past event belonging to the

collection of past events that had not belonged
to this collection at t1. However, at t2 there is
not a greater number of events belonging to
this collection than at t1, for the addition of the
one event at t2 to the infinite collection that had
existed at t1 results in a collection with the
same number of members as the collection that
existed at t1, this number being (aleph zero).
This is true because (aleph zero) plus I equals
(aleph zero). … The collection of past events at
t1 is a proper subset of the collection of past
events at t2. Craig feels that the equivalence
51
between an infinite set and a proper subset of
that set as applied to real things and events is
'just not believable'. It is only unbelievable,
however, if one presupposes erroneously that
the definition of an infinite set of real things or
events is the same as the definition of a finite
set of real things or events; namely, that a set
necessarily has more things or events belonging
to it than any proper subset of itself. If one does
not make this false presupposition, then the
equivalence in question is perfectly believable.87
If you think this is some kind of trick, consider

this comment from Wes Morriston:
Even on a presentist [one who believes that

only present events exist] view, … there is no
relevant difference between a beginningless
series of past events and an endless series of
events each of which is determined to occur in
the future. The absurdities that supposedly
attend a series that can be placed in one-to-one
correlation with the natural numbers will afflict
an endless series just as much as a
beginningless one.88
52
Subtracting from the infinite leaves you with an
infinite. If you can believe aleph zero - 1 = aleph
zero then you can believe aleph zero + 1 = aleph
zero.
What about the paradox of being able

to add to an infinity of prior moments? As
Engels pointed out, the same paradox appears if
time has no end. If time has no end, but a
beginning, "[w]e give the infinity of time a one-
sided, halved character; but a one-sided, a
halved infinity is also a contradiction…"89 As we
will see in the next chapter, infinity + infinity =
infinity.90 Even if you added an infinite future to
an infinite past, you still don't have any more in
your collection. As mentioned in the first
chapter on the Kalam, Engels resolved the
paradox by noticing that it doesn't matter
where one starts the series (or, in this case,
where one ends it). As should be clear by now,
"infinity is not a real number";91 so even if
events were physical things, it would be
incoherent to say that the present event is
being added to an infinity of prior ones. One
can always think of a "larger" infinity,92 but
what we really have is a different infinity.
53
Appendix
"Infinity and the Past" Diagram
On pp. 68 & 69 of Quentin Smith's article

"Infinity and the Past" (Philosophy of Science,
Vol. 54, No. 1, Mar., 1987, pp. 63-75) he wrote,
[Re: The possibility of an infinite past] The

second argument is the one upon which
[William Lane] Craig relies most heavily: if all
possible negative numbers have been matched
with past events, no new past events can be
assigned to this collection. However, new
assignments can be made if with the arrival of
each new event in the past, each negative
number is reassigned by being matched with
the event immediately earlier than the event to
which it had been assigned; such that, -3 is
reassigned to the event to which -2 formerly
had been assigned, and -2 to the event to which
-1 had been assigned, and so on for all the
negative numbers greater than -3. This leaves -1
free to be matched with the event that has
newly become past.... [A]leph-zero [the actual
infinite] plus 1 equals aleph-zero. Consequently,
54
since there are aleph-zero past events at both
times, and since there are aleph-zero negative
numbers, there is no past event at either time
that is unmatched with a negative number.
Craig usually illustrated his argument by using a

library analogy. That is why the figure refers to
books, not events.
55
Conjuring Contradictions
If you take two things that are different

and you insist that they are in fact the same,
then you end up with a contradiction. No
surprise. If you are dead-set on finding a
contradiction, that procedure is a lazy way to do
it. In the Hilbert's Hotel chapter, I showed how
William Lane Craig employed that trick. In his
debate with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, he
employed another trick in his desperate quest
to find a contradiction in the realm of actual
infinites.
Responding to Sinnott-Armstrong's
point about the forbidding of mathematical
operations (on infinite quantities) that lead to
contradictions, Craig wrote, "That works great
in the postulated mathematical realm of
discourse; but in the real world you can't stop
people from taking away real objects or dividing
real collections!"93 With this comment, he gave
the game away. It's true that you can't stop
people from moving real objects, but it's also
true that Craig can stop calling that activity
subtraction. Moving objects may be the same as
56
subtraction or it may not be. That's the issue.
Sinnott-Armstrong already informed us of how
mathematicians define "subtraction"; it doesn't
involve infinities. Subtraction, also, as I pointed
out in the Hilbert's Hotel chapter, doesn't
involve removing every other number from a
series, at least no subtraction I've ever heard of.
Does it involve removing every other object? If I
want to be consistent I would have to say no.
The point is that if I wanted to find a
contradiction, I could. It all depends on how I
define my terms.
Perhaps the following will expose my

philosophical naiveté, but sometimes I think it
helps to just look at things like a third grader
would. Craig gives examples where objects are
moved. In the first example some objects are
moved. In another example, many of the
objects that are moved in the first example
aren't moved. The outcomes are different
because the activities are different. Whether or
not the activities are really just two examples of
the same thing, I'll leave up to the
mathematicians.
57
Of course, regardless of what the
mathematicians say, moving members of an
infinite doesn't leave you with more than an
infinite or two infinites. It simply gives you the
same infinite in a different pattern (zig-zag
instead of straight line, etc. See Figure 1). The
only difficulty is the infinite x infinite pattern.
However, even with an actual infinite and an
infinite quantity of people, they'll never finish
that in any finite period of time; so it's not of
any concern. Even if it was, Paul Davies proved
that "even if we multiply infinity by itself it still
stubbornly refuses to grow any larger." The
"infinite square" pattern is just an infinite row
pattern rearranged in an unending lattice.94 (For
image, see endnotes.)
58
Speculations on Time
July 3, 2019
Note: I think Engels was incorrect about the

possibility of the unchanging transitioning from
an unchanging state to a changing state. We
can conceive of it; so it's not, strictly speaking,
impossible. As I quote Graham Oppy in
Stubborn Credulity, "'The universe exists
Sounds fine to me!" (52). I don't know how well
such a rebuttal would be received by the general
public. Also, professional philosophers would
probably disagree with Engels about a
"motionless state of matter [being] … one of the
most ridiculous of ideas…" Why ridiculous?
There are no logical contradictions involved. As
Michael Martin argued, "One possibility is that
the creator or creators of the universe created it
out of something that existed in some timeless
realm" (Atheism: A Philosophical Introduction,
Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1990, 104). When
confronting the "man in the street," I don't
recommend bringing up such an idea, even as a
59
fallback position. I strongly recommend reading
Engels's words quoted here as well as Oppy and
Martin.
For the remainder of this post, vist:

https://jmgiardi.wixsite.com/stubborncredulity/
post/speculations-on-time
60
Unreasonable Faith?
July 20, 2019
post/unreasonable-faith
Since the Kalam Cosmological Argument is

being shared on social media by “everyday
people,” it’s time to inquire into how the
argument became so widely known. Although it
does appear in Dinesh D’Souza’s book What’s
So Great Christianity, D’Souza, if I recall
correctly, completely ignored philosophical
reasons for why the universe had a beginning.
He based his argument for the finitude of the
universe on a Big Bang model that is, from what
I gather, obsolete. We have to, ironically, look
to a book by a Christian publisher to conjecture
why the Kalam argument has become so
mainstream. I am hesitant to even bring up
arguments found in a book written for a
popular audience, but in this case, you can
count the a priori arguments on one hand; so
why not?
61
The popular book I am using is Lee Strobel’s The
Case for a Creator. In its pages, we find the
Kalam argument. We are informed by its
defender William Lane Craig that it has been
around in its current form for hundreds of
years. In case you don’t know it:
• Whatever begins to exist has a cause
• The universe began to exist
• Therefore, the universe has a cause
I posted some notes about it in an earlier blog:

post/notes-on-the-kalam-argument
Craig only gave two or three a priori arguments

for premise 2 in the popular book. Frankly,
that’s not bad considering that the mainstream
publisher (Regnery) that put out the D’Souza
book didn’t include any. Part of the first a priori
argument was included in my book Stubborn
Credulity. I’ll reproduce the relevant section
here:
According to the apologist William Lane Craig,

the early Christian and Muslim scholars
"pointed out that absurdities would result if you
were to have an actually infinite number of
62
things. … Since an infinite past would involve an
actually infinite number of events, then the past
simply can't be infinite." Craig is equivocating
here. Although an event may be a thing in the
conceptual sense, it's not a thing in the physical
sense. For example, he said, "Substitute 'past
events' for 'marbles,' and you can see the
absurdity that would result." He's assuming that
it's legitimate to substitute events for marbles.
Is it? Things have properties that events don't
have. As one philosopher explained,
[P]ast events are not movable. Unlike the

guests in a hotel, who can leave their rooms,
past events are absolutely inseparable from
their respective temporal locations. Once an
event has occurred at a particular time, it can't
be "moved" to some other time.
Craig talked about adding and subtracting using

