Your views on the Kalam Cosmological Argument

[Krampus]

Hello,

What are your views on Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument? Is there any short and effective response to it?

[Solitary]

Yes---one---it is the same old God of the gaps of our knowledge argument.


The Kal?m cosmological argument is a variation of the cosmological argument that argues for the existence of a first cause for the universe, and the existence of a god. Its origins can be traced to medieval Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers, but most directly to Islamic theologians of the Kal?m tradition. Its historic proponents include John Philoponus, Al-Kindi,Saadia Gaon, Al-Ghazali, and St. Bonaventure. William Lane Craig revived interest in the Kal?m cosmological argument with his 1979 publication of a book of the same name.

The argument postulates that something caused the Universe to begin to exist, and this first cause must be God.

The Kal?m argument was named after the Kal?m tradition of Islamic discursive philosophy through which it was first formulated. In Arabic, the word Kal?m means "words, discussion, discourse."

The cosmological argument was first introduced by Aristotle and later refined by Al-Kindi, Al-Ghazali (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). In Western Europe, it was adopted by the Christian theologian Bonaventure (See Craig, 1979, p 18). Another form of this argument is based on the concept of a prime-mover, which was also propounded by Averroes.

His premise was that every motion must be caused by another motion, and the earlier motion must in turn be a result of another motion and so on. He argued that there must be an initial prime-mover, a mover that could cause motion without any other mover. One of the earliest formations of the Kal?m argument comes from Al-Ghazali, who wrote, "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."

Two kinds of Islamic perspectives may be considered with regard to the cosmological argument. A positive Aristotelian response strongly supporting the argument and a negative response which is quite critical of it. Among the Aristotelian thinkers are Al-Kindi, and Averroes. In contrast Al-Ghazali and Muhammad Iqbal may be seen as being in opposition to this sort of an argument.

Al-Kindi is one of the many major and first Islamic philosophers who attempt to introduce an argument for the existence of God based upon purely empirical premises. In fact, his chief contribution is the cosmological argument (dalil al-huduth) for the existence of God, in his On First Philosophy.

Al-Ghazzali was unconvinced by the first-cause arguments of Kindi. In response to them he writes: "According to the hypothesis under consideration, it has been established that all the beings in the world have a cause. Now, let the cause itself have a cause, and the cause of the cause have yet another cause, and so on ad infinitum. It does not behove you to say that an infinite regress of causes is impossible."

Al-Kindi's argument has been taken up by some contemporary Western philosophers and dubbed the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Among its chief proponents today is William Lane Craig.

The Kal?m argument is applied by the spiritist doctrine as the main argument for the existence of God.

Argument
Classical argument
Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;
The universe has a beginning of its existence;
Therefore:
The universe has a cause of its existence.
Contemporary argument

 William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig formulates the argument with an additional set of premises:
Argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite
An actual infinite cannot exist.

An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.

Argument based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition
A collection formed by successive addition cannot be an actual infinite.

The temporal series of past events is a collection formed by successive addition.
Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite.

The argument has seen some revival within Christian apologetics and among some philosophers, but has been criticized by such philosophers as J. L. Mackie, Graham Oppy, and Quentin Smith, and physicists Paul Davies, Lawrence Krauss and Victor Stenger.

William Lane Craig argues that the first premise is strongly supported by intuition and experience. He asserts that it is "intuitively obvious", based on the "metaphysical intuition that something cannot come into being from nothing". Additionally, Craig argues the first premise is affirmed by interaction with the physical world; for if it were false, it would be impossible to explain why things do not still randomly pop into existence without a cause.

Stenger has argued that quantum mechanics refutes the first premise of the argument, that is, that something can not come into being from nothing. He postulates that such naturally occurring quantum events violate this premise, like the Casimir effect and radioactive decay. Craig disagrees with physicists on the definition of "nothing", and has responded to Stenger that particles which appear due to these effects are not really created from "nothing", but rather, a quantum vacuum which contains energy to permit for the spontaneous existence of matter.

Craig asserts that it is logically impossible for the number of past events to be infinite, and therefore the universe must have a definite beginning to its existence. From the position of Cosmology, Craig cites the Big Bang theory as evidence for the second premise. He argues in favor of the Big Bang being interpreted as the temporal beginning of the universe, criticizing models which suggest differently, such as the Cyclic model, vacuum fluctuation models, and the Hartle–Hawking state model.

Ghazali thought that it is at least theoretically possible for there to be an infinite regress, and that there is nothing that necessitates a first-cause simply by pure deductive reason. He thus disputes one of the essential premises of the first-cause argument. Muhammad Iqbal also rejects the argument, stating: "a finite effect can give only a finite cause, or at most an infinite series of such causes. To finish the series at a certain point, and to elevate one member of the series to the dignity of an un-caused first cause, is to set at naught the very law of causation on which the whole argument proceeds."

Craig's argument concludes, through a process of elimination known more formally as modus tollens, that the cause of the universe must be a personal, uncaused, beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, enormously powerful, and enormously intelligent being, which Craig defines as God.

According to Craig, another objection comes from the B-theory of time. On a B-theory of time, the universe doesn't come into being, it just exists tenselessly as a four-dimensional space-time block, and so the Kal?m cosmological argument is predicated upon the A-Theory of time.

More recently it was used by Muslim apologist Hamza Andreas Tzortzis in his debate with Lawrence Krauss. Lawrence Krauss tried to show Hamza that this argument was flawed by showing him that infinity does exist and by using this argument Hamza was using an argument from ignorance (god of the gaps). However Professor Krauss was unable to show Hamza an actual infinite and was only able to explain to him a theoretical/mathametical infinite (Pi).
Solitary

[Krampus]

Hi,

I don't think that the Kalam argument is in any way a god-of-the-gaps argument. It rests on the metaphysical properties of the universe, which are beyond the scope of the scientific method. Because science deals only with the physical properties of the world, not with its metaphysical properties.

Sure, sometimes what we thought was metaphysics was in fact just crappy science. But then it does not allow us to jump to the conclusion that everything is open to scientific investigation, that metaphysics is just poor, muddled science. Besides, sometimes what parades as science is just poor philosophy, so the score is even.

We need not say that the Big Bang is REALLY the beginning of the universe to endorse the Kalam argument. We may believe in whatever quantum vacuum you want: the argument would remain unscathed. A scientist may go back any number of steps she wants in the past, it is irrelevant to the Kalam argument.  

The design argument IS a god-of-the-gaps argument, but not the Kalam argument in its metaphysical version.

[SkepticOfMyOwnMind]

Hello,

What are your views on Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument? Is there any short and effective response to it?

The KCA's premise "an actual infinite cannot exist" doesn't have any (significant) supporting evidence, is not tautological, and is not self-evident. We already have inductive reasons to let go of this premise, considering that each individual sees an exceedingly small portion of the Universe. The work necessary to confirm it may not be infinite, but it is so huge that it's not practical to take the idea seriously.

[the_antithesis]

It's poop.

It's basically a first cause argument and I take all first cause arguments as an admission of defeat. They can't prove their gods any other way, so they resort to an area they believe to be not well understood.

If anyone gives you the kca, you can disregard everything they say, including "Look out for that bus!" They're probably lying about that, too.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

I don't think that the Kalam argument is in any way a god-of-the-gaps argument.

I'm gonna stop you right there. The KCA assumes a beginning to the universe when in fact we:

• Do not know for sure that the Big Bang is the absolute starting point.
• That the universe needs a starting point.

Since it seeks to explain away a gap in our knowledge, it is indeed a "god of the gaps" argument in spite of your protests.

[Plu]

4.1 Argument that the cause of the universe is a
   personal Creator:
    4.11 The universe was brought into being either
      by a mechanically operating set of necessary and
      sufficient conditions or by a personal, free agent.
    4.12 The universe could not have been brought into
      being by a mechanically operating set of necessary
      and sufficient conditions.
    4.13 Therefore, the universe was brought into being
      by a personal, free agent.

This is not evidence. And without "personal", the whole thing kinda falls apart. This kind of "proof" should get you laughed out of every science building in the world.

[Atheon]

It's the classical Cosmological Argument, but re-worded to allow special pleading for gawd.

[Solitary]

:-D Thank you! Solitary

[josephpalazzo]

A flaw in Craig's argument is that God's first act and the first moment of time must have been simultaneous. That is, God must have been completely changeless (no pondering, no planning, no daydreaming, etc.) before the creation. This means that, necessarily, God's first act must have been unintentional. This is totally irreconcilable with traditional notions of God, who has a plan, a design for the universe and humans.

[Plu]

That's a good point. He also wouldn't be able to change his mind, I guess. That's also a key part of the bible.

[Bibliofagus]

It's simple: Kalam only works if god or the prime mover is defined as non-existent.
Which totally beats the goal of the argument, which is to argue that god or the prime mover actually exists.

[GSOgymrat]

Even if one accepts that some external force caused the creation of the universe it provides no information other than some external force caused the universe. It doesn't prove that force continues to interact with our universe. Unless I am missing something, the concept has no utility at all.

[Plu]

Even if one accepts that some external force caused the creation of the universe it provides no information other than some external force caused the universe. It doesn't prove that force continues to interact with our universe. Unless I am missing something, the concept has no utility at all.

This is the ultimate death of all religious arguments. "When will we get something useful out of this knowledge?" The answer is always "never", which means their argument, even if it were miraculously correct, would still be completely useless to consider.

[Mister Agenda]

'Begin to exist' is an interesting phrase. Until the last century we never observed anything begin to exist, we only witnessed transformations of previously-existing states of matter and energy. The only thing we have ever observed to begin to exist are virtual particles...a product of quantum uncertainty and therefore causeless. That is, they 'pop' into existence there's no 'rule' to stop it from happening.