The Kalām cosmological argument is a contemporary version of the cosmological argument taking its form from Kalām, a form of dialectical argument used in Islamic philosophy.[citation needed] It attempts to prove the existence of God by appealing to the principle of universal cause. Similar arguments are found in the theologies of Judaism (for example, in the work of Maimonides) and Christianity (for example in Thomas Aquinas), where it is known as the "uncaused cause" or "first cause" argument.


http://thoughtlife.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/the-kalam-cosmological-argument-part-1-scientific-observations/


http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-cosmological-argument/the-kalam-cosmological-argument/

The temporal, kalam cosmological argument, dates back to medieval Muslim philosophers such as al-Kindi and al-Ghazali. It has recently been restored to popularity by William Lane Craig. Like all cosmological arguments, the kalam cosmological argument is an argument from the existence of the world or universe to the existence of God. The existence of the universe, such arguments claim, stands in need of explanation. The only adequate explanation, the arguments suggest, is that it was created by God.
What distinguishes the kalam cosmological argument from other forms of cosmological argument is that it rests on the idea that the universe has a beginning in time. Modal forms of the cosmological argument are consistent with the universe having an infinite past. According to the kalam cosmological argument, however, it is precisely because the universe is thought to have a beginning in time that its existence is thought to stand in need of explanation.

With regard to the empirical confirmation of the conclusion of the philosophical arguments, Taylor in effect admits that anyone who holds to a realist interpretation of the Big Bang theory should believe in God as the supernatural cause of the origin of the universe. For if that theory is correct in positing a beginning of the universe, then, since it is impossible for there to be physical antecedents of the Big Bang, it follows that we do have grounds "why positing a supernatural cause is more reasonable than positing a natural cause for the physical state in question."

The Greeks attributed the origin of the universe to a "Prime Mover", or "First Cause" who set things in motion. "Rational thinkers" of the enlightenment took this idea further and found it popular for them to believe in a watchmaker God, who "wound up" the universe and left it to run on its own. This deistic view of the world saw God as an absentee father, who got things going, and then went on about his more important business. Big Bang theory says that the universe exploded, and over billions of years it cooled, and matter condensed forming galaxies, nubulae, stars, and solar systems. Our solar system is thought to be a "third-generation" solar system, which contains the left over parts of two previous star systems which "went nova." The formation of the solar system, and the earth, allegedly occurred long after the beginning of the universe. Thus, while God could have initially set physical properties of the universe and then gone fishing, the presence of similar "anthropic principles" for the solar system, the moon, and the earth itself indicate that the Designer was involved long after the beginning of the universe and had something to do with life on earth. Put in simple theological terms, one might say, God cares about life on earth.

First of all, the very position of the solar system in our galaxy is unique among stars, and allows for the existence of life. Astronomers Hugh Ross and Guillermo Gonzalez explain:
"The solar system occupies a position in the disk of the Milky Way approximately halfway to its edge and in-between two spiral arms. We now know enough about the structure of our galaxy to understand why our location should be preferred over others. If our solar system were closer to the center of the Milky Way or closer to one of its spiral arms, we would encounter harmful radiation from supernovae and perturbations from stars that would send Oort cloud comets careening into the inner solar system. If the solar system had formed farther out in the disk of the Milky Way, there would not have been sufficient heavy elements to build a planet capable of supporting life. "22
Not only is the position of our solar system important, but also the fact that our solar system's relative position remains constant within the galaxy. Richard Deem notes that, "the stability of our position is possible because the sun is one of the rare stars that lies within the 'galactic co-rotation radius'"23 where, "most stars located between spiral arms do not remain there [within a galactic co-rotation radius] for long, but would eventually be swept inside a spiral arm [of the galaxy]. Only at a certain precise distance from the galaxy’s center, the "co-rotation radius," can a star remain in its place between two spiral arms, orbiting at precisely the same rate as the galaxy arms rotate around the core"23. But having a sun--or even a typical sun--isn't enough:
"While most textbooks discuss the Sun as if it were a typical star, it is a more massive star than 90 percent of the stars in the Milky Way. The Sun is anomalous in other ways, including its composition, brightness variation, and Galactic orbit. It can be plausibly argued that each of these characteristics must be exactly as it is for advanced life to exist on Earth."22
As discussed above, liquid water is necessary at least for carbon based life23, and probably for any life. Yet another parameter allowing for life on Earth is its position within the solar system which allows for liquid water. Nick Hoffman, Senior Research Scientist at La Trobe University, Melbourne Australia notes that if Earth was a bit closer to the sun, it would have a runaway greenhouse atmosphere vaporizing any chance for non-gaseous water to exist, like Venus. But, if it were a little further, it would have had no liquid water, as it all would have been frozen24.