infinity ("infinity minus infinity"), but, in this
case, arithmetic doesn't make sense. As Paul
Davies pointed out, "infinity itself is clearly not
a number, or anything like it." If it's not a
number, how can we use it for addition and
subtraction?
63
The reason I set out to write this post is that I
wanted to scrutinize, in particular, the sentence
“[A]n infinite past would involve an actually
infinite number of events.” In Craig's more
scholarly work, we tend to see the following
syllogism:
1. An actual infinite cannot exist.
2. An infinite temporal regress of events is an

actual infinite.
3. Therefore an infinite temporal regress of

events cannot exist.
See the similarities. "Actually infinite" appears

to be implying "an actual infinite". The claim
that an infinite past is an actual infinite is
actually (no pun intended) controversial. Craig
had to spend time in his scholarly books
defending it. In an early draft of Stubborn
Credulity, I rejected Craig's claim:
[Craig] conceded that "the collection of all past

events prior to any given point is not a
collection whose members all co-exist." ...
[E]vents aren't things that accumulate in some
pile. Craig mistook the fixity of the past for the
actuality of the past. If time has no beginning
64
then there is an infinity of prior moments. The
events are literally countless. If you add the
present moment to prior moments it would be
like adding one to "countless". The sum,
supposedly, is one which would make sense
because only one event presently exists - the
present one.
My point was that there is at the moment, not

an infinite, but a moment. Assuming an infinite
past, the infinite part of the timeline is
horizontal, not vertical. The upshot: events are
not like infinite marbles. In a paper that I
recently discovered, Wes Morriston articulated
what I was trying to express in my book.
Whether Morriston would agree or not, even if
the past is "actual," it doesn't exist. As I wrote,
only one event presently exists--the present
one. A physical infinite, on the other hand,
would be undoubtedly real. Craig could have
used the word "actual" to describe both types
of infinite, but the examples he gave involve not
just actual, but real infinites. There is an
important distinction:
[I]t does not immediately follow that infinite

sets in general are impossible. Before drawing
so sweeping a conclusion, we need to consider
65
what it is in the example that produces the
(allegedly) absurd implication. The answer, I
think, can be found in the way in which the
number of elements in the set interacts with
other features of the example. A library is a
collection of coexistent objects (books and
shelves) whose physical relationship to one
another can be changed. It is only when these
features are combined with the property of
having infinitely many elements that we get this
particular sort of implication. ("Craig on the
Actual Infinite," Religious Studies, 38(2), 2002,
148 https://www.jstor.org/stable/20008403)
I think that we can conclude that both premises

of the supporting syllogism are questionable. If
we wanted to make concessions for the sake of
argument, we would grant that:
1. A real infinite cannot exist.
2. An infinite temporal regress of events is an

actual infinite.
3. Therefore ... ?
But, if we adopt my initial position, we don't

even have to concede all of the above:
1. A real infinite cannot exist.

66
2. An infinite temporal regress of events is a
fixed infinite.
3. Therefore ... ?
I think that I've said enough about the first a

priori argument.
The second argument is found on p. 104 of The

Case for a Creator:
"In fact, we can go further. Even if you could

have an actual infinite number of things, you
couldn't form such a collection by adding one
member after another. That's because no
matter how many you add, you can always add
one more before you get to infinity. This is
sometimes called the Impossibility of Traversing
the Infinite."
In my book I mention that in a debate, Craig's

friend J. P. Moreland actually said, "It would be
impossible to traverse the [infinite?] past going
backward in your mind." Notice that Craig keeps
saying "you ... you ... you". What we can do isn't
relevant. As I wrote in my book, "if we ignore
the red herring about whether we can
synthesize an infinite series and, instead, focus
on whether such a series can be synthesized,
67
then the answer is clear" (Stubborn Credulity,
38). If you disagree, then let's ignore that.
Perhaps my analysis wasn't radical enough. It
may be absurd to ask, but is it really the case
that we can't go through the infinite past in our
mind? Couldn't we conceive of going through
it? Do you really have to live a century in order
to go back one hundred years "in your mind"?
Regardless, a general response usually
resembles the words found in an article that I
recommended in my book: "[I]t is inconsistent
to suppose that an infinite series of events
elapses in a finite amount of time, but
consistent that they elapse in an infinite
amount of time" (Quentin Smith, "Reply to
Craig: The Possible Infinitude of the Past,"
International Philosophical Quarterly, 33(1),
1993, 113). Anything else I can think to say
about the above argument has been said
elsewhere.
The next argument is related to the last one.

Craig thought that it too demonstrated the
impossibility of traversing the infinite. He
continued, "But if the past really were infinite,
then that would mean we have managed to
traverse an infinite past to arrive at today. It
68
would be as if someone had managed to count
down all of the negative numbers and to arrive
at zero at the present moment. Such a task is
intuitively nonsense." That's how his argument
ended. He appealed to intuition. His argument
is about as sophisticated as someone saying "It
stands to reason!" (Isaac Asimov once quipped,
"Never trust an argument only because it stands
to reason.") I know that I'm quoting from a
popular book, but even popular books have
arguments. If you have read my book, you
would know that I agreed with Quentin Smith,
not Craig. Smith wrote, "It may be the case that
we must start at - 1 and can only count some
ways backwards, but a logically possible counter
could have been counting at every moment in
the past in the order in which the past events
occurred. And this logically possible counter in
relation to any present would have completely
counted the negative numbers" ("Infinity and
the Past," Philosophy of Science, 54 (1), 1987,
74). Of course, one could have misgivings about
the last sentence. One might wonder why the
counter would finish at this moment and not
the previous one. The best answer that I'm
aware of was given in the Morriston paper that
I just discovered. He wrote, "It is true that at
69
any moment in the past, the man had already
counted off infinitely many numbers, but it
does not follow that he had already counted off
all the numbers or that he had already reached
zero. Perhaps that could have been the way the
man's count went. But it was not..." ("Craig on
the Actual Infinite," 150).
Those who have read my book know what

mathematicians say about the infinite.
According to them, in the case of infinite
collections, "a part contains as many terms as
the whole" (Bertrand Russell, Wisdom of the
West, ed. Paul Foulkes, Crescent Books, 1959,
281). As Isaac Asimov put it, "the phrase 'as
many' doesn't have the usual everyday meaning
when we're talking about things that are
endless" (The Realm of Numbers, Fawcett
Premier, [1959] 1967, 131 & 132).
Mathematicians use the term "aleph-null" to
refer to the infinite that is relevant here. Aleph-
null "corresponds to the endlessness of the
series of integers" (Ibid, 140). The a priori Kalam
argument hinges on the presumption that
actual things can be numbered using all of the
real numbers (the positive integers). I suspect
that the "man on the street" wouldn't have a
70
problem dropping that presumption. My
suspicion would explain why Craig didn't
mention it in the popular book and why D'Souza
didn't even bother with philosophical
justifications for a temporally finite universe.
We have no problem conceiving of a timeline
with numbers going in reverse order. Ironically,
the Christian calendar essentially has years that
are labeled with negative integers (for example,
300 B.C.). Even believers may be leery of saying
that an actual infinite cannot exist. Wouldn't
such a claim put limits on God? As we saw
above, even Craig was willing to drop the
premise for the sake of argument. If D'Souza's
book is an indication, most non-philosophers
never accepted the premise to begin with.
71
The Scourge of the Kalam Argument
July 31, 2019
post/the-scourge-of-the-kalam-argument
Again. I know it's a popular book and not a

scholarly tome, but I just noticed that William
Lane Craig cited a curious statement in Lee
Strobel's The Case For a Creator. According to
Craig, Stephen Hawking said, "Almost everyone
now believes that the universe, and time itself,
had a beginning at the Big Bang" (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2004, 107). It's difficult for me to
understand how Craig is helping his case here.
Let's be clear about what it would mean for
time itself to have a beginning. As I explained in
Stubborn Credulity, "It could be argued that God
being the cause of time is worse than
mysterious. As B. C. Johnson noticed, 'It
certainly would appear that the existence of
time is necessary to the functioning of causality.
A cause precedes its effect in time'" (52). In
other words, time would begin not with the
cause of time, but with the cause of the
universe. If time began at the Big Bang, then
72
what place is there for God? If God caused the
universe to exist, then time began with God.
Right? Hawking wasn't apparently saying that.
He was saying that time began at the Big Bang.
Therefore, the Big Bang is, supposedly, the first
cause. If there was a cause of the Big Bang, then
time would begin before the Big Bang. If time
began at the Big Bang, then the Big Bang is a
cause that has no cause, and vice versa, I think.
In David Hume's first book A Treatise of Human

