The First Cause Argument with Dr. Robert Koons

Dr. Robert Koons joins me on Think for Christ to walk us through his formulation of the First Cause Argument.

[thinkforchrist]

Many thanks to Dr. Koons for joining me on the show!

[markbirmingham]

Comment for traction. Greatly appreciate Dr. Koons

[rosenzollern]

Great interview! Thank you so much for sharing this video!

[jakelm]

58:30 this is the most famous fragment from Aristotle’s lost work Protrepticus, which was written for the public and was an exhortation to do philosophy.

[rjskeptic]

There is no logical contradiction for an infinite regress.

[matswessling]

"highest leveks of academia."... not. koons does not have the reputation you would like viewers to believe...

the time when you could get away with using logic only to reach valid conclusions about reality is long gone...

[Bill_Garthright]

_"Over the last 50 years or so, there has been a revival of theism among professional philosophers"_

Really? Because this poll of philosophers shows that only 15% "accept or lean toward theism." If 15% is a "revival, " how low did it _used_ to be? Or did you just make that up?

[YouTube doesn't want me to post a link, apparently. But it's easy to find the PhilPapers survey of philosophers. And it's really pretty interesting.]

When it comes to the Kalam Cosmological Argument - I don't know about any others - "God" isn't even in the argument. So _that's_ funny, isn't it? I'd say it's a terrible argument, anyway. (There's a reason why William Lane Craig is called "Low-Bar Bill.") But then, I'm not a philosopher.

But the problem with philosophical arguments in general is that you need to connect them to the real world, rather than just to the world of your imagination. And you can only do that with _evidence._ Evidence is how we distinguish reality from delusion and wishful-thinking.

You can _assume_ that your premises are true, of course. But can you demonstrate that they really _are_ true? Everywhere, not just within this local universe (which, obviously, doesn't help when you're trying to argue about how this universe began)?

_"Fictional things don't cause anything."_

OK. So you need to demonstrate that your god is real before you can argue that he caused anything? That seems reasonable. So, you can begin at any time. How about one piece of good evidence, specific enough and in enough detail that I can judge it for myself, that your god is real, rather than just imaginary? Just *one, * please (one at a time is all I can manage in a YouTube comment), but be specific.

_"You get to the conclusion that there must be something uncaused that then is responsible for causing all the causable things."_

No. Aren't you supposed to be a philosopher? Is this how careless philosophers are, typically? If there must be something uncaused, that doesn't mean there's just _one_ thing that's uncaused. That doesn't mean there's only _one_ uncaused thing responsible for everything that's caused. You simply can't assume that, can you?

I know very little about quantum physics - and I'm not sure even how much quantum physicists know about it, yet - but the quantum realm seems to be more about probability than causality, doesn't it? Isn't that why we have to measure the decay rate of radioactivity in half-life? It's not causal, but just probabilistic? And virtual particles aren't "caused" to appear in the vacuum of space. It's just probabilistic, isn't it?

_"infinite regress of causable things"_

Cosmologists tell us that time - in _this_ universe, at least - has only existed for about 13.7 billion years. That's a very long time, of course, but it's not "infinite." And as far as I can tell, the word "infinite" would not even have a meaning in the absence of time. (I'm not sure that "cause" would, either. But that probably doesn't matter as long as you're just separating things into "caused" and "uncaused.")

Everything you're talking about here applies, at best, to inside _this_ universe, _this_ ... macrocosm? (I'm not sure of the best word to use here.) That's because this is the only reality we've experienced. It doesn't necessarily apply to the cosmos ("everything that exists, " which may or may not include more than our own local universe), though, and you can't just assume that it does.

It certainly wouldn't apply - necessarily - to 'before' this spacetime even _existed._ (Again, I know that 'before' would have no meaning in the absence of time, but it's hard to talk about this stuff using a language that just _assumes_ time.) So how can you make this argument _at all?_

_"I want to say that God is the necessary first cause."_

Why? Why do you "want" to say that? Is it just because you were taught to believe in this god as a child? Is it just because you were promised infinite reward if you continued to believe in this god (and likely infinite punishment if you didn't)? Is it just because this is the god of your... tribe, so you really, really _want_ it to be true?

And, therefore, you've been desperately trying to find a reason to believe in this god, other than the real one (that you really, really _want_ it to be real)? Seriously, ... why? I don't know you, and I'm not going to pretend that I can read your mind. So you tell _me, _ please.

It's just that, worldwide, faith-based people _overwhelmingly_ tend to believe in whatever religion and whatever god or gods they were taught to believe as a child. And yes, that's almost always the case when theists tell me they "used to be an atheist" or when theists tell me that they researched "all the other religions." They _still_ tend to end up - not always, but nearly so - at the religion they were taught to believe as a child, if they remain theists at all.

I'm not like that. I want to believe the truth. If your god is real, then I want to believe that. But _only_ if that god is real.

_"It's just reasonable if you look at something that's causable and say that it must have a cause."_

Yeah, and it was "just reasonable" to look at the Earth and decide that it was flat. It was "just reasonable" to look at the Sun and decide that it was a god driving a golden chariot across the sky. It was "just reasonable" to decide that either the Earth was infinitely big, so you could travel forever in a single direction without ever getting to the end of it, or it was finite in size, so that you'd come to the edge of the Earth, eventually, if you did that. It was "just reasonable" that those were the only two options.

I don't care what seems "just reasonable" to you. I care about what the *evidence* indicates. Because evidence is how we distinguish reality from delusion and wishful-thinking. And whenever you talk about what's "just reasonable" - especially when you're talking about stuff 'before' or outside of this universe - you are forgetting the other option: that there's something you don't know.

OK, this is plenty long enough already, huh? Sorry for the book! But so far, at least, it's not convincing. But if you'd like to talk - if _anyone_ here would like to talk about this stuff - I'm right here. And I enjoy talking to intelligent people who disagree with me about religion.