Opening Remarks
When considering opposing worldviews, it is pertinent to evaluate each worldview on the basis of how they answer the deepest questions of reality and what evidence they provide for their answers. Christian theism asserts that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”¹ What is the evidence for this claim? Does this claim describe reality?
I began studying philosophical arguments for God’s existence when I was in college, and the one that has so far stood out to me as the most compelling is the Kalam Cosmological Argument, most famously propounded by William Lane Craig. One of the reasons this argument is so compelling to me is that it is not only so simple to follow in its syllogistic form (see below) but that anyone who has common sense and time to think about it can easily grasp the premises. You do not need philosophical training to understand this argument. I should note here that there are different cosmological arguments for God’s existence and different ways to formulate them. J.P. Moreland formulates the Kalam cosmological argument (“Kalam” for short) in his book, Scaling the Secular City, as follows.
1. The universe had a beginning.
2. The beginning of the universe was caused.
3. The cause for the beginning of the universe was personal.²
William Lane Craig famously formulates his version of the Kalam as follows.
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.³
Craig then goes on to do a conceptual analysis of what properties this cause must have to complete the argument. Because I have mostly studied Dr. Craig’s writings for this argument, I will follow his work most closely here.⁴
The Argument
Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
In support of this premise, Dr. Craig lists three lines of reasoning.
Metaphysical Intuition
This first premise is simply a deep metaphysical intuition that I am sure most people (who are not merely trying to refute this argument) would happily agree with. Just ask yourself. Do you believe that something can come into existence without any cause whatsoever? Surely not. Dr. Craig states that “to suggest that things could just pop into being uncaused out of nothing is to quit doing serious metaphysics and to resort to magic.” ⁵ I agree with this, and I am sure that most people would also. I think the desperate move that atheists make when they resort to just asserting that the universe created itself or just popped into being uncaused simply shows the strength of this argument.
Why does this not happen all the time?
Another reason to accept this first premise is that if things could come into existence without any cause, then it becomes inexplicable how things do not randomly come into existence all of the time. Why has a new truck not popped into existence in my driveway yet? Why has a wad of cash not appeared in my hand yet? (Direct deposit would be easier.) If things could really come into existence without any cause, then I would honestly be terrified of living. How could I know that a huge boulder would not randomly appear above my car as I am driving and crush me? How could I know that a random object would not randomly come into existence in my body and cause me to die? As you can see, if things could come into existence from nothing, it makes no sense that it does not happen all of the time.
Inductive Evidence
Lastly, we have inductive evidence that things around us coming to existence have causes. Think about your desk. Someone crafted it. Think about your lunch. You probably made it yourself. You can name anything in your experience of life, and it will have a cause for its existence. This is powerful inductive evidence that whatever begins to exist has a cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
This is the most crucial premise of debate. As I have heard it, atheists have long asserted that the universe was eternal and always existed, thus leaving no room for a Creator. However, if the universe did have a beginning, then that opens up some questions about what could have brought it into being. There are two philosophical arguments and two scientific arguments in support of the premise that the universe actually did begin to exist a finite time ago.
Philosophical Arguments
The Impossibility of an Actual Infinite
This argument is a bit technical to explain but so easy to grasp once you understand it. It goes something like this.
(1) If the universe is eternal, then there exists an actual infinite number of past events.
(2) An actual infinite number of events is metaphysically impossible.
(3) Therefore, the universe is not eternal.
(1) is easy to understand and obvious. If the past is infinite, then the number of temporal events leading up to the present is truly infinite. The past being eternal means that time had no beginning, so if you start in the present and then count backwards in seconds, hours, years, or whatever unit of time you like, you will never ever reach a starting point; it is infinite. (2) is more technical and in need of argumentation. There are a few thought experiments that show the absurdities that result if actual infinites could truly exist in the mind-independent world. By “mind-independent” world, I mean the actual world outside of just a human mind’s imagination. Let us clarify the difference between a potential infinite and an actual infinite. A potential infinite is sort of like counting from 1 to infinity. You can never reach any number and say, “I have reached infinity!” No, by definition, infinity is impossible to reach. No matter what number you reach, you could always count one more, two more, three more. . . A potential infinite always tends toward infinity but never reaches infinity because, by definition, infinity is impossible to reach. However, an actual infinite is just that: actual. For example, the set of all even numbers is actually infinite: [2, 4, 6, 8, 10. . .]. If you think of all even numbers as a set then you have an actual infinite, but as I said, that is only mental. Mathematicians use infinite sets in their mathematics, but that is only theoretical. It is not actual in the mind-independent world. Let us examine a thought experiment.
