This post is part of blog series God: Truth or Delusion and continuation to following blog post.
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The kalam cosmological argument is put forward by theists in support of their proposition. It argues for the existence of a personal cause for the beginning of universe and is based on arguments from causality. Its origin can be traced back to medieval thinkers of Abrahamic faith, mainly to Islamic theologians of kalam traditions like Al-Ghazali. Contemporary proponents of this argument are William Kane Craig (Christian theist) and Hamza Andreas Tzortzis (Muslim theist).
The content and form of cosmological argument, put forward by various theists, differ little, only in formulation and format of arguments but the semantics remains same. For no specific reason, I will be putting up the kalam cosmological argument as it is put up by Hamza Andreas on his website with small edits (without any semantic change) to fit the flow of this blog series.
The main argument
The summary/gist of the cosmological argument can be put down as follows:
The first premise seems obviously true in contrast to its negation, as Philosopher William Lane Craig nicely explains “it is rooted in the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come into being from nothing.” To start claiming that things come into existence out of nothing is an irrational claim that contradicts our intuition and our human experience.
Second premise
Some philosophers such as Bertrand Russell argued that the universe is eternal, meaning it has no beginning and it will never end. However if we think about this we will conclude that this position is irrational. If the universe never had a beginning it means there must be an infinite history of past events. Yet does an actual infinite exist in the real world? Is it possible?
The concept of the actual infinite cannot be exported into the real world, because it leads to contradictions and doesn't make sense. Let’s take the following examples to illustrate this point:
So if we refer back to an infinite history of past events we can conclude, since events are not just ideas they are real, the number of past events cannot be infinite. Therefore the universe must be finite, in other words the cosmos had a beginning.
The universe began to exist is supported by physics in what is popularly known as the ‘Big Bang’ theory. According to this theory physical time and space were created and matter and energy were also created. The four prominent scientists, J Richard, James E. Gunn, David N. Schramm and Beatrice M. Tinsley describe the event of the big bang as follows, “the universe began from a state of infinite density. Space and time were created in that event and so was all the matter in the universe.”
However what does “infinite density” mean? Well, infinite density is precisely equivalent to ‘nothing’. This is why the Cambridge Astronomer Fred Hoyle states that the universe at a point in the past was “shrunk down to nothing at all”. So the ‘Big Bang’ model requires us to believe that something was created out of nothing, as Anthony Kenny, a Professor at Oxford University, states “A proponent of the big bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came out of nothing and by nothing”.
If we consult our metaphysical intuitions we will conclude “out of nothing, comes nothing!” Even atheists have recognized this, the Philosopher David Hume states “I never asserted to absurd proposition as that anything might arise without a cause".
Third premise
Since the first and second premise are true, it logically follows that third premise is true. Everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe must also have a cause. However to believe that this cause is God is a leap of faith rather than a rational conclusion, because this cause could have been a mechanical cause or necessary pre-existing conditions. In light of this how can we justify that this cause is a transcendental personal being? What is the nature of this cause?
Given that the universe has a cause and it created time and space, it must be,
Atheist's contentions to the argument and theist's responses
Atheists primarily raise three contentions against the kalam cosmological argument put forward by theist:
First contention
Atheist argue that we cannot apply causality to the universe. Because causality presupposes time, and since the universe is all of time, the universe cannot have a cause. In other words, causality doesn't make sense outside of time; therefore you cannot ask what caused the universe. The question becomes meaningless.
Theist Hamza Andreas argues back that the problem with this contention is that it assumes that causality presupposes time. There is no philosophical justification that causality only makes sense within time. In actual fact, there is no consensus amongst philosophers on what causality is, so in absence of a consensus the basic definition will suffice, and the basic definition is “something which produces an effect”. If you notice with this definition, time is not pre-requisite in understanding causality.