Nature, he had a lot to say about cause and
effect. In a section titled "Rules by Which to
Judge of Causes and Effects," he wrote that the
cause "must be prior to the effect." Cause,
evidently, presupposes time. There can't be a
cause of time. God could be the cause, and time
would begin with God, but what would God be
the cause of? God would be the cause of the
universe. But wait. Hawking, if I'm not mistaken,
said (or at least said that everyone believed)
that time and the universe began
simultaneously. Wouldn't that mean that the
universe is the first cause? If so, did the
universe cause itself? I really doubt that
Hawking was proposing that sort of thing.
Regardless, I am dumbfounded that apologists
73
were so eager to latch on to Big Bang
cosmology. For example, Dinesh D'Souza, in
What's So Great About Christianity, wrote,
"Scientists call the starting moment of the
universe a 'singularity,' an original point at
which neither space nor time nor scientific laws
are in effect. Nothing can be known
scientifically about what came before such a
point. Indeed the term before has no meaning
since time itself did not exist 'prior to' the
singularity" (119). Now, we are told that time
didn't even exist at the "starting moment." Even
the singularity can't be the cause. Nor can it be
the effect. The effect must succeed the cause.
Doesn't succession imply time? Aren't the
apologists trying to have it both ways? Time is
not in effect when they want to conjure up
mystery. Then, time is smuggled back in when
they want cause or, more accurately, the Cause.
Cosmologists are cited by apologists because

they say or support the idea that the universe
had a beginning. A priori, however, it's doubtful
that philosophers could ever come to that
conclusion. Bertrand Russell, early in the
twentieth century, declared that "[t]here is no
reason to suppose that the world had a
74
beginning at all." At most, philosophers can
show that "it [is] impossible to have an infinite
past" (Craig quoted in The Case For a Creator,
102). A beginning of time, however, does not
imply a beginning to the universe or "the
world". Substituting "God" with "the universe,"
Graham Oppy argued, "'The universe exists
Sounds fine to me!" It does the apologist no
good to quote Newton's first law of motion.
That law, also known as the law of inertia,
states that an object at rest stays at rest. It tells
us nothing about the entire universe. The
universe is not an object within the universe.
Science may aid the Kalam defenders in their
effort to prove that the universe had a
beginning, but I doubt it would help them in any
other way. As the quote says, "time itself ... had
a beginning at the Big Bang." Time begins with
the first cause. The Big Bang is, then, the first
cause. Isn't the universe the first cause too
under Hawking's alleged model? Two first
causes, if that even makes sense, are
incomprehensible enough. God would be
superfluous.
75
If you agree with the analysis so far, you may
have realized that it seems to undermine the
first premise of the Kalam Argument. As Craig
put it, “whatever begins to exist has a cause.”
The wording is unfortunate. As Quentin Smith
explained, “this does not say that whatever has
a beginning to its existence must have a cause”
(“Big Bang Cosmology and Atheism,” Science
and Religion, ed. Paul Kurtz, 69). It seems that
one of the premises would have to say
something about a cause being necessary. What
if it did? If it did, it would be false. Think about
it. If time began to exist, could time be an
effect? Could the beginning of time be an
effect? If so, then the cause is timeless. We,
however, established that a cause is in time.
The beginning of time’s existence, therefore,
can’t have a cause. If it did, then the cause
would be the beginning of time. Time would
exist before it existed, and we would have a
contradiction. The beginning of time can’t have
a cause. “Whatever has a beginning must have
a cause” can only apply to things that can have
a cause. Otherwise, we say that it must have a
cause and that it can’t have a cause. We are
then guilty of doublethink. Unless I’ve erred, it
follows that Premise 1 can’t apply to time. I am
76
hesitant to draw such a conclusion because it
would expose the Kalam as an intellectual
fraud. Consider this honest version of the
argument:
1. Whatever begins to exist must have a cause

(Time is excepted).
2. Time (not the universe) began to existence.
3. Conclusion:????
Even if I’m wrong about Premise 1, the revised

Premise 2 raises a serious concern about the
Kalam Argument. As Quentin Smith explained,
Either God exists in time. In which case, God

can’t create time without creating Himself—a
self-caused cause. Or else, God does not exist in
time and is timeless. In that case, God cannot
create time because his creative act that
creates the beginning of time is going to exist at
the first moment of time, which makes God
exist in time.
Interviewer: Which is contradictory?
Smith: Yeah.
(<https://youtu.be/rEvzGSx9JN0>)
77
If the beginning of time is t^1, God can’t be the
cause of t^1. If He was, then an earlier time,
t^0, would be the beginning of time. We would
be neglecting our premise. If God is the cause of
t^1, then the cause, I believe, would have to be
simultaneous with its effect. That is what I think
Smith meant when he spoke of a “self-caused
cause.” Regardless, causes can’t be, according
to Hume, simultaneous with their effects.
Causes must be prior to their effects. “God is
the cause of t^1” is impossible, it seems. God
can’t be the cause of time. What then does the
beginning of time’s existence really tell us?
78
"Forget the Old Bluffer"
September 18, 2019
post/forget-the-old-bluffer
Christian apologists regularly teach variations of

the principle "Nonbeing cannot produce being."
According to my notes, the late Norman Geisler
taught precisely that (The Big Book of Christian
Apologetics, 2012, 70 & 106). Interestingly, the
once-famous unbeliever Charles Bradlaugh also
taught that "out of nothing nothing can come
[ex nihilo nihil fit]" (Gordon Stein, ed., An
Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, 1980,
11). Bradlaugh was a man of the nineteenth
century. The notion of an expanding universe,
from what I gather, wasn't on anyone's mind at
the time. As I wrote in Stubborn Credulity, the
universe "is not 'static,' as it was believed to be
in the nineteenth century" (29). According to
Victor Stenger, before Einstein, "everyone
thought the universe was a static firmament, as
described in the Bible" (God and the Multiverse,
122). As I mentioned in the previous blog posts,
the Kalam Cosmological Argument has existed
79
for at least several centuries. The premise "The
universe began to exist" existed long before
Einstein. Today, however, apologists and
theologians can use relativity (See Bertrand
Russell, The ABC of Relativity, Third Revised
Edition, Mentor, 1969, 111) and the Big Bang
Theory to prove that the universe began to
exist. One apologist--perhaps the most
prominent one--who uses the Big Bang to argue
for the Kalam argument (from this point, KCA),
William Lane Craig, actually conceded, "[S]ome
people find philosophical arguments dubious or
difficult to follow; they prefer empirical
evidence" (Reasonable Faith, Third Edition,
125). I will argue that apologists need
philosophical arguments since Big Bang
cosmology alone doesn't support the claim that
the universe "popped into existence from
nothing"*
As I mentioned in a previous blog, one

of the philosophical arguments for the finitude
of the past is premised on the assumption that
an actual infinite cannot exist. To see why I
don't accept that premise, see Stubborn
Credulity or the blog post "Unreasonable
Faith?". In Stubborn Credulity, I conceded the
80
premise for the sake of argument, but as I
observed elsewhere, the fallback position is one
that even an atheist could very well have
trouble with. One atheist who had no problem
with time having a beginning was the forgotten
author Dühring. We know about him and his
work because Frederick Engels wrote an entire
book attacking him. Engels asked two important
questions:
"What was there before this beginning of

time?"
"If the world had ever been in a state in which

no change whatever was taking place, how
could it pass from this state to a changing
state?"
I believe I've written enough about the second

question. If the universe is static, then there are
(at least) two ways that time could begin:
1. Immobile matter transitions to a mobile

state.
2. Matter pops into existence from nothing.
Whether Engels was wrong to decry the first

way, he at least understood that the beginning
of time presented the atheists of his day with a
81
problem. Even so-called "low-brow atheists"
(William Lane Craig, Apologetics, 1984, 58)
seemed to have a problem with the Big Bang
well into the twentieth century (See John
Murray & Madalyn O'Hair, All the Questions You
Ever Wanted to Ask American Atheists, Second
Edition, Austin: American Atheist Press, 1986,
36 & 37). Perhaps, the American Atheists were
under the impression that the Big Bang
supported the theistic view, which they
described quite eloquently:
At the root of it all, we think now, is an

incorrect assumption that there was a time
when "nothing" existed. This is a so-called
period of "void," before the subsequent
"creation" of all natural things, of what you call
"something." The religionists, such as yourself,
must have this "nothingness" period in order to
justify a then-necessitated omnipotent creator.
(John Murray & Madalyn O'Hair, All the
Questions You Ever Wanted to Ask American
Atheists, Austin: American Atheist Press, 1986,
32)
"Nothing" evidently means no natural things.

The universe would mean all of the natural
things. O'Hair is basically saying that the
82
theologians sneak God into the proceedings.
"Nothing" essentially means "only God". The
philosopher Michael Scriven conceded that
such a scenario was possible: "[I]f we mean by
'the Universe' just the material things which
make it up ..., then it is conceivable that these
things all come from some nonmaterial entity
such as a God or a magnetohydrodynamic
vortex" (Primary Philosophy, McGraw-Hill, 1966,
115).
Regarding conceivability, Graham Oppy

asked, "[W]hy is [the criterion of conceivability]
good enough here [in the case of a changeless
and timeless God], and yet not in the case of
the supposition that something might exist
uncaused?" ("Craig, Mackie, and the Kalam
Cosmological Argument, Religious Studies, 27,
196). Mere conceivability would permit a
Godless scenario just as easily as it would
permit the contrary. As Quentin Smith noticed,
"I can conceive the possibility of the universe
beginning to exist uncaused. This uncaused
beginning may be utterly astonishing, but it can
be conceived to possibly occur, unlike a blade of
grass simultaneously being both green all over
and red all over" ("A Big Bang Cosmological
83
Argument For God's Nonexistence," 1992
<https://infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_s
mith/bigbang.html>).
The apologists evidently are relying on

"ex nihilo nihil fit." As I wrote in Stubborn
Credulity, the late R. C. Sproul reportedly taught
that "if there was ever a time when there was
nothing, there would be nothing now." Perhaps
uncharitably, I rebutted,
The phrase "if there was ever a time when

there was nothing" is incoherent. Literally, it
means "if there was ever a time when there
was no time". Physicist Sean Carroll recognized
that people misconceived when they conceived
of a time when only nothing existed: "The
problem with 'creation from nothing' is that it
conjures an image of a pre-existing
'nothingness' out of which the universe
spontaneously appeared--not at all what is
actually involved in this idea. As human beings
embedded in a universe with an arrow of time,
we reflexively attempt to explain events in
terms of earlier events, even when the event
we are trying to explain is explicitly stated to be
the earliest one. It would be more accurate to
84
characterize these models by saying 'there was
a time such that there was no earlier time.'"
Admittedly, what Carroll and other physicists

were proposing was a bit mind-boggling. At the
risk of confusing you even more, I'd like to share
some old notes on this subject. Trust me when I
say that there is a payoff at the end:
It shouldn't trouble us if we can't understand

the mysteries of existence; this should be
expected. As psychologist Steven Pinker
explained, "If the mind is a biological organ
rather than a window onto reality, there should
be truths that are literally inconceivable, and
limits to how well we can ever grasp the
discoveries of science." The strange idea that
"time came into existence with the Big Bang"
just makes our heads hurt the more we ponder
it. Question like "What lies beyond the edge of
the universe?" just lead to more questions
(Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate, 2002, 239). Are
scientists claiming here that "the total" or "the
cosmos" came into existence or had a
beginning; not just the universe we inhabit? If
so, then they are denying the existence of God,
or at least a God that existed before the Big
Bang. As Father Copleston observed during his
85
debate with Bertrand Russell, "if the total has
no cause, then ... it must be its own cause..." (Al
Seckel, ed., Bertrand Russell on God and
Religion, 1986, 130).
What I wish to focus on is the claim made by

Father Copleston. I think he's wrong. When
people say that God is uncaused, do they mean
He is self-caused? We need context before we
can determine what someone meant by
"uncaused". The word "uncaused" is
ambiguous. I know it's cliché to say that the
context matters, but here the context really
does matter. Coming to be in time is one thing.
Coming to be with time is another thing. The
late Norman Geisler told a story that implied
the difference didn't matter:
One of the fundamental rational laws of all

thought ... is that every event, everything that
comes to be, has a cause. Now if the universe
came to be then it's only rational to conclude
that the universe had a cause. Let me illustrate
by a story of two men, an atheist and a theist,
who went for a walk in the woods. They came
on a translucent glass ball about eight feet in
diameter, and the theist said to the atheist,
"Where did it come from?" He said, "I don't
86
know, but someone must have put it there. It
didn't just pop into existence out of nowhere."
They both agreed. The theist said, "But if the
ball was sixteen feet in diameter, does it still
need a cause?" "Well, little balls need causes.
Big ones need causes, too." "What if the ball is
as big as the whole world?" The atheist pauses
and says, "Yeah. If little ones need causes, then
big ones need causes, and really big ones need
causes, too." Then he says, "What if the ball is
as big as the whole universe?" The atheist said,
"Of course it doesn't need a cause. It's just
there." That's not rational.
Geisler's opponent, Paul Kurtz, shrewdly

declared, "I deny the notion that the universe
came into being ex nihilo, out of nothing."**
Indeed, I don't see why atheists must deny "ex
nihilo nihil fit". Apologists might insinuate that
they do, but even the atheist in Geisler's story,
as we'll see, isn't guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt. The most obvious objection to Geisler is
that, unlike some ball, the universe was at some
point a microscopic object. Even the fictional
character who is quoted in the title of my post
understood that: "As you know, … inside the
Planck length and the Planck duration you have
87
this space-time foam where the quantum
fluctuations from matter to non-matter really
have very little meaning …. [Y]ou get this bubble
of broken symmetry that by negative pressure
expands exponentially, and in a couple of
microseconds you can have something go from
next to nothing to the size and mass of the
observable present universe" (John Updike,
Roger's Version, 1986; New York: Random
House, 2013, 314).
It may be simply unintelligible to talk

about a cause for the universe. As Quentin
Smith explained,
[A]s for [William Lane Craig]'s final remarks, if

atheists believe the universe is uncaused then it
popped into existence. Well, I spent the whole
night explaining this theory that says that the
universe did not pop into existence without a
cause. The universe does not have a cause.
Everything in the universe has a cause. This
didn't pop into existence uncaused, it was
caused by that. That didn't pop into existence, it
was caused by that. So there is nothing that
lacks a cause and since everything is caused by
some other part of the universe, there is
nothing in the universe that lacks a cause,
88
therefore there is nothing that needs God for its
cause. I mean, what theists need to show - what
is it that God needs to cause to exist?
Everything that exists has a cause. And if you
add God to it, what did God do? If God exists,
he was already caused to exist by some other
part of the universe. That's not what God is
though.*
It may seem that Smith is expounding upon the

familiar "infinitely old Universe," but, as we'll
see, he is not. He has recently been writing
about what Michael Scriven referred to as the
Universe "which has an infinite history but a
finite age." Lest you think he is falling into
contradiction, let's acknowledge that "even if
we concerned ourselves only with small
numbers, notions of 'infinity' would crop up":
Consider a series of fractions like this: 1/2, 1/4,

1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, 1/256, 1/512, and
so on endlessly. Notice that each fraction is
one-half the size of the preceding fraction, since
the denominator doubles each time.... Although
the fractions get continually smaller, the series
can be considered endless because no matter
how small the fractions get, it is always possible
to multiply the denominator by 2 and get a still
89
smaller fraction and the next in the series.
Furthermore, the fractions never quite reach
zero because the denominator can get larger
endlessly and it is only if an end could be
reached (which it can't) that the fraction could
reach zero. (Isaac Asimov, Realm of Numbers,
1959; Greenwich: Fawcett, 1967, 132 & 134)
What does this have to do with our topic? The

phrase "fraction of a second" may give you a
hint. "In an instant" makes one wonder what an
instant is. There is no smallest fraction, but is
there a smallest instant of time? The answer is
both yes and no. Yes, empirically speaking. No,
logically speaking. Again, Quentin Smith:
The Big Bang occurs at t > t^0. However there is

not some instant at which the Big Bang occurs,
for (assuming that time is dense or continuous)
there is no earliest instant after the first instant
t^0; for every instant t^a > t^0 there is another
instant t^b < t^a. Accordingly, if the phrase "the
Big Bang" is to be used unequivocally, it must
be used to designate a state occupying an
interval that is the first interval of some length
to elapse after t^0. Although on a priori grounds
there is no nonarbitrary basis for selecting this
length, there are empirical reasons for
90
identifying the first post-t^0 interval of length
10^-43 second as the time of the Big Bang. The
earliest state of the universe that cosmologists
have determined to be unpreceded by a state
of a different kind is the state constitutive of
the Planck era, which occupies the first post-t^0
interval of length 10^-43 second. ("The
Uncaused Beginning of the Universe,"
Philosophy of Science, Vol. 55, No. 1, Mar.,
1988, 45)
As mentioned, more recently, Smith has

reconciled the Big Bang with an infinite history
universe to develop a KCA for Atheism:
According to contemporary physical science, in

particular, big bang cosmology, there is no first
instant t = 0. If there were such a first instant,
the universe would exist in an impossible state
at this time; the whole spatially three-
dimensional universe would occupy or exist in a
point that had no spatial dimensions. Such a
state of affairs would be described by
nonsensical mathematical statements.
For example, at t = 0, the density of the

universe's matter would be (to give a simplified
example) of the form 25 grams per zero unit of
91
space, that is, 25/0. But this a mathematically
nonsensical sentence, since there exists no
mathematical operation of dividing by zero. The
alleged fraction 25/0 is not a number but
merely marks on a page, since there is no
fraction with zero for a denominator and a
positive number for its numerator. The universe
began to exist later than the hypothetical time t
= 0.... An interval [of time] is half-open in the
early direction if it has no earliest instant.... The
first hour would be closed if the hypothetical
first instant t = 0 actually existed. But since it
does not exist, the first hour is half-open in the
early direction.... If we "cut out" the instant t =
0 that corresponds to 0 in the interval 0 > x < or
= 1, we will not find a certain instant that
immediately comes after the "cut out" instant t
= 0. For example, the instant y corresponding to
the number 0.5 cannot be the first instant, since
between the number 0 and the number 0.5
there is the number 0.25 and some instant z
corresponding to 0.25. The same holds for any
other number in the interval 0 > x < or = 1.... An
interval is half-open in the earlier direction only
if its beginning point is a singularity, that is, its
alleged beginning point is in fact physically
impossible and does not exist.... [T]here is no
92
first instant of the universe's beginning to exist
that is uncaused and that requires an external
cause, such as God, to bring it into existence.
("Kalam Cosmological Arguments for Atheism,"
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed.
Michael Martin, Cambridge UP, 2007, 185 &
196)
If you are unfamiliar with the term "singularity,"

