Kalam Cosmological Argument

[rikuoamero]

A certain user (who will go unnamed) has promised to discuss the Kalam Cosmological Argument, but has so far failed to do so. I thought I might as well introduce it, defeat the argument and so get it out of the way.
The original cosmological argument is thus
P1: Everything that exists must have a cause.
P2: If you follow the chain of events backwards through time, it cannot go back infinitely, so eventually you arrive at the first cause.
P3: This cause must, itself, be uncaused.
P4: But nothing can exist without a cause, except for God.
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

Sharp readers will notice that P3 and P4 contradict P1 (God, an uncaused cause, somehow exists despite the fact that P1 doesn't allow for such a thing), so William Lane Craig introduced the KCA.
Here is the KCA

P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause
P2: The universe began to exist
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause
and we are led to believe that that universe-causer is God.
William Lane Craig is famous for using the KCA, and in order to demonstrate the soundness of P2, he offers the following in defense

(2.1) An infinite temporal regress of events would constitute an actual infinite.
(2.2) An actual infinite cannot exist.
(2.3) Therefore an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.

Eagle eyed readers will spot a problem in 2.2. An actual infinite cannot exist? That right there refutes the notion of God, who is often described as being an infinite mystery.

Another way to defeat the argument is to show that the conclusion is in the premises. The Kalam arguer says that everything that begins to exist has a cause. So what about things that do not begin to exist? Oh they don't have causes, says the arguer.
Okay. Give me an example of a thing that does not have a cause.
The only thing the Kalam arguer will say is God. There is nothing else that does not have a cause.
So basically, there are two sets or two types of things, objects that begin to exist and objects that do not begin to exist. However, the ONLY example for the second group that the Kalam arguer will say is God, so the second group might as well simply be labelled God (why bother with the longer label?)

So if we plug that into the KCA
P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. Whatever does not begin to exist does not have a cause (this second sentence was implied in P1 of the original form of the KCA above)
P2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: The universe has a cause and that cause is God.

Now...
P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. God does not have a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist
Conclusion: The universe has a cause and that cause is God.

Wait what? Look what happened there. The conclusion is in the premise, thus making it an invalid logical argument, just like the Modal Ontological Argument, which had the god it was trying to prove exists as being unable to fail to exist in the preface to the argument (thus making it rigged).

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 1 by rikuoamero]

I have not studied the kalam argument. I have studied Aquinas' demonstrations, however. Whether or not your summary does justice to Kalam, it does not to Aquinas.

P1: is not that everything has a cause. That would obviously be silly, and Aquinas was far from silly. The argument is empirical--everything in our experience has potency--a technical term for which we might substitute "is liable to change".

P2: an infinite regress of change is not possible (note, this is a maneuver used among physicists as well. Hubble observed that the universe was winding down. From this, others reasoned that it must have had a beginning, for had it not, then the universe would have "winded down" an infinite time ago, which is impossible, both logically and empirically. Point: This is a not sly religious move, or even a dry, abstract philsoophical move).

P3: therefore something which lacks potency must exist--something of which change is illogically ascribed.


Now, perhaps Aquinas too hastily identified this with God. Most certainly, this argument does not lead to a demonstration of a god of any particular religion. But the bare description of this entity (the First Cause) possesses an attribute classically attributed to the god of Abrahamic religions; while nothing in our sensory experience possesses this attribute.

P.S. it should be noted that Aquinas did not believe the creation of the universe was demonstrable by reason. He never once tried to prove the Christian/Jewish doctrine of creation ex nihilo; he took that as a matter of faith. His demonstration is simply for a First Cause, which possesses attributes that nothing in our sensory experience does.

But it should also be noticed that a good many scientists believe on "scientific" evidence that the universe does have a beginning.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 51 by liamconnor]

I have not studied the kalam argument. I have studied Aquinas' demonstrations, however. Whether or not your summary does justice to Kalam, it does not to Aquinas.

P1: is not that everything has a cause. That would obviously be silly, and Aquinas was far from silly. The argument is empirical--everything in our experience has potency--a technical term for which we might substitute "is liable to change".

IF we include God into that "everything"... then god can change too.

P2: an infinite regress of change is not possible

Not everyone would agree with that, of course. Let's have the mathematicians and theoretical physicists decide that one, shall we?

(note, this is a maneuver used among physicists as well. Hubble observed that the universe was winding down. From this, others reasoned that it must have had a beginning, for had it not, then the universe would have "winded down" an infinite time ago, which is impossible, both logically and empirically. Point: This is a not sly religious move, or even a dry, abstract philsoophical move).

P3: therefore something which lacks potency must exist--something of which change is illogically ascribed.

So... this "proves" that "God" lacks potency?... I say... of course not. To me, this sounds like a tautology, i.e. "What must exist must exist".

Now, perhaps Aquinas too hastily identified this with God. Most certainly, this argument does not lead to a demonstration of a god of any particular religion.

If ANYTHING cosmological arguments can demonstrate that the universe had a CAUSE. Well, DUH.

In quantum physics, we know that things can come to be acausally.

But the bare description of this entity (the First Cause) possesses an attribute classically attributed to the god of Abrahamic religions; while nothing in our sensory experience possesses this attribute.

The first cause is just the first one.. And we don't even know IF there is a "one" cause like that to the universe. Nature is very surprising. Cosmological arguments usually assume WAY TOO MUCH to be useful in any way.

P.S. it should be noted that Aquinas did not believe the creation of the universe was demonstrable by reason. He never once tried to prove the Christian/Jewish doctrine of creation ex nihilo; he took that as a matter of faith. His demonstration is simply for a First Cause, which possesses attributes that nothing in our sensory experience does.

Religious people have a lot of faith.
Their faith doesn't prove what they believe in is true.

But it should also be noticed that a good many scientists believe on "scientific" evidence that the universe does have a beginning.

They don't have any real hard evidence of course, just conjecture. However, saying that the universe most probably had a beginning doesn't even come close to proving that there exists a god or a supernatural cause of any kind.

We could say that it's WAY more probable that it was another physical first cause, instead, the way that one snowflake can be the first cause of an avalanche.

[historia]

The proponent of KCA looks at things in the world and sees that they have causes.

Agreed.

He then makes a mistake and assumes that this holds true for the universe as a whole.

I'm not sure I appreciate this point. But let's examine your objections.

1) Mistaking properties of the set for the things in the set. Think of the universe as the ultimate set. Things within this set have causes. However, this does not mean that the universe itself has a cause.

Sometimes the properties of things in a set do apply to the set as a whole. Consider, for example, a wall in which each brick is made of stone. In that case, the whole wall is made of stone.

If every part of the universe is contingent, then it would seem to follow that the universe as a whole is contingent.

2) When the theist says 'causes', and gives examples, he mentions things like the building of a house, or the drawing of a painting. However, these are not comparable to what he wants to get to. The theist is trying to get to creation ex nihilo, but is using as examples things that are merely re-arrangements of already existing matter. If the theist admits this, then he says that the 'stuff' that makes up the universe has always existed, and thus, there was no creation. Hence, no need for a creator.

As I already mentioned above (see post 17), by 'cause' the kalam argument means efficient, rather than material, cause. So, while the second premise of the argument states that the universe began to exist, whether this was ex nihilo is incidental to the argument itself.

Therefore, it is possible to accept the kalam argument while also conceiving of a perfectly quiescent, changeless universe that suddenly began to change, thus initiating the finite series of past events.

Craig thinks the balance of the scientific evidence does not point in this direction (again see post 17). But, moreover, the idea seems improbable logically. In The Kalam Cosmological Argument (1979), pgs. 100-101, he argues that a quiescent universe could never, under its own power, stir from its frozen state.

While this is logically possible, it does not seem very reasonable. For this means that this event occurred entirely without eterminate conditions for its happening. The universe existed in a static, absolutely immobile state from eternity and then inexplicably, without any conditions whatsoever, a first event occurred...such a picture of the universe is singularly unconvincing.

So, even on this view, some external cause is necessary to give an explanation for the universe.

2a) Related to the examples in 2). Things like the building of a house do not have a single cause. They have many causes. Many people are involved in the building of a house. So even the things the theist proposes as examples or analogies to try to get a single cause of the universe are anything but!

Analogies are, of course, meant to show a correspondence or partial similarity between things. Here you seem overly focused on the details of this one particular analogy, as if every aspect of how a house is built must be true of how the universe came into existence for the analogy to be useful.

Moreover, I think you're mixing arguments. Theists may point to houses or paintings as examples of things that are designed to argue that the cosmos was designed. But proponents of the kalam argument are not doing that.

Rather, they are looking more broadly at the fact that all of the events we see going on around us in the universe have causes. And if you could rewind time, you would eventually see the universe come back to a single, initial event (i.e., the Big Bang).

To postulate multiple causes rather than a single cause for that event seems unnecessary. Or as Hume put it, "To multiply causes, without necessity, is indeed contrary to true philosophy."

[Inigo Montoya]

I would like to grant, as you write, that the universe as a whole IS contingent, or at least seems so.

I would like to do that so that you can be made to answer what it may be contingent on, in your view.

Will you do that? You obviously think the argument has merit, and are here defending against its misuse.

So will you take one more tiny step forward and share what you think it demonstrates?

[marco]

Here is the KCA

P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause
P2: The universe began to exist
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause


It is an interesting argument and appears logically sound.

The conclusion may be valid but it is sound only if the premises are true. Premise 2 is not a statement of fact but one of belief. It may well be true but whatever we conclude from this statement holds true only in so far as this assumption is true. If we can accept the notion of infinity then infinite existence should not be an impossibility.

Postulating a cause external to the sphere of our deliberations is also a dubious exercise. It would appear we are plastering over a crack in our reasoning powers.

[historia]

The following questions must be answered by theists for people such as myself to take Kalam seriously.

Let's take a look.

Is God the only object accommodated by the set of things that do not begin to exist?

No, it appears that abstract objects (e.g., numbers, sets) are also in this category.

Does the logic of Kalam apply only to temporal antecedents in the real world?

If yes, this assumes the existence of nontemporal antecedents in the real world, so why is this not begging the question?
If no, then why doesn't the impossibility of an actual infinity disprove the existence of an actually infinite God?

I'm not sure what Barker is asking here, exactly. The kalam argument concerns itself with the temporal ordering of causes, so I guess the answer to his question is 'yes'.

However, as I mentioned above, other forms of the cosmological argument do not require a temporal ordering of causes. I'm left wondering how that would be "begging the question" though.

His 'If no' rejoinder is, as we've already seen above (see post 8), an equivocation of the word "infinite."

Is the universe (cosmos) a member of itself?

If not, then how can its "beginning" be compared with other beginnings?

Another awkwardly phrased question. He seems to be asking, as you did above, How can the set as a whole have the properties of its members? But we see examples of this all the time, so I'm not sure what his objection is here.

[jgh7]

The only alternative I'm aware of to having no beginning is to exist infinitely back in time.

If God had no beginning, then he existed infinitely back in time. The KCA holds an infinite regression to be impossible correct? Therefore God must have had a beginning, and this beginning must have been uncaused, and if God was the first "something" in existence, then it means He came into existence uncaused from nothing.

I don't quite see why it makes more sense to say this happened to God instead of the universe. Why is it not possible for the beginning of the universe to have been uncaused and for causes to have taken place from that point onward?

[Inigo Montoya]

It's because God is timeless. He exists outside space and time so isn't bound by it. Timeless. Spaceless. Immaterial.

Pretty #@$% handy, eh?

[rikuoamero]

historia, I'm beginning to see why you were voted best debater You're the first person on this site to force me to up my game.

As you said in a previous post, yes I did take the form of the KCA that I used from Iron Chariots. However, apart from that (and mentioning Dan Barker), everything is my own.
Now straw-manning was never my intent. If it turns out that Iron Chariots have an incorrect version of Kalam on their website, then what I have done on this thread is useless.
Guess I'll have to give up on this thread, at least until I do further research on Kalam.

I do have a few thoughts to add though

Craig is quoted as saying

The universe existed in a static, absolutely immobile state from eternity and then inexplicably, without any conditions whatsoever, a first event occurred...such a picture of the universe is singularly unconvincing.

Wouldn't this be a description he'd hold true of his god? His god, existing in a static, absolutely immobile state from eternity and then inexplicably, without any cause from anything external, he causes the universe? If he's not going to accept this line of reasoning for the universe, why does his god get a pass?

Moreover, I think you're mixing arguments. Theists may point to houses or paintings as examples of things that are designed to argue that the cosmos was designed. But proponents of the kalam argument are not doing that.

Yes I was thinking of the ID argument here.

To postulate multiple causes rather than a single cause for that event seems unnecessary. Or as Hume put it, "To multiply causes, without necessity, is indeed contrary to true philosophy."

That is something that holds true (generally) for within the universe. However, the supernatural realm that Craig et al believes exists...what are its rules? For all we know, Occam's Razor doesn't apply there or isn't useful there.

Your comment about time not being a problem for Kalam is intriguing. Care to explain a bit more please?

No, it appears that abstract objects (e.g., numbers, sets) are also in this category.

I think here, the definition of 'exist' changed from Set 1 to Set 2, at least for you. Numbers and sets don't exist in the same way that the universe does, or that you and I do.

The kalam argument concerns itself with the temporal ordering of causes

Which is a problem when we're talking about what happened 'before' the universe. The very concept of 'before' makes no sense when talking about this, since time itself began at the Big Bang.
I'm not entirely sure of the meaning of that question myself - in the essay I took it from, Barker talks about how, in this pre-Big Bang 'world', time has no meaning, thus the difference between cause and effect is nil. Whatever caused the universe happened simultaneously with the effect, meaning there is no way to distinguish between the cause and the effect.

[Willum]

[Replying to rikuoamero]

Ah, Riku, you got suckered...
There is no need, logical, Biblical, anyical, to assume that God existed before (much before) creation. The argument has traps in it. Many of them is agreeing to spurious assumptions.

Once you agree to the one, the others are self-reinforcing.