Additionally, there is a concept called “simultaneous, asymmetric causation” which means that something can be causally prior but not temporally prior (before in time) to the effect. A useful example to illustrate this is by way of a thought experiment. The philosopher Emmanuel Kant gave the example of a heavy ball resting on a pillow causing a depression in the pillow, now the ball and the pillow could have existed from eternity past so that the ball was always resting on the pillow. However, the depression in the pillow is obviously caused by the ball resting on it, it is not the other way round, meaning that the roundness of the ball is not caused by the depression in the pillow. In this example the ball is not temporally prior to the depression in the pillow but causally prior, in other words they are simultaneous with each other, which highlights how a cause doesn't have to exist temporally prior to its effect. Therefore, it is not impossible or incoherent to argue that you can have something that is timeless and related to its effect timelessly. There is no reason why the cause and effect cannot exist at the same time in an asymmetric dependency relation, like a boxing bag hanging on a chain from the ceiling, the ceiling and chain hold up the boxing bag and it is not the boxing bag and chain that support the ceiling.
Even if this contention carries some weight the following questions still remain: how could the universe come into existence with no causal conditions whatsoever? Why did the universe begin to exist at all? To claim the universe began to exist without a cause would be truly absurd. The questioner may respond by saying "Well, what caused the cause of the universe?" and if they do they will be admitting what they first denied, that causality makes sense outside of time!
Putting rhetoric aside a simple response to the question "what caused the cause of the universe?" would be to respond by saying "nothing, it is necessarily uncaused". The main reason for this is that if we say there is a cause for the cause of the universe, then what stops us from continuing this ad infinitum? If the causes went back forever there wouldn't be a universe to talk about in the first place! This is the same for the cause of the universe, therefore it has to be uncaused.
To simplify a response to this contention, you can argue that time only allows us to recognize that effects are a result of prior causes and not necessarily a result of time itself.
Second contention
Atheist contend that there can be other alternate explanation of the origin of universe. The universe could have been created or brought into being from nothing and it could be self-caused or self-created. Recently, the world renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking in his new book The Grand Design argues that the universe did self create due to the law of gravity - “Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing...”
To this contention, theist like Hamza Andreas, argue that the universe couldn’t have come out of nothing, because out of nothing, nothing comes! This is an undeniable philosophical principle, as P. J. Zwart in his publication About Time explains, “If there is anything we find inconceivable it is that something could arise from nothing.”
Hamza argues that nothingness should not be misconstrued as the nothingness that some physicists talk about. The term nothingness in this context refers to the absence of anything physical, in other words there is no pre-existing ‘stuff’. In light of the beginning of the universe, there was absolutely nothing before it began to exist, which is why physicists have explained the universe as having a space-time boundary. However, nothingness as defined by some physicists relates to the quantum vacuum. This is misleading because the quantum is something. In quantum theory the vacuum is a field of energy pervading the whole of the universe. So, in context of some of the physicists’ definition, the universe could not have come from absolutely nothing, as the quantum vacuum is something. It is a sea of fluctuating energy, which is still part of the cosmos and it did not pre-exist the universe.
Regarding possibility of self-cause or self-creation Hamza Andreas argues that, philosophically, the universe couldn’t have created itself because that would imply a paradox. It would mean that something can exist and not exist at the same time. The logical ends of this explanation are tantamount to saying that your mother gave birth to herself! Talking about Hawking's assertions, Hamza Andreas argues that Hawking's view on nothing, as previously mentioned, is not really nothingness but is space filled with the quantum vacuum, which is part of the universe. In essence Hawking is telling us that the universe can create itself, but it has to already exist for it to do that!
Concerning the law of gravity, Hamza Argues, is just a mathematical equation that describes nature. This law is part of the universe, which can also be described as a force of attraction between material objects. Therefore, how can this force exist before matter, in other words the universe? To assert that the universe created itself would be absurd and self refuting, because in order for something to create itself it would need to exist before it existed!
Third Contention
A common contention made by atheists to the first premise of cosmological argument is that the assumption - whatever begins to exist has a cause - is false. There are many sub-atomic events in the quantum vaccum that do not correspond with causality, therefore it is possible that nothing caused the universe. It could have been spontaneous creation, an idea Stephen Hawking has propagated. Therefore, it is unlikely that God exists.
