The Kalam Cosmological Argument is Sound

Introduction The kalam cosmological argument may be formulated as follows: 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause. 4. If the universe has a cause, that cause is a spaceless, timeless, changeless, immaterial, beginningless, uncaused, enormously powerful Mind. 5. Therefore the cause of the universe is a spaceless, timeless, changeless, immaterial, beginningless, uncaused, enormously powerful Mind. I will argue that each premise in this argument is more plausibly true than false, and because it is logically valid, the conclusion (5) is therefore more plausibly true than false. Preliminary Definitions By cause, I mean an efficient cause. An efficient cause is that which brings its effect into being. Whether that thing also has a material cause is incidental. We must keep these two types of causes distinct. For example, when a carpenter makes a table, he is the efficient case of the table. The stacks of wood out of which the table is made is the material cause. What I am claiming is that whatever begins to exist has something which brings it into being, whether out of preexisting material or not. By universe, I do not mean everything that exists, or even all physical reality. Rather, I mean a connected spacetime. If two things are causally connected within time and space, then they are part of the same universe. Under this definition, there can be other universes, for there can be other disconnected spacetimes “out there”. All that I’m claiming is that this connected spacetime which we find ourselves in began to exist. I will leave the rest of the terms to be defined intuitively. We now turn to the evidence for each premise. (1) Whatever Begins to Exist has a Cause There are three lines of evidence for premise (1). 1. Something cannot come from nothing In other words, being only comes from being, being cannot come from non-being. This principle of metaphysics seems intuitively obvious, when you think about it. For how could the potentiality for something’s existence be turned into actuality without something that caused it to do so? In the case of the universe, this should be even more obvious, for in this case there wasn’t even the potentiality for the existence of the universe, for there wasn’t anything prior to the universe! 2. If something could come into being out of nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why anything and everything don’t come into being out of nothing Think about it. If universes can come into being out of nothing, why can’t horses and potatoes likewise do so? If they can, then why don’t they? Why aren’t lions and tigers and bears coming into being right now, if it’s possible that they can? What would make nothingness so discriminatory? But nothingness isn’t anything, and therefore it can’t discriminate! 3. Common experience confirms and never falsifies premise (1) Some have appealed to virtual particles as an empirical falsification of premise (1), but this is false. If my opponent wishes to raise this objection, I will answer it. Suffice it to say that premise (1) has experience on its side. (2) The Universe Began to Exist Here I will sketch two arguments for premise (2), a scientific argument and a philosophical argument. 1. The Impossibility of an Actually Infinite Number of Things An actual infinite is a collection of things who’s total number of members is infinite. It is not growing towards infinity, it is complete and actual. An example of this would be the set of all positive numbers. I will argue that an actual infinite, so defined, cannot exist because its real existence leads to absurdities. Imagine an infinite collection of marbles, numbered 1, 2, 3, and so on out to infinite. Now imagine that you want to give your friend some marbles because he doesn’t have any. You take away all the even numbered marbles and give them to your friend. How many marbles do you have left? An infinite amount, for you still have all the odd numbered marbles. Here infinity minus infinity equals infinity. But now rewind the scenario, so that you have all the marbles again. This time you decide to give your friend all the marbles numbered 3 and above. How many marbles would you have left? Well, 2. Here infinity minus infinity equals 2. But that contradicts the answer we got in our first thought experiment. Because the real existence of an actual infinite leads to contradictions, it cannot exist in reality. But if the universe is eternal in the past, then there have been an actually infinite number of events in the history of the universe prior to today. Because an actually infinite number of things cannot exist, the universe cannot be eternal. Rather, it had a beginning. We can summarize our argument as follows: 1. An actually infinite number of things cannot exist. 2. An infinite number of past events is an actual infinite. 3. Therefore, the number of past events must be finite. 2. The Big Bang Theory In the early 1900s, Albert Einstein formulated his General Theory of Relativity (GR). One of the disturbing implications of GR was that it predicted the universe was either expanding or contracting, which contradicted the then dominant idea that the universe was static and unchanging. A few years later two physicists independently found solutions to the equations of GR, which predicted an expanding universe. Later that same decade Hubble observed the light from distant galaxies was shifting towards the red end of the spectrum, which implied that they were moving away at fantastic speeds. This implied the universe was expanding. This was the first of many empirical confirmations of what later became known as the Big Bang theory. Because this theory is based on the equations of GR, it does not predict that galaxies are being pushed apart from a central point, but rather that space itself is expanding. As you trace the expansion backwards in time, space gets smaller and galaxies get closer together. The universe gets denser and denser, until you reach a time when everything is crushed down to a point. The density of the universe at this point is infinite. Before this, the universe did not exist. Some object that because GR breaks down at the first split-second of the universe, we cannot say what happened during that time. This is true, but irrelevant. In 2003, three cosmologists crafted the BGV theorem, which shows that any universe which is on average in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal in the past. Cosmologist Alex Vilenkin writes: “It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men, and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place [the BGV theorem], cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” [1] (4) If the Universe has a Cause, that Cause is a Spaceless, Timeless, Changeless, Immaterial, Beginningless, Uncaused, Enormously Powerful Mind Having established the universe has a cause, we may now inquire what such a cause must be like. As a cause of space and time, this cause must be spaceless and timeless. It must therefore be immaterial and changeless. This cause must be uncaused, for as we’ve seen there cannot be an infinite regress of causes; you must get back to an Uncaused First Cause. This cause must therefore be beginningless, for anything with a beginning has a cause. But I think we can go beyond that and establish that this cause is also personal. 1. Abstract Objects vs. Unembodied Minds There are only two things which could be spaceless and timeless: abstract objects, such as a number, or unembodied minds. But abstract objects can’t cause anything, let alone the universe. That’s part of what it means to be an abstract object. Therefore, the cause of the universe must be an unembodied Mind. Notes [1] Vilenkin, Alexander. Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print. 176.