The Problem with Kalam

A favorite apologetic for many Christians is the Kalam Cosmological Argument.  This apologetic is stated as:

From Matt Slick:

Cosmological Argument

  1. Things exist.
  2. It is possible for those things to not exist.
  3. Whatever has the possibility of non-existence, yet exists, has been caused to exist.
    1. Something cannot bring itself into existence since it must exist to bring itself into existence, which is illogical.
  4. There cannot be an infinite number of causes to bring something into existence.
    1. An infinite regression of causes ultimately has no initial cause, which means there is no cause of existence.
    2. Since the universe exists, it must have a cause.
  5. Therefore, there must be an uncaused cause of all things.
  6. The uncaused cause must be God.

Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) had a version of the Cosmological Argument called the Argument from Motion.  He stated that things in motion could not have brought themselves into motion but must be caused to move.  There cannot be an infinite regression of movers.  Therefore, there must be an Unmoved Mover.  This Unmoved Mover is God.

Although he is stating this as originating from Thomas Aquinas, it dates back far earlier than that, all the way back to Aristotle.  In fact, the modern name Kalam Cosmological Argument betrays a simple fact:  Kalam refers to Islamic teachings.  Herein is are my major argument against this apologetic.  It originated with Aristotle, which relates back to greek mythology:

In the beginning there was an empty darkness. The only thing in this void was Nyx, a bird with black wings. With the wind she laid a golden egg and for ages she sat upon this egg. Finally life began to stir in the egg and out of it rose Eros, the god of love. One half of the shell rose into the air and became the sky and the other became the Earth. Eros named the sky Uranus and the Earth he named Gaia. Then Eros made them fall in love.

As you can see there, the cosmic egg is a just as valid as the Biblical account of Waters from Waters, firmament, etc.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place,and let dry ground appear.” And it was so.  God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Do either of these sound like how the universe actually started?

From Space.com

In the first second after the universe began, the surrounding temperature was about 10 billion degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 billion Celsius), according to NASA. The cosmos contained a vast array of fundamental particles such as neutrons, electrons and protons. These decayed or combined as the universe got cooler.

This early soup would have been impossible to look at, because light could not carry inside of it. “The free electrons would have caused light (photons) to scatter the way sunlight scatters from the water droplets in clouds,” NASA stated. Over time, however, the free electrons met up with nuclei and created neutral atoms. This allowed light to shine through about 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

This early light — sometimes called the “afterglow” of the Big Bang — is more properly known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). It was first predicted by Ralph Alpher and other scientists in 1948, but was found only by accident almost 20 years later.

So, if you are a Christian (or Muslim) trying to argue that the Cosmological argument proves god, explain to me why your creation myth has no connection with how the universe actually started?  In fact, light was not even the first thing, it took over 380,000 years before light was even possible.  In fact, using this argument creates four HUGE problems:

  1. Your own creation myths have no relation to present theories as to how the universe began.
  2. You have no way to linking your particular god to the first mover, or uncaused cause.
  3. The violates the law of parsimony, by introducing a far more complicated solution, namely a timeless, spaceless, unchanging god that can create the universe out of nothing.
  4. By using this apologetic, you are ACTIVELY refuting your own personal god.

This fourth point is important.   Accepting the universe started with the Big Bang, followed by no discernable interaction for billions of years, eliminates the need for a personal god.  This apologetic really works against the concept of a god that answers prayers, cares about our sins, or interacts with the universe in any way.  This lack of the need of a personal god also works against the fine tuning argument.  If your deistic god started the universe and set all of the laws in motion and disappeared…you would have the universe as you see it now.

More on Kalam and other deistic apologetics.

For me, the most confusing aspects of the Kalam Cosmological are the abandonment of the Bible (or at least the old testament) and the first statement of any cosmological argument, namely that thing begint to exist.  First off, lets look into the abandoment of the Bible.

The first line of the Bible is “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.”  This, somehow, relates to Big Bang.  You can accept the Genesis at face value, or you can accept the standard model.  I suppose you could come up with convoluted interpretation of Genesis, but reading the actual words on the page “God created