Firstly, the view that some events just happen, also known as indeterminism, for no reason at all is impossible to prove conclusively. Our inability to identify a cause does not necessarily mean that there is no cause.
Secondly, there are deterministic perspectives adopted by physicists to explain these so-called spontaneous sub-atomic events. For instance in the 1950s David Bohm showed there was an alternative formulation of quantum theory that is fully deterministic in its basic structure. Commenting on Bohm’s theory Polkinghorne explains,
“In Bohm’s theory there are particles which are as unproblematically objective and deterministic in their behavior as Sir Isaac Newton himself might have wished them to be. However, there is also a hidden wave, encoding information about the whole environment. It is not itself directly observable, but it influences in a subtle and highly sensitive manner the motions of the particles in just such a way as to induce the experimentally observed probabilistic effects.”
What this means is that the apparent indeterminism present at the quantum level can be explained deterministically by this hidden wave that produces observed indeterministic or probabilistic effects.
However, since these two interpretations of quantum theory are empirically equivalent the choice between them will not be based on a scientific decision but on a metaphysical one. This leads to the philosophical objection to this contention.
Thirdly, from a philosophical perspective it is extremely difficult for these physicists (who adopt an indeterministic explanation of sub-atomic events) to justify their conclusions. This is because without the concept of causality we will not have the mental framework to understand our observations and experiences. In philosophical terms causality is a priori, which means knowledge we have independent of any experience. We know causality is true because we bring it to all our experience, rather than our experience bringing it to us. It is like wearing yellow-tinted glasses, everything looks yellow not because of anything out there in the world, but because of the glasses through which we are looking at everything. Take the following example into consideration; imagine you are looking at the White House in Washington DC. Your eyes may wonder to the door, across the pillars, then to the roof and finally over to the front lawn. Now contrast this to another experience, you are on the river Thames in London and you see a boat floating past. What dictates the order in which you had these experiences? When you looked at the White House you had a choice to see the door first and then the pillars and so on. However, with the boat you had no choice as the front of the boat was the first to appear.
The point to take here is that you would not have been able to make the distinction that some experiences are ordered by yourself and others are ordered independently, unless we had the concept of causality. In absence of causality our experience would be very different from the way it is. It would be a single sequence of experiences only: one thing after another. So to accept that sub-atomic events do not correspond with causality would be tantamount of denying our own experience!
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In my personal assessment of these arguments, to me the theists lobby seem to have a stronger case and edge over the contentions made by atheists and we have stronger reasons to believe that a cause exists (call it God or any names). However, with that said, regarding nature of God, if this God is immaterial, transcendent, and unlike anything we can conceive then we can never know, who this God is or what He intends for humanity, in absence of revelation. And this position takes us to another discussion: revelation and prophethood. But this is not the focus of this blog series.
Till I type down the next part to series, may God's peace and mercy for evermore be with you :)
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The kalam cosmological argument is put forward by theists in support of their proposition. It argues for the existence of a personal cause for the beginning of universe and is based on arguments from causality. Its origin can be traced back to medieval thinkers of Abrahamic faith, mainly to Islamic theologians of kalam traditions like Al-Ghazali. Contemporary proponents of this argument are William Kane Craig (Christian theist) and Hamza Andreas Tzortzis (Muslim theist).
The content and form of cosmological argument, put forward by various theists, differ little, only in formulation and format of arguments but the semantics remains same. For no specific reason, I will be putting up the kalam cosmological argument as it is put up by Hamza Andreas on his website with small edits (without any semantic change) to fit the flow of this blog series.
The main argument
The summary/gist of the cosmological argument can be put down as follows:
- Whatever begins to exist has a cause
- The universe began to exist
- Therefore the universe has a cause
The first premise seems obviously true in contrast to its negation, as Philosopher William Lane Craig nicely explains “it is rooted in the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come into being from nothing.” To start claiming that things come into existence out of nothing is an irrational claim that contradicts our intuition and our human experience.