that is fine. I bring it up here because I once
found it strange when atheists would mention
the singularity. By the nineties, Stephen
Hawking maintained that a singularity didn't
mark the beginning of the universe. The
universe, according to Victor Stenger, "was
never an infinitesimal point in space-time" (The
Fallacy of Fine-Tuning, 2011, 125). "The laws of
quantum mechanics ... forbid the infinities" (Kip
Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 1994,
476). I was under the impression that no
singularity meant, arguably, no need for God
(See the Hawking biopic The Theory of
Everything.) If even a singularity doesn't point
to God, then we can, in the words of a fictional
"evangelical on behalf of nonbelief," "[f]orget
the old bluffer [God]" (John Updike, Roger's
93
Version, 1986; New York: Random House, 2013,
318 & 320).
If there are no singularities, then the

universe's origin is a mystery. As Victor Stenger
argued, we can never know what went on
before the Planck time (Stubborn Credulity, 29).
Because of the new developments in
cosmology, I doubt that the fictional character
whom I quoted in the title was correct about
every detail. I do, however, believe that trying
to bring God into the theoretical model isn't
helpful. God, when grafted onto the model, is a
way to abide by the axiom "ex nihilo nihil fit." At
least, that is my tentative answer to Graham
Oppy's question "How does God's existing
'changelessly and timelessly' differ from his
coming into existence uncaused at the very
moment at which time is created?" ("Craig,
Mackie, and the Kalam Cosmological Argument,
Religious Studies, 27, 196). Even if we are
confronted with what Michael Scriven called
"the fully finite Universe [finite history and
finite age]," we are just trading one mystery for
another by bringing in God. Apologists want to
make it seem that the concept is ridiculous or
violates the just mentioned axiom so that it can
94
be ruled out, but Scriven argued that "even the
Universe of limited age does not come from
nothingness, since there was no previous time
and no empty space from which it could have
come. It simply exists without having come
from anywhere. And this will be true whether
or not it has an inexhaustible history. So ... the
Universe is a kind of entity that exists without
coming from anywhere" (Primary Philosophy,
McGraw-Hill, 1966, 122). Adolf Grünbaum,
echoing Scriven, wrote,
[I]n what sense could an uncaused Big Bang

universe be thought to have "come out of
absolutely nothing"? Surely NOT in the sense
that there existed moments of time before the
Big Bang at which the physical universe did not
yet exist but only nothing. As I argued …,
despite the metrically finite past duration of the
Big Bang world, there was no such prior time.
Thus, the finitude of that past does not warrant
the conclusion that if this universe is uncaused,
it must have "come out of" a prior state of
nothing.***
For the above reasons, I can without hesitation

say that, until we have exhausted all other
95
options, we should not resort to a disembodied
mind who wields magic.
Even if we do need to resort to God,

let's not pretend that God meshes well with the
Big Bang. In the pre-Big Bang KCA, time could
begin in any conceivable way. It just had to be
finite. Post-Big Bang, however, "time itself is a
result of the Big Bang" (Dan Barker, Godless,
Ulysses Press, 2008, 133). The Big Bang, in some
way, caused time, but in order to accept that,
would you have to accept that a cause can be
simultaneous with its effect? (Not quite. See
George H. Smith on the universe being a
"metaphysical primary" [Atheism: The Case
Against God, Prometheus, 1979]. Likewise,
Nathaniel Branden taught,
The universe is the total of that which exists….

Causality presupposes existence…. The universe
… did not, at some point in time, "spring into
being." Time is a measurement of motion.
Motion presupposes entities that move. If
nothing existed, there could be no time. Time is
"in" the universe; the universe is not "in" time.
["'First Cause' is Existence, not God"
<http://www.skepticfiles.org/american/1stcaus
e.htm>]
96
Sean Carroll, in his debate with William Lane
Craig, said something similar:
[I object] to the language of coming into

existence or popping into existence. That is not
what the universe does even in models where
the universe has a beginning, a first moment.
Because the verb popping, the verb to pop, has
a temporal connotation, is the word I'm looking
for. It sounds as if you waited a while, and then,
pop, there was the universe. But that's exactly
wrong.
The popular author Sam Harris was also aware

of this problem: "It is not clear that we can even
speak coherently about the creation of the
universe, given that such an event can be
conceived only with reference to time, and here
we are talking about the birth of space-time
itself" [Letter to a Christian Nation, 2006, 73 &
74].) Isn't that confusing enough? Adding God
to the situation makes matters more, not less,
difficult. A questioner at the now legendary
William Lane Craig-Sean Carrol debate spoke for
me when he said,
I'd like to understand better the Kalam

argument because I am struggling with this.
97
You're stating that the universe has a beginning
and then you invoke cause and effect. Cause
and effect is a temporal concept; so if there's no
time.... [Cause and effect] is a temporal
concept. It makes sense if time exists. But
before the universe, there's no time.... Why
would you need a cause?... The cause has
always to precede [the effect].
William Lane Craig responded,
I don't think that's true. Don't you think causes

and effects can be simultaneous?... I think that's
evident. God's creation of the universe is
simultaneous with the universe coming into
being. What can be more obvious than that?
Craig once wrote, "[H]e thereby exposes himself

as a man interested only in an academic
refutation of the argument and not in really
discovering the truth about the universe"
(Apologetics, 74). It's ironic, then, that he would
be resorting to a concept that caused people to
literally "struggle". Craig doesn't have much of a
choice. He apparently endorsed the relational
view of time (See William Lane Craig, "'What
Place, Then, for a Creator?': Hawking on God
and Creation," The British Journal for the
98
Philosophy of Science, Vol. 41, No. 4, 478).
According to this view, "there may be no
meaning to time besides change" (Lee Smolin,
The Life of the Cosmos, Oxford UP, 1997, 286).
The view is evidently the consensus view, at
least among philosophers. If I'm not mistaken,
the relational view can mix with the Big Bang
and the principle that states that causes
precede effects. When you throw God in to the
situation and declare Him to be the first cause,
you apparently have problems. The intuitive
principle about causes preceding effects must
go. Again, throwing Craig's words back at him,
the principle that cause and effect is a temporal
concept "is so intuitively obvious that I think
scarcely anyone could sincerely believe it to be
false" (Apologetics, 74). I think Sean Carroll had
the above conundrums in mind when he, during
the same debate, said, "[A]s a scientist, there is
this enormous temptation that I am constantly
resisting when I am in dialogue between science
and theology which is that as theologians talk
about the relationship between God and time,
or God's status as necessary or anything like
that, there's a big part of me that wants to say,
'Why are you working so hard to extract
99
yourself from these dilemmas when you can
just say God doesn't exist?'"
In his book Godless, the former

preacher Dan Barker made some important
points about causality. Craig is quoted as
teaching that "the origin of the universe is
causally prior to the Big Bang, though not
temporally prior to the Big Bang" (quoted in
Godless, 136). Barker dissented in part. Barker
seemed to be saying that Craig's statement was
an example of an a priori truth. Given what
Barker wrote in the original version of the
piece, my interpretation is virtually confirmed.
The original version, still available online, reads:
"(In logic we say that a conclusion 'follows,'
though we do not mean this happens in space
or time. Craig writes that 'the origin of the
universe is causally prior to the Big Bang,
though not temporally prior to the Big
Bang')"**** Craig's proposition could be known
through pure logic. In other words, the truth of
the statement is known a priori and is,
therefore, beyond dispute. It has nothing to do
with what Hume called a "matter of fact". As
Hume argued, "The contrary of every Matter of
Fact is still possible" (An Enquiry Concerning
100
Human Understanding, ed. Ernest C. Mossner,
New York: Washington Square Press, 1963, 36).
"Matters of fact" or "judgments of experience"
are, according to Immanuel Kant, "always
synthetic" (Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics, Philosophy of Material Nature,
trans. James W. Ellington, Hackett, 1985, 13).
Craig's statement is also, apparently, a synthetic
one, as in synthesis or combination. Synthetic
judgments involve two or more separate things.
In the first edition of Critique of Pure Reason,
Kant explained, "[I]n synthetic judgments I must
have besides the concept of the subject
something else (X), upon which the
understanding may rely, if it is to know that a
predicate, not contained in this concept,
nevertheless belongs to it" (Critique of Pure
Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, New York:
St Martin's, 1965, 49). Craig's statement not
only appears to be a synthetic a priori
judgment; it is also a judgment about causality.
A priori judgments concerning causal relations
were referred to by Kant in a non-pejorative
way as metaphysics (Prolegomena to Any
Future Metaphysics, Essays in Philosophy, ed.
Houston Peterson, Pocket, 1959, 77).
Metaphysics was controversial among many, if
101
not most, twentieth century philosophers (The
first chapter in A. J. Ayer's book Language,
Truth & Logic was titled "The Elimination of
Metaphysics"). Bertrand Russell also evidently
believed that synthetic a priori was a "null set"
(See my professor Bill Barnett and Walter Block,
quoted in my pamphlet "Insuppressible Fallacy-
Mongers"). If something is "causally prior" but
not "temporally prior," then, according to
Russell at least, the statement is analytic.
Russell, in the debate that Barker cited
repeatedly, said, "[T]o my mind, a 'necessary
proposition' has got to be analytic" (Russell-
Copleston debate, The Existence of God, ed.
John Hick, New York: Macmillan, 1964, 169).
Presumably, Barker agreed. Yet, he also agreed
with Craig. What's going on here? I think that
we need to check our premises. According to
Hume, "We cannot at all see why, in
consequence of the existence of one thing,
another must necessarily exist or how the
concept of such a combination can arise a
priori" (Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any
Future Metaphysics, Essays in Philosophy, ed.
Houston Peterson, Pocket, 1959, 77, underline
added). Superficially, the universe is one thing,
and the Big Bang is another thing, but Barker
102
shrewdly wondered whether the universe was,
indeed, a thing. He concluded that it wasn't:
"the universe is not a 'thing'" (Godless, 141).
Barker thus, arguably, avoids the controversy
about metaphysics, if not the one about the
synthetic a priori. More importantly, he
undercut the KCA. The KCA states that
1. Everything that comes to be has a cause.
2. The universe came to be
3. The universe had a cause.
I won't object to the validity of the conclusion

since there are more robust ways of stating the
first premise ("Whatever begins to exist has a
cause"). Barker, using a formulation almost
identical to Norman Geisler's, noticed that
something was missing. If one is going to use
the word "everything," it is only fair if someone
asks, "Is the universe a thing?" If it's not, then
Geisler's "translucent ball" story is irrelevant. As
Barker argued, it compares apples to oranges
(Godless, 140).
Because the universe is not a thing, it's

not clear if we can say that it has a causal
relationship with something else. It is,
103
therefore, questionable to use the universe to
prove the simultaneity of cause and effect. In
his writings, Craig mentions events such as "a
ball denting a cushion" and "a locomotive
pulling a train." Perhaps, these examples can be
used to refute the principle about causes
preceding effects. Adolf Grünbaum, however,
rebutted that the first example "is predicated
on the assumption that, prior to the ball's
impact on the cushion, the dent was not
present in the cushion. Hence we must consider
the process which issued in that dent."***
The biggest problem with a cause being

simultaneous with its effect was articulated by
Barker. He wrote, "Without temporal
succession, there is no way to determine the
order of cause and effect" (Godless, 137). I think
he's correct. For those who are unfamiliar with
Hume, I'll mention here what I have mentioned
elsewhere. Hume taught, "Now as all objects,
which are not contrary, are susceptible of a
constant conjunction, and as no real objects are
contrary; I have inferr'd from these principles,
that to consider the matter a priori, any thing
may produce any thing, and that we shall never
discover a reason, why any object may or may
104
not be the cause of any other, however great,
or however little the resemblance may be
betwixt them" (A Treatise of Human Nature,
Second Edition, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford,
1978, 247). As mentioned, Craig said that
"God's creation of the universe is simultaneous
with the universe coming into being." If the two
events are simultaneous, then why couldn't the
universe's coming into being cause God's
creation of it? If we take Hume seriously, the
question is unavoidable. I think that the
universe's coming into being is simply a
corollary of God's creation of it. Craig is
mistaking a corollary relationship for a cause-
effect relationship.
My speculation is that Barker, the

atheist, was thinking that the universe "sets the
foundation for causal explanation" (George H.
Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God,
Prometheus, 1979, 240). In that sense, the
universe is "antecedent" to events within the
universe. "Causally prior" sounds like "prior to
causes"; so it's understandable if people think
that Craig is saying the latter. I don't think Craig
meant that, but frankly, I don't know how else
to make sense of his statement. Just based on
105
what we've seen, it's not obvious at all that
"causes and effects can be simultaneous."
Interestingly, Craig, in the same debate,
admitted, "Both the naturalist and the theist
can be stubbornly committed to their
worldviews and not allow contrary evidence to
overthrow it. Naturalists are just as adept as
theists at explaining away evidence that they
find inconvenient.... That's a charge that I think
cuts both ways." Isn't Craig, by denying that the
cause must be prior to the effect, himself
revealing how stubbornly committed he is to his
theistic worldview?
Craig's words come back to haunt him

in still another case. Craig champions the
criterion "more plausible than its denial". I ask,
"Is Craig's denial of Hume more plausible than
its denial?" For those who are unfamiliar with
Hume, he taught that "the cause should be
prior in time to the effect" (T. Z. Lavine, From
Socrates to Sartre, New York: Bantam, 1984,
160, emphasis added). Returning to what I just
said, the universe's coming into being is a
corollary of God's creation of it. Replace "God"
with "naked singularity". According to Paul
Davies, "the singularity should not be regarded
106
as an object or a thing, so much as a non-place
where all known laws are suspended....
[Stephen] Hawking has argued that, being an
utterly lawless entity, a singularity should
originate totally chaotic and random influences"
(The Edge of Infinity, 1981, ix, 149, 150 & 169).
We could say that the naked singularity's
creation of the universe is simultaneous with
the universe coming into being. The question,
however, is not "What can be more obvious
than that?" That's not the right question. The
question is, instead, "What caused the universe
to come to be?" If someone asked, "What
caused the universe to come into being?," and
you said, "God's creation of the universe," the
questioner would wonder if you understood the
question. On the other hand, saying that God is
the cause is not enough. How did God cause it?
God is said to have spoken the world into
existence. I suppose it's conceivable that the
speaking and the creating can be simultaneous.
It's not the case that they must be
simultaneous. What, then, is the cause of the
speaking? Let's say it is God's eternal
determination to speak the world into existence
(See Craig, Apologetics, 93). If that is the cause,
then cause and, therefore, time not only existed
107
before the moment of creation, but also existed
from eternity past. (Perhaps, there is a grain of
truth in the assertion that "[a]ll cosmologies--
whether secular or theological--are forced to
contemplate an infinite regress" [David Mills,
Atheist Universe, 2006, 237 & 238].) If the two
events happen at the same time, one can
always say that one caused the other. It's
plausible that the two simultaneous events are
both caused by God's eternal determination to
actualize both events.
In Stubborn Credulity, I wrote,
[T]he theologians could rebut that it is not

causality that they are concerned with, but
change. Change, according to some, had a
beginning. Prior to the beginning of change,
nothing but a changeless, quiescent God
existed―this God being an unembodied mind
who is determined from eternity past to create
the universe from nothing using will alone. I
mention these teachings not to refute them but
so that the reader will understand what,
according to my understanding, he will have to
resort to if he accepts the conclusions of
theologians like Craig [et al]. (39)
108
If I'm correct in what I've written here, modern
apologists have to bite another bullet. Of
course, they would have their readers believe
that unbelievers are the ones who have to bite
the worst bullets. For example, the following
quote from a philosopher named Anthony
Kenny is available everywhere Christian books
are sold: "According to the Big Bang Theory, the
whole matter of the universe began to exist at a
particular time in the remote past. A proponent
of such a theory, at least if he is an atheist, must
believe that the matter of the universe came
from nothing and by nothing" (quoted in
Varghese, ed., The Intellectuals Speak Out
About God, Geisler & Turek, I Don't Have
Enough Faith to be An Atheist, etc.). The Scriven
quote reproduced here is less well-known but is
older than the Kenny quote.
In a book attributed to Antony Flew, we

find the following sentences: "Modern
cosmologists seemed just as disturbed as
atheists about the potential theological
implications of their work. Consequently, they
devised influential escape routes that sought to
preserve the nontheist status quo" (Antony
Flew & Roy Abraham Varghese, There is a God,
109
2007; HarperCollins, 2008, 137). Apologists are
no strangers to the "block universe" hypothesis.
According to G. J. Whitrow, an author writing in
the nineteenth century suggested that it is an
illusion that "there is a three-dimensional world
enduring in time." Instead, the author argued,
"the world is a four-dimensional spatial
manifold." Hermann Weyl, in the twentieth
century, was of the same opinion. He wrote,
"The objective world simply is, it does not
happen" (quoted in The Natural Philosophy of
Time, 1963, 293 & 308). Of course, the
apologists and, I'm guessing, the public-at-large
aren't too impressed with the "block universe".
It's not a "live option". Regardless, time
"starting and stopping is no problem for the
block-universe picture, within which what's real
is the history of the universe taken as a timeless
whole" (Lee Smolin, Time Reborn, 2013, 74).
Unlike some other physicists, Lee Smolin does
not spatialize time. Even he, in an early book,
could write, "[B]y definition the universe is all
there is, and there can be nothing outside it.
And, by definition, neither can there have been
anything before the universe that caused it, for
if anything existed it must have been part of the
universe" (Three Roads to Quantum Gravity,
110
emphasis added
<https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/19/books
/chapters/three-roads-to-quantum-
gravity.html>). To steal a phrase, the universe is
"causally prior". According to Victor Stenger,
"Not everything requires a cause" ("The
Universe Was Created by Accident," Science &
Religion, ed. Janelle Rohr, San Diego:
Greenhaven Press, 1988, 123). The question,
however, remains: Is the universe a thing?
*Smith-Craig Debate
(<http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/doc
s/craig-smith_harvard07.html>)
** John Ankerberg Show, "Secular Humanism -

