The Kalam cosmological argument is a modern formulation of the cosmological argument for the existence of God, named after the Kalam—or medieval Islamic scholasticism—from which many of its foundational ideas originated. Philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig was principally responsible for revitalising these ideas for modern academic discourse through his book The Kalām Cosmological Argument (1979), as well as other publications.
The argument's central thesis is the finitude of the past, which determines the universe, including time itself, to be bounded by a definitive beginning. This structural principle is rooted in the impossibility of an infinite temporal regress, or beginningless past, distinguishing it from other cosmological arguments, such as Aquinas's Second Way, which rests on the impossibility of an infinite causal regress, and those of Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, which refer to the principle of sufficient reason.Reichenbach, 2004 Modern discourse incorporates both philosophy and science, encompassing such fields as cosmology, quantum mechanics, philosophy of science, relativistic physics and philosophy of time.
Since Craig's original publication, the Kalam cosmological argument has elicited public debate between Craig and Graham Oppy, Adolf Grünbaum, J. L. Mackie and Quentin Smith, and has been incorporated into Christian apologetics. According to Michael Martin, the cosmological arguments presented by Craig, Bruce Reichenbach and Richard Swinburne are "among the most sophisticated and well-argued in contemporary theological philosophy".Martin, 1990: 101
Form of the argument
The most prominent form of the Kalam cosmological argument, as defended by William Lane Craig, is expressed in two parts, as an initial syllogism followed by further philosophical analysis.Craig and Moreland, 2009: 102
Initial syllogism
The Kalam cosmological argument is a deductive argument. Therefore, if its premises are true, the conclusion follows necessarily.
Conceptual analysis of the cause
Craig argues that the cause of the universe necessarily embodies specific properties, in being:Craig and Moreland, 2009: 193–194
Uncaused, otherwise an infinite regress of causes would arise. Timeless (therefore changeless), spaceless, immaterial and enormously powerful, in creating spacetime and its contents ex nihilo. Personal, possessing non-deterministic agency, in creating the universe from a timeless state (without prior determining conditions). Singular, per Occam's razor, in the absence of good reasons to believe in the existence of more than one uncaused cause.
Based upon this analysis, he appends a further premise and conclusion:
Craig appraises the theological significance of the final conclusion:Craig, 2000: 149
Historical background
The origins of the cosmological argument can be traced to classical antiquity, rooted in the concept of the prime mover, introduced by Aristotle. In the 6th century, Syriac Christian theologian John Philoponus (c. 490 – c. 570) presented the first known version of the argument based on the impossibility of an infinite temporal regress, postulating that time itself must have had a beginning.
Like other early Christian commentators, Philoponus disputed the Greek doctrine of the eternity of matter, noting that this was inconsistent with the Judeo-Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. Furthermore, he examined the contradiction between Greek conceptions of past eternity and Aristotle's repudiation of the existence of actual infinities. In 529, he presented his critique, On the Eternity of the World Against Proclus, categorising arguments for the finitude of the past, which underpinned his arguments for the existence of God.
Philoponus's ideas were further developed and debated within medieval Islamic scholasticism—or kalam—through the 9th and 12th centuries, especially by Al-Ghazali in the 11th century and later criticised by Ibn Rushd in the 12th. In his landmark thesis, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Persian Muslim theologian Al-Ghazali characterised the absurdity of a beginningless universe and of the existence of actual infinities, articulating a prototypical formulation of the modern Kalam cosmological argument:Craig, 1994: 80
In the 13th century, the cosmological argument was introduced to medieval Christian theology, wherein it would be examined by St. Bonaventure as well as Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica (I, q.2, a.3) and Summa Contra Gentiles (I, 13).Smith, 2007: 183Craig, 2000 Conceptions of temporal finitism that had been substantiated in Philoponus's—and later, Al-Ghazali's—writings inspired energetic debate between Aquinas and Bonaventure, as well as further generations of scholars up until the 18th century. Craig writes:
Contemporary discourse
According to Quentin Smith:
The Kalam cosmological argument has received criticism from philosophers such as J. L. Mackie, Graham Oppy, Adolf Grunbaum, Michael Martin, Quentin Smith, Wes Morriston and Alex Malpass as well as physicists Sean M. Carroll, Lawrence Krauss and Victor Stenger.Reichenbach, 2004: 4.1
Modern discourse encompasses the fields of both philosophy and science (e.g. the fields of quantum physics and cosmology), which Bruce Reichenbach summarises as:Reichenbach, 2004: 5.6
Since the temporal ordering of events is central, the Kalam argument also brings issues of the nature of time into the discussion.Reichenbach, 2004: 2.
