The Kalam Cosmological Argument is Sound

Observation: I agree to the formulation of the KCA my opponent listed in his opening remarks. However, I retain the right to slightly change a premise based on the arguments to which my opponent chooses to appeal to show that the argument is immune from semantic-based arguments, if that is the path he takes. Premise One: Whatever begins to exist has a cause This premise is simple. It is merely to affirm the following conditional: If X comes into being at a point in the finite past, such that it had a first moment of its existence, X necessarily has a cause. Note that this conditional can be true and its antecedent false, in order to show premise one to be true, I need not affirm that things actually begin to exist (come into being at a point in the finite past, such that it had a first moment of its existence). I need only prove that IF things DID begin to exist, then they would have a cause. Warrant: Given the definition, to which I have appealed, of ‘begin to exist,’ the negation would mean that non-being, which lacks ALL properties, including causal ones, could cause things to begin to exist. That is, a denial of P1 is the same as saying non-being can cause something to begin to exist at a point in time, prior to which it did not exist. But this is impossible since it involves a contradiction. Non-being has no properties and therefore cannot cause things to do anything. Thus, we have a priori warrant for the view that things that begin to exist at a point in time prior to which they did not exist must have a cause, since non-being cannot cause being. The Principle of Contradiction would therefore apply since non-being and causality are mutually exclusive. I am not talking merely about material causation, I am talking about efficient causation. Premise Two: The universe began to exist Remember, ‘began to exist’ means there was a point at which the universe had a first moment of its existence. Warrant: Actual infinites cannot exist in reality. If the universe did not begin to exist, that necessarily means that the number of past events is actually infinite. The actual infinite, however, leaves us with several problems. First, say I have an actual infinite number of dollar bills in a line. I take every even-numbered bill such that there is now a new line. This means that infinity minus infinity is infinity (both lines remain actually infinite). But now suppose there is one line again and I take away every single bill except the first three such that there are two lines: one with three bills, the other with an actually infinite number of them. Now, infinity minus infinity is three! This means that the actual infinite works in mathematics because we can place rules and restrictions on the addition and subtraction of infinites to avoid contradictions. However, in reality, we are dealing with physical objects and groups of objects, from which things can be added and subtracted. But this means that contradictions would exist, but we know this to be absurd. Thus, the actual infinite does not exist in reality. 1’ An actually infinite cannot exist2’ An infinite number of past events is an actual infinite3’ Therefore, an infinite number of past events cannot exist But if an infinite number of past events cannot exist in reality, that means that there is a point in the finite past at which the universe began to exist and prior to which the universe did not exist. We therefore have evidence for the beginning of the universe. Warrant 2: Empirics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is evidence of a past-finite universe, or one that began to exist. Since the universe is a closed system, eventually maximum entropy will be reached and heat death becomes inevitable. At this stage, all life is impossible and this WILL happen. The problem is that life exists and the universe is not in a state of heat death. But, if the universe were eternal that would mean that heat death would have already happened and we would not be here. Since heath death is yet to come, that implies that the universe is not eternal in the past, but began to exist at some point in the finite past. BVG Theorem: I quote directly from the 2003 paper of the theorem: “Our argument shows that null and time- like geodesics are, in general, past-incomplete in inflationary models, whether or not energy conditions hold, provided only that the averaged expansion condition Hav > 0 holds along these past-directed geodesics. This is a stronger conclusion than the one arrived at in previous work in that we have shown under reasonable assumptions that almost all causal geodesics, when extended to the past of an arbitrary point, reach the boundary of the inflating region of spacetime in a finite proper time (finite affine length, in the null case). ” [1] This finding is particularly strong since the only assumption on which it is based is that “the average expansion rate in the past is greater than zero:”[2] Hav>0. The assumption is obviously true since there is and has been a constant rate of expansion since the beginning. Vilenkin explains the strength of these findings:“A remarkable thing about this theorem is its sweeping generality. We made no assumptions about the material content of the universe. We did not even assume that gravity is described by Einstein’s equations. So, if Einstein’s gravity requires some modification, our conclusion will still hold. The only assumption that we made was that the expansion rate of the universe never gets below some nonzero value, no matter how small. This assumption should certainly be satisfied in the inflating false vacuum. The conclusion is that past-eternal inflation without a beginning is impossible. ”[3] Note that this is NOT controversial. The second premise can be found in any physics journal/textbook. The premise in itself is theologically neutral and is based on the scientific evidence. Even Stephen Hawking conlcluded, in his new book The Grand Design, that the universe did begin and was “created,” he just believes that the universe came from nothing (my defense of P1 would apply). [4] Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause. This follows logically and necessarily, which means at this point the KCA is a sound argument. What can be implied, however, by the conclusion of this argument? Well, if the universe, and by extension all of matter, energy, space and time, began to exist, that necessarily means that the cause must be beyond and independent of space, time, matter and energy. The cause is necessarily immaterial and transcendent. It must also be extremely powerful, for it brought into being everything. The problem with positing an impersonal creator is explained by William Lane Craig: “There seems to be only one way out of this dilemma, and that is to say that the cause of the universe's beginning is a personal agent who freely chooses to create a universe in time. Philosophers call this type of causation "agent causation," and because the agent is free, he can initiate new effects by freely bringing about conditions which were not previously present. For example, a man sitting changelessly from eternity could freely will to stand up; thus, a temporal effect arises from an eternally existing agent. Similarly, a finite time ago a Creator endowed with free will could have freely brought the world into being at that moment. In this way, the Creator could exist changelessly and eternally but choose to create the world in time. By "choose" one need not mean that the Creator changes his mind about the decision to create, but that he freely and eternally intends to create a world with a beginning. By exercising his causal power, he therefore brings it about that a world with a beginning comes to exist. So the cause is eternal, but the effect is not. In this way, then, it is possible for the temporal universe to have come to exist from an eternal cause: through the free will of a personal Creator.