Part 1" (<https://youtu.be/a6PUhIP4fJk>)
***"Some Comments on William Craig's

'Creation and Big Bang Cosmology'"
<https://infidels.org/library/modern/adolf_grun
baum/comments.html>
**** "Cosmological Kalamity," 2000

(<https://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_bark
er/kalamity.html>)
111
Appendix
"The writers of the Bible actually described

characteristics of a big bang universe more than
two thousand years before scientists developed
any big bang models. Most people know the
first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, right? … The
Bible says the universe had a beginning and
that's exactly what the big bang says."95
Assessment: By this point, the folly of using

science to promote religion or faith should be
plain as day. Apologists have used the laws of
physics, the Shroud of Turin, and, now,
cosmology. As in those cases, it appears that
the apologists are making another mistake by
appealing to cosmology. As everyone should
know, a model is one thing and the universe is
another.96 If the difference in this case isn't
common knowledge, these words from Heinz
Pagels should clear things up:
As the universe continues to contract it gets

hotter and denser and, according to classical
general relativity, collapses into a space-time
singularity. But this purely classical picture of
collapse must be modified if quantum theory is
taken into account. Physicists know that the
112
classical description of space-time geometry
breaks down at the Planck-length scale before
the singularity is encountered.97
What this implies for the apologist's argument

was evaluated more recently by Victor Stenger:
The theologians who waxed so enthusiastic

about the big bang were well aware that the
cosmological model bore little, if any,
resemblance to the creation story in Genesis or
that of any other religious tradition for that
matter. The key point for them was that science
was providing evidence that a beginning did in
fact occur…
Furthermore, as shown in 1970 by

Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, Einstein's
general theory of relativity implies that the
universe at its first moment of existence was a
singularity, that is, an infinitesimal point in
space of infinite energy density. This meant that
not only was matter created at that moment,
but so were space and time…
However, there was a fly in the

ointment. General relativity is not a quantum
theory and so does not apply to a region of
space less than [the Planck length].
113
The apologist trope about how "the big bang
says…" is beside the point. All we have are
models that are correct or incorrect given the
assumptions of the model. As Pagels explained,
a purely classical model gives you a singularity
or a beginning of time, but the purely classical
model can apply "only for times greater than
the Planck time and only for distances greater
than the Planck length."98 In other words,
whether or not a big bang model describes a
universe with a beginning is not germane to the
subject of whether the universe actually had a
beginning.
"(Hawking) did much of the research that

demonstrated the universe needed some
transcendent (outside of space and time) agent
to cause it to come into existence. The fact that
he (along with some other scientists) now
invests so much effort trying to prove that God
is not that agent shows how strongly the
evidence points toward God's existence."99
Assessment: Again, no citation, but it's fairly

obvious what some of this commentary is
referring to. We can let Hawking speak by
reading this excerpt from his best-selling book:
114
[A] joint paper by Penrose and myself in 1970 …
at last proved that there must have been a big
bang singularity provided only that general
relativity is correct and the universe contains as
much matter as we observe. … [I]n the end our
work became generally accepted and nowadays
nearly everyone assumes that the universe
started with a big bang singularity. It is perhaps
ironic that, having changed my mind, I am trying
to convince other physicists that there was in
fact no singularity at the beginning of the
universe―as we shall see later, it can disappear
once quantum effects are taken into account.
If we want to be charitable, we can concede

that Hawking did do the work that the
apologists say he did … in the late
sixties―nearly fifty years ago. Since then, as he
said, he changed his mind. Furthermore, the
characterization of Hawking's current work
must be wrong because Hawking doesn't
believe that there was a singularity and hasn't
since the eighties. Could it be that Hawking and
the other scientists are not involved in some
anti-theistic conspiracy but are just doing their
jobs? Yes, Hawking demonstrated something in
the seventies that some theists think "points to
115
God," but his research didn't stop there. As he
told the story, "It might seem … that my more
recent work had completely undone the results
of my earlier work on singularities. But … the
real importance of the singularity theorems was
that they showed that the gravitational field
must become so strong that quantum
gravitational effects could not be ignored."100
Although his early work wasn't totally a waste
of time, it's clear that there is some
discontinuity between his early work and his
recent work. The apologist's quote above
doesn't even hint at this discontinuity.
116
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Smith, Quentin. "Infinity and the Past."
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[1961] 1963
122
Index
Al-Ghazali 35
Asimov, Isaac 69, 70, & 90
Barker, Dan 96, 100, 102, 103, 104, & 105
Branden, Nathaniel 96
Carroll, Sean 84, 85, 97, & 99
Craig, William Lane Craig
Craig's Library 48 - 55
Davies, Paul 6, 58, 63, & 106
D'Souza, Dinesh 61, 62, 71, & 74
Engels, Frederick 6, 7, 18, 19, 33, 34, 53,

59, 60, & 81
Flew, Antony 109
Geisler, Norman 9, 10, 79, 86, 87, & 103
Grünbaum, Adolf 95 & 104
Hawking, Stephen 72, 73, 75, 93, 98, 107,

