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Writer's picturejmgiardi

Notes on the Kalam Argument

Does the Kalam Cosmological Argument presume that God never began to exist? [redacted] thinks so. He wrote that it "proves" God's eternal existence by "constructing an argument that assumes God's eternal existence based on Scripture." ([redacted] 2006, 234) The Kalam Cosmological Argument was popularized by the philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig. He stated the argument as "a simple syllogism":

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

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause. (Stenger 2000, Strobel 2004, 98 - 109)

Where does the presumption that God has always existed appear? Certainly the cosmological argument is consistent with the presumption that God has always existed but it is also consistent with the premise that God did begin to exist. The regress can go on indefinitely. Do the following steps violate any of the premises?

4. That cause we call God.

5. God began to exist.

6. Therefore, God has a cause.

If [redacted] is correct in saying that there is a certain hidden presumption in the original argument then step #5 would be invalid. I fail to see where the first two premises imply that God never began to exist. [redacted], I suspect, is concluding that the philosophers who invented the Kalam argument must have believed this. He is, however, basing this conclusion on a speculative history of apologetics and not on the actual text. As he tells the story,

Intelligent Design proponents knew that their original First Cause argument was flawed so they contrived a "patch" in an attempt to salvage the necessity of Jehovah's existence. They changed their starting premise from "Everything needs a cause" to "Everything that begins to exist needs a cause." Since God didn't begin to exist (according to the Bible) and since the universe did begin to exist (according to ID's … lie…), ID leaders claim they have delivered scientific proof of God's existence. ([redacted] 2006, 234)

[redacted] is indeed correct that the classic cosmological ("First Cause") argument was easy to refute. According to it, "Everything must have a cause. Therefore, the universe has a cause, and that cause was God. God was the first (or uncaused) cause." It could be shown that the argument contradicted itself: "If everything must have a cause, then God must have had a cause. If God had a cause, then He was not the first … cause. If God did not have a cause, then not everything needs a cause." (Stein 1980, 56) Not only was it refutable; it was incompatible with the belief that God was uncaused. After theologians noticed this, it is plausible that they set out to construct a new cosmological argument that lacked this defect. This plausibility vanishes, however, after one learns that the Kalam argument was used by al Ghazali in essentially its modern form centuries ago. (Craig [1980] 2001, 58) [redacted] is probably correct that the originator(s) of the Kalam argument believed that God never began to exist but that isn't relevant. The Kalam argument doesn't imply that God never began to exist; it simply fails to imply that God did begin to exist.

Commenting on the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA), Dan Barker, the ex-evangelical preacher who is currently an unbeliever, wrote, "The curious clause 'Everything that begins to exist' implies that reality can be divided into two sets: items that begin to exist …, and items that do not…" It doesn't unless we include the premise "An actual infinity does not exist in reality." (Barker 2008, 131) Nowhere does the original syllogism imply that something didn't begin to exist. Neither the presumption nor the implication that something or God never began to exist can be deduced from the syllogism. One could agree with the syllogism and also believe that the series of causes extends to infinity past and nothing was ever uncaused. (There would then only be one set: items that begin to exist.) Barker is assuming that an infinite regress is not permissible but the syllogism never states this. (The complete KCA, covered below, does rule out an infinite regress.)

[redacted] and Barker deserve credit for confronting the KCA but, in the case of [redacted], the response is deficient. [redacted] wrote that there are "three transparent blunders with this so-called Kalam argument." He accuses the KCA of presuming its conclusion. The conclusion, as mentioned above, that [redacted] claimed is assumed by the argument is that "God exists and has always existed." This, however, is not the conclusion of the KCA and it is not contained in the premises of the KCA. [redacted]' first charge is unfounded.

