…for the Non-Existence of God. 
A sort of tongue-in-cheek reply to the original (or, rather, more modern) argument that I am wondering about. Is it as valid and sound as the kalam?
P1) That which has always existed has no cause.
P2) The universe has always existed.
C1) The universe has no cause.
Definition of “always existed”. X has “always existed” as of time t if and only if there is no time t - n such that X did not exist at t - n.
Further thinking, getting to ‘no God’.
P3) If God exists, he is the cause of the universe. (Definition of God.)
P4) The universe has no cause. (From C1.)
C2) God does not exist.
Thoughts? Not asking if it is convincing, I doubt it is, more just is it as valid and sound as its counterpart?
Seems valid but not sound; like it’s counterpart.
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Yep, like the original sounds good, seems intuitively correct. But, like the original totally collapses under even cursory scrutiny.
As long as maths are involved, I’m totally convinced… cause maths were “given” to us,
can’t think of where they may have “come from” 
The problem with the religious counterpart to this is that they use unfalsifiable claims in the premises so they get an unfalsifiable conclusion. That is the only way they can have a syllogism give them the results they want and why they are invalid.The only reason people use syllogisms to try to prove that something does or does not exist is because they can’t measure it making it automatically unscientific.
For the above statement, I would argue that P1 and P2 are unfalsifiable since we have no way of measuring that. Also, much depends on the definitions of things; how “beginning” is defined, for example. One might argue it would be impossible to know what existed before the big bang, so we’ll consider that point the beginning. If so, then there was a finite beginning. It’s a good example of putting unfalsifiable things in a syllogism to get the results you want, so in short, the above sounds just as valid 
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The word “valid” can be used with a special meaning (that is often surprising to people) when speaking about logical proofs. When I said it was valid, that is what I meant.
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Fair enough. It still being valid but doesn’t describe the universe well.
Yeah, it is all just assumptions.
@Oddgamer
Ummmmm how is anything valid, when it is arriving at unfalsifiable conclusions or using an unfalsifiable premis? It only seems valid if unchallenged.
I’m quite happy with the responses, so thank you all.
Yes, this argument is garbage. The whole point is to show to those who use it/insist on it, in a way that should seem to fit their notions of how reasoning works, that the original is garbage.
Thought I had a new(ish) one along the same lines for the ontological (necessary being version), but it looks like someone beat me to it (hardly shocking).
Still, since I mostly “debate” in the cesspool that is the YouTube comments section, I’ll keep my two videos on these to serve up next time those horrible arguments appear.
Premise 1 rejected.
You assert something always existed. Instead.
- If something always existed it is causeless.
- The universe has always existed (Not true. We know the origins of our universe. ) More plausible would be (As something can not come from nothing, our universe has always existed in some form.) Granted we have no “Nothing” to examine, but you are more likely to get away with this as we do know something exists and have no way to get to nothing.
- (The universe has no cause?) Previously stated in #2.
IN SHORT (It’s a mess)
.
Oddgamer,
Again, which God concept are you referring too? It does matter, because the three primitive god concepts that remain today are Yahweh, the Hebrew God, Jesus, the Christian god as Yahweh God incarnate, and the Muslim God of Allah. They are 3 distinctive god concepts of mans’ creation and thousands of years apart.
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I agree with your call its a mess, but I don’t think you have arrived at the ‘true’ mess it is. I could be wrong, but I think you need to further qualify this:
I think you need to qualify what you mean by “we know the origins of our universe” and I assume you mean we know it up to Planck time as everything before then, before anything like the laws of physics kicks in, is pure conjecture.
This doesn’t mean whatever existed beforehand existed forever, or had a beginning. Or came from ‘nothing’’. Anything is possible but we just don’t know for sure.
Just trying to ensure your philosophical arguments, Brother Cog, are as tidy as your bathroom.
If you do agree, I want a banana and a cookie.
You can tell that by my uncharacteristic entry into a philosophical thread, I have way too much time on my hands.
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Yes, Planck Time. Time itself “our universe.” Our current models of physics break down at Planck time. ) = banana 0 = cookei
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Premises
- Everything that has a beginning has a cause
- The universe had a beginning.
Conclusions
The universe had a cause outside of time and space.
Assumption
Insert a deity (2nd assumption) of your choice.
So premise 1 has at least two problems I can see. Firstly in every single instance where we understand a cause it is a natural phenomenon, thus is it absurd to posit a supernatural one whilst citing the “law” of cause and effect.
Secondly these natural cause always occurred within the temporal material universe, so to assume this applies prior to the big bang is an equally absurd assumption.
Another assumption:
It’s at this point theists make a string of assumptions about the characteristics of the cause they are arguing for, it’s eternal has no cause, needs no cause, transcends time and space etc etc…
Making assumptions in an argument about the thing you are arguing for is a known common logical fallacy called a begging the question fallacy. It’s also absurd to claim to know what a cause of the universe would need, it’s pure assumption.
The Kalam cosmological argument has been popularised of late by William Lane Craig, but it remains deeply flawed, and of course is a first cause argument, not a theistic argument.
It is quite frankly risible. Much of it is no more than a “god of the gaps” polemic, or an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. A cursory amount of research online produces compelling refutations of it, but most importantly it does not represent objective evidence for ANY deity. So theists are left holding an empty bag.
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Any god concept in which said god is the cause of the universe existing. Beyond that, nothing else matters. It eliminates all of the bible-based and bible-adjacent gods (ie, all the ones you mentioned), plus any others where the proposal is that the universe is here because that god caused it.
Humans don’t have wings. If you propose that ‘Jim’ is ‘a winged human’, we can state that, because humans do not have wings, Jim cannot be human. Or we can do the old ‘mortality’ argument and see if it holds. “All men are mortal. The logical absolutes are not mortal. Therefore the logical absolutes are not in the class of ‘men’.”
Oh my… I would just say - “Hey! Logic is an idea that came from human minds”
That would probably be it.
Edited to add: actually, a statement that “logic absolutes are not mortal” I wouldn’t accept as a true statement.
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Logical absolutes are just logic, neither mortal or immortal.
- The law of identity — All things are equal to themselves.
- The law of non-contradiction — No proposition can both be and not be (the case).
- The law of the excluded middle — All propositions either are or are not (the case).
That is it, no god required for logic.
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As in the wise words of Yoda
“there is no try”