What is The Kalam Cosmological Argument?

For millennia, humans have grappled with the concept of the universe being self-existent and infinite. With every past event being preceded by another, on and on into infinity. Among ancient men, there were two predominant views of the state of the universe. The Greeks believed that matter and energy were self-existent and eternal, and that the gods organized them into the planets and heavenly bodies. Then the Hebrews, who held the view that the universe was not in itself eternal, but that God had created all of it some time in the past "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). Like most people in our relativistic culture, why can't both of these views be true? The claim about whether the universe is past eternal or incomplete is no matter of a subjective truth claim. The claim is centered around the real object we can observe, the universe, and is in no way based on the preferences of an individual. This is like saying the claim that water is necessary for your survival is a subjective claim; it can be tested, and we can see that water is indeed essential to human survival (because without it, you would die).

Similarly, we can observe the universe and try to determine if we can conclude that it had a beginning in the finite past or if it is actually an infinite regress. Only one claim about the universe's objectivity can be actually true, and that is what I will try to clarify in this article series about the Origins of our Universe.

For Starters...

Before we begin analyzing the evidence for this, we must understand the argument. To this, I will provide a short overview of the Kalam Cosmological Argument for the beginning of the universe. Also, before we begin, we must understand that at the core of this argument is not a focus on proving God's existence, but rather that the universe is not eternal. What we can, and will do, is examine the evidence and reason back to a cause, from its effects to see if we can reveal the nature of what caused the first cause; the beginning of space, time, and matter.

Context of the Argument

When Western philosophy took off, the two views came into contact at long last. This resulted in a debate that lasted about a millennium among Jews, Muslims, and Christians. The debate seemingly ended with the famous Imanuel Kant (1724-1804) claiming that "since both sides have convincing arguments, it reveals the bankruptcy of reason itself." Despite the silence, the argument has returned to the scientific and philosophical scene with vengeance.

The argument has deep roots in Islamic theology, and William Lane Craig dubbed it the Kalam (Arabic for medieval theology) Cosmological Argument.

“The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (2007) reports, “A count of the articles in the philosophy journals shows that more articles have been published about . . . the Kalam argument than have been published about any other . . . contemporary formulation of an argument for God’s existence. . . . theists and atheists alike ‘cannot leave [the] Kalam argument alone’ (p. 183).” (Craig, "The Kalam Cosmological Argument", 2.).

An artists sketch of Al-Ghazali: https://www.ghazali.org/works/port.htm

The 12th-century Islamic theologian Al-Ghazali is the pioneer of the argument. He was concerned with seeing other theologians of his day being influenced by the Greek philosophers, which led them to deny that Allah created the universe. After deeply studying the teachings of the Greeks, he composed a massive critique of their eternal matter views in his works called The Incoherence of the Philosophers. In it, he argues that believing the universe is eternal is absurd. He says that since nothing begins to exist without a cause for its beginning, there must be a creator of the universe.  “Every being which begins has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning. (Al-Gha-zalı-, Kitab al-Iqtisad fi’l-I’tiqad, cited in S. de Beaurecueil, “Gazzali et S. Thomas d’Aquin: Essai sur la preuve de l’exitence de Dieu proposée dans l’Iqtisad et sa comparaison avec les ‘voies’ Thomiste,” Bulletin de l’Institut Francais d’Archaeologie Orientale 46 (1947): 203.)"

Premises of the Argument

The argument has three very simple and easy-to-understand premises, and we will look at the evidence for the validity of all of them in this series. The argument goes like this:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning.

2. The Universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the Universe has a cause for its beginning.

We will now discuss each premise in some detail below.

1. Whatever Begins to Exist Has a Cause of its Beginning

William Lane Craig offers a useful summary of this premise: "If the universe bagan to exist, then it had a cause for its beginning" with the term "universe" refering to all contiguous spacetime reality, even subatomic particles that are the results of quantum decay processes (words taken from Craig, "The Kalam Cosmological Argument"). This means that to hold to the belief that the universe didn't have a cause for its beginning is to hold to the universe coming into existence from absolutely nothing.

Quantum decay does not produce particles from "nothing"; what occurs is the conversion of one type of matter into another, with the energy remaining constant throughout. There are major issues with holding to the possibility of something coming from nothing. Something simply cannot come from nothing by definition. To deny premise 1 is to think the universe appeared with no reason or cause, which is more absurd than magic. If something came from nothing, then there ceases to be an explanation for how and why anything comes into existence. In other words, why did only the universe come from nothing? Why aren't kangaroos appearing in Minnesota, or hot dogs in Sweden? Why is "nothing" so selective to only universes? “What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can’t be anything about nothingness that favors universes, for nothingness doesn’t have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness, for there isn’t anything to be constrained! (Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, 3)."

To deny premise 1 is to also deny the holistic human experience and all scientific evidence that confirms it. Cosmology itself is based on the foundational presupposition that there were initial causal conditions to the universe's origin. Cosmology agrees with premise 1.

2. The Universe Began to Exist

The second premise is the debated one. You will not find many people claiming things come into existence from nothing; you will find far more people holding to a beginningless universe. This article is not going to go over the evidence supporting this premise, that is for the next article. Here, I will go over some philosophical issues and briefly mention some scientific evidence, with the next article going into more detail on the evidence itself.

Actual and Potential Infinites

If the universe never began to exist, then the past is infinite. There have been an infinite number of events preceding today. How did today come about, then, if the past has an actually infinite number of events leading up to today? It makes no sense, logically speaking.