113, 114, & 115
Hume, David 73, 78, 100, 102, 104, 105, &

106
123
Kant, Immanuel 101 & 102
Kurtz, Paul 87
Lewis, C. S. 11
Martin, Michael 59 & 60
Moreland, J. P. 18, 20 - 22, 24, 28, 38, & 67
O'Hair, Madalyn Murray 82
Oppy, Graham 26, 39, 41, 48, 50, 59, 60, 75,
83, & 94
Pagels, Heinz 12, 112, & 114
Philoponus 33 & 34
Russell, Bertrand 70, 74, 80, 86, & 102
Sagan, Carl 12
Scriven, Michael 83, 89, 94, 95, & 109
Smith, George H. 23, 96, & 105
Smith, Quentin 21, 43, 51, 54, 68, 69, 76, 77,
78, 83, 84, & 88 - 91
Smolin, Lee 99 & 110
Stenger, Victor 7, 10, 11, 19, 79, 93, 94, 111, &
113
124
Strobel, Lee 62 & 72
Whitrow, G. J. 110
125
Please visit
https://jmgiardi.wixsite.com/stubborncredulity
for more information.
126
References
1
short for the Kalam Cosmological Argument
2
Lee Strobel, The Case For a Creator (2004) p. 102 -
103
3
Wes Morriston "Doubts About the Kalam
Argument," Debating Christian Theism, eds. J. P.
Moreland et al (Oxford University Press, 2013) p. 23
4
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator p. 103
5
Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity (1981) p. 24
6
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring (1939) p. 56 - 59
7
"It is hard to grasp the idea of an infinitely old
Universe. It is all very well to allow infinity in
mathematics, but can there really be a physically
existing infinity? One way to persuade oneself of the
legitimacy of the idea is to ask oneself whether one
thinks the Universe must suddenly come to an end.
There seems to be no absolute necessity about this,
and hence, turning our gaze backward in time
instead of forward, there is surely no necessity for
the Universe to have begun at any time. Hence it
may be infinitely old" (Michael Scriven, Primary
Philosophy, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966, 118).
8
Victor Stenger, Has Science Found God? Kindle
Edition location 1791
9
Norman Geisler, The Big Book of Christian
Apologetics p. 152
10
Norman L. Geisler, "The Collapse of Modern
Atheism," The Intellectuals Speak Out About God, ed.
Roy Abraham Varghese (1984) p. 137
127
11
Victor Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum (1995)
p. 226 - 230
12
Isaac Asimov, Of Time and Space and Other Things
(1965; Discus-Avon, 1975) p. 120
13
Victor Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum (1995)
p. 226 - 230
14
C. S. Lewis, "Miracles" (1942) reprinted in C. S.
Lewis, God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (1970) p.
33
15
Victor Stenger, Not By Design (1988) p. 159
16
Heinz Pagels, The Cosmic Code (1982) 123 & 124,
emphasis added
17
Carl Sagan, "Gifford Lectures" (1985), The Varieties
of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan,
ed. ([2006] 2007) p. 157 & 158
18
Heinz Pagels, The Cosmic Code (1982) p. 123 & 124
19
G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time
([1961] 1963) p. 7
20
Wes Morriston, "Doubts About the Kalam
Moreland et al (Oxford UP, 2013) p. 21
21
"[W]e have no automatic reason to believe that
the universe itself is finite in scope, even if the
observable universe necessarily is and always will
be" (James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot, Onus, 2013
Kindle Edition Location 1170).
22
Atheism: The Case Against God p. 254
23
Henry M. Morris et al quoted in Scott M. Huse, The
Collapse of Evolution (1983) p. 64
24
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring p. 55
128
25
J. P. Moreland, "Yes! A Defense of Christianity,"
Does God Exist? by J. P. Moreland & Kai Nielsen
([1990] 1993) p. 37
26
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith Third Edition
(Wheaton: Crossway, 2008) p. 122
27
Victor Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis p. 123
28
Anti-Dühring p. 57 & 58
29
Wallace I. Matson, The Existence of God (1965) p.
60 & 61
30
J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City (1987) p. 31
31
William Lane Craig & Quentin Smith, Theism,
Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (1993; New York:
Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1995) p. 89
32
Does God Exist? by J. P. Moreland & Kai Nielsen
([1990] 1993) p. 37, emphasis added
33
Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical
Justification (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1990) p. 105
34
Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1995) p. 89 & 90
35
Atheism: The Case Against God p. 242
36
J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City (1987) p. 29
37
Keith Parsons, "Is There a Case for Christian
Theism?" Does God Exist? by J. P. Moreland & Kai
Nielsen p. 187
38
Edwyn Bevan, Christianity (1932; London: Oxford
University Press, 1955) p. 252
39
(Wheaton: Crossway, 2008) p. 116 - 118, emphasis
added
129
40
Graham Oppy, Arguing About Gods p. 140
41
Moreland et al (Oxford UP, 2013) p. 22 & 23,
emphasis added
42
Does God Exist? by J. P. Moreland & Kai Nielsen p. 37
43
Jérémie Harris, "A Whole Lot of Nothing" Skeptic
Vol. 19 No. 4 2014 p. 36
44
James A. Lindsay, Dot Dot Dot: Infinity Plus God
Equals Folly (Onus, 2013) Kindle Edition location 899
45
William Lane Craig, Apologetics: An Introduction
(Chicago: Moody, 1984) p. 78
46
p. 116 - 118
47
"Arithmetic avoids these implications by leaving
subtraction undefined for infinity" (Wes Morriston,
"Doubts About the Kalam Argument," Debating
Christian Theism, ed. J. P. Moreland et al, p. 22).
48
(Chicago: Moody, 1984) p. 77
49
William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological
Argument ([1979] 2000) p. 9
50
Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity p. 26
51
Anti-Dühring p. 59
52
William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological
Argument p. 8
53
Anti-Dühring p. 59
54
See T. Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre (New
York: Bantam, 1984) p. 210
130
55
William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argument
from Plato to Leibniz ([1980] 2001) p. 102
56
Equals Folly (Onus, 2013) Kindle Edition location
1256
57
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram
Shandy, Gentleman, ed. Ian Watt (Boston: Riverside-
Houghton Mifflin, 1965)
58
The Kalam Cosmological Argument p. 98 & 99
59
Victor Stenger, Timeless Reality (Amherst:
Prometheus, 2000) Kindle Edition Location 926
60
The Kalam Cosmological Argument p. 99
61
William Poundstone, Labyrinths of Reason (New
York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1988) p. 159
62
J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City p. 23
63
Graham Oppy, "Craig, Mackie, and the Kalam
Cosmological Argument," Religious Studies, Vol. 27,
No. 2 (Jun. 1991) p. 197
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20019467 accessed
3/8/2017
64
quoted in Graham Oppy, "Craig, Mackie, and the
Kalam Cosmological Argument" p. 193
65
B. C. Johnson, The Atheist Debater's Handbook
(Buffalo: Prometheus, 1983) p. 70; "The cause must
be prior to the effect" (David Hume, "Rules by Which
to Judge of Causes and Effects," A Treatise of Human
Nature).
66
Reasonable Faith p. 124
67
Equals Folly (Onus, 2013) Kindle Edition location 913
131
68
69
Graham Oppy, Philosophical Perspectives on
Infinity (2006) p. 58 & 59
70
Wes Morriston, “Doubts about the Kalām
Cosmological Argument”
http://spot.colorado.edu/~morristo/NewKalamCritiq
ue.pdf accessed 8/22/2017
71
Graham Oppy, Philosophical Perspectives on
Infinity (2006) p. 116
72
Morriston, "Doubts About the Kalam Argument" p.
26 & 27
73
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1984) p. 78
74
Quentin Smith, "Infinity and the Past," Theism,
Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology by William Lane
Craig & Quentin Smith p. 84, emphasis added
75
William Poundstone, Labyrinths of Reason (New
York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1988) p. 143 & 144
76
John W. Loftus, Why I Became an Atheist Revised
and Expanded (2012)
77
Quentin Smith, "Infinity and the Past," Theism,
Criag & Quentin Smith p. 87
78
William Lane Craig, "Time and Infinity," Theism,
Craig & Quentin Smith p. 98
79
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006; Boston:
Mariner-Houghton Mifflin, 2008) p. 155; Craig uses
similar rhetoric in his other works. For example:
132
 "Can anyone believe that such a hotel could
exist in reality?" (Reasonable Faith Third
Edition p. 119).
 "But this method seems even more
unbelievable than the first method"
(Reasonable Faith Third Edition p. 122).
 "…the notion that a tree shrew evolved by
chance to a personal being who journeys to
the Moon appears at face value rather
preposterous" (Knowing the Truth about
the Resurrection p. 14).
80
81
Oppy, Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity p. 54 &
55
82
83
Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity p. 54 & 55
84
Isaac Asimov, Of Time and Space and Other Things
(1965; New York: Discus-Avon, 1975) p. 150
85
Quentin Smith, "Reply to Craig: The Possible
Infinitude of the Past," International Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1 Issue No. 129 (March
1993) p. 114; I realize that this rebuttal violates the
"every possible" number assumption. That
assumption, however, is one that I have trouble with
since it seems clearly possible to invent a new
number.
86
133
87
88
Moreland et al (Oxford UP, 2013) p. 26
89
Anti-Dühring p. 59
90
Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity (1981; New York:
Touchstone-Simon & Schuster, 1982) p. 27
91
Victor Stenger, God and the Multiverse (Amherst:
Prometheus, 2014) Kindle Edition location 4300
92
Curiously, the admission "…according to the
mathematicians, there are now no more persons in
the hotel than there were before: the number is just
infinite" drops out of a later edition (William Lane
Craig, Apologetics p. 77).
93
Willam Lane Craig & Walter Sinnott-Armstrong,
God?: A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist
(2004) p. 58
134
94
Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity p. 27 & 28
135
95
Jeff Zweerink & Ken Hultgren, IMPACT EVENTS:
the universe (2010) p. 12
96
"[A] scientific theory is just a mathematical model
we make to describe our observations: it exists only
in our minds." (Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of
Time, 1988, p. 139).
97
Heinz Pagels, Perfect Symmetry (1985) p. 338,
emphasis added
98
Victor Stenger, God and the Atom (2013) p. 253 &
254
99
IMPACT EVENTS: the universe p. 13
100
Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time
(1988) p. 50 & 139
136

The Case Against The Kalam

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All of the material has been previously released

DISCLAIMER: Due to amateurism, some of the

5 "The Case against the Kalam" (originally

9 "Learning Science from Creationists"

Appendix (originally published in Stubborn

18 "Infinity Redux" (originally published in

25 "Boycott Hilbert's Hotel" (originally

33 "Infinity Redux Reloaded" (originally

37 "The Curious Case of Tristram Shandy"

48 "Dr. Craig's Library" (originally

56 "Conjuring Contradictions" (originally

59 "Speculations on Time" (originally

61 "Unreasonable Faith?" (originally

72 "The Scourge of the Kalam Argument"

79 "'Forget the Old Bluffer'" (originally

Appendix (originally published in Stubborn

117 Works Cited & Index

According to the apologist William Lane

[P]ast events are not movable. Unlike the

In his classic book Anti-Dühring,

We shall be in a position to examine this more

Engels could've argued that you can't count

According to Norman Geisler,

1. The amount of usable energy in the universe

2. In a closed, isolated system, the amount of

3. Left to themselves, things tend to disorder.

He concluded, "No matter which way it is

Physicists now understand that the

As for what caused or preceded the

Disorganization and chance is continually

Lewis compared the universe to Humpty

At the Planck Time, the entropy of the universe

According to Heinz Pagels, the "law of entropy

NOTE: See the Tristram Shandy chapter for a

"…the Second Law proves, as certainly as

Assessment: The apologists are so prejudiced

Engels quoted Dühring as saying that

Eternity in time, infinity in space, mean from

An infinite series, as Engels defined it is, indeed,

Recall what Stenger explained about

As applied to time, the infinite line or series of

It's impossible to traverse the infinite only if

Dühring wrote, "The infinity of a series

[W]hat we can or cannot do given our empirical

Of course, if we ignore the red herring

There is no reason why a succession of changes

Of course, the theologians could rebut that it is

A student remarked to William Lane

[L]et us imagine a hotel with an infinite number

According to Craig, "[i]f an actually infinite

Certainly, a hotel like the one in the

Craig gives another example that merits

Suppose the guests in rooms #1, #3, #5…. check

It needs to be recognized that in this example,

In an earlier version of Craig's commentary, he

Philoponus, a Christian theologian who

[I]f the end is left out, the beginning just

If the beginning is left out, the end becomes the

Another argument that stems from

Tristram Shandy "has been writing (his

J. P. Moreland reproduced the Shandy

If he lives an actually infinite number of days, he