Kalam cosmological argument

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The Kalām cosmological argument is a version of the cosmological argument derived from the Islamic Kalam form of dialectical argument. It attempts to prove the existence of God by appealing to the principle of universal cause. Similar arguments are found in the theologies of Judaism (for example, in the work of Maimonides) and Christianity (for example in Thomas Aquinas), where it is known as the "uncaused cause" or "first cause" argument.

A recent formulation of the argument by William Lane Craig is as follows:

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe must have a cause.

The first premise is fairly straightforward. Craig defines "begins to exist" as "comes into being," and the idea is that things don't just pop into being uncaused.

The second premise is usually supported by the following argument:

An actual infinite cannot exist.
A beginningless series of events is an actual infinite
Therefore, the universe cannot have existed infinitely in the past, as that would be a beginningless series of events.

The definition of an actual infinite comes from set theory. The Big Bang Theory is normally regarded as adhering to a finite universe. The possibility of an actual infinite is often disputed, and is the focal point of this argument.

Craig describes the impossibility of an actual infinite like an endless bookcase. For example, imagine a bookcase that extends infinitely on which there is an infinite number of books, colored green and red, green and red, and so on. Obviously there would be an infinite number of books. But imagine you remove all red colored books. How many are left? An infinite amount. Thus infinity divided by two equals infinity, which is illogical. Infinity is an imaginative construct, and cannot be applied to "actual" things (hence the term actual infinite). One can imagine taking a finger and passing an infinite number of dimensionless points on a ruler from one end to the other, but time is not dimensionless or imaginary. According to Craig, there cannot be an infinite number of past events, because one cannot traverse an infinite set of events.

In summary, the Kalam Cosmological Argument rests on the premise that the universe is not infinite in the past, but had a finite beginning which necessitates an immaterial cause for its existence.

[edit] Objections

A more concise expression of this argument is known as the "Argument from Contingency" which found recent articulation by the late Mortimer Adler. In any form this argument has its ultimate origin in Aristotle whose expression of the argument was reconstituted by Maimonides and Aquinas for their respective monotheisms as well as by Ibn Russhd (Averroes) for Islam during a time in history when each of these faith systems had to come to grips with the intellectually modernizing effects of Aristotlean thought.

One challenge to the argument would be to question whether finite objects can self-cause. Quentin Smith, world renowned atheist scholar, states that "the universe...both caused itself to exist and caused the later states of the universe to exist."[1] He says that the whole universe does not need an extra cause; if all parts of the universe cause each other to exist, that logically implies that the whole exists. Smith claims that "the first state of the universe consists of an indefinitely or infinitely long chain of simultaneous events that are causally connected to each other." This view relies on two controversial concepts: that of a physically existing actual infinite; and that of a cause simultaneous with its effect.

Another objection concerns whether or not the kalam argument's conclusion, "the universe must have a cause," points to the existence of God. That is, why must the cause of the universe, if there is one, be God? This objection does not question the validity of the syllogism itself, but of the soundness of its application to infer theism based solely on the underlying validity.

For example, ordinary cosmology, when it contemplates universal origins, seeks a "mechanism" for that origin. No assumption is made that the mechanism is supernatural in a spiritual sense or otherwise Divine. Thus, when we consider the possible varieties of unknown mechanisms extant either (a) at the original Planck time that brought about cosmic inflation or the Big Bang or alternatively (b) we postulate other universes existing in branes that spread apart, then come back together again, collide and create new universes or (c) we postulate that there are simply many universes, one of which is our own, existing unaware of each other on some sort of inter-universal substance, itself not subject to our universes laws - in all such cases, we are postulating a naturalistic dualism, in contrast to the supernatural dualism required to presume the Divinity of the original uncaused cause.

Thus it is possible to preserve the original dualism of both the standard cosmological argument (minus theistic extensions to imput the "Prime Mover" with the quality of Divinity) as well as its Kalam form, without appeal to the supernatural. Each of these cosmological hypotheses assumes that the natural, human-experienced universe, experienced by the five senses, consisting minimally of 3 spatial dimensions and a fourth time dimension, is of one "natural" "substance" or "essence", and then goes on to postulate an alternative substance, whether that substance is a mechanism, force, set of super-universal laws or conditions, but in any case a substance that exists outside the experience of the 5 senses. The substance can be said to be "supernatural" but is in no sense "spiritual" in character; but it is, nonetheless, fundamentally dualist, in perfect logical parallel to the cosmological argument.

Craig responds that "the simple syllogism lying at the heart of the kalam cosmological argument should be supplemented by a conceptual analysis of what it is to be a cause of the universe, an exercise which serves to recover many of the traditional divine attributes." [2]

We may conclude that true or not, the Kalam cosmological argument as a case for dualism, whether a natural or supernatural dualism, appears to meet the criteria of being a valid syllogism: its conclusions of a dualistic non-natural source of origin for the universe are validly drawn from its premises. That leaves for people to disagree on account that one or more of its premises are false (thus the valid argument is not sound) or to agree that it is both valid and sound. For those who accept that the syllogism is both valid and sound, it still remains a subject of considerable and perfectly legitimate debate whether one is led from there to belief in a Divinity of any kind. Neither empirical data nor logic force either conclusion.

[edit] Further reading

J.P. Moreland. Scaling the Secular City: A Defence of Christianity (1987) ISBN 0-8010-6222-5. Chapter 1: "The Cosmological Argument".

William Lane Craig. A Swift and Simple Refutation of the Kalam Cosmological Argument? (1999) [3]

Derrick Abdul-Hakim. God's Paradox: A Comment on William Lane Craig's Cosmological Argument (2006) Presented at San Jose State University Philosophy Conference