Potential Infinites are where infinity serves as a max upper limit that can never be reached. A good example is choosing a distance and dividing it in half. Say we divide one meter into 50 centimeters. Then we divide that in half, and again, and again. The number of times you can divide that distance is infinite, but you will never reach a limit where you cannot surpass infinity. Or simply if a man in a chair began counting, starting from one, he could keep counting forever without reaching the limit of infinity.

Actual Infinities are an actual number of infinite things. But an actual infinite number of things cannot exist in the material world. If I had a chest full of an infinite amount of lollipops, and I ran an event with 5,000 attendees, and each one received a lollipop upon entry. How many lollipops would be left in my chest? Would I not have an infinite amount remaining? Moreover, what if I needed to remove one-third of my supply to pay my lollipop tax to the candy government (at 33% of my lolipops)? Would I not still have an infinite amount remaining, and wouldn't my one-third division also result in an infinite amount of lollipops?

A division of infinity results in more infinities. Therefore, the existence of an infinite number of past events would never result in today happening; the past cannot be infinite.

Succesive Addition Does not Create Actual Infinites

The amount of past events has been accumulated, one event after another, for infitnity. Two days ago I went to work, the next day I went to work again, and the next day I had off work, and so on. But you cannot reach an actual infinity by adding one by one; an infinite series of things cannot happen one thing at a time. Today can never be reached if there were an infinite number of past events. If the past were an infinite series of events, and no series of addition can reach an infinite limit, the past cannot be infinite.

Has Math Refuted This?

Some have said that modern set theory refutes this defense of a past incomplete universe. Past incomplete simply means the past is not eternal; it has a finite nature. The set of natural numbers, like 1, 2, 3, and so on, has an infinite number of members within it. It also says that you can reasonably talk about infinites if you adopt certain axioms without creating giant gaps in logic. While set theory makes use of infinities in ways of arithmetic, it does nothing to show how actual mathematical entities can really exist.

Some also claim that we cannot understand infinities; therefore, we obviously are going to conclude they cannot actually exist. But this reveals a misunderstanding of our argument. Set theory is a very well-developed and understood branch of mathematics, so to say we deny the existence of actual infinities based on ignorance is bogus. We deny their existence because of what we know about infinities and how they work. Since actual infinities cannot exist, an infinite past cannot exist either.

Premise 3: Falsifiable Claims?

The claim that "the universe is eternal" is an objective truth claim, where we can examine the object of the universe and see if we can determine if that statement is true. This is where scientific evidence, such as the Cosmic Background Radiation, the Distance Light Red-shift, mathematical models, philosophical problems, and other observable evidence, come into play. In the next article, we will discuss the scientific developments in concluding with high confidence that the universe had a cause for its beginning in the finite past.

Did God Have a Cause?

Now, assuming the premises are true, and that we can conclude that a God did create the universe, some will ask if the creator had a creator who created him that was created by another creator, which was created by whom? In other words, did the first cause have a cause that caused it that was caused by another cause preceded by more causes that were caused by what? At first glance, this seems like a reasonable concern, but it has some flaws in the understanding of God's nature. If we think a little longer about what the universe's beginning means, it means that space, time, and matter all began. Before that, no time was present. The theological term for this aspect of God's nature is His Aseity (God's Self Existence). This describes how, since God created time and time requires a beginning, and a beginning requires a cause, God does not require a cause for His beginning because He has none. God exists outside of time, and that means time does not in toto influence Him, nor does He have any dependence for His existence.

This is ultimately a category error; it equates God with causal entities. But the premises never state "everything has a cause for its existence," but that everything that has a beginning to its existence has a cause for its beginning. God is not in that category of being; He created the category itself! So to ask "Did God have a cause?" is to make a category error.

Conclusion

With a brief overview of what the Kalam Cosmological argument posits, we can now delve into what the actual heavens say when we ask, "Is the universe eternal?" Be prepared to learn about the history of science. We will discuss the many universe models that have been made over the years, their strengths and weaknesses; the Big Bang model; Quantum causes; Other Issues with an eternal universe; the BGV Theorem; Then reasoning to a cause from its effects and whether that cause was personal or not.

Be aware that this argument only establishes the impossibility of an infinite universe in philosophical terms. In further articles we will discuss further philosophical arguments and scientific and mathmatical evidences for a finite universe. Aswell as the issues with multiverse models.

To further clarify, the Kalam Cosmological Argument does not "prove" the Christian God exists, but rather offers an argument that the universe had a beginning on philosophical grounds. As we will discover later, things cannot cause themselves to exist, and we will go deeper into the quantum origin models.

Moreover many claim this argument is special pleading in some way. Often they reference William Lane Craigs formulation and conclusion of the Christian God being the cause, and that the pleading occurs with that logical leap. What they misunderstand is that even Craig acknowledges the previous reality mentioned above, what he does do is delve into more philosophical arguments and scientific confirmations that support a cause with the nature of God as revealed in Scripture and through the person of Jesus Christ. There will be a section responding to popular arguments against a past incomplete universe, offering the refutations to such critiques.

May you read the opening verses of Genesis in a newfound light. That in the beginning (time), God created the heavens and the earth (space and matter: the universe).

"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible (Hebrews 11:3)."

Knowing that God has revealed His truth through His Word, and His "booke" of nature. Amen