You are confusing two things, an inferential argument that takes premises inductively from features in the world and a deductive argument that is demonstrably true purely to the premises being valid and sound. An inductive argument can still be unsound even if the premises are valid because nothing in experience can ever be certain, whereas a deductive argument such as the “Tom” example will always be true by definition, regardless of there being a “Tom” person.
So
A bachelor is an unmarried male entity
Darth Vader is not married
Darth Vader is a bachelor.
This is not a problem even though Darth Vader does not exist. OK.
No it isn’t necessary for any specific. Allow me to explain with an example by Rene Descartes, a theist philosopher (who himself proposed a version of the cosmological argument), who said: “…because I cannot conceive of a mountain without a valley it does not follow that there is any mountain in the world, or any valley, but only that the mountain and the valley, whether they exist or not, cannot be separated from one another.” Discourse on method and the meditations.
So, how do we know that there is always a valley by a mountain if no mountain or Valley exists. How would we know that the mountain i'r a high object that leaves valleys if we have never set eyes on one as none exist?
Equally, once a thing is defined then it cannot be other than the definition. If a bachelor is an unmarried man then that is the definition, regardless of any individual man.
Well, that is questionable. We can change the meanings of words.
We cannot venture outside the natural world. Newton’s laws apply to things within the natural world and cannot be used to give a cause to the world without asserting “All universes that exist are caused to exist”, a statement that no scientist could or would ever make because it is not empirically demonstrable (and nor is it a necessary truth).
Newton's laws on motion can only be confirmed to work in our world. So, in order for Newton's Laws to be responsible for the universe coming into being we have to look for a way that is possible. We have already gone through it in this thread but I see no reason why we cannot do it again.
Unfortunately, Grünbaum's objection is pretty clearly a pseudo-dilemma. For he fails to consider the obvious alternative that the cause of the Big Bang operated at to, that is, simultaneously (or coincidentally1) with the Big Bang. Philosophical discussions of causal directionality routinely treat simultaneous causation, the question being how to distinguish A as the cause and B as the effect when these occur together at the same time [Dummett and Flew (1954); Mackie (1966); Suchting (1968-69); Brier (1974), pp. 91-98; Brand (1979)].2 Even on a mundane level, we regularly experience simultaneous causation; to borrow an example from Kant, a heavy ball's resting on a cushion being the cause of a depression in that cushion.3 Indeed, some philosophers argue that all efficient causation is simultaneous, for if the causal conditions sufficient for some event E were present prior to the time t of E's occurrence, then E would happen prior to t; similarly if the causal conditions for E were to vanish at t after having existed at tn < t, then E would not occur at t. In any case, there seems to be no conceptual difficulty in saying that the cause of the origin of the universe acted simultaneously (or coincidentally) with the origination of the universe. We should therefore say that the cause of the origin of the universe is causally prior to the Big Bang, though not temporally prior to the Big Bang. In such a case, the cause may be said to exist spacelessly and timelessly sans the universe, but temporally subsequent to the moment of creation
Read more:
Creation and Big Bang Cosmology | Reasonable Faith
Let me remind you that the Kalam argument says “Whatever begins to exist”. “Whatever” means “everything”, all matter, which includes the chair that was formed out of matter. But we’ve no experience of all matter beginning to exist and so the primary premise is false.
That is not true. kalams cosmological argument says "
Anything that begins to exist has a cause.
I like this statement, it has opened my eyes to knew knowledge.
"Things which don’t exist can’t be caused to ‘do’ anything, since they aren’t *there* to be influenced by a cause.”
So what exactly was Kalam saying when he said that "anything that begins to exist has a cause". What he meant was that anything that has been
created has a cause, which is the same as saying
"begins to exist"
create
kriːˈeɪt/Submit
verb
past tense: created; past participle: created
1. bring (something) into existence."he created a thirty-acre lake"
2. to cause to come into existence
synonyms, design,
bring into being, frame, form.
Meaning of the Word Create
You ask the learned doctors why they say the world was made out of nothing, and they will answer, "Doesn't the Bible say He created the world?" And they infer, from the word create, that it must have been made out of nothing. Now, the word create came from the word baurau, which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos—chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time He had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning and can have no end.
So, we could write that "Anything that is created has a cause", which is exactly the same as saying "Anything that begins to exist has a cause. To further confirm "Things which don’t exist can’t be caused to ‘do’ anything, since they aren’t *there* to be influenced by a cause.”, well, of course, so the singularity was caused to change into the universe. It was created and in all likelihood it was God who caused it. Kalam was never saying that the universe came into existence from nothing as from nothing comes nothing. Kalam was saying that the universe came into existence ex-materia. You learn something new everyday, don't you? That should effectively remedy your claims that premises P1 is very much proved and that we can then move straight onto P2 and the conclusion
I thought you said you’d grasped the objection? Now I find you’re still begging the question! If matter is already existent and only changes form then it cannot be said to have begun to exist. So the only way to prove the truth of the proposition “whatever begins to exist has a cause” is to demonstrate the premise ”The world has a cause”, and that cannot be demonstrated by reference to things existent within the world that simply change their form. Please tell me that you’ve got it now?
Oh, I have got it, only I do not think that you have it. See my previous response.
Well, in this case you must think that the theory of gravity entails that scientists think that gravity is hypothetical, too, lol.