Earth's single large satellite, the Moon, is unique among the planets and greatly affects the geography of the earth. Hoffman again notes that, "it has become clear that our Moon is a rare celestial object and that few Earth-like planets could have produced such a chance outcome during their assembly"26 and argues that without the moon, the earth most likely would have little to no exposure of continents24. Similarly, Ross and Gonzalez note that the moon is vital for earth's continental geography:
"Removing the moon seems harmless enough at first. Of course, Solon [Earth without the moon] would differ from the earth. The tides would be lower without the moon, and it would lack eclipses and romantic, moonlit nights, but in the global scheme of things these changes seem trivial. As we dig deeper, we discover that lower tides, higher winds, and shorter days would greatly affect Solon's geography, its ability to evolve [could also read: support] life, and the quality of the life animals would have there. As the differences between Earth and Solon become more evident, it becomes clear that Solon would be a much less hospitable place in which to live."21
Finally, it has been argued that the size of the earth has prevented it from becoming either a total desert or a waterworld23, that the large magnetic field protects life from harmful radiation23, that our unique continental crust allows for plate tectonics and replenishes nutrient supplies for life23, and even that the size and position of Jupiter is vital to the protection of life on earth from space debris27. The bottom line is that a large number of parameters of the earth and solar system are finally tuned to keep it a stable, protected, nutrient and liquid-water bearing planet. This implies that design went into the origins of earth and the solar system, disallowing for a deistic worldview where God does not care about life on this planet.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument is, essentially, the Argument from First Cause dressed up in new clothes. This isn’t really a bad thing. Of all the apologia that I encountered, my own personal opinion is that the two arguments which make the best case are the Argument from First Cause and the Argument from Design. Unfortunately, I believe that they also both partake of the same error, which Richard Dawkins has termed the Argument from Personal Incredulity. An Argument from Personal Incredulity is one where one attempts to make a case from a proposition on the basis of our inability to fathom or to explain a certain phenomenon or set of phenomena. In the case of the Argument from Design, the central proposition was that we have no means of explain complex "design" in biology, therefore we must assume the existence of a designer. The theory of evolution has since done a fair job of knocking out the pins from this argument, but, and this is an important point, even before we had a theory of evolution, the Argument from Design was still flawed. When one has a dearth of information on a subject, the best answer that one can give is to simply say, "I do not know the answer". Any attempt to fathom an answer from a lack of information is going to be epistemologically empty. It is my contention that the KCA suffers from precisely this sort of emptiness.

It rather mystifies me that Craig spends so much time offering a metaphysical argument for the fact that the universe has existed for a finite amount of time. The Big Bang model has been the accepted model for the formation and evolution of the universe for several decades now, and there isn’t anything approaching serious opposition to it anymore (there are numerous interesting refinements, but that’s another matter). It seems rather like using a deep and abstract philosophical argument to demonstrate that the earth must be round: a pointless exercise. Even so, given its prominence in the KCA, it behooves us to examine it. Alas, there is little to examine. When faced with the prospect of trying to imagine real infinities, Craig offers a number of thought experiments (i.e. Hilbert’s Hotel) in order to attempt to convince us that such infinities are impossible. Unfortunately he doesn’t offer us any logical inconsistency in the notion of real infinities, but rather simply declares that certain consequences of having real infinities are "absurd". Rarely does one see the Argument from Personal Incredulity so blatantly presented. I will grant that the guest shuffling of Hilbert’s Hotel is odd, and contra-intuitive, but that doesn’t invalidate its potential. Indeed, given that this weird shuffling is consistent with the very logic of transfinite sets, one would hope that anyone arguing from Craig’s position could offer us something stronger than a denial based on the intuition that things just can’t behave that way. It seems naive that Craig would expect infinite sets to conform to our expectations given that our expectations are derived from our experiences of living in a distinctly finite world. Science (especially 20th century science) has shown us that our intuitions are often grossly misleading. It doesn’t seem reasonable that something could simultaneously be a particle and a wave, and yet we have wave/particle duality. It doesn’t seem reasonable that time moves at different rates depending on your acceleration, and yet careful measures with atomic clocks have shown this to be true. It doesn’t seem reasonable that a single electron could interfere with itself, but all evidence to date indicates that this is exactly the case. In short, intuition is not a good guide. Sometimes nature behaves in ways that seem to us to be inherently absurd, but that is probably because our "ordinary" experiences represent a small slice of reality and that, outside of that slice, we must be willing to abandon our preconceptions even if the results do appear to be absurd.