Second premise
Some philosophers such as Bertrand Russell argued that the universe is eternal, meaning it has no beginning and it will never end. However if we think about this we will conclude that this position is irrational. If the universe never had a beginning it means there must be an infinite history of past events. Yet does an actual infinite exist in the real world? Is it possible?
The concept of the actual infinite cannot be exported into the real world, because it leads to contradictions and doesn't make sense. Let’s take the following examples to illustrate this point:
- Say you have an infinite number of balls, if I take 2 balls away, how many do you have left? Infinity. Does that make sense? Well, there should be two less than infinity, and if there is, then we should be able to count how many balls you have. But this is impossible, because the infinite is just an idea and doesn’t exist in the real world. In light of this fact the famous German mathematician David Hilbert said - “The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought…the role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea.”
- Imagine you are a soldier ready to fire a gun, but before you shoot you have to ask permission from the soldier behind you, but he has to do the same, and it goes on for infinity. Will you ever shoot? No you wouldn’t. This highlights, the absurdity of an infinite regress and this applies to events too. Therefore, there cannot be an infinite history of past events.
- Take the distance between two points, one may argue that you can subdivide the distance into infinite parts, but you will always be subdividing and never actually reach the ‘infinitieth’ part! So in reality the infinite is potential and can never be actualised. Similarly the ancient Greek Philosopher Aristotle explained,“...the infinite is potential, never actual: the number of parts that can be taken always surpasses any assigned number.”
So if we refer back to an infinite history of past events we can conclude, since events are not just ideas they are real, the number of past events cannot be infinite. Therefore the universe must be finite, in other words the cosmos had a beginning.
The universe began to exist is supported by physics in what is popularly known as the ‘Big Bang’ theory. According to this theory physical time and space were created and matter and energy were also created. The four prominent scientists, J Richard, James E. Gunn, David N. Schramm and Beatrice M. Tinsley describe the event of the big bang as follows, “the universe began from a state of infinite density. Space and time were created in that event and so was all the matter in the universe.”
However what does “infinite density” mean? Well, infinite density is precisely equivalent to ‘nothing’. This is why the Cambridge Astronomer Fred Hoyle states that the universe at a point in the past was “shrunk down to nothing at all”. So the ‘Big Bang’ model requires us to believe that something was created out of nothing, as Anthony Kenny, a Professor at Oxford University, states “A proponent of the big bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came out of nothing and by nothing”.
If we consult our metaphysical intuitions we will conclude “out of nothing, comes nothing!” Even atheists have recognized this, the Philosopher David Hume states “I never asserted to absurd proposition as that anything might arise without a cause".
Third premise
Since the first and second premise are true, it logically follows that third premise is true. Everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe must also have a cause. However to believe that this cause is God is a leap of faith rather than a rational conclusion, because this cause could have been a mechanical cause or necessary pre-existing conditions. In light of this how can we justify that this cause is a transcendental personal being? What is the nature of this cause?
Given that the universe has a cause and it created time and space, it must be,
- Not subject to time because it created time as Stephen Hawking says “Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself had a beginning at the Big Bang”.
- Uncaused as we have discussed the absurdity of an infinite regress. If the cause of the universe had a cause, and that cause had a cause ad infinitum, then there wouldn't be a universe to talk about in the first place!
- Immaterial and beyond matter because it created the universe, and the universe is the sum of all matter.
- A personal agent because this cause is eternal, and it caused a finite effect, in other words the universe, then it must have chosen to do so. And choice indicates will and will indicates a personality.
Another way to understand this is to familiarize with the kinds of immaterial realities that we know exist that cause effects in nature, the only type we can think of are minds like our own minds (just lift your leg to see what I mean). Since minds symbolize cognition and personality, then it follows that the immaterial cause is a personal agent.
Hence, God Exists! the kalam cosmological argument provides a positive case for the existence of God by arguing that a transcendental personal cause exists.
