The Kalam Cosmological Argument

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

This argument for the existence of God has been made famous by Dr. William Lane Craig, an excellent Christian apologist known for his high-profile debates with outspoken atheists. The argument finds it's roots in Islamic philosopher Al-Ghazali. The argument is simple, and has become one of the best known arguments for God's existence.

Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

Most people would agree with this premise. Think about it. Just about anything you see in the world has some type of explanation for it's being. A bicycle came together because a worker put it together. The cause was the act of the worker. The frame was welded together by a welder. The cause was the act of the welder. The metal to create the frame came from earth and was gathered by the aluminum excavators, and so on.

Even though this first premise seems rudimentary, it has been attacked by many lately who want to appeal to quantum physics and the weird characteristics of quantum particles. Critics of this first premise would say that quantum physics shows that things really do pop in and out of existence randomly and seemingly without causes. But is this true? First of all, quantum physics doesn't say anything, the physicists interpreting the data do. And there are at least 10 different physical interpretations of quantum mechanics, and no one is sure which is correct.  

See this article for more info: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-many-interpretations-of-quantum-mechanics/

But why should anyone, aside from choosing a quantum theory that supports indeterminacy, believe that things just pop into existence without causes? This flies in the face of our everyday experience. As Dr. Craig would point out, why doesn't anything and everything just pop into existence uncaused out of nothing? Why only this universe? If everything else that we see in the universe that begins to exist has a cause, then surely this would be true of the universe itself (if it really did begin to exist).

Premise 2: The universe began to exist.

This is fairly uncontroversial. Almost all scientists agree that the universe had it's beginning with the Big Bang. In fact, we're taught this principle in school. The theory is so well known that it has made it's way into popular culture as the title of a hit TV sit-com. The Big Bang theory is almost not even a theory anymore, and has been virtually proven beyond any doubts that the universe came into being roughly 14.5 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since.

It was Edwin Hubble who first noticed the "red-shift" in distant stars that indicated the cosmos was moving away from the earth. In every direction Hubble looked, the distant stars and galaxies were expanding away from our point of view. When scientists started to think about the implications of these discoveries, they came to the conclusion that the universe must have exploded into being. The term "Big Bang" was coined by physicist, Fred Hoyle, and it's been called that ever since. Other theories have come along, but the standard Big Bang theory has been scientifically proven time and time again and is now considered the standard model of the origin of the universe.

Again, hardly anyone disputes this fact. So what necessarily follows from these two premises? 

Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Ok, so what? What does this have to do with God? Well, we'll need to do a little thinking to find out what the cause could be.

If time and space came into being at the big bang, then whatever caused the universe must be beyond space and time. That means this thing would be spaceless and timeless.

This thing must also be extremely powerful. For all of space and time to be created out of nothing, the power needed by this thing would have to be approaching the infinite. How else would something be able to create matter and energy where there was no matter and energy to begin with?

This thing would be immaterial. Since matter itself came into existence with the big bang, this thing couldn't be made of matter itself. It would have had to be the creator of the matter.

In addition, this thing would have to be personal. Why personal? Because it would have to have chosen to create in the first place.

So then, what fits the bill of a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, infinitely powerful, and personal being that you've ever heard of? I think you know...God.


For more resources on the Kalam Cosmological Argument, see these videos: