CSAP 510 MD, Spring 2017, Bon Ha Gu #01742613

An Excursus of the Deductive Kalam Cosmological Argument

Bon Ha Gu (#01742613)
CSAP 510 MD (Spring 2017)
Dr. Clay Jones
March 7th, 2017

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 Introduction
There have been startling discoveries within the last century in cosmology and

astrophysics that, when coupled with philosophical and scientific reflection and argumentation,

serve as rationally compelling pieces of natural theology. In this paper, I want to demonstrate

that the premises of the deductive form of the Kalam Cosmological Argument are true, and, thus,

the syllogism is logically sound, which must lead to the conclusion that the universe has a cause.

The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology sketches a basic form of the Kalam:

1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause

2) The universe began to exist

3) Therefore, the universe has a cause1

Everything that Begins to Exist Has a Cause

A case for the plausibility of premise one, that everything that begins to exist has a cause,

appeals to rational intuition, and is only reinforced by its empirical consistency on scientific, a

posteriori grounds (negative scientific case for its plausibility). First, premise one enjoys an a

priori intuitiveness in its simple constructionit seems patently true, at least more so than its

negation.2 As Craig remarks, no one in their right mind really believes [premise 1] to be

false;3 and in this sense, the causal principle, as Craig contends, is the critically important first

principle in science that is so remarkably intuitive, that upholding its negation would lead one to

believe that things can come into being uncaused, out of nothing; but if this were the case, as

Craig remarks, it would then be inexplicable why just any and everything cannot or does not

1
William Lane Craig and James Sinclair, The Kalam Cosmological Argument. In The Blackwell Companion to
Natural Theology, edited by Craig, William Lane Craig., and James Porter Moreland (Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2009), 101.
2
William Lane Craig. Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008),
111.
3
William Lane Craig, The Kalm Cosmological Argument (London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press 1979).
doi:10.1007/978-1-349-04154-1. 141.

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come to exist uncaused,4 which is both metaphysically and scientifically absurd. Although these

defenses rest ultimately on the metaphysical assumption (or empirical presupposition) that

something cannot come from nothingor as Lucretius remarked, ex nihilo nihilo fitour

everyday experience and scientific investigation continues to repeatedly corroborate this

principle.5

However, skeptics have repeatedly challenged this principle, and as the late J. L. Mackie

maintains, As Hume has pointed out, we can certainly conceive an uncaused beginning-to-be of

an object; if what we can thus conceive is nevertheless in some way impossible, this still requires

to be shown.6 Mackie, Quentin Smith, Victor Stenger and others, in lieu of Humes lingering

skepticism, attempt to show that this self-evident cause-and-effect connection becomes non-

applicableor at least largely weakenedin the field of quantum physics;7 Specifically,

subatomic particles, like electrons and virtual particles, have been proposed to allegedly emerge

in and out of existence with apparently no causal connection, and the inability to measure their

intermediate states spatio-temporally weakens the plausibility of premise one. As philosopher

Quentin Smith avows, it is false that all beginnings of existence are caused" and, therefore, ". . .

4
William Lane Craig, "The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe | Reasonable Faith."
ReasonableFaith.org. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-existence-of-god-and-the-beginning-of-the-universe.
Accessed February 28, 2017.
5
Craig, Reasonable Faith, 111-112
6
J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1982). As cited in Professor Mackie and the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Religious Studies 20 (1985): 367-
365. Although this contention by Mackie is ironically undercut by a later correspondence between Hume and John
Stewart, in which Hume writes, I never asserted so absurd a Proposition as that any thing might arise without a
Cause," Mackie still stands by the thrust of the argument and appeals to the non-applicability of causation in
quantum mechanics. David Hume to John Stewart, Feb. 1754, in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig, 2
vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), Vol. 1: p. 187.
7
Bruce Reichenbach, "Cosmological Argument." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. July 13, 2004.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/. Accessed February 07, 2017.

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the crucial step [or premise 1] in the argument to a supernatural cause of the Big Bang . . . is

faulty."8

However, this counterargument rests on two implicit moot points, first of which is the

presupposition that quantum indeterminacy is an ontological fact, or to take the supposed acausal

emergence of subatomic particles in quantum vacuums as being entirely veridical, which only

applies if one conforms to certain quantum interpretations, like the Copenhagen interpretation.9

However, other physical interpretations, like the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation, reject

indeterminacy and are fully causally deterministic, and, unlike the indeterminate interpretations,

the Broglie-Bohm interpretation posits that causal mechanisms in quantum phenomena also exist

ontologically and are just as physically applicable and veridical; as Sheldon Goldstein muses:

Bohmian mechanics is manifestly nonlocal. The velocity of any particle of a many-

particle system will typically depend upon the positions of the other, possibly distant,
particles whenever the wave function of the system is entangled, i.e., not a product of
single-particle functions, and [hence] the configuration of a system of particles
evolves via a deterministic motion choreographed by the wave function its location
upon arrival [is] completely determined by its initial position and wave function.10

Put simply, determinacy assumes that even the outputs in quantum mechanical systems are

invariably predetermined by given, starting conditions or initial states. John Bell, the prominent

quantum physicist and early exponent of Bohms interpretation therefore cogitates, It is a merit

of the de Broglie-Bohm version to bring this [non-locality] so explicitly that it cannot be

8
Quentin Smith. (1988), "The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe," Philosophy of Science 55:39-57 as quoted in
"The Caused Beginning of the Universe: A Response to Quentin Smith."
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/smith.html. Accessed February 07, 2017.
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The Copenhagen interpretation describes that quantum phenomena are fundamentally non-deterministic or
indeterministic, which is understood as the strange inability to measure the output values in an observable quantum
state from its directly initial physical state-of-affairs, suggesting that there is no causal connection between them.
10
Sheldon Goldstein. "Bohmian Mechanics." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. October 26, 2001.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/#nl. Accessed February 18, 2017, (emphases mine).

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ignored.11 And in light of this, atheist physicist Victor Stenger concedes, Other viable

interpretation of quantum mechanics remain with no consensus on which, if any, is the correct

one; therefore, one must remain open to the possibility that causes may someday be found for

such phenomena.12 Hence, given that both the Copenhagen and Bohmian interpretations are

entirely consistent mathematically and with the known scientific evidence, are indistinguishable

from each other evidentially, and are still debated by a many physicists, quantum mechanics

fails to serve as a counterargument against premise one.13

Second, quantum phenomena, as many proponents of premise one argue, rely at least on

some necessary physical conditions to produce its outcome, which prima facie does not apply to

the beginning of the universe, since there did not exist anything causally prior to the universe.

This counterargument can also be intimately tied to the popularized something out of nothing

argument, spearheaded by atheist cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, which befalls the lay atheistic

community; Krauss writes, For surely nothing is every bit as physical as something,

especially if it is to be defined as the absence of something.14 But herein lies the inexorable

rub: both suggestions falsely equate quantum phenomena (and quantum vacuums) as a sort of

theoretical and physical nothing, which merely commits the fallacy of equivocation, because

they assume that such a vacuum existed prior to the big bang and that a quantum vacuum

actually corresponds to an actual state of immaterial, spatiotemporal nothingness. David Albert,

in his critique of Krauss, A Universe From Nothing, affirms, But [the idea that a vacuum is the

11
J. S. Bell: Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press 1987),
115. As quoted in Goldstein, Bohmian Mechanics, SEP.
12
Victor Stenger, Has Science Found God? (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2003), 199-89, 173. As quoted in Craig,
Reasonable, 114.
13
William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument Dr. William Lane Craig (University of Birmingham
2015). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKDUdb0Z03o. Accessed February 15, 2017.
14
Lawrence Maxwell Krauss, A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing (New York:
Free Press, 2012), pp.xiii-xiv.

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absence of everything] is not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum statesno less

than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systemsare particular arrangements of elementary

physical stuff.15 Hence, quantum phenomena do not occur in states equivalent to the

philosophical and laymen-common-sense understanding of nothingor the total lack of some

thingbut is actually a preexisting substratum of broiling energy in which virtual particles and

other subatomic particles may fluctuate in and out of existencea tacit equivocation of the word

nothing. And since the universe or any material state did not exist prior to the big bang, any

dependence on quantum vacuums and phenomena become meaningless as in the beginning of

the universe, there are no prior necessary causal conditions; simply nothing exists.16

The Universe Began to Exist

Furthermore, premise two fancies itself on philosophical and robust scientific reasoning,

and therefore can be defended on a posteriori grounds. Objectors to premise two often heralded

the view that the universe is temporally eternal, as Hume and Russell quipped respectively,

Why may not the material universe be the necessary existent Being, according to this pretended

explanation of necessity?"17 and . . . The universe is just there, and that's all.18 However, this

contention is undermined when one dispels the mystifying conception of infinity by delineating a

potential infinity from that of an actual infinity and inquiring what an actual infinity truly entails.

Premise two argues against the actual infinite, and detractors would need to uphold its negation:

15
David. Albert, "On the Origin of Everything." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-
from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=0. The New York Times. 2012. Accessed February 11, 2017,
(emphasis mine).
16
William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, 1993, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, New York: Oxford
University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263838.001.0001. As quoted in Reichenbach, The Cosmological
Argument (SEP).
17
David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. with an Introduction by Norman Kemp Smith, Library
of the Liberal Arts (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. 1947), p. 190.
18
Bertrand Russell and F.C. Copleston, "The Existence of God," in The Existence of God, ed. with an Introduction
by John Hick, Problems of Philosophy Series (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1964), p. 175.

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that the universe is temporally infinite. Here, demonstrating the impossibility of an actual infinite

provides good a priori grounds in demonstrating that premise two is true. Consider Craigs

following homespun and illustrative case in point: imagine one has an infinite number of coins

(numbered 1, 2, 3 and so on onto infinity), and subtract all the odd numbered coins (an actually

infinite amount); this would yield an infinite number of coins (the resultant set of even numbered

coins); ergo, infinity minus infinity equals infinity. Now, suppose one would take away all the

coins numbered greater than 5 (again, an actually infinite amount); the resultant number of coins

remaining would be 5; ergo, infinity minus infinity equals five. In both series of inverse

operations, an identical number (i.e., infinity) of coins was subtracted from an identical number

of coins (i.e., infinity), and resulted in numerically contradictory results.19 As Craig rightly points

out, inverse operations of subtractions and division are prohibited because they lead to

contradictions. 20 But this transfinite constraint is not confined in reality (one can subtract any

number of coins he/she wishes!), or when extrapolated to temporal events in the universe.21

Therefore, one can argue successfully, that, since an actual number of things cannot exist in

realitybecause it leads manifestly to contradictions and absurditiesand since an infinite

series of events in time entails an actual infinite, a beginningless series of events (temporal

infinitude) in time cannot exist.22 As eminent mathematician David Hilbert opines, The infinite

is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature, nor provides a legitimate basis for

rational thought The role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea.23

19
William Lane Craig, What is the Kalam Cosmological Argument? - William Lane Craig firstcauseargument -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeKavDdRVIg. Accessed February 15 th 2017.
20
Craig, Reasonable Faith, 120.
21
Craig, What is the KCA? WLC Firstcauseargument, Youtube.
22
Ibid., 120-121.
23
David Hilbert, On the Infinite, in Philosophy of Mathematics ed. with an introduction by Paul Benacerraf and
Hillary Putnam (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall). As quoted in William Lane Craigs Reasonable Faith:
Christian Truth and Apologetics. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008).

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 Moreover, the assertion of an eternal universe is strongly disconfirmed by modern

empirical evidences elucidated by contemporary cosmology and astrophysics. The last century

has supplied a panoply of empirical evidence arguing for the origin of the universe, which argues

naturally against an eternal one. Although scientists prior to the 1920s posited a static and eternal

universe, Albert Einsteins monumental gravitational theorythe General Theory of

Relativitywhich was later appraised by Alexander Friedman and Georges Lemaitreproved

that the universe was expanding.24 ThisFriedman-Lemaitre model of an expanding universe

was later re-corroborated by Edwin Hubbles 1929 epochal discovery of the red shift (as well as

the earlier discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965 by Arno Penzias

and Robert Wilson), which exhibited that the light in distant galaxies systemically shifted toward

the red end of the visible spectrum. This illustrated that the light sources in these galaxies were

progressively receding, and that galaxies were moving away from each otherfurther

corroborating a physically expanding universe.25 However, if one were to reverse the process of

cosmological expansion, as Barrow and Tipler assume, the universe would reach an initial

cosmological singularity. Here, Barrow and Tipler assert, that, at this singularity, space and

time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe

originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo.26 But what makes this

singularity so significant? Philosophically and scientifically speaking, the standard big bang

model predicts, unavoidably, an absolute beginning of space, time, and matter, and the universe.

Although numerous cosmological theories have been proposed to avoid an absolute beginning

and its insuperable theological implications, none have even come closein scientific

24
Craig, Reasonable Faith, 125-126.
25
Ibid., 126.
26
John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 442.

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corroboration and rigorto outweigh the evidence substantiating the Big Bang. The coup de

grce of this prejudice towards a temporal beginning was delivered by a discovery made in 2003

by cosmologists Arvin Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, who were able to

demonstrate that any expanding universe (which applies to all models having an expansion

phase) could not be temporally infinite but must have a past space-time beginning. Vilenkin

writes, None of these [alternate cosmological] scenarios can actually be past-eternal,27 All the

evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.28 Craig therefore accentuates, the

universe originates ex nihilo in the sense that it is true that there is no earlier spacetime point

or that it is false that something existed prior to the singularity, so unless one affirms the radical

view that the universe was brought into being from nothing and by nothing, it is more reasonable

to affirm the negation, and therefore we have good grounds for affirming the second premise of

the Kalam cosmological argument that the universe began to exist.29

Therefore, The Universe Has a Cause

The two premises of the Kalam are, therefore, affirmed by modus ponens in logical

reasoning and shows necessarily that the universe has a cause.30 Here, if one inquires

philosophically into the nature of the cause, the state prior to the beginning of the universe must,

be: space-less (since there was no space prior to the creation event and physical things exist in

space); non-temporal or outside time (since time was created in tandem with space at the

27
Audrey Mithani and Alexander Vilenkin, Did the universe have a beginning? arXiv:1204.4658v1 [hep-th] 20
Apr 2012, p. p. 1; cf. p. 5. As "Contemporary Cosmology and the Beginning of the Universe | Reasonable Faith."
ReasonableFaith.org. Accessed February 16, 2017. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/contemporary-cosmology-and-
the-beginning-of-the-universe#_ftnref1. For an accessible video, see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXCQelhKJ7A.
28
Alex Vilenkin, cited in Why physicists can't avoid a creation event, by Lisa Grossman, New Scientist (January
11, 2012), as quoted in "Contemporary Cosmology and the Beginning of the Universe | Reasonable Faith."
ReasonableFaith.org. Accessed February 16, 2017. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/contemporary-cosmology-and-
the-beginning-of-the-universe#_ftnref1.
29
Craig, Reasonable Faith,128, 150, (emphases mine).
30
Craig and Sinclair, The Blackwell Companion, 102.

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singularity); and non-material or matter-less (since all matter came into being at the first moment

and no matter existed causally prior to the Big Bang). Quite radically, from the conclusion of the

syllogism, one can append the following supposition of the ontological properties of the cause of

the universe: If the universe has a cause, then [the universe came into being by a]

beginningless immaterial, timeless, and spaceless [first cause].31 Put simply, the universe was

instantiated from a state of spatiotemporal and immaterial nothingness, which, as the proponents

of the Kalam rightly argue, must have been produced by something outside the purview of space,

time, and matter. As a final point, one can contend that the nature of cause must also be

personalin the sense that it is endowed with rationality, self-consciousness, and volitionthe

usual sort of qualities associated with being a person.32 Craig identifies specifically two

candidatesuninfluenced by space-time and matterthat fit into this insular classification:

abstract objects (or things that lack actual physical referents, like numbers or the concept of

justice), and noetic, unembodied minds. However, abstract objects by their very nature lack

bearing on physical realityno material phenomena stand in physical, causal association with

for example, the idea of redness or with the mathematical variable x.33 Thus, an external cause of

the universe seems only to be fittingly justified by an unembodied and intelligent mind, which

transcends space-time and matter, and one that also possesses freedom of the will, intentionality,

self-reflexivity, and volition.

But as Craig appropriately opines, This is not to make some sort of nave claim that

contemporary cosmology proves the existence of God Rather [] contemporary cosmology

31
Ibid., 194.
32
William Lane Craig. "Personal God: Christianity Today Article and Gods Personhood | Reasonable Faith."
ReasonableFaith.org. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/personal-god. Accessed March 23rd, 2017.
33
Ibid. Personal God.

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provides significant evidence in support of premises in philosophical arguments for conclusions

having theological significance.34 And in this sense, a greater philosophical and scientific

understanding of the two premises lends greater justification for one to accept the two premises

of the Kalam as true, providing one with a rationally defensible basis for its conclusion, which

leads to inexorable theological implications.

34
William Lane Craig, Sean M. Carroll, and Robert B. Stewart. God and cosmology: William Lane Craig and Sean
Carroll in dialogue. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 20, (emphasis mine).

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 Works Cited
Alex Vilenkin, cited in Why physicists can't avoid a creation event, by Lisa Grossman, New
Scientist (January 11, 2012), as quoted in "Contemporary Cosmology and the Beginning
of the Universe | Reasonable Faith." ReasonableFaith.org. Accessed February 16, 2017.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/contemporary-cosmology-and-the-beginning-of-the-
universe#_ftnref1.

Audrey Mithani and Alexander Vilenkin, Did the universe have a beginning?
arXiv:1204.4658v1 [hep-th] 20 Apr 2012, p. p. 1; cf. p. 5. as quoted in "Contemporary
Cosmology and the Beginning of the Universe | Reasonable Faith." ReasonableFaith.org.
Accessed February 16, 2017. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/contemporary-cosmology-
and-the-beginning-of-the-universe#_ftnref1. For an accessible video, see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXCQelhKJ7A.

Bertrand Russell and F.C. Copleston, "The Existence of God," in The Existence of God, ed. with
an Introduction by John Hick, Problems of Philosophy Series (New York: Macmillan &
Co., 1964), p. 175.

Bruce Reichenbach, "Cosmological Argument." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. July 13,

2004. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/. Accessed February 07,
2017.

David. Albert, "On the Origin of Everything."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-
lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=0. The New York Times. 2012. Accessed February 11, 2017.

David Hilbert, On the Infinite, in Philosophy of Mathematics ed. with an introduction by Paul
Benacerraf and Hillary Putnam (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall) as quoted in
William Lane Craigs Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. (Wheaton, IL:
Crossway Books, 2008).

David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. with an Introduction by Norman
Kemp Smith, Library of the Liberal Arts (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. 1947), p. 190.

David Hume to John Stewart, Feb. 1754, in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig, 2
vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), Vol. 1: p. 187.

J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1982). As cited in Professor Mackie and the Kalam Cosmological
Argument. Religious Studies 20 (1985): 367-365.

J. S. Bell, Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics (Cambridge: Cam-bridge

University Press 1987), 115. As quoted in Goldstein, Bohmian Mechanics, SEP.

John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, (Oxford: Clarendon,
1986), 442.
12
Lawrence Maxwell Krauss, A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than
Nothing (New York: Free Press, 2012), pp.xiii-xiv.

Quentin Smith, (1988), "The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe," Philosophy of Science
55:39-57 as quoted in "The Caused Beginning of the Universe: A Response to Quentin
Smith." The Caused Beginning of the Universe: A Response to Quentin Smith.
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/smith.html. Accessed February 07, 2017.

Sheldon Goldstein, "Bohmian Mechanics." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. October 26,

2001. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/#nl. Accessed February 18, 2017.

Victor Stenger, Has Science Found God? (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2003), 199-89, 173. As
quoted in Craig, Reasonable, 114.

William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, IL:
Crossway, 2008), 111-112,120-121, 125-126.

William Lane Craig. "The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe | Reasonable
Faith." ReasonableFaith.org. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-existence-of-god-and-
the-beginning-of-the-universe. Accessed February 28, 2017.

William Lane Craig. The Kalam Cosmological Argument Dr. William Lane Craig (University
of Birmingham 2015). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKDUdb0Z03o.
Accessed February 15, 2017.

William Lane Craig, The Kalm Cosmological Argument. (London and Basingstoke: The
Macmillan Press 1979. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-04154-1. 141.

William Lane Craig, What is the Kalam Cosmological Argument? - William Lane Craig
firstcauseargument - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeKavDdRVIg. Accessed
February 15th 2017.

William Lane Craig and James Sinclair, The Kalam Cosmological Argument. In The Blackwell
Companion to Natural Theology, edited by Craig, William Lane Craig., and James Porter
Moreland (Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 102.

William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, 1993, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, New
York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263838.001.0001. As
quoted in Reichenbach, The Cosmological Argument (SEP).

William Lane Craig, Sean M. Carroll, and Robert B. Stewart. God and cosmology: William Lane
Craig and Sean Carroll in dialogue. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 20.

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