Of course, I cannot help but to note that it is probably to the good that Craig’s arguments regarding "real" infinities (including temporal infinities) are so unconvincing, for if we were to accept them at face value, they would do away with the entire notion of an eternal creator. Craig’s arguments, after all, don’t simply posit that our universe is finite, but that it must, at a metaphysical level, be finite in duration, because real eternities can’t exist. It is perplexing, then, that Craig later introduces an eternal and uncreated Creator without so much as sparing a single sentence to explain this contradiction in reasoning. After all, if a man counting backwards from infinity and arbitrarily reaching zero as we meet him is "absurd", then what about a god counting backwards in like manner? If a hotel with an infinite number of rooms is impossible, then what of a god who is infinite in any dimension (even the dimension of time)? What sort of ontological distinction can we make that would allow room for the one but not the other? Craig doesn’t answer that, but I will hazard to guess that the likeliest answer would be one of special pleading: that God is an exception and that he doesn’t need to follow the rules (just as, somehow, we are expected to accept that all things need to be created... except God). To put it bluntly, if I allow Craig to convince me that the universe cannot be infinite in age, even in principal, then there is no room to put an eternal god. Craig cannot have his epistemological cake and eat it too.

Craig spends the second half of point 2 using cosmology to demonstrate the limited age of the universe. Here he is on solid ground. All evidence available does, indeed, indicate that the observable universe has only existed for several giga-years (the exact number, of which, is still in doubt). It is a non-controversial position, and he would have spared himself much effort (and dialectic inconsistency) if he had simply left it at that, rather than trying to form some ad hoc reason that the universe must be temporally finite. It is this tendency in the KCA that, I believe, Lusion refers to when he accuses Craig of indulging in "head speak".

Having established a relatively concrete fact (the universe has existed for a finite time), Craig attempts to extract a metaphysical truth (a god must have made the universe) from this. His arguments are interesting but, once again, have more sound and fury than substance. Craig’s central assumption is that whatever begins to exist must have a cause for its existence. Alas, Dr. Craig spends precious little time explaining why we must accept this axiom, stating that "it is based on the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come out of nothing". As I have already noted, intuition is not a firm foundation upon which to derive universal truths.

Strictly speaking, the issue of first causes deals with two separate issues: the issue of causation, and the issue of creation ex nihilo. The pure randomness and intrinsic uncertainty of quantum phenomena should be sufficient to banish the first claim. When one speaks of quantum uncertainty, one is not merely describing an observational limit to the universe, one is expressing a fundamental breakdown of our macroscopic expectations. Why does an electron appear in place X (more or less, given the uncertainty of position)? The only answer is that there was a certain probability that it would. There is no thing that caused it to be in X (more or less) than Y (more or less)[1]. It is the summation of these probabilities that lead to the statistical observation that A leads to B. At the quantum level, the best we can say is "If A, then maybe B, or possibly B’, or B’’, or B’’’..., to varying degrees of probability). So what about creation ex nihilo? Well, as John Gribbin notes in The Edge of Time the vacuum itself is subject to quantum uncertainty. If the energy of the vacuum were precisely zero, then there would be no uncertainty. The coscensus of Quantum physicists is that this manifests itself as a basic "frothiness" in the actual fabric of space-time. Since gravity counts as a negative in the equations, there is, literally, nothing in the laws of physics to prevent a vacuum from spontaneously "degenerating", nor any necessary upper bounds that such degradation can manifest. As one physicist put it, "Universes may be one of those things that happen, from time to time". I wish to emphasize that such degeneration is entirely consistent with our understanding of physics and that it provides some interesting possibilities when it comes to cosmogenesis.

Currently one of the hot topics in cosmology is the notion of inflation. Inflation is a model whereby a quantum fluctuation can be spontaneously blown up by quite a few orders of magnitude in a fractional amount of time. The details of it are too far to go into here [see The Inflationary Universe by Alan Guth], but it does provide one realistic model to account for Creation ex Nihilo, without the need to invoke a creator. I hasten to add that it is not the only model. Other models include such exotica as fractal scalar fields, baby universes born of black holes, Stephen Hawkings finite but unbounded view of time, and others. However, rather than get into detailed discussions regarding the pros and cons of these theories, I am simply listing them to note that there ARE theories out there which provide a potential framework for cosmogenesis that do not require anything like a "necessary being" (at one point in _A Brief History of Time, Hawkings wonders whether there is "any room for a Creator"). But rather than dwelling on these alternatives, let us return to the KCA and see what Craig provides by way of substantiating his claim that there is a creator.

In a word: nothing. When you boil the verbiage away from the KCA, you are left with precious little. Craig’s assertion that there must be a "necessary being" is firmly rooted in the notion that nothing else can account for the universe. As a pre-Darwinian atheist may have replied to the Argument from Design, I reply, "How do you know that this is the only alternative?"

