Physicists & Philosophers debunk the Kalam Cosmological Argument featuring Penrose, Hawking, Guth

We have assembled some of the world’s leading physicists and philosophers to reply to the Kalam Cosmological Argument for God (as presented in popular debates by the Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig). The argument says that everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause, which must be God. We show the flaws in this argument, featuring interviews we conducted with physicists Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking, Alan Guth, Carlo Rovelli, Alex Vilenkin, Niayesh Afshordi and many others as well as philosophers such as AW Moore (co-editor of the world's leading philosophy journal Mind), Oxford logician Daniel Isaacson, Cambridge philosopher Arif Ahmed, philosopher of science specialising in foundations of quantum mechanics Alastair Wilson, and Alex Malpass and Daniel Linford who have both published multiple articles on the Kalam in leading journals. Most of the footage was shot especially for this film and all of those participants reviewed it carefully before release. All of the other living participants, where we reused interview footage from previous films, were sent a draft of this one in advance and asked if they objected to appearing or wanted changes. None objected and all changes are in the final film you see. Most participants gave extremely positive feedback and we hope you will too.

Timecodes

0:00 Introduction

1:38 Actual versus Potential Infinity

2:40 Cantor's Infinity

3:06 The Infinite Property

5:42 Hilbert’s Hotel

11:16 Contradiction & not a Contradiction

13:38 Jupiter and Saturn

14:52 Physicists on Infinity

16:38 Counting to Infinity

18:36 The Infinite Future

22:35 Spacetime Singularity

24:50 Carlo Rovelli on Neo Lorentzian Relativity and Cosmic Time

28:29 Hawking, Penrose, Vilenkin, Efstathiou on The Big Bang & Quantum Gravity

29:37 Strings, Loops and the Big Bounce

31:16 Guth and Vilenkin on the BGV

34:00 Is a Collapsing Universe Unstable?

35:31 Wall Theorem, Ashtekar and Afshordi

36:36 Anthony Aguirre on Past Eternal Universe

37:47 Singularities, Magueijo and Vidotto

38:24 Second Law, Guth and Ashtekar

40:43 A Universe From Nothing? Vilenkin

42:53 Causality

44:17 Interpretations of QM

48:05 Tigers in Our Living Room, Vilenkin

49:44 Causality and Philosophy

51:25 Simultaneous Causation

54:46 Can The Universe Create Itself?

56:51 Ghazali's Argument

57:53 Closing Arguments

[HolyKoolaid]

This needs to be seen by every Christian apologist who's ever tried to use the Kalam.

[rationalityrules]

So damn excited! Will be sure to share this an infinite number of times :P Thank you <3

[DavidJohnWellman]

This puts my own videos on the Kalam to shame. Great job Phil and Monica. This may be the definitive response to Kalam for some time to come.

[danieledgardoadorno-cruz]

Here because of Rationality Rules, I enjoyed the thorough response and analysis of the argument. And great documentary quality 👌 Keep up the amazing work… Subscribed 👍

[tristanneal]

Honestly, this is so much more interesting than simply "debunking religious people who use the Kalam cosmological argument". I love the idea of taking these big philosophical questions and looking at them through the lens of science as we know it.

[ernest]

Came here from Paulogia. Love this thorough dive into the Kalam argument! It's difficult to fully understand the flaws of this argument with only a layman background, so breaking it down like this was very helpful!

[romanbesel]

Looks super awesome! Glad to see Alex Malpass in there, his formulation of the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis is a pretty good response.

[epistemologicaldespair]

I am very pleased by the quality of the video, the caliber of speakers, the framing of the Kalam argument and the beauty of the refutations. This could easily be behind I pay wall so thank you for bringing this to us for free!!!!

[frogandspanner]

I'm glad I spent the two hours to watch this. Two hours you ask: yes - I needed time to look things up, or just think. This programme was worthy of that.

I am pleased that this has confirmed much of what I thought (I am a Physicist by training, Biophysicist by research), and introduced me to concepts with which I was not previously familiar.

I'd have liked a bit more on causality, in particular simultaneous causation. If two events are simultaneous which causes the other? Does the depression of the pillow cause the sinking of the ball, or vice versa? What causes photon pair production, as everywhere is simultaneous for the photon? There is the necessity of the nearby nucleus, but there is no sufficiency.

To one of your contributors, Alastair Wilson: if you are ever in Staff House bar when I am I'd like to discuss this with you.

[eristic]

Suggestion for a future video: Reaction of people as they hear Craig quoting them.

[tenpotkan]

I like the contrast between Craig's rather aggressive, asertionist approach soaked with an ever-present vibe of mockery and the scientists' calm, educational tone.

[Burtimus]

Far and away the best and clearest response to the Kalam I have seen. Thank you for this!

[fensom]

Christians: God created everything. Infinite doesn't exist.
Also Christians: God is Infinite.

[deeliciousplum]

Thank you for creating this and for sharing these ideas and concerns. A huge thank you to all of the interviewees who shared their time with us. 🌺

[CosmoPhiloPharmaco]

Wow! No doubt this will be excellent! I love this subject of the Kalam. I'm glad Daniel Linford was invited. :) He surely deserves it.

[yours-truely-sir]

As a mathematician I hate to see mathematics being misused with such wild claims such as 'mathematicians agree that infinity leads to self controdiction'. that is just the lowest of the low and you can see that they are scraping the bottom of the barrel for arguments

[KazimierzSurma]

7:25 There is a misunderstanding or rather premeditated miscomprehension In the phrase: "and yet, EXACTLY THE SAME NUMBER of people left the hotel this time when the odd-numbered guests checked out."
It is simply not true. Just because the number of people leaving we call: "infinity" doesn't mean it is a number. The infinity does not equal any number. The notion of infinity cannot be misapprehended as any number. Simply infinity is not a number. Kantor showed that there are some different kinds of infinities - some are bigger than others.
After you realized such a thing, there is no paradox in both situations compared. Somebody has just used the same word for different things. It often happens, when arguing negligently.
Using one word (infinity) for different things doesn't make those different things the same. This is a very similar problem to dividing by zero.

[Tshego_Mk]

Rationality rules sent me here
I'm glad I came

[jaynajuly]

WLC unironically said skeptics of his argument are deliberately abusing science LMAO

[macieyid]

This is perfect! Every time I hear that ridiculous "we couldn't get to now from infinite past"' thing I start to cry and bang my head against the desk, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Nice to see that the big minds have heard the banging.