Hence, God Exists! the kalam cosmological argument provides a positive case for the existence of God by arguing that a transcendental personal cause exists.
Atheist's contentions to the argument and theist's responses
Atheists primarily raise three contentions against the kalam cosmological argument put forward by theist:
First contention
Atheist argue that we cannot apply causality to the universe. Because causality presupposes time, and since the universe is all of time, the universe cannot have a cause. In other words, causality doesn't make sense outside of time; therefore you cannot ask what caused the universe. The question becomes meaningless.
Theist Hamza Andreas argues back that the problem with this contention is that it assumes that causality presupposes time. There is no philosophical justification that causality only makes sense within time. In actual fact, there is no consensus amongst philosophers on what causality is, so in absence of a consensus the basic definition will suffice, and the basic definition is “something which produces an effect”. If you notice with this definition, time is not pre-requisite in understanding causality.
Additionally, there is a concept called “simultaneous, asymmetric causation” which means that something can be causally prior but not temporally prior (before in time) to the effect. A useful example to illustrate this is by way of a thought experiment. The philosopher Emmanuel Kant gave the example of a heavy ball resting on a pillow causing a depression in the pillow, now the ball and the pillow could have existed from eternity past so that the ball was always resting on the pillow. However, the depression in the pillow is obviously caused by the ball resting on it, it is not the other way round, meaning that the roundness of the ball is not caused by the depression in the pillow. In this example the ball is not temporally prior to the depression in the pillow but causally prior, in other words they are simultaneous with each other, which highlights how a cause doesn't have to exist temporally prior to its effect. Therefore, it is not impossible or incoherent to argue that you can have something that is timeless and related to its effect timelessly. There is no reason why the cause and effect cannot exist at the same time in an asymmetric dependency relation, like a boxing bag hanging on a chain from the ceiling, the ceiling and chain hold up the boxing bag and it is not the boxing bag and chain that support the ceiling.
Even if this contention carries some weight the following questions still remain: how could the universe come into existence with no causal conditions whatsoever? Why did the universe begin to exist at all? To claim the universe began to exist without a cause would be truly absurd. The questioner may respond by saying "Well, what caused the cause of the universe?" and if they do they will be admitting what they first denied, that causality makes sense outside of time!
Putting rhetoric aside a simple response to the question "what caused the cause of the universe?" would be to respond by saying "nothing, it is necessarily uncaused". The main reason for this is that if we say there is a cause for the cause of the universe, then what stops us from continuing this ad infinitum? If the causes went back forever there wouldn't be a universe to talk about in the first place! This is the same for the cause of the universe, therefore it has to be uncaused.
To simplify a response to this contention, you can argue that time only allows us to recognize that effects are a result of prior causes and not necessarily a result of time itself.
Second contention
Atheist contend that there can be other alternate explanation of the origin of universe. The universe could have been created or brought into being from nothing and it could be self-caused or self-created. Recently, the world renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking in his new book The Grand Design argues that the universe did self create due to the law of gravity - “Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing...”
To this contention, theist like Hamza Andreas, argue that the universe couldn’t have come out of nothing, because out of nothing, nothing comes! This is an undeniable philosophical principle, as P. J. Zwart in his publication About Time explains, “If there is anything we find inconceivable it is that something could arise from nothing.”
Hamza argues that nothingness should not be misconstrued as the nothingness that some physicists talk about. The term nothingness in this context refers to the absence of anything physical, in other words there is no pre-existing ‘stuff’. In light of the beginning of the universe, there was absolutely nothing before it began to exist, which is why physicists have explained the universe as having a space-time boundary. However, nothingness as defined by some physicists relates to the quantum vacuum. This is misleading because the quantum is something. In quantum theory the vacuum is a field of energy pervading the whole of the universe. So, in context of some of the physicists’ definition, the universe could not have come from absolutely nothing, as the quantum vacuum is something. It is a sea of fluctuating energy, which is still part of the cosmos and it did not pre-exist the universe.
