The Kalam Cosmological Argument: Part 1 (William Lane Craig)

Information: This is Part 1 of a review of the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA), as presented and defended by the evangelical theologian William Lane Craig. Click here to read Part 2. All quotes are by William Lane Craig unless otherwise noted. A version of this article was originally published on the website www.faithnet.org.uk.

Key Terms

Kalam - An Arabic term meaning 'to argue' or 'to discuss'.
Infinite - That which has no beginning or end. Something which is infinite can also be said to be complete (i.e. it contains all of its possibilities).
Potential Infinite - Something which is not infinite now (i.e. it is in the process of becoming infinite). It will achieve infinity in the future.
Actual Infinite - Something which is infinite now (i.e. it is complete). Nothing can or will be added to it.

Introduction

'Although the over-all logic of the argument is extremely simple, establishing the truth of its premises can be, depending upon the depth to which one wishes to go, a long and complex affair.'

Not to put too fine a point on it, but articles on the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) can be some of the most tedious reads ever! My desire then is to avoid becoming yet another one of these bore-fests, and to give you (dear reader) a somewhat lighter excursion into this rather interesting and ancient argument, in support of the existence of God.

Author's comment: 'Yes, I am well-aware that I just used the words 'Kalam' and 'interesting' in the same paragraph!'

The KCA originated with Christian theologians, who wanted to challenge (and reject) the Greek doctrine of the eternity of matter. This is the idea that everything in the world and the universe has always been here, rather begun to exist at some point in time. The KCA would later be developed by medieval Islamic and Jewish theologians, and has recently been explored in modern theology by the Evangelical theologian William Lane Craig.

Picture of William Lane Craig William Lane Craig's website says that he became a Christian at the age of sixteen. This is important to remember, for he is a Christian who believes in God, who is presenting arguments based on the KCA to justify God's existence. He also assumes certain things to be true about God. For example, the statement, 'Something comes into existence without a cause' is said by him to be impossible for physical things, yet not so for God!

The basic argument

The basic point of the KCA (as with all cosmological arguments), is to show why it is logically impossible for the world and the universe to have always been here. To get the ball rolling towards this conclusion, William Lane Craig sets out his version of the KCA in the following way:

Whatever begins to exist, has a cause of it's existence (i.e. something has caused it to start existing).
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, as the universe is something which exists, it must have had a cause of it being here (which William Lane Craig would obviously say was God).

There appears to be nothing too complicated here so far... However, the KCA gets more complicated when William Lane Craig introduced arguments to support the notion that the world and the universe cannot have always existed:

Argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite

An actual infinite cannot exist.
An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.

Argument based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition

A collection formed by successive addition cannot be actually infinite.
The temporal series of past events is a collection formed by successive addition.
Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite.

Do you have a headache yet?

Let's take a few moments to understand what Craig is trying to get at in these supporting arguments (1 and 2).

The argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite

Something to do: If you have not already have one, get a piece of paper and a pen before reading on.

Actual Infinite - Something which is infinite now (i.e. it is complete). Nothing can or will be added to it.

Take your piece of paper and write today's date on it, and next to that write 'the world has always existed'. Now there is nothing contradictory in this. The world might always have been here, and this is today's date. Now write down the year you were born. For me, nearly four decades have passed between my being born and today's date (which means I would have to write down far too many years I care to remember - but you get the point).

The fact that we can count how many years have passed since the day we were born, means we have a starting point from which to begin counting from (this means we have a starting-point - I deliberately repeated that to make the point loud and clear!). If we did not know in what year we were born, we would not know how old we are today. This means we can measure things such as dates and times etc., because we have a starting-point from which to begin measuring them from. In fact, all talk of time only really makes sense, once we have a starting-point from which to begin our measuring it from.

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12...

Now with this in mind, let's think about someone who is said to have been counting an infinite sequence of numbers - when did they begin, and when will they end? If something is infinite it is never-ending - i.e. it has no ends! Yet we just said that in order to make sense of any sequence of numbers (or dates), we would need to have a starting point from which to begin from.

Furthermore, if something is infinite now it cannot be added to! Think about today's date to see what we mean here. We know what today's date is because we can measure it from a certain point, but we just said that something that is infinite has no start or end-point to it. So that means if it has no start or end-point, then nothing can be added to it (for this would entail adding something onto it, which we simply cannot do because there is no 'gap' in it). To try and add something to an infinite thing, would be like trying to add something to the perimeter of this circle... we cannot do it - for there is no gap to be found in it!

Something to do: Draw a circle on your piece of paper, and make sure the ends join up. Now try and add a short line to this without breaking the circle you have just drawn? Impossible - isn't it?

So what does all this mean for William Lane Craig? It simply means that it is nonsense to speak of anything as being actually infinite. To do so leads to the logically nonsensical situation, as illustrated by the following quote:

'Suppose we meet a man who claims to have been counting from eternity and is now finishing: ..., -3, -2, -1, 0. We could ask, why did he not finish counting yesterday or the day before or the year before? By then an infinite time had already elapsed, so that he should have finished by then. Thus, at no point in the infinite past could we ever find the man finishing his countdown, for by that point he should have already be done! In fact, no matter how far back into the past we go, we can never find the man counting at all, for at any point we reach he will have already finished. But if at no point in the past do we find him counting this contradicts the hypothesis that he has been counting from eternity. This illustrates the fact that the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition is equally impossible whether one proceeds to or from infinity.' [Emphasis mine]

In order for the man in this example to have been counting from eternity, William Lane Craig argues that he must have begun somewhere in time, otherwise it makes no sense to say that he is still counting. Infinity implies completeness, whereas counting implies successive additions (and the notion of incompleteness).

Another example (known as Hilbert's Hotel) would be to say that you have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms in it, which are all full. Now imagine someone comes to you wanting a room, and you want to start moving people to different rooms to accommodate them. Now if there are an infinite number of rooms, and all of these rooms are full - where are you going to move people to?

So taking all this into account, William Lane Craig rejects the notion of an actual infinity (as set out in statement 1).

Something to think about: Make sure you understand the argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite, before moving on to the next section. To check you do, think about whether you could teach this idea to someone else using your own examples to illustrate the logical impossibility of an actual infinite.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument: Part 2 (William Lane Craig)

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The Kalam Cosmological Argument: Part 1 (William Lane Craig)

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12...