PHIL 100W, Fall 2024

Lecture 2 Transcription

Warning: This transcript was made by a computer, and may contain errors.

Welcome to Lecture 2 in Philosophy 100. Can you give me a wave if I'm audible at the back? Great,
thank you. Before we get started today, I have a couple of brief announcements.

First, the Centre for Accessible Learning is looking for a note taker. If you take detailed notes during
lectures, this could be a good opportunity for you. After each lecture, you would organize your notes
and send them to the Centre. At the end of the term, they would provide you with a $100
honorarium. If you are interested, please contact the Centre for Accessible Learning.

Second, your first assignment is due on Friday. I’ve reviewed the submissions received so far, and
I’m pleased with them. Initially, I was concerned that one of the questions might be too challenging,
but you’re handling it well. Most of the answers are between one and two pages in length, which
seems appropriate.
Some students have asked me about the “format” for assignments. My advice is that it doesn’t
matter, as long as your TA can understand your work. Just ensure that your answer is clearly legible
and understandable.

With the announcements out of the way, let's begin today's lecture.

We will be discussing William Lane Craig's cosmological argument. William Lane Craig is a well-
known philosopher in the United States, largely due to his participation in numerous high-profile
debates about the existence of God. He is an accomplished debater, but I have chosen to talk about
him today primarily because I admire his writing. This course, as you know, is a writing course, so
we will be discussing how to write philosophically later in the term. Craig’s work can serve as a
model for clear and engaging philosophical writing.

The argument he presents in the reading is complex, but he succeeds in presenting it in a lucid and
enjoyable manner. If you are looking for an example of good philosophical writing to emulate, this is
it.
The core of his argument is as follows:

(1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

(2) The universe began to exist.
Therefore: (3) The universe has a cause.

Starting with the first premise, let’s consider a hypothetical scenario. I have a five-year-old son
named Charlie. If I hear a loud bang coming from the kitchen while I’m upstairs, I would naturally
wonder what caused the noise. There are several possibilities: perhaps Charlie fell, perhaps he
knocked over something heavy, or maybe he put a sealed container on the stove until it exploded.
Regardless, I would not accept it if Charlie said, “There was no cause; it just happened.” I would
insist that there must be a cause for the bang. This illustrates Craig’s first premise: whatever begins
to exist has a cause.
You might wonder why he says, “Whatever begins to exist has a cause,” instead of simply,
“Everything has a cause.” To clarify, think about the number 17. If I asked you what caused the
number 17, it would be an odd question. Numbers, we assume, do not have causes. Perhaps Craig
would argue that this is because numbers do not begin to exist; they are eternal. Therefore, it is
more precise to say, “Whatever begins to exist has a cause.”

The second premise, that the universe began to exist, is a familiar concept. According to current
physics, the universe began approximately 14 billion years ago with the Big Bang.

If both premises are true, then it follows that the universe has a cause.

This leaves us with several questions. Why should we believe the first premise? What justification is
there for the second premise? Moreover, the conclusion of the core argument — that the universe
has a cause — is not yet a statement of theism. Craig must show how to move from this conclusion
to theism.
Craig argues that everything that begins to exist has a cause. He seems to think that this is obvious:
if you heard a loud bang and I told you it happened for no reason, you would find that response
incomprehensible. He says that the same applies to the Big Bang.

Because his discussion of this point is so short, I don't have a great deal to say about it. I'm just
going to note that some atheists have challenged this claim. There was a famous debate on the radio
between Bertrand Russell, the agnostic and Frederick Copleston, the Catholic priest, about the
existence of God, and in the course of this debate, Russell said, “The universe is just there and that's
all.” For Russell, there doesn't have to be a cause. There doesn't have to be an explanation. There
doesn't have to be a reason the universe exists. It is just there, and that is all.

In my experience, debates on this point rapidly reach stalemate. You see the theist stamping his foot
and saying, “Oh, come off it! Obviously everything that begins to exist has a cause. Surely it would be
crazy to deny that!” And then the theist responds by stamping her foot and saying “No! Look, maybe
in the course of our our ordinary experience, everything that begins to have a cause, that's a truth
about ordinary everyday life. But that doesn't mean that the universe as a whole has to have a
cause.” And I don't really know how to make progress from that point.
Anyway, let's talk about the other premise from the core argument: “The universe began to exist.”
Lane Craig offers two different arguments for this claim.
• The first is what I call the argument from physics. Craig simply appeals to the authority of
physicists, who generally agree that the universe began about 14 billion years ago with the
Big Bang.
• The second argument is more complex—it's the argument from mathematics, which I will
discuss in a moment.
Briefly, regarding the argument from physics, I am not a physicist, so I am not the best person to
comment on this part of the argument. If you want a more informed discussion, you might need to
speak with someone in the physics department or perhaps consult Holly Anderson in the
philosophy department, who has a solid grasp of these topics. I'll just note that the claim that the
universe began to exist has been disputed. In Stephen Hawking's popular science book A Brief
History of Time from the 1980s, he challenges this premise in the context of a discussion of theism.

My impression is that when you delve into the mathematical details, there is a debate about what it
exactly means to say that the universe began to exist. However, if you allow Lane Craig to clarify his
meaning, you’ll find that his position is not particularly controversial. I think he is correct in saying
that the consensus within physics is that the universe began to exist. So, I am persuaded by the
argument from physics.

You might then ask, "Do we even need to consider the argument from mathematics? The argument
from physics already shows that the universe had a beginning, so why bother?" I think we do need
to discuss it because it will resurface later. So, here is the argument from mathematics. It's a bit
complicated.
Aristotle made a famous distinction between potential infinity and actual or completed infinity. A
potentially infinite process is one that could, in principle, continue indefinitely—the central
example is counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. In principle, there need be no end to counting; it can
continue indefinitely, which makes it potentially infinite.

A completed infinity, on the other hand, would be an infinite series of things that have already
happened, such as an infinite series of past events, or it could be an infinite collection of things all
existing at the same time. From Aristotle onward, proponents of potentialism have argued that
there can be no completed infinities, only potential infinities. The potentialist argues that while
there are potential infinities—like the process of counting—you could never actually count through
all the numbers. You could never finish counting all the numbers, which shows that you can never
have a completed infinity.
Lane Craig argues that if the universe had no beginning, then the history of the universe up until
now would be a completed infinity. Think about all the seconds that have passed in the universe. If
the universe had no beginning, there would be infinitely many seconds that have already occurred.
These seconds would form a completed infinity, an infinite series of events, all of which are in the
past. Lane Craig, as a potentialist, believes that completed infinities are impossible and therefore,
the universe must have had a beginning.

Now, what is the argument for potentialism? Why should we accept that there can be no completed
or actual infinities? From Aristotle onward, potentialists have argued that if completed infinities
were possible, they would give rise to paradoxes and contradictions. Here is Lane Craig's version of
this ancient argument …
Central to Lane Craig's argument for potentialism is a claim that I’ll call “Euclid's Principle”: if
equals are subtracted from equals, the remainders are equal. Or, to put it in more colloquial
language, if you start off with two things of equal size and remove equally sized pieces from each,
the remainders will be of equal size. I'm calling this “Euclid's principle” because some of you will
recognize it as one of the common notions from Euclid's Elements, a classic book on geometry
written around 300 BC.

Euclid was writing about geometric quantities such as length, volume, area, and angle. Let’s give
some geometric examples.
• Suppose I have two rods, each one meter long, and I remove ten centimeters from each. The
remainders will each be ninety centimeters long. I started with two things that were equal
in length, removed equal pieces, and the remainders were equal in length.
• The same holds for area. Suppose I have two tiles, each with an area of one hundred square
centimeters. I remove ten square centimeters from each. The remainders will each have an
area of ninety square centimeters. Again, I started with equally sized things, removed
equally sized pieces, and the remainders are equal in size.
• The same applies to volume. Suppose I start with two buckets, each containing ten liters of
water. I remove one liter from each. Each bucket will then contain nine liters of water. I
started with two things that were equal in size, removed the same amount from both, and
the remainders were equal in size. All of this should seem obvious.
Now consider a more complicated example. Suppose I have two infinite collections of balls. One is a
collection of red balls, the other a collection of black balls. Within each collection, the balls are
labeled 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on.
Suppose I remove all the balls greater than two from the collection of red balls. How many balls are
left? Three balls remain.

Now, from the collection of black balls, suppose I remove all the odd-numbered balls. How many
balls remain? Infinitely many, as all the even-numbered balls are left. We seem to have a violation of
Euclid's principle. We started with two equally sized collections—the red balls and the black balls,
both infinite. I then removed infinitely many balls from both collections, but the remainders were
not equal in size. In one case, I had three balls left, and in the other case, infinitely many.

So we started with two things that were equal in size, removed the same amount from both, and the
remainders were different in size, which violates Euclid's principle. Craig believes that Euclid's
principle must hold in all cases, but the story about the balls suggests that if completed infinities
were possible, then there would be violations of Euclid's principle. Therefore, Craig infers that
completed infinities are impossible.

Now, let's summarize the argument from mathematics.

Now I’ll pause to give you my thoughts on this argument.

As historical background, Aristotle introduced the distinction between potential infinity and
completed or actual infinity. Aristotle argued for potentialism, maintaining that if completed
infinities were possible, they would lead to absurdities and contradictions. His argument was
evidently persuasive, as potentialism remained the dominant view in philosophy and mathematics
until the 19th century.

However, in that century, mathematicians, particularly Georg Cantor, began exploring the
mathematics of completed infinities. The resulting theory is logically consistent, non-contradictory,
useful, and elegant. Modern mathematics is filled with completed infinities. If you read any modern
mathematics textbook from the late 19th or 20th century, completed infinity is a standard part of
the subject. For this reason, it would take a very strong argument to convince me that completed
infinities are impossible, and I don't think Lane Craig has provided such an argument here.

When Euclid formulated his principle, he was talking about geometry—calculating the volume of a
sphere, the perimeter of an ellipse, or the volume of an icosahedron. He was discussing finite
geometrical quantities: lengths, areas, volumes, and angles. Lane Craig has taken this principle from
Euclidean geometry and insisted it must apply in all contexts, including cases involving infinities. I
see no justification for that move.

It seems reasonable to say that Euclid's principle, while true for finite geometrical quantities, does
not necessarily hold for infinite collections. I reject Lane Craig's claim that Euclid's principle must
be true in all cases without exception. Interestingly, Georg Cantor, one of the mathematicians who
developed the theory of completed infinities, was a devout theist. He believed his mathematical
theories had theological significance, which is an ironic twist.

Now we can move to the final stage of Lane Craig's argument. So far, Craig has argued that
everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, so the universe must have
some cause, which we'll call “X”. You might expect Lane Craig to argue that X is God, but it's more
complicated than that. Craig thinks God is uncaused, but so far, we have no reason to think that X is
uncaused.
So Craig proceeds by saying, “OK, let's say that X may have a cause, call it “X1”. Maybe X1 has a cause,
call it “X2”, and X2 may have a cause, call it “X3”, and so on.” But, he argues, this chain of causation
cannot go on infinitely, because that would be a completed infinity, and completed infinities are
impossible. So, eventually, if we follow this chain backward, we will reach an uncaused thing Y.
Lane Craig will try to convince us that this uncaused thing is God. To do this, he will argue that this
uncaused thing has several characteristics: (a) it is uncaused, (b) ittranscends space and time, (c) it
does not change, (d) it is non-physical, and (e) it is personal. From there, Craig will argue that this
thing must be God.

This part of the argument proceeds quickly. The reading is a transcription of a public talk, and my
suspicion is that Craig was running out of time, so he condensed this part into one paragraph. It’s
difficult to understand, but I have faith in you, so let’s go through it.

(a) First, Craig argues that Y is uncaused. We have already discussed this, so there’s nothing
new to add here.

(b) Second, Craig argues that Y transcends space and time. The idea is that Y created the
universe, possibly through a series of intermediate causes, and space and time are aspects of the
universe. Therefore, if Y brought the universe into existence, Y must transcend space and time.

(c) Craig believes that if Y transcends space and time, Y must also be unchanging.
Actually this is a tricky point for Craig. As a Christian, he believes that God intervenes in history,
which implies that God does different things at different times, suggesting that God changes. Yet, by
this argument, Craig wants to say that God is unchanging. To resolve this, he endorses what might
be called a compromise position: God is timeless and changeless “without the universe”, but
temporal “subsequent to creation”. It’s unclear whether this is coherent, but Craig has discussed this
at length in other works.

(d) Next, Craig argues that Y is non-physical. This step is straightforward. Y created the entire
physical universe, so Y is not part of the physical universe. Therefore, Y is non-physical.

(e) Finally, Craig argues that Y is a person. What does this mean? Often, we use “person” as a
synonym for “human being”, but Craig is not suggesting that God is an instance of Homo sapiens!
When Craig says that God is a person, he means that God can have goals and make free and rational
decisions in pursuit of those goals.

Craig believes that people can make spontaneous decisions—decisions without any prior cause. For
example, one evening I might spontaneously decide to get a beer from the fridge without any
particular cause. Craig thinks that only persons can do this; non-persons, he argues, always act due
to some prior cause. When a non-person acts, there is always an external or internal cause, like a
stone being thrown or a computer following a program.

Since Craig has already argued that the divine act of creation was uncaused, he believes this must be
a spontaneous action, implying that God must be a person. This part of the argument touches on
deep questions in the philosophy of mind and free will, which we will address later in the term. Not
everyone agrees that there is this fundamental difference between persons and non-persons.
I won't evaluate these arguments from Craig in detail since he presents them so quickly, making it
difficult to assess them thoroughly. However, I will note that his list of characteristics seems to be
missing some points:
• Craig hasn't shown that Y is a single person; it could be a group of gods working together.
• He also hasn't addressed God's moral characteristics, such as being morally perfect or
omnibenevolent.
Craig likely addresses these questions elsewhere, but they are missing here.

Most importantly, the flaw in Craig’s argument lies in his reliance on potentialism.
I said last time that if you’re not persuaded by an argument, you should ask two questions: “Can it
be fixed?” And “What can I learn from it?” Let’s apply this here.

Can the argument be fixed? To make it work, Craig must provide a persuasive argument for
potentialism, but I doubt this is possible given the great successes of modern mathematics.
However, that’s what would be needed to fix this argument.

What can I learn from this argument? While I’m not persuaded that the universe was created by
God, I don't claim to have an alternative explanation for its existence. I don’t even claim to know
whether the universe has a cause. This discussion leaves me with a sense of uncertainty and doubt,
which is a valuable reminder for me to reflect on the limits of my knowledge.
Question from the audience: Suppose I run 16m. Isn’t that an example of a completed infinity?
• First, I ran 8m.
• Then I ran another 4m.
• Then I ran another 2m.
• Then I ran another 1m.
• Then I ran another ½ m.
(and so on)

Answer: I think that Lane Craig would say that this is only a potential infinity. The 16m is a single
unbroken thing. You can divide it up into an arbitrarily large number of parts (say by marking off
sections of the track with flags), but that’s just a potential infinity. You couldn’t divide the track up
into infinitely many parts by putting infinitely many flags down!

(1) The movie theatre is only accessible by car. (Premise)

(2) If John went to see the movie, he must have taken the family car. (From 1)
(3) We say John’s husband Sam driving the family car down Main Street. (Premise)
(4) John didn’t take the car to the movie theatre. (From 3)
(5) John didn’t see the move. (From 2, 4)

To get this right, you need to pay attention to the “giveaway” words and phrases:
“after all”, “because”, “so”.
(1) A recent study of paralegals found that they could achieve just as much in a four-day week as in a five-day week. (Premise)
(2) If Canada adopted a four-day workweek, there would be no loss in economic output. (From 1)
(3) A four-day workweek would lead to a significant improvement in Canadians’ mental health. (Premise)
(4) A four-day workweek would give people more time to perform important unpaid
tasks, such as community work or caring for family members. (Premise)
(5) A four-day week for all Canadians is desirable. (From 2, 3, 4)
(6) The Canadian parliament should introduce legislation mandating a four-day week for all employees across the country. (From 5)

Evaluation:
• Many students were sceptical about the inference from (1) to (2), pointing out that even if it
is true that paralegals can accomplish as much in a four-day workweek as a five-day
workweek, it doesn’t follow that the same is true for factory workers, farmers, cleaners, and
other jobs.
• Many students agreed with premise (3).
• Everyone agreed with premise (4).