The second blunder, according to [redacted], is "the utterly dishonest claim that 'cosmologists agree that the universe arose suddenly out of absolute nothingness.'" ([redacted] 2006, 234) What cosmologists believe about the universe was covered [redacted]. Ironically, Barker wrote something that is indistinguishable from what [redacted] labelled a "dishonest claim": "[C]osmologists almost universally confirm that our observable universe began at a Big Bang, a singularity." (Barker 2008, 130 & 131) In this case, it is Barker and not [redacted] who appears to be mistaken. In a book more recent than Barker's, physicist Victor Stenger reported that "the origin of our universe was not a singularity and need not have been the beginning of time." (Stenger 2013, 254)

The third "transparent blunder" like the first one exists solely in [redacted]' brain. He considers it a shortcoming that "[t]here is nothing in the (KCA) that even addresses (the identity of the god whose existence is allegedly "proved" by the argument.)" Nowhere in this passage does he uncover a genuine fallacy. A fallacy is either a false idea or incorrectness of reasoning. [redacted] is just nit-picking.

The KCA includes two syllogisms that support premise #2. The first one states,

1. An actual infinite cannot exist.

2. An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.

3. Therefore an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist. (Moreland et al. 2013, 7)

Apologists have been offering versions of this in debates for a while now. According to one, "[i]f (the past) were infinite, then to come to the present moment, one would have had to have traversed an actual infinite to get here, which is impossible." (Moreland & Nielsen [1990] 1993, 37) [redacted]' paraphrase of Craig is substantively the same as the preceding quote: "Craig … argues that the universe can't be infinitely old because an infinite length of time would have to precede the Big Bang - an infinite length of time which, by definition, could never have ended to permit the Big Bang to occur." He rebutted, "All cosmologies - whether secular or theological - are forced to contemplate an infinite regress, either in the form of mass-energy or in the form of a god." ([redacted] 2006, 237 & 238) This is too easy for the apologist to get around. He could say, as William Craig has recently argued, that the first cause (God) is "changeless," "immaterial" and "timeless". (Moreland et al. 2013, 16) An adequate rebuttal would have to answer whether infinite regress is possible. Craig's argument is in fact much older than himself. Centuries ago, a philosopher named John Philoponus was articulating why "a temporally infinite universe is impossible." Victor Stenger responded that

Philoponus was assuming that an eternal universe still had a beginning, one that occurred an infinite time ago … (The argument) is wrong. The universe need not have had a beginning. The time from the present to any moment in the past no matter how distant - last year, a thousand years ago, ten billion years ago - is still finite … [A]n eternal universe would not have had a beginning an infinite time ago. It had no beginning. Running a clock backward and counting the ticks: -1, -2, -3,…, will never get it to -∞. The time from now to any moment in the past is a finite number of ticks. Another simple way to see why everything need not have had a beginning is based on the fact that there is no reason for it to have an end. (Stenger 2014)

Responding to a modern take on Philoponus' argument, Antony Flew wrote,

Oh dear! This argument assumes the very conclusion which it is presented to prove. For only if you set out from a temporal starting position infinitely far removed from the present would you have to "cross an actual infinite" in order to get where we are now. But to hold that the universe was without beginning …, precisely is to deny that the universe and time itself had a beginning … It is not to assert that it did, after all, have a beginning; but a beginning one actual infinite time ago.

J. P. Moreland responded to Flew, arguing that if there were no beginning, then "reaching the present moment would be like counting to zero from negative infinity." This is sophistry. As Keith Parsons argued, "to say that the universe is infinitely old is not to say that the universe existed at some infinitely distant past T such that it had to pass through infinite time to get from T to the present." (Moreland & Nielsen [1990] 1993, 164, 187 & 230) We're already living at the present moment so we've "reached it". Obviously, you can't count from negative infinity to zero because infinity isn't a number. Moreland has it backwards. A universe with no beginning is a universe where you pick an arbitrary point (not necessarily the present) and you count backwards from zero to not negative infinity (because infinity isn't a number) but to any finite negative number. You would have to stop at some finite negative number because there are only finite numbers.

Moreland, in his first book, wrote that "if there was no beginning, the past could have never been exhaustively traversed to reach the present." (Moreland 1987, 29) William Lane Craig used this same argument recently and Kalam critic Wes Morriston effortlessly disposed of it:

If … a series of events has no beginning, then before any given event in that series occurs, infinitely many previous ones must have occurred. That's all perfectly correct. But it's hard to see what the problem is supposed to be, since on the hypothesis of a beginningless past each of those infinitely many events has occurred. When the present arrives, all of its (infinitely many) predecessors are past … From the fact that we cannot - beginning now - complete the task of enumerating all the events in a beginningless series, it does not follow that the present event cannot arrive or that a beginningless series of events that have already arrived is impossible. To suppose otherwise would be to confuse the items to be enumerated with the enumerating of them - it would be like arguing that there must be finitely many natural numbers because we can't finish counting them. (Moreland et al 2013, 26 & 27)

The KCA has evolved. In an earlier version premise #2 read "A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things." (Craig 2008, 116) It should be obvious what is wrong with this. An event is a "thing" only conceptually; it's not a physical thing. Equating the two is philosophical sleight of hand. Morriston noticed:

[P]ast events are not movable. Unlike the guests in a hotel, who can leave their rooms, past events are absolutely inseparable from their respective temporal locations. Once an event has occurred at a particular time, it can't be "moved" to some other time. (Moreland et al 2013, 23)

If premise #2 is incorrect then the original premise #1, "An actually infinite number of things cannot exist" (emphasis added) is irrelevant.

Ultimately, the issue is not whether an infinite number of events have been traversed. Clearly, an infinite number of events can't be traversed if we consider an infinite number of events to be all the events that have happened and will happen in an eternal universe. Paradoxically, this doesn't imply that the universe had a beginning. Infinity is "something to be approached." This is the concept of "potential infinity." As Paul Davies explained it,

The basic principle behind potential infinity is that there are systems, such as the natural numbers, 1, 2, 3, …, that have no upper bound, so that nothing prevents them from growing ever larger. Yet infinity itself is clearly not a number, or anything like it. Infinity, for the adherents of these views, is something one always approaches but never reaches - a sort of open-ended arrangement.

The problem with infinity is that one can always think of a "larger" infinity. This sounds crazy but it can be demonstrated: Ask yourself, if the past had no beginning how many events took place? The answer is infinitely many. As you read this another second elapses. Now how many events took place? Infinitely many or infinitely many plus one? This is, admittedly, esoteric.

Perhaps, it is just logically invalid to add to infinity. "Adding to infinity" would really be just moving the starting point and the starting point is arbitrary. Also, adding to infinity would mean adding a number to a non-number which is clearly absurd. Because infinity isn't a number, adding it to itself likewise doesn't make sense. The notion that infinity has been traversed implies that we can add infinity to infinity. This can't be right. For this reason, the ancient view that "infinity should stand like a forever unattainable goal, never 'consummated'" is an attractive one. (Davies 1981, 24)

Infinity might not lead to absurdities as long as we realize that it's a series of numbers and that the starting point is arbitrary. Starting an infinite series at a different point doesn't make it longer. An endless series will be endless whether we start today, tomorrow or a billion years from now. If we turn a timeline 180°, it's clear that a beginningless series is beginningless no matter when we end it. If an endless series is an infinite one then a beginningless series is also infinite. If one can exist, why can't the other?

Ultimately, one must decide how infinity should be defined. If infinity has a forward direction then it's irrelevant whether it has a beginning point; the series will not be completed. Noncompletion of the series is so intertwined with the concept of infinity that confusion appears to be inevitable. These issues received a thorough hearing long ago when Frederick Engels wrote his classic polemic against Dühring. According to Dühring,

For although it is equally possible for our thought to conceive an opposite direction in the accumulation of states of being, this retrogressive infinity is nevertheless only a rashly conceived image of thought. For, because it must run through reality in a reverse direction, in each of its states it would have an infinite succession behind itself. But this would involve the impermissible contradiction of an infinite series which has been counted, and so it is clearly contrary to reason to postulate any second direction to infinity.

Covering much that has been mentioned herein, Engels responded,

As applied to time, the infinite line or series of units in both directions has a certain figurative meaning. But if we think of time as something counted from one forward, or as a line starting from a definite point, we imply in advance that time has a beginning: we put forward as a presupposition precisely what we are to prove. We give the infinity of time a one-sided, halved character; but a one-sided, a halved infinity is also a contradiction in itself…

He resolved the paradox by noticing that it doesn't matter where one starts the series:

We can only get past this contradiction if we assume that the one from which we begin to count the series, the point from which we proceed to measure the line - that this is any one within the series, that it is any one of the points within the line, so that where we place the starting point does not make any difference to the line or to the series.

Like Craig and Moreland, Dühring concluded that "the chain of causes and effects in the world must at some time have had a beginning." His reasoning was similar to Moreland's: "an infinite number of causes which must already have succeeded one another is inconceivable, just because it presupposes that the uncountable has been counted." In other words, the untraversable has been traversed. This assumes that infinity is by definition untraversable. Engels' rebuttal poked fun at this premise:

But what of the contradiction of "the infinite series which has been counted?" We shall be in a position to examine this more closely as soon as Herr Dühring has performed for us the clever trick of counting the series. When he has completed the task of counting from -∞ (minus infinity) to 0, then let him come again. It is certainly obvious that, at whatever point he begins to count, he will leave behind him an infinite series and, with it, the task which he was to fulfil … It is clear that the infinity which has an end but no beginning is neither more nor less infinite than that which has a beginning but no end. (Engels 1939, 54 - 59)

The second syllogism in support of the finitude of the past includes the premise "A collection formed by successive addition cannot be an actual infinite." This assertion, like those made by Dühring, was inspired by Immanuel Kant. It was demolished by Craig's critic, Quentin Smith:

[T]he collection of events cannot add up to an infinite collection in a finite amount of time, but they do so add up in an infinite amount of time. And since it is coherent to suppose that in relation to any present an infinite amount of time has elapsed, it is also coherent to suppose that in relation to any present an infinite collection of past events has already been formed by successive addition. This suffices to disprove Kant's thesis that an infinite series 'can never be completed through successive synthesis'; for, although such a series can never be completely synthesized in a finite time, it can be completely synthesized in an infinite time. (Craig & Smith [1993] 1995, 30 & 89)

Precisely formulated logical arguments like the ones we've encountered crumble once one or more of the premises are refuted. When dealing with deductive syllogistic reasoning it should be remembered that a purely logical argument "that contain(s) no empirical input" tells you nothing not already embedded in its premises. (Stenger 2014)

[redacted]

The debate about infinity pertains to the second premise of the first syllogism covered. [redacted] disputed that premise as well as the first one. He claimed that the first premise ("everything that begins to exist needs a cause") has "been flatly contradicted by the findings of modern quantum mechanics." ([redacted] 2006, 239) [redacted]

How could one determine merely from observation of nature that something came to be without a cause? Maybe we just don't know the cause. Ernest Nagel insisted that "there appear to be no unquestionably authentic cases of (events that lack determining conditions for their occurrence, i.e., uncaused events.)" Furthermore,

[I]t is impossible in the nature of the case to establish beyond question that any event is an absolutely chance occurrence. For to show beyond all possible doubt that a given happening … is spontaneous and without determining circumstances, it would be necessary to show that there is nothing whatever upon which its occurrence depends. But this would be tantamount to showing that no satisfactory theory could ever be devised to explain what present theories already explain, and in addition account for the allegedly spontaneous event. However, though any amount of evidence might be produced to show that the given event's occurrence does not depend on a specified set of factors, the possibility would not be thereby excluded that other factors may eventually be found which do determine the event's occurrence, and that in consequence a theory might yet be constructed which will do what our present theories fail to do. Accordingly, the assumption that events of a certain type are absolutely chance occurrences cannot be conclusively validated, even if the available evidence may make that assumption plausible. (Nagel 1979, 332 & 333)


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