Regarding possibility of self-cause or self-creation Hamza Andreas argues that, philosophically, the universe couldn’t have created itself because that would imply a paradox. It would mean that something can exist and not exist at the same time. The logical ends of this explanation are tantamount to saying that your mother gave birth to herself! Talking about Hawking's assertions, Hamza Andreas argues that Hawking's view on nothing, as previously mentioned, is not really nothingness but is space filled with the quantum vacuum, which is part of the universe. In essence Hawking is telling us that the universe can create itself, but it has to already exist for it to do that!
Concerning the law of gravity, Hamza Argues, is just a mathematical equation that describes nature. This law is part of the universe, which can also be described as a force of attraction between material objects. Therefore, how can this force exist before matter, in other words the universe? To assert that the universe created itself would be absurd and self refuting, because in order for something to create itself it would need to exist before it existed!
Third Contention
A common contention made by atheists to the first premise of cosmological argument is that the assumption - whatever begins to exist has a cause - is false. There are many sub-atomic events in the quantum vaccum that do not correspond with causality, therefore it is possible that nothing caused the universe. It could have been spontaneous creation, an idea Stephen Hawking has propagated. Therefore, it is unlikely that God exists.
Firstly, the view that some events just happen, also known as indeterminism, for no reason at all is impossible to prove conclusively. Our inability to identify a cause does not necessarily mean that there is no cause.
Secondly, there are deterministic perspectives adopted by physicists to explain these so-called spontaneous sub-atomic events. For instance in the 1950s David Bohm showed there was an alternative formulation of quantum theory that is fully deterministic in its basic structure. Commenting on Bohm’s theory Polkinghorne explains,
“In Bohm’s theory there are particles which are as unproblematically objective and deterministic in their behavior as Sir Isaac Newton himself might have wished them to be. However, there is also a hidden wave, encoding information about the whole environment. It is not itself directly observable, but it influences in a subtle and highly sensitive manner the motions of the particles in just such a way as to induce the experimentally observed probabilistic effects.”
What this means is that the apparent indeterminism present at the quantum level can be explained deterministically by this hidden wave that produces observed indeterministic or probabilistic effects.
However, since these two interpretations of quantum theory are empirically equivalent the choice between them will not be based on a scientific decision but on a metaphysical one. This leads to the philosophical objection to this contention.
Thirdly, from a philosophical perspective it is extremely difficult for these physicists (who adopt an indeterministic explanation of sub-atomic events) to justify their conclusions. This is because without the concept of causality we will not have the mental framework to understand our observations and experiences. In philosophical terms causality is a priori, which means knowledge we have independent of any experience. We know causality is true because we bring it to all our experience, rather than our experience bringing it to us. It is like wearing yellow-tinted glasses, everything looks yellow not because of anything out there in the world, but because of the glasses through which we are looking at everything. Take the following example into consideration; imagine you are looking at the White House in Washington DC. Your eyes may wonder to the door, across the pillars, then to the roof and finally over to the front lawn. Now contrast this to another experience, you are on the river Thames in London and you see a boat floating past. What dictates the order in which you had these experiences? When you looked at the White House you had a choice to see the door first and then the pillars and so on. However, with the boat you had no choice as the front of the boat was the first to appear.
The point to take here is that you would not have been able to make the distinction that some experiences are ordered by yourself and others are ordered independently, unless we had the concept of causality. In absence of causality our experience would be very different from the way it is. It would be a single sequence of experiences only: one thing after another. So to accept that sub-atomic events do not correspond with causality would be tantamount of denying our own experience!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In my personal assessment of these arguments, to me the theists lobby seem to have a stronger case and edge over the contentions made by atheists and we have stronger reasons to believe that a cause exists (call it God or any names). However, with that said, regarding nature of God, if this God is immaterial, transcendent, and unlike anything we can conceive then we can never know, who this God is or what He intends for humanity, in absence of revelation. And this position takes us to another discussion: revelation and prophethood. But this is not the focus of this blog series.
Till I type down the next part to series, may God's peace and mercy for evermore be with you :)