One thought experiment that Dr. Craig credits Al Ghazali (medieval Muslim philosopher) with goes like this. (I am going to do one with my own words, but the basic thought experiment with planets is the same.) Imagine if the universe was eternal in the past and that the planets in the solar system were revolving around the sun from eternity. This means that they have been revolving around the sun for an infinite amount of time. If planet A revolves around the sun every 200 days and planet B revolves around the sun every 400 days, then how many more times has planet A revolved around the sun than planet B? Twice as many, right? The answer, strangely enough, is no. In fact, the number of revolutions for each planet is exactly the same: infinity! But this is absurd. If one planet has been revolving twice as fast, then its revolutions would be double the other planet. This is the kind of result you get when you think about actual infinites existing in the mind-independent world. There are more examples that could be given, such as Hilbert’s Hotel,⁶ but I will just list this one example for brevity’s sake.
The Impossibility of Crossing an Infinite by Successive Addition
Another independent argument against the eternality of the universe makes the case that even if infinites could actually exist, it would still be impossible to reach the present moment if the past were eternal. This is simple to understand. Imagine counting from zero to infinity. Would ever reach infinity? No, you would not because infinity is inexhaustible by definition. You could count for billions and billions of years, but you would be no closer to infinity. Now, thinking of a timeline of the universe, imagine counting up from infinity with the present moment being zero, like …-2, -1, 0. It is hard to explain how we could possibly be in the present moment we are currently in if there is an infinite number of temporal events preceding the present moment. How would time have ever possibly reached the present? It is impossible. But it does not stop here. It gets worse. Not only could we not traverse the infinite gap between the present and past eternity, but there is also nowhere to begin! It is sort of like jumping from a bottomless pit. There is nowhere to get started.
Scientific Arguments
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
Let me go ahead and say that I am very ignorant of scientific data. While I can reason through a technical work of philosophy using the tools of rationality and logic, I am not equipped for scientific conversation. I have not spent years studying science, engaging with all of the relevant material. I will be borrowing heavily from William Lane Craig, as I already mentioned. This scientific consideration will be put in very simple terms.
Dr. Craig states that “According to the second law of thermodynamics, processes taking place in a closed system always tend toward a state of equilibrium. In other words, unless energy is constantly being fed into a system, the processes in the system will tend to run down and quit.”⁷ If the universe is a closed system of physical processes, laws, events, etc., then it is moving toward a state of equilibrium. As an analogy, imagine driving a car. Eventually, no matter how much fuel you put in it, you will run out of gas. The car will then shut down. Applied to the universe, you can imagine that eventually stars would burn up or the expansion of the universe would have planets stars, galaxies, etc. spread so far out that all of life in the universe would end in a cold, isolated death. Another scenario is the expansion of the universe being too weak to continue and gravity causing the universe to contract back into itself, resulting in chaotic destruction. Whatever the scenario may be, you can see how the universe cannot have existed for an infinite amount of time. The car runs out of fuel eventually, but this car (our universe) is still running. It has not used up its fuel. For more on other possible scenarios, such as the multiverse, read Dr. Craig’s writings where he addresses those.
The Expansion of the Universe
I will not attempt to speak on all of the physics and mathematics that come into play when discussing models of the universe’s expansion. I will only say that according to what is seemingly the most popular model of the expansion of the universe, the Big Bang model, a beginning to the universe is at least implied. Dr. Craig has studied this field thoroughly and is able to engage the conversation.
3. Conclusion: The universe has a cause.
Whether we want to or not, we must see that if both of the above premises are true, then this conclusion necessarily follows. The universe has a cause for its existence. However, the argument is not done here. Merely postulating an ambiguous “cause” does not get you to a personal Creator. For that, we must do some analysis of what this cause must be.
Analysis of the Cause
In this discussion, we are defining the “universe” as all of space, time, energy, and matter—everything physical. In order for this cause to bring about the existence of the universe, the cause must transcend space, time, matter, and energy. We can deduce from this that the cause of the universe is spaceless to have created all of space. The cause must be timeless to have created time. The cause must also be immaterial to have brought matter into existence. Obviously, the cause must be enormously and uniquely powerful to bring about such an awesome effect. Lastly, the cause must be personal as well, which is crucial.