Premise one: philosophical perspectives
In the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, Craig and James Sinclair offer three reasons in support of the causal premise:Craig and Moreland, 2009: 92, 182–190
Rational intuition: The first premise originates in the metaphysical first principle that "something cannot come into being from nothing", commonly expressed as the Parmenidean Causal Principle that "from nothing, nothing comes", or ex nihilo nihil fit. They define this category of knowledge as self-evident, postulating that it is understood a priori through the faculty of rational intuition. Reductio ad absurdum: If false, it would be inexplicable why anything and everything does not spontaneously come into existence without a cause. Scientific inquiry would become unintelligible, yielding absurd, random outputs. Inductive reasoning from common experience and scientific evidence, which consistently verify and never falsify the causal premise. Craig emphasises the Causal Principle's indispensibility in science, including cosmogonic models aimed at averting a beginning of the universe, which assume methodologically that effects are contingent on prior causal conditions.
Intuition and induction
Graham Oppy, J. L. Mackie and Wes Morriston object to the intuitive foundation of the first premise.Mackie, 1982: 94 Oppy states:
Mackie derives from common experience that all causation is confined to rearrangements of existing matter, therefore cannot apply to the ex nihilo origin of all matter. He appeals to David Hume's conceivability argument,Hume states in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Section IV): "Now whatever is intelligible, and can be distinctly conceived, implies no contradiction, and can never be proved false by any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning a priori." contending that uncaused instantiations are logically possible, provided they can be conceived without contradiction in the mind.Mackie, 1982: 85 Craig responds that an underlying mechanism, or efficient cause, must be necessary to effect the emergence of the universe, even if a material substrate, or material cause, is absent at the point of origin. He notes that Hume himself affirmed the Causal Principle consistently throughout his Enquiry and in correspondence, denying only its intuitive foundations. Bruce Reichenbach protests that Mackie's argument confuses visual imagination for logical possibility:Reichenbach, 2004: 3.4
Adolf Grünbaum pronounces the causal principle to be meaningful only within temporal sequences, therefore inapplicable to the first moment of time where there is no prior temporality for causation to transpire. Similarly, Morriston remarks that the intuitive knowledge we have of cause and effect, in the context of events within time and space, do not hold true for the very beginning of time:
Craig stipulates that causal laws are not physical laws, but unrestricted metaphysical truths that are prior to the very conceptions of space and time, applying irrespective of temporality. Correspondingly, he distinguishes temporal priority from causal priority, determining that a cause can be both temporally simultaneous with and causally prior to the first moment of time. He writes:
Premise one: scientific perspectives
Quantum indeterminacy
Paul Davies is unconvinced that the Causal Principle can be defined consistently in fundamental physics. He adopts the phenomenon of quantum indeterminacy as a direct challenge to deterministic conceptions of cause and effect, deriving that subatomic physics is grounded in mechanisms that are intrinsically non-deterministic in nature. Craig responds that the first premise is independent of a determinist construal of causality. Though indeterminism contradicts the proposition that "every event" has a cause, he maintains it is consistent with the causal premise that "everything that begins to exist" has a cause. This encompasses the more modest view that objects cannot come into existence entirely devoid of causal conditions, rooted in the Parmenidean principle that "from nothing, nothing comes".
Where quantum events arise without sufficient prior conditions, he affirms at least some necessary conditions are present:
Wes Morriston inquires whether necessary conditions alone are adequate in defining causation, suggesting further substantiation is necessary when contemplating the causal origin of the universe. For Bruce Reichenbach, the strength of the causal premise is grounded in the ontology of quantum indeterminacy. If indeterminism is an ontic feature of the real world rather than an epistemic artefact of incomplete knowledge or hidden variables, he suggests its implications for the Causal Principle would be "significantly negative":All deterministic quantum interpretations define indeterminacy as epistemic, the majority alluding to either hidden physical parameters, as in Bohmian mechanics, or indexical incomplete knowledge, as in the many-worlds interpretation. Most indeterministic interpretations describe it as realist, or ontic, with some exceptions. Certain instrumentalist formulations of the Copenhagen interpretation bypass the question of realism altogether. For reference, see: Myrvold, 2016.Reichenbach, 2004: 7.1
Craig contends that, though indeterminism is central to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, it is only one of many interpretations, most of which are fully deterministic and none of which are yet known to be true:Craig and Moreland, 2009: 183
The quantum vacuum
Quantum vacuum phenomena, from virtual particles to quantum universes, are often expounded to be uncaused in origin. This may refer to:
Quantum indeterminacy governing the physics of the vacuum state. Plenistic perspectives that define the vacuum state as "nothing" in a semantic sense.