The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Argument

One of the big marks William Lane Craig has made in philosophy of religion, for good or ill, is his revival of the kalam cosmological argument (KCA) in modern times. There are a number of ways to formulate the argument, but here is one of them:

1. If the universe began to exist, it has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause (from 1 and 2).

The proponent of the KCA then argues further that the cause of the universe must be (among other things) transcendent and personal. It should be noted that by “the universe” the argument refers to all of connected space-time reality. So if one thinks there was a physical reality prior to the big bang that caused the big bang to occur, that physical reality would also be part of “the universe” as the term is being used in this argument.

Those familiar with the KCA might wonder why I didn’t replace the first premise with “Anything that begins to exist has a cause,” since another well-known form of the argument is this:

1. Anything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe begins to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has cause.

In this case though I’m using a version of the first premise that doesn’t claim anything more than it needs to for the conclusion to follow. If one believes the universe began to exist, all one really needs to get to the conclusion is “If the universe began to exist, then it has a cause.” The claim that anything that begins to exist has a cause claims more than it needs to for the conclusion to follow.

First Premise

The “anything that begins to exist has a cause” claim is potentially misleading, and to help dispel some possible misunderstanding here I should first explain what a material cause and efficient cause is. A material cause is the stuff from which something is made out of, e.g. when Michelangelo created his famous marble sculpture David, marble is the material cause. The efficient cause is that which makes the effect, or more generally, brings something about. In the case of the David sculpture, the efficient cause is Michelangelo. The “anything that begins to exist has a cause” claim is saying, “It is not the case that something that begins to exist has no efficient cause and no material cause.” Something coming into being with no efficient cause and no material cause is said to come into being out of literally nothing. Theists have claimed that the universe popping into being uncaused out of nothing is absurd.

It might be tempting to object here and say the universe did come into being from nothing, but I would caution against this move. First, it’s completely unnecessary. The universe existing eternally is a viable option. Second, the idea that things don’t come into being from nothing has surprisingly strong support, on par with the best confirmed physical laws that astrophysics relies on (see an argument for that principle in Maverick Christian’s Anything that Begins to Exist Has a Cause article, and keep in mind that even Christians can be right about a few things).

Third, all atheists who would seriously consider the universe popping into being uncaused out of nothing should ask themselves: would we really abandon this principle in any other circumstance when we have no real evidence that it occurred? If I say an apartment popped into being uncaused out of nothing, would you believe me? What if I showed you a video of an apartment popping into being uncaused? Would you believe me then or think I had used some special effects? It would appear intellectually suspicious to immediately abandon our natural skepticism of things popping into being from nothing to avoid a creator of the universe, and as I said before, believing that the universe popped into being from nothing is completely unnecessary. We don’t have to resort to such extreme measures to refute the KCA.

The Second Premise

This is by far the most vulnerable premise, and the one worth attacking. While there are some scientists who think the evidence points to an absolute beginning of the universe (such as Alexander Vilenkin) there are others who disagree (for example, Sean Carrol believes the universe probably did not have a beginning). To be generous though, let us grant for sake of argument that the past is temporally finite and that some sort of first cause or other is needed. Because the past is finite, the first cause would have to be something outside of time. William Lane Craig, for example, believes that God is timeless sans the universe, but after God creates the universe God “enters into” time as a result of creating it.

But why does the first cause have to be a nonphysical personal being instead of some impersonal physical entity? The atheist could believe the physical universe is eternal in the following sense: the physical universe has a finite past but the first cause is some other sort of physical reality that caused the rest of the universe to come into being (perhaps at the moment of the big bang). Since the first cause would have to be timeless, we would have to commit ourselves to some sort of first cause that is radically different from what we temporal creatures have experienced. But there’s no good reason to favor a transcendent magical deity over some sort of physical reality as the first cause, and if forced to choose between the two surely the physical reality hypothesis is the less extravagant view.

William Lane Craig, naturally enough, would disagree about which of the two we should favor. To help avoid straw men I’ll quote from the horse’s mouth:

In fact, I think that it can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal Creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause? If the cause were simply a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions existing from eternity, then why would not the effect also exist from eternity? For example, if the cause of water's being frozen is the temperature's being below zero degrees, then if the temperature were below zero degrees from eternity, then any water present would be frozen from eternity. The only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time. For example, a man sitting from eternity may will to stand up; hence, a temporal effect may arise from an eternally existing agent. Indeed, the agent may will from eternity to create a temporal effect, so that no change in the agent need be conceived.

For the nonce, let’s ignore the possibility that the transcendent personal cause could have been many persons involved instead of a lone Creator. One problem with Craig’s argument is that the examples he is using involve the temporally everlasting sort of eternity rather than timeless eternity. I agree that it makes sense (or at least more sense) to posit a personal cause when dealing with an eternal cause with a temporal effect when the cause in question is temporally everlasting. But that isn’t the question here: the question is about whether a timelessly eternal physical cause (which we may presume is a timelessly eternal “mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions”) could not create a temporal effect.

A more charitable way to read Craig here is that he was just offering an analogy. Just as a temporally eternal personal cause can do the job whereas a temporally eternal mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions cannot, so too is a personal cause needed when the causal agency is timelessly eternal. But isn’t it the case that an omnipotent God’s will to create the universe would, when the personal agent is timelessly eternal, constitute a timelessly eternal set of necessary and sufficient conditions to create the universe, and thereby result in a co-eternal effect? Craig might say that a timelessly eternal personal agency can create a temporal effect in a way that’s analogous to the temporally eternal personal agent willing from eternity to create a temporal effect.

But it’s hard to see how the analogy holds. Notice that the mechanism can’t work the same way in the timelessly eternal case as it does in the temporally eternal case. In the temporally eternal case, the personal agent can say to himself throughout most of eternity past, “I will stand up at 7:30 a.m. on February 24, 2013” and as the time grows nearer think, “7:28 a.m., 7:29 a.m., at last, 7:30 a.m. on February 24, 2013! I will stand up now.” But when the personal agent is timelessly eternal, the personal agent can’t just traverse through time and wait for the right moment to occur to produce a temporal effect from an eternal willing of the effect, because time doesn’t even exist in the timelessly eternal state of affairs. The mechanism, if there is one, would have to be quite different. So what is this mechanism and why can’t a timelessly eternal physical cause not do it? The answer is at best unclear, and for this reason (if for no other reason) the KCA fails.

Conclusion

One form of the KCA:

1. If the universe began to exist, it has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause (from 1 and 2).

The first premise strikes me as reasonable. We have a natural skepticism for things popping into being uncaused out of nothing. For example, the typical atheist would disbelieve me if I said I saw an apartment popping into being uncaused out of nothing. Even if I provided a video of the event, the atheist would likely believe I had used special effects. It would seem intellectually suspicious if we abandoned such natural skepticism to avoid a creator of the universe, and fortunately such a maneuver is not needed to refute the KCA. The rational atheist can attack the second premise instead.

While there are some scientists who think the universe had a beginning, there are other scientists who don’t. Even if we grant that the universe has a finite past, the cause need not be a transcendent magical deity—a physical cause would work too. Indeed, when forced to choose between transcendent magical deity and some sort of physical reality as the first cause, the physical reality hypothesis is the less extravagant view. Craig has (at best) made an argument from a bad analogy that when it comes to eternal causal agencies, only a personal cause could create a temporal effect. It is at best unclear why this would be the case, and without any good reason to think this, the most reasonable view (if we had to posit a first cause) is the less extravagant physical cause.