• Walter Pound
    202
    Suppose that the KCA was sound is contra-causal free will undermined?

    The premise "every thing that begins to exists has a cause" and the general assumption that nothing causes itself are what makes me wonder if the argument refutes libertarian free will.


    This video argues that it doesn't undermine LFW but I am still doubtful about the arguments given.
    https://youtu.be/qXfdeM2yukE
  • fishfry
    3.4k
    I didn't watch the vid but I know the argument. I have three comments.

    * Everything that "begins" to exist has a cause. So the conclusion that there must be an uncaused cause, which we name God, is baked in to the assumptions. But who caused God? How can there be an uncaused cause? Well in the argument, it's because God has always existed. God did not "begin to exist." So there's a bit of sophistry or word play at work.

    * The negative integers ..., -4, -3, -2, -1 provide a model of causality in which (a) every event has a cause; and (b) there is no first cause. How do you know causality in the world doesn't work like that? It's turtles all the way down.

    * Causation in the world is not at all like one thing causing another. Any event has many causes. A million different things had to happen for your parents to be born and meet and create you. Causality is more like a network and not like a linear chain. So the whole model of causality in the argument is wrong.

    The argument is sophistry. It doesn't prove the existence of God. It's not even a coherent argument. It's wordplay. William Lane Craig makes a living off it but that's as far as it goes.

    Suppose that the KCA was soundWalter Pound

    The argument is unsound. If we suppose it's sound we can conclude anything we like.
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    Will doesn't come OUT of nothing. It moves independent of anything. That's the difference in abstract terms
  • Banno
    25k
    KCA? Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia?
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    Kant Cognized Accurately
  • Banno
    25k
    Kentucky Charred Artichoke?
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    That sounds good
  • Banno
    25k
    As in, on toast?
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    Well unlike this thread, artichokes are da bomb
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    Craig says that we can't understand the world without believing in God yet we have to understand the world in order to first have a proof for God so he is clearly wrong
  • DrOlsnesLea
    56
    Libertarian Free Will does not imply outside causality, only that it's anomalous how it all works out.
    However, LFW is supported by the intuitions for that avenue of arguments.
  • fdrake
    6.6k
    KCA? Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia?Banno

    Probably Kalam Cosmological Argument.
  • Banno
    25k
    Oh, it's one of those threads.
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