This is especially pertinent given that Craig does not provide us with positive evidence for his Necessary Being. At most, he proclaims that the existence of the universe is a mystery that must be accounted for. However, when one is confronted by a mystery, and one cannot confidently demonstrate a solution to the mystery, the best possible answer that one can give is "I do not know."

Instead of this, Craig seems to be saying, "You don’t know, therefore I must be right -- it’s God."

It would seem that Craig has found a place to put God that is unassailable by science. The unassailability of that position is, even now, crumbling, and we have a number of alternatives with at least as much explanatory power as the deific hypothesis, but, even before the cracks started to appear in Craig’s Cosmological Conundrum, the argument was still faulty. Indeed, it was, as I said at the beginning, epistemologically empty. Given the framework of the KCA, until and unless Craig can provide us with a compelling positive reason to a) discard all of the competing cosmological hypothesis, and b) gives us a compelling reason to believe that no alternative hypothesis, conceived or otherwise, is viable, the KCA will be little more than a philosophical curiosity. As such, I don’t see much point to addressing the "beard" that Craig has put on his deity. The simple fact of the matter is that when one uses God as a placeholder for the unknown, one makes God into nothing more than a synonym for our personal ignorance.

The KCA is formulated as follows:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause

PREMISE ONE

The first premise is relatively uncontroversial, and is rooted in the metaphysical principle that out of nothing, nothing comes. The denial of the first premise, although strictly logically possible, is metaphysically unactualizable. By definition, nothing has no potentialities. Thus, it is impossible for something to arise out of nothing, for how can its existence be actualized if the potential is not there? [3] The truth of the causal premise is additionally supported by our everyday experience. If the causal premise were false, then it is quite odd as to why we don't observe things coming into existence uncaused and out of nothing in our everyday experience. Presumably, nobody lives their life worrying about the possibility of an elephant suddenly appearing out of nothing in their living room. Writes Craig:

"Why is it only universes that can come into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There cannot be anything about nothingness that favors universes, for nothingness does not have any properties. Nothingness is the absence of anything whatsoever. As such, nothingness can have no properties, since there literally is not anything to have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness, for there is not anything to be constrained." [4]

PREMISE TWO

The second premise of the kalam cosmological argument is supported by both philosophical and scientific arguments. Arguments under the former category involve showing that the existence of an actually infinite number of things is metaphysically impossible. If the universe never began to exist, then its past duration would be actually infinite. [5] Since actual infinities cannot exist, then the past duration of the universe must have been finite, implying that the universe must have begun to exist. Even if one grants that it is possible for an actual infinite to exist, it still cannot be formed by successive addition, and henceforth the past duration of the universe must be finite. From a scientific perspective, the beginning of the universe is strongly supported by modern big bang cosmology. The proponent of the KCA thus finds himself comfortably seated in the midst of mainstream cosmology. Combined, these two reasons lend strong support to the truth of the second premise. Additionally, an eternal universe is ruled out by the second law of thermodynamics.

Before I move on, I just want to offer some definitions of the different types of infinity lest my opponent choose to attack that particular argument.

Potential infinities are sets that are constantly increasing toward infinity as a limit, but never attain infinite status. A more accurate description would be to say that their members are indefinite. An actual infinite, by contrast, is a set x that contains a subset x' that is equivalent to x. "The crucial difference between an infinite set and an indefinite collection would be that the former is conceived as a determinate whole actually possessing an infinite number of members, while the latter never actually attains infinity, although it increases perpetually. We have, then, three types of collection that we must keep conceptually distinct: finite, infinite, and indefinite." [6]

PREMISE THREE

Since it has been established that the first two premises are true, the conclusion follows logically; the universe must have been caused to exist. But caused by what? Some object that the first cause need not be God, but was rather an impersonal in nature. There are, however, good reasons to believe that the cause of the universe was a personal cause with attributes that closely resemble a monotheistic conception of God.

Firstly, it must be noted that since there is nothing prior to the cause of the universe, it cannot be explained scientifically, as this would imply the existence of antecedent determining conditions. Hence, because there are no prior determining conditions, the cause of the universe must be personal and uncaused. Moreover, the cause must transcend space both matter and time to create both matter and time. It must also be changeless, since there was no time prior to the creation of the universe. Interestingly enough, this also lends credibility to the notion that the cause was personal, for how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect? It seems that the only way this could be possible is if the cause was a free agent who has the ability to effect a change; for if the cause of the universe was impersonal, then it would not have created. Finally, in order to create the universe ex nihilo, this cause must be enormously powerful, if not omnipotent. One is warranted in concluding that therefore, God exists.