L 5.24

Wes Morriston tries to show that there is no difference between a personal creator and an impersonal creator where causality is concerned. He concludes “So the Kalam argument fails” on p. 86.

Even if Morriston is correct in his rebuttal of Craig regarding a personal creator, only one part of the Kalam argument has failed, not the entire argument. Loftus didn’t specify this so it seems that he is referring to the argument as a whole.

L 5.23

William Lane Craig claims that the cause of the universe must be personal since someone had to will the universe into existence at some point. Morriston responds that “if God is timelessly eternal there was never a moment in time when God did not will into existence this universe”. (p. 86)

The objection is built on the assumption that even though God might be timeless, He is incapable of experiencing events as discrete. If He can experience events as discrete entities to themselves, then He could have at some point willed the universe into being as Craig suggests thus, justifying a personal creator as opposed to an impersonal force or the universe just existing as brute fact.

L 5.22

“Craig’s basic problem is that he conflates counting an infinite number of events with counting all of them”. (p. 86)

What’s the difference? God still has to count them all and the number is infinite

“An immortal being could finish her beginningless task and yet not count all events.”

God can’t finish unless all events are counted. The sentence is absurd.

“…a set of an infinite number of events is not to be regarded as the same thing in every respect as an infinite number of sets each containing an infinite number of events”.

Why introduce an infinite number of sets each containing an infinite number of events? Either way, there is an infinite. Each event has to be counted down in order to get to zero. His attempt to object to the explanation further illustrates the absurdity of actual infinites. How can an infinite number of events be contained in a set in any real sense? How can an infinite set be compared to an infinite number of like sets?

L 5.21

“If we cannot go back in the infinite timeless past to find her counting, then she was never counting at all”. (p. 85)

Unless God finished in the infinite past which illustrates the absurdity of actual infinites.

L 5.20

Loftus expounds on the subject of actual infinites when he responds to a comment by William Lane Craig who says that actual infinites aren’t possible, although potential infinites are. If God were counting down from infinity to zero, God, being eternal, would have finished in the infinite past. Yet, if God is counting down from infinity, God would never reach zero. Loftus says that “He [Craig] cannot say that she has always been counting and that she has never been counting”. (p. 85) That’s not what Craig is saying. It’s not that God has never been counting. It’s that God finished in the infinite past since God is Himself infinite. If God is counting down to zero, God has to finish at some point but, if God is counting from an infinite number, He can’t ever finish. This shows the absurdity of actual infinites.

Also, Loftus stresses that Craig’s conception goes against the mainstream. What Loftus isn’t admitting is that it isn’t a crime to go against the mainstream. Surely, Craig isn’t the only person with this stance. Plus, the mainstream has been wrong before. To support his case, Loftus quotes David Ramsay Steele who says that “things begin to exist without any cause all the time.” It’s disappointing that Loftus doesn’t specifically state what can exist sans cause. Perhaps Loftus is referring to virtual particles but, even they don’t come from nothing. In fact, nothing comes from nothing. Everything in the universe has a cause and thus, it’s existence warrants explanation. Steele is either misleading or misled.

L 5.19

“David Ramsay Steele reminds us that according to quantum mechanics ‘things begin to exist without any cause all the time’”. (p. 85)

Steele is asserting something that is highly debatable and most probably false. Virtual particles, vacuum fluctuation and the Casimir effect have been well documented and there is no evidence whatsoever that particles are coming into existence from nothing. To quote such an assertion as a fact is nothing more than an attempt to mislead people.

L 5.18

In response to William Lane Craig’s assertion that tigers don’t just pop into existence and neither should the universe, Wes Morriston notes that “We have no experience of the origin of worlds to tell us that worlds don’t come into existence like that…That is why the absurdity of tigers and the like popping into existence out of nowhere tells us nothing about the utterly unique case of the Beginning of the whole natural order”. (p. 84)

What Morriston doesn’t understand is that when Craig is referring to tigers, he’s also referring to anything. It is a universal maxim that ex nihilo, nihil fit, from nothing, nothing comes. It doesn’t matter if we’re using tigers or universes as examples. Matter just doesn’t happen from nothing, Casimir effect included.