Dr. Craig gives three reasons for taking the cause to be a personal agent. First, he mentions two different ways of explaining things: scientific explanation and personal explanation. The popular illustration of this that I have heard often is a teapot boiling water. You could explain why the water is boiling in two different ways. The first way is to explain it in scientific terms. The water is boiling because the heat of the fire on the stove caused an increase in molecular kinetic energy, causing the water molecules to be stirred up, etc. Another equally legitimate explanation is that I wanted to make some tea. This second explanation analyzes the scenario in terms of personal agency. When applied to the coming-to-be of the universe—the universe coming into existence—scientific explanation is disqualified. Why? This is because science examines and tests the natural world, but before the universe’s existence there was no natural world to test; nature did not yet exist. A scientific explanation would not have anywhere to begin because there was no matter, space, or energy to test or examine. The only explanation that fits here is a personal explanation whereby the universe coming into being is explained in terms of a rational agent willfully choosing to bring about the effect (the universe). Second, the cause must be personal because there are only two kinds of entities that could be immaterial, timeless, etc. These are abstract objects, such as numbers, and persons. It cannot be numbers or another abstract object because those kinds of entities do not stand in causal relations to anything. Has 1 +1 = 2 ever given you $2? Of course, it has not because numbers cannot cause or create anything. They only describe. However, persons can bring about effects. I created this post because, as a person with active power and agency, I can willfully choose to bring about an effect. We reason here that the same is true of the universe. Because abstract objects cannot create, it must have been a rational and free person who brought the universe into being. Third, as Dr. Craig says, “this same conclusion is also implied by the fact that we have in this case the origin of a temporal effect from a timeless cause.”⁸ This is where some intellectual rigor comes into play. We must understand sufficient and necessary conditions. A necessary condition for some effect is one that must be met in order for the effect to come about. A sufficient condition, or set of sufficient conditions, is enough to bring about the effect. It is necessary for me to have vanilla if I want vanilla ice cream, but vanilla alone is not sufficient; I need other ingredients. It is sufficient for me to buy flowers for my wife to make her smile, but it is not necessary; I could have (hopefully) made her smile some other way. The question now at hand is this. If the eternal cause of the universe was sufficient to bring about the effect, then why has the universe not existed forever? Dr. Craig gives the idea of an eternally frozen lake. Imagine a scenario in which a lake was surrounded by freezing temperature from eternity. If the temperature is below freezing, that is sufficient for water being frozen. Well, if the cause (freezing temperature) is sufficient for the effect and has always existed, then the effect (frozen lake) would have always existed along with the cause. If the cause of the universe was sufficient for its effect and has existed forever, then how has the universe not existed along with the sufficient cause forever? The only way to explain this is that the cause of the universe was a personal agent with freedom of will who could freely choose to bring about the effect.
We can see that with a proper analysis of this cause, the theistic implications are strong. The cause of the universe must have been spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, and personal. It must have been a Creator. Most people understand this to be God. Do you think an atheist would admit that God does not exist, but there was a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, and personal creator of the universe? Hardly.
Closing Remarks
Well, that is a simple presentation of the Kalam Cosmological argument. There are plenty of related topics of discussion that have a part in this argument, such as the nature of time, philosophy of mind, causation, physics, etc. However, I attempted to present this briefly and simply. Moreover, there were certain things in the scientific areas that are just simply beyond my knowledge. However, using the resources I cited, you can discover more about this. I will be doing a post addressing objections to this argument and others in the future, so look out for those.
This is only one piece of evidence for the existence of a transcendent Creator of the universe. If you are interested in reading more, please continue in The Case for Christian Theism. Lastly, please feel free to comment or contact me directly. Blessings!
¹The ESV Study Bible. Crossway, 2008. For now, I take this verse to suggest a real, ontological, and material creatio ex nihilo, but see John Walton’s talk, Genesis Through Ancient Eyes, for a different interpretation of the creation account in Genesis, which I find considerable.
²J.P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, pg. 19
³William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, pg. 106
⁴See William Lane Craig’s website, Reasonable Faith, to see more resources for study. He has written books, chapters, articles, and essays on the topic. You can also check out his podcast.
⁵William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, pg. 111
⁶See William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, pg. 118 and J.P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, pg. 22
⁷William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, pg. 140
⁸Ibid., pg. 153