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Writer's picturejmgiardi

The Scourge of the Kalam Argument

Updated: Aug 3, 2019


Again. I know it's a popular book and not a scholarly tome, but I just noticed that William Lane Craig cited a curious statement in Lee Strobel's The Case For a Creator. According to Craig, Stephen Hawking said, "Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang" (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004, 107). It's difficult for me to understand how Craig is helping his case here. Let's be clear about what it would mean for time itself to have a beginning. As I explained in Stubborn Credulity, "It could be argued that God being the cause of time is worse than mysterious. As B. C. Johnson noticed, 'It certainly would appear that the existence of time is necessary to the functioning of causality. A cause precedes its effect in time'" (52). In other words, time would begin not with the cause of time, but with the cause of the universe. If time began at the Big Bang, then what place is there for God? If God caused the universe to exist, then time began with God. Right? Hawking wasn't apparently saying that. He was saying that time began at the Big Bang. Therefore, the Big Bang is, supposedly, the first cause. If there was a cause of the Big Bang, then time would begin before the Big Bang. If time began at the Big Bang, then the Big Bang is a cause that has no cause, and vice versa, I think.


In David Hume's first book A Treatise of Human Nature, he had a lot to say about cause and effect. In a section titled "Rules by Which to Judge of Causes and Effects," he wrote that the cause "must be prior to the effect." Cause, evidently, presupposes time. There can't be a cause of time. God could be the cause, and time would begin with God, but what would God be the cause of? God would be the cause of the universe. But wait. Hawking, if I'm not mistaken, said (or at least said that everyone believed) that time and the universe began simultaneously. Wouldn't that mean that the universe is the first cause? If so, did the universe cause itself? I really doubt that Hawking was proposing that sort of thing. Regardless, I am dumbfounded that apologists were so eager to latch on to Big Bang cosmology. For example, Dinesh D'Souza, in What's So Great About Christianity, wrote, "Scientists call the starting moment of the universe a 'singularity,' an original point at which neither space nor time nor scientific laws are in effect. Nothing can be known scientifically about what came before such a point. Indeed the term before has no meaning since time itself did not exist 'prior to' the singularity" (119). Now, we are told that time didn't even exist at the "starting moment." Even the singularity can't be the cause. Nor can it be the effect. The effect must succeed the cause. Doesn't succession imply time? Aren't the apologists trying to have it both ways? Time is not in effect when they want to conjure up mystery. Then, time is smuggled back in when they want cause or, more accurately, the Cause.


Cosmologists are cited by apologists because they say or support the idea that the universe had a beginning. A priori, however, it's doubtful that philosophers could ever come to that conclusion. Bertrand Russell, early in the twentieth century, declared that "[t]here is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all." At most, philosophers can show that "it [is] impossible to have an infinite past" (Craig quoted in The Case For a Creator, 102). A beginning of time, however, does not imply a beginning to the universe or "the world". Substituting "God" with "the universe," Graham Oppy argued, "'The universe exists changelessly and timelessly with an eternal determination to become a temporal world.' Sounds fine to me!" It does the apologist no good to quote Newton's first law of motion. That law, also known as the law of inertia, states that an object at rest stays at rest. It tells us nothing about the entire universe. The universe is not an object within the universe. Science may aid the Kalam defenders in their effort to prove that the universe had a beginning, but I doubt it would help them in any other way. As the quote says, "time itself ... had a beginning at the Big Bang." Time begins with the first cause. The Big Bang is, then, the first cause. Isn't the universe the first cause too under Hawking's alleged model? Two first causes, if that even makes sense, are incomprehensible enough. God would be superfluous.


If you agree with the analysis so far, you may have realized that it seems to undermine the first premise of the Kalam Argument. As Craig put it, “whatever begins to exist has a cause.” The wording is unfortunate. As Quentin Smith explained, “this does not say that whatever has a beginning to its existence must have a cause” (“Big Bang Cosmology and Atheism,” Science and Religion, ed. Paul Kurtz, 69). It seems that one of the premises would have to say something about a cause being necessary. What if it did? If it did, it would be false. Think about it. If time began to exist, could time be an effect? Could the beginning of time be an effect? If so, then the cause is timeless. We, however, established that a cause is in time. The beginning of time’s existence, therefore, can’t have a cause. If it did, then the cause would be the beginning of time. Time would exist before it existed, and we would have a contradiction. The beginning of time can’t have a cause. “Whatever has a beginning must have a cause” can only apply to things that can have a cause. Otherwise, we say that it must have a cause and that it can’t have a cause. We are then guilty of doublethink. Unless I’ve erred, it follows that Premise 1 can’t apply to time. I am hesitant to draw such a conclusion because it would expose the Kalam as an intellectual fraud. Consider this honest version of the argument:


1. Whatever begins to exist must have a cause (Time is excepted).

2. Time (not the universe) began to existence.

3. Conclusion:????


Even if I’m wrong about Premise 1, the revised Premise 2 raises a serious concern about the Kalam Argument. As Quentin Smith explained,

Either God exists in time. In which case, God can’t create time without creating Himself—a self-caused cause. Or else, God does not exist in time and is timeless. In that case, God cannot create time because his creative act that creates the beginning of time is going to exist at the first moment of time, which makes God exist in time.

Interviewer: Which is contradictory?

Smith: Yeah.


If the beginning of time is t^1, God can’t be the cause of t^1. If He was, then an earlier time, t^0, would be the beginning of time. We would be neglecting our premise. If God is the cause of t^1, then the cause, I believe, would have to be simultaneous with its effect. That is what I think Smith meant when he spoke of a “self-caused cause.” Regardless, causes can’t be, according to Hume, simultaneous with their effects. Causes must be prior to their effects. “God is the cause of t^1” is impossible, it seems. God can’t be the cause of time. What then does the beginning of time’s existence really tell us?

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