What would an alternative be to causality? Surely quantum particles causually rely on their quantum fields? — DoppyTheElv

Depends on how you define causality. Are you the person who given a Humean reductive analysis of the concept or are you the person that philosophical needs a casual omph at the base of reality?

The basic argument itself just says that the universe had a cause. But then after that he sometimes argues that such a cause would have to supervene space and time itself and therefore God. I dont know how a mind can work without time. And I know jack shit about philosophy of time (apparently he has written a good amount on time though) So theres that. — DoppyTheElv

If causation as defined by you or others requires the inclusion of change/time then yes it would be nonsense to suppose that without time/change there could be causation. Note that he's assuming an interpretation of general relativity that presumes that all the matter that was compressed close to each other close to the big bang singularity just appeared out of nothing ex nihilo. To assert time began citing general relativity as evidence you would need to defend a spacetime substantivalist perspective of the theory as well as mess around with this interpretation in a vacuum away from most all none work on quantum gravity. In my perspective I take change to be fundamental to reality with time merely being an abstraction from such a central concept. Spacetime to me is either coexistent or emergent from materiality and the least parsimonious answer in my eyes is to argue that stuff got really close to each other then. . . just. . . popped out of existence the farther back in time we go?

Again I dont know much. I'm simply playing devils advocate to learn more. I dont have a positive or negative opinion of WLC. But I do wonder why people dislike him so much. Where is he dishonest? — DoppyTheElv

Some claim and perhaps have good reason to regard him as dishonest but my problem with him has more to do with his messy philosophical defenses for a god. They assume too much and there's always too many asterisks to have on its own without recourse to objections put the argument in question. Many opponents to him also cite video evidence of him on numerous occasions saying (possibly in contrast to other apologist/counter-apologists) that no amount of evidence could convince him other wise that his religious convictions are wrong because the holy spirit supports such convictions. He would still believe even if all his arguments fell through, his words paraphrased not mine. Play devils advocate all you want, it's good to entertain contrary positions to keep bias in check.

(1) Disentanglement of causality from necessity. Positive claim: there can be causes which do not follow of necessity.
— StreetlightX

There goes the Kalam cosmological argument. — Banno

IMO, the biggest problem with the KCA is the equivocation on "begins to exist".

Premise one (Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence) is justified by our intuitions that observe things beginning to exist from a prior state of affairs in which the thing did not exist.

Premise two (The universe began to exist) is justified by the inference that the past is finite, so spacetime had a beginning. However, this is not consistent with the justification for premise 1 - because there is no prior time at which spacetime didn't exist. In fact, a finite past just entails an initial state for the universe (more properly: for material reality), one that cannot have been "created" because there is no prior state at which it didn't exist.

E.g. modern inflationary cosmology posits a cause for the big bang as we know it, but that cause has a cause, and so on, possibly infinitely back. — Pfhorrest

It is not temporal causal relationships that matter. The question 'What came before the beginning of time?' is almost trivial. Physical Time, like any physical object, is a property of the material universe and ultimately a property of energy. The real question here is 'What are the necessary conditions for contingent things to exist?'

The question 'What came before the beginning of time?' is almost trivial. — EnPassant

"Before time" is incoherent nonsense, much like "a cause of causation".
And the quote is self-contradictory, both asserting "the beginning of time" and "what came before".
Put differently, if we proceed from such phrases, then we're moving into "anything goes" territory. :confused: