The Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) is a modern variant of the old “But Someone had to be there to start it all off, right?” argument. It has a common sense appeal, but it falls apart under inspection.

This is the final installment of a critique of a Christian defense of the KCA (part 1). We’ll look at “Your explanation requires another explanation,” “God has no ‘but what created God?’ infinite regress” and a few more.

Here is the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA):

1: Whatever begins to exist had a cause

2: The universe began to exist

3: Therefore, the universe had a cause

Below, the skeptical argument is shown in bold and the Christian response in italics.

8. Even if the universe has a beginning, there are possibilities besides God.

If you’re thinking of aliens or the multiverse, that just pushes the problem back a step.

What is it with this obsession for an immediate answer? Can’t we just say, “I don’t know”? That approach has done well for science because it puts the spotlight on interesting questions, which then tend to get answered.

Of course, it’s clear why apologists demand an answer right now. They know that science regularly replaces supernatural explanation with evidence-based explanations. Their time window is brief, and they want to score some points for “God did it!” before their question du jour is answered. Then they’ll move on to another unanswered scientific question and hope that everyone forgets that last one.

As one example of a non-God beginning of our universe, maybe it’s a computer simulation like the Matrix. Perhaps such a simulation will for advanced civilizations be no more difficult than a homework assignment. And there are plenty of theories with natural causes. We’re beyond “I don’t know” but haven’t advanced to “here’s the overwhelming scientific consensus” yet.

Let’s return to the Christian challenge that any explanation for the universe—aliens created it, or there’s a multiverse—just creates another thing that must itself be answered. These would indeed demand an explanation, but why imagine that God is it? God has never been the answer to anything. If God is the explanation, show that he exists first and then infer that he created the universe/multiverse. The Christian god who loves us and desires a relationship would be obvious, and the obtuse KCA wouldn’t be the way to find him. Every clue points to naturalism as the explanation for this and other unknown puzzles.

When religion begins to answer interesting questions like these, let me know. Until then, the idea that religion will provide the answers to questions it could never dream up is ridiculous.

9. Popular-level science teaches the universe had a beginning, but someone says the real science shows it doesn’t.

“We aren’t given any argument as to why it’s really the case that a potentially successful model for the beginning of the universe shows no finite beginning. We’re simply to take someone’s word for it, when we actually have physicists and scientists admitting these theories don’t work.”

There’s not much to respond to here, but I include it for completeness. I’ll just note that cosmologist Sean Carroll’s list of proposed models for the universe (there are many) includes a beginning-less universe (more).

10. The KCA relies entirely on current science, and science can change.

“First, simply because some claim remains open to change does not mean that claim cannot be accepted as true. . . . Of course we can claim it is true!”

I reject the phrasing of your statement, but you’re welcome to use science as the basis for an argument that concludes God exists. KCA isn’t a sound argument, as I’ve shown before, but have at it.

“Second, the KCA does not rely entirely on science. In fact, the second premise (“the universe began to exist”) can be defended solely on rational argumentation.”

I think we’ve found your problem: thinking that “rational argumentation” (do you mean “common sense”?) is reliable at the frontiers of physics (see claim #3 above). The origin of the universe is within the domain of quantum mechanics, remember? You check your common sense at the door.

Quantum mechanics has already defeated the first premise, “whatever begins to exist had a cause” (see claim #1 above).

11. Your first cause falls to the infinite regress problem. If God is your first cause, what created God?

God didn’t begin to exist. The First Cause must logically precede all else. There simply can’t be, by definition, anything that came before.

Be cautious when a definition brings something into existence. Like the Ontological Argument, which just thinks God into existence, that may be too good to be true.

You didn’t say this, but let me just add the caution that apologists shouldn’t respond to a scientific question with a theological claim. “My religion says that God was uncreated” is no answer in the real world.

So you’re telling us that God didn’t have a cause . . . just because? That’s magic, and I need evidence. Why does God not need a cause if everything else does? Why is God eternal, but nothing else is? How did God create something out of nothing? How can he create the universe when he was outside of time—doesn’t deciding and acting require time?

The most charitable view is that you’ve resolved “What caused the universe?” with God, but you now have these new questions about God. You’ve simply repackaged the question, not answered it.

And if God can exist eternally, maybe that’s true for the universe (or the multiverse).

Wrapup

The author concludes:

Each objection has been dealt with by providing an answer. This means that each Christian, and each person, is rationally justified in accepting the KCA. If that is true, then it seems that the KCA’s truth implies God—not just any God, but the God of the Bible!

Nope. My original post is intact. I leveled five attacks on the first premise and three on the second. None of those were addressed in this article. No, rational people are not justified in accepting the Kalam Kosmological Argument.

You’ve probably seen the famous Sidney Harris cartoon where one scientist points to an involved equation on the blackboard and says to his colleague, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two,” where step two says, “Then a miracle occurs.” God is the step two—the implausible savior of Christians’ apologetic arguments.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 11/7/16.)

Image from NASA, public domain

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Life as a Christian apologist must be hard. They have to deliver weak arguments with enthusiasm, and the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) is one of the most prominent weak arguments.

Here it is:

1: Whatever begins to exist had a cause

2: The universe began to exist

3: Therefore, the universe had a cause

This is #2 in a three-part series responding to a Christian defense of the KCA (part 1 here).

Here are three more responses to skeptical attacks on the KCA. The skeptical argument is shown in bold and the Christian response in italics.

5. The first cause is logically incoherent because it existed “before” time.

This isn’t an objection to either premise.

Oh, but it is; it’s an objection to premise 1. It questions whether there can be a cause of any sort given that time didn’t exist before the universe did.

The First Cause didn’t precede the universe, because it acted in the first moment—that is, the First Cause and the first moment were simultaneous. “So what we have is a timeless, unchanging (because it is timeless) First Cause whose first act is bringing the world into existence.”

This is metaphysical bullshit. The simple solution is to drop the idea of any cause (First or otherwise) for the universe. The God hypothesis is jammed in as the answer despite its not fitting into this puzzle at all. The naturalistic explanation doesn’t need a cause of the universe, and the KCA vanishes without one.

How could a god outside of time decide anything, such as that the universe should be created? “Timeless and unchanging” means frozen and inert. No conclusions, no changing of his mind, no initiation of any creative act.

“What could cause the universe if there were no time beforehand?” is like “How could a frozen and inert god do anything, like create a universe?” And they’re both neatly dismissed by hypothesizing no cause for the universe, as allowed by quantum mechanics. God becomes a solution looking for a problem. Apologists spend more effort keeping the God card relevant than using it to show that it explains things better than naturalistic solutions.

Cosmologist Sean M. Carroll debated Craig on cosmology (more on that debate here), and Carroll ticked off several models of the universe with no place for a First Cause such as a universe with a beginning but no cause and one that is eternal without a beginning.

And let me step back to marvel that this godly First Cause is advanced by apologists with no evidence whatsoever. Carroll noted that cosmology textbooks don’t rely on “transcendent cause” or “First Cause” or God, they use differential equations!

Even trying to put the Cosmological Argument in the best possible light, it doesn’t solve the infinite regress. You’ve still got God infinitely old who existed infinitely long before the Big Bang. How does he traverse that time? And while we’re puzzling over Christianity’s unexplained mysteries, how does a noncorporeal being affect our world? Do we just call it magic and move on? And if God created the universe, that must’ve been to improve things, but how is that possible since everything was perfect already?

Maybe this is really the Kalam Kosmological Argument, just a bit of fun that’s not to be taken seriously.

6. If some metaphysical truth is not well-established, one is unjustified in saying it is true.

Does “not well established” mean that philosophical truth is discovered by a poll? And how can new truth bubble to the surface if no one accepts it until a majority do?

When metaphysicians have a track record like scientists where they give us reliable new knowledge, then yes, polls would be useful. We laypeople could rely on them to know where they’ve reached a solid consensus, and we could treat that as provisional truth. But metaphysics has no such track record. (I argue that laypeople must accept the scientific consensus here.)

As for his concern about “a new idea is fine as long as it’s not new,” we must separate the experts from laypeople. In an evidence-guided meritocracy with a high bar for entry like science, the experts can dream up, advocate, and accept whatever they feel the evidence demands. While we lay outsiders can critique, we have no standing for accepting anything but the consensus (where it exists).

That describes science, not philosophy or metaphysics.

7. There could be other deities besides the Christian God.

This doesn’t object to either premise of the KCA. Let’s be clear that the KCA is used as natural theology (understanding God through nature), never revealed theology (understanding God from his personal revelations).

Nevertheless, the properties of the cause of the universe—timeless, spaceless, changeless, powerful, creator—do sound like the Christian god.

“Imagine, if you will, a timeless, spaceless, all-powerful Creator of the universe. Sounds like God, doesn’t it?” Well, it sounds like what Christians today think of God, but consider God before he hit the big time—back in the Old Testament when he was still doing vaudeville.

• He had to personally investigate Sodom and Gomorrah to see if the gossip he’d heard was correct (Genesis 18:21),
• he regretted having made mankind (Gen. 6:6),
• he spoke to Moses “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11),
• he was beaten by the Moabite god Chemosh and couldn’t defeat tribes with iron chariots (more),
• and he was just one of many gods in a pantheon.

He was more super than the rest of us, but certainly not the omni-everything god of today. God has evolved.

The final four arguments: The Kalam Argument: infinite regress and more

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 11/2/16.)

Image from NASA, public domain

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Let’s continue examining William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument (part 1 here). His version of the argument has two premises and a conclusion:

(Premise 1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

(Premise 2) The universe began to exist.

(Conclusion) Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Premise 1 sounds like common sense until you realize that Craig is talking about

• a supernatural creation (he provides no examples of a supernatural anything),
• out of nothing (he provides no examples of creation out of nothing),
• before time (which didn’t yet exist before the universe came to be)
• with “begins to exist” as a special-pleading caveat to carve out a God-shaped exception
• to the “everything has a cause” rule, which is false.

Seen this way, premise 1 loses all common-sense appeal, but let’s flog this dead horse and continue.

Second premise: The universe began to exist

Craig defends the second premise this way:

Let’s consider the second law of thermodynamics. It tells us the universe is slowly running out of usable energy… and that’s the point.

If the universe had been here forever, it would have run out of usable energy by now. The second law points us to a universe that has a definite beginning.

6. The second law of thermodynamics is no ally to the apologist.

Unlike his frequent metaphysical handwavings, Craig makes a plausible argument here. If the universe is like a clock that’s running down, it can’t have been running forever.

But does Craig really want to argue that things always run down, so therefore everything must have a beginning? If so, then this must apply to God as well.

It turns out that a clock is a poor analogy to the universe. The zero-energy universe theory says that matter and light are positive energy, but gravity is negative energy. Add it all together, and the sum is zero—the universe has zero net matter and energy. Alexander Vilenkin, a cosmologist who Craig often cites, agrees, “The gravitational energy, which is always negative, exactly compensates the positive energy of matter, so the energy of a closed universe is always zero” (source: video @24:00). Though it seems like cheating, it takes no energy to create a universe.

WLC might say that the zero-energy universe theory might be overturned with new evidence. True, but then his argument has become “The second law of thermodynamics argues for a beginning … or maybe not.”

7. The universe began … in its present form. We don’t know what preceded or caused the Big Bang. The universe might’ve come from nothing, or it might be a rearrangement of material from another universe. (This point and point 6 may not coexist as objections.)

8. Response to Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin. Craig frequently cites the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem (BGV) to argue for a beginning to the universe and, if you want to posit a multiverse, a beginning for that, too.

He’s such a fan that he has the following quote by Vilenkin on 22 pages at his web site:

It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning. (Alexander Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One [2007], p.176)

That’s powerful evidence for Craig, but if he’s such a fan, I wonder why he ignores this bit from Vilenkin on the very next page:

Theologians have often welcomed any evidence for the beginning of the universe, regarding it as evidence for the existence of God … So what do we make of a proof that the beginning is unavoidable? Is it a proof of the existence of God? This view would be far too simplistic. Anyone who attempts to understand the origin of the universe should be prepared to address its logical paradoxes. In this regard, the theorem that I proved with my colleagues does not give much of an advantage to the theologian over the scientist.

Oops—it looks like Craig wants to pick and choose his evidence and hope that we don’t notice. (We’ll soon see that the cosmologists he cites aren’t the allies he imagines.)

Cosmologist Vic Stenger sees limitations to BGV:

I asked Vilenkin personally if his theorem required a beginning. His e-mail reply: “No. But it proves that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning. You can evade the theorem by postulating that the universe was contracting prior to some time.” This is exactly what a number of existing models for the uncreated origin of our universe do.

In Carroll’s debate with Craig (my summary here), he made clear that BGV starts with assumptions. Discard those assumptions, and the rules are different and eternality is possible. Carroll said:

BGV … is certainly interesting and important, because it helps us understand where classical general relativity breaks down, but it doesn’t help us decide what to do when it breaks down. Surely there’s no need to throw up our hands and declare that this puzzle can’t be resolved within a materialist framework. (Source: Vic Stenger, The Fallacy of Fine Tuning, p. 130.)

In the debate, Carroll mentioned that there are over a dozen plausible models for the universe, including eternal ones.

Craig says he’s BFFs with B, G, and V, but then these guys go off and say things that Craig can’t possibly agree with. When arguing for Kalam, Craig needs to rethink who his allies are.

• Vilenkin says that the universe can have no cause.
• Vilenkin argues for the multiverse, which defeats Craig’s fine-tuning argument.
• Alan Guth says, “It looks to me that probably the universe had a beginning, but I would not want to place a large bet on the issue.”
• Craig likes to channel The Sound of Music and declare, “Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could.” But Guth says, “Conceivably, everything can be created from nothing. And ‘everything’ might include a lot more than what we can see. In the context of inflationary cosmology, it is fair to say that the universe is the ultimate free lunch.”
• And I’m guessing that Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin aren’t convinced by their own theorem to become theists.

Though I’m open to disconfirming evidence, it seems that Craig simply cherry-picks his evidence to cobble together a sciencey argument, then stamps it with his two doctorates. He has no interest in following the evidence.

He also enjoys mocking the pathetic plebes from his ivory tower. Take this defense of Kalam’s first premise:

I think the first premise that whatever begins to exist has a cause is virtually undeniable for any sincere seeker after truth…. It’s silly then when popularizers say things like, “Nothingness is unstable to quantum fluctuations” or “the universe tunneled into being out of nothing.” (Source: video @22:55)

No argument here, just derision. Note also that Craig dismisses the “popularizers,” who include the very cosmologists he cites as allies.

I’ll close with an apt summary by the Uncredible HallQ:

This is just an example of Craig’s annoying tendency to make unsupported claims and then demand his critics disprove them, and it’s an absurd way to argue. If Craig is going that way, why not just announce God exists, demand atheists prove otherwise, and be done with it?

People are so unsophisticated in their thinking.
I am just appalled, honestly,
when I read the stuff that’s out there on the internet,
how inept and sophomoric people are.
— William Lane Craig

Photo credit: NASA

World-famous philosopher William Lane Craig (WLC) is perhaps most famous for his popularization of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Let’s examine it to see if it is as compelling as WLC thinks.

The argument is a Muslim variant on Aristotle’s First Cause argument (something had to be the first cause; otherwise, you have causes going back forever). WLC states the argument this way:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

The universe began to exist.

Therefore, the universe has a cause.

First premise: Whatever begins to exist has a cause

Let’s begin with that first premise. WLC defends it:

Believing that something can pop into existence without a cause is more of a stretch than believing in magic. At least with magic you’ve got a hat and a magician.

And if something can come into being from nothing, then why don’t we see this happening all the time?

No … everyday experience and scientific evidence confirm our first premise—if something begins to exist, it must have a cause.

That’s the argument? Just an appeal to common sense?

WLC’s support for his philosophical claims often devolve into something akin to, “Aw, c’mon. You’ll give me that one, right? It’s obvious!” One wonders: if he’s not going to use his doctorates, maybe he should give them back.

Understand the limitations of common sense. It’s not the tool to rely on at the frontier of science. To take one example, we all know that a thing can’t be in two places at once, but quantum physics shows that it can. WLC handwaves a simple argument that works with people desperate for justification for their supernatural beliefs, but it doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

1. Things don’t need a cause. Contrary to WLC’s intuition, things may indeed pop into existence without cause. That’s the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. For example, virtual particles and the electrons that come out of a decaying nucleus qualify as things that “began to exist,” and they didn’t have a cause.

WLC will say that the Copenhagen interpretation might be overturned, and that’s true. But then his premise becomes, “Whatever begins to exist might have a cause,” which doesn’t make for much of an argument.

He wonders, “Why don’t we see this happening all the time?” and the obvious answer is that it applies only at the quantum level. Indeed, the universe itself was once the size of a quantum particle, so it’s reasonable to think that causelessness could apply to the universe as well.

That’s the conclusion of cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin:

If there was nothing before the universe popped out, then what could have caused the tunneling? Remarkably, the answer is that no cause is required. In classical physics, causality dictates what happens from one moment to the next, but in quantum mechanics the behavior of physical objects is inherently unpredictable and some quantum processes have no cause at all.

To see this another way, let’s replace “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” with “Everything has a cause” and ask WLC to find a counterexample. Unless he can, he has no reason (besides supporting his agenda) to prefer his clumsier version. He can point to the Copenhagen interpretation, but that defeats his version as well. (Thanks to commenter primenumbers.)

2. We know nothing about supernatural creation. “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” has a common-sense appeal, but the only “whatevers” that we know that began to exist (stars, oak trees, a dent in a fender, tsunamis) are natural. Why imagine that this common sense rule of thumb would apply to supernatural causes? And why even imagine that the supernatural exists? WLC doesn’t bother even acknowledging the problem.

3. We know nothing about creation ex nihilo. The only “begins to exist” we know of is rearrangement of existing matter and energy. For example, an oak tree begins with an acorn and builds itself from water, carbon dioxide, and other nutrients. If WLC is talking about creation ex nihilo (“out of nothing”), his premise has become “Whatever begins to exist from nothing has a cause.” He wants us to accept this remarkable claim though he can’t give a single example of something coming from nothing. The common sense appeal of the premise is gone.

WLC said above, “If something can come into being from nothing, then why don’t we see this happening all the time?” If this is supposed to be an argument against creation ex nihilo, does he then not believe God created ex nihilo? He might want to sit down with himself to get his argument straight.

4. “Began to exist” makes little sense at the beginning. WLC wants to stretch the common sense “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” from the natural to the supernatural, from rearrangement of matter to creation ex nihilo, and from creation within time to creation before time. He’s referencing a cause before the universe has even come into existence. I’ll grant that magical creation of this sort is possible, but WLC has given no evidence to support this claim. (Thanks to A-Unicornist blog.)

First we have the earthquake, then the tsunami. First the moving car, then the dented fender. First the collection of gas moving inward by gravity, then the star. If the instant of the Big Bang is at t = 0, where is the prior cause? There is no t = –1 if time started at t = 0. How can there be a cause that works in time before there is time?

Every example WLC can point to (like tsunamis and dented fenders) is a different kind of “begins to exist” than the one he imagines, a (1) supernatural creation (2) from nothing (3) before time began, none of which have examples.

5. We have no reason for the “began to exist” caveat. Why is the premise not simply “Everything has a cause”? It’s just a “Get Out of Jail Free” card to bias the argument so that it will deliver the divine answer WLC wants. We don’t have myriad examples of things with beginnings, plus myriad examples of things that are without beginnings. That he wants to carve out a spot for his beginningless god reveals his agenda.

Since God is the only exception he imagines, WLC’s “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” is simply a disguised version of “Everything has a cause, except for God.” It’s not like he gives evidence to support this remarkable claim; he just asserts it. But if that’s the game we’re playing, I suggest a new first premise: “Everything has a cause, except for the universe.” This is certainly the simpler claim, since WLC must invent a supernatural realm to support his.

WLC will demand that I support my claim with evidence. My response: you first.

Concluded in part 2.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run
by smart people who are putting us on
or by imbeciles who really mean it.
— The Peter Principle
by Laurence F. Peter and Raymond Hull

Image credit: NASA