Posted: Apr 08, 2011 7:06 am
Paul Almond wrote:
Okay, I accept that he misuses science - but I wouldn't say his (stupid) proof is reliant on that. You could take the scientific stuff out and you would still have a (stupid) proof there.
"The standard big bang model thus predicts an absolute beginning of the universe. If this model is correct, then we have amazing scientific confirmation of the second premise of the kalam cosmological argument. …
[P]hysicists have proposed scores of alternative models over the decades since Friedman and Lemaitre's work, and those that do not have an absolute beginning have been repeatedly shown to be unworkable. Put more positively, the only viable nonstandard models are those that involve an absolute beginning to the universe. That beginning may or may not involve a beginning point. But theories (such as Stephen Hawking's 'no boundary' proposal) that do not have a pointlike beginning still have a finite past. The universe has not existed forever, according to such theories, but came into existence, even if it didn't do so at a sharply defined point.
In a sense, the history of twentieth-century cosmology can be seen as a series of one failed attempt after another to avoid the absolute beginning predicted by the standard big bang model. Unfortunately, the impression arises in the minds of laymen that the field of cosmology is in constant turnover, with no lasting results. What the layman doesn't understand is that this parade of failed theories only serves to confirm the prediction of the standard model that the universe began to exist. That prediction has now stood for over eighty years throughout a period of enormous advances in observational astronomy and creative theoretical work in astrophysics. …
Today the proponent of the kalam cosmological argument stands comfortably within the scientific mainstream in holding that the universe began to exist."
(pp. 90-3)
"[T]he scientific evidence of thermodynamics confirms the truth of the second premise of the kalam cosmological argument. This evidence is especially impressive because thermodynamics is so well understood by physicists that it is practically a completed field of science. This makes it highly unlikely that these findings will be reversed."
(p. 98)
(Craig, William Lane. On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010.)
So Craig's "scientific" arguments for KCA are:
1. The big bang model predicts an absolute beginning of spacetime and is correct.
2. All alternative cosmological models lacking an absolute beginning of spacetime (cyclical/oscillating, baby or bubble universes/multiverses) are unworkable, not viable, or even physically impossible because inconsistent with the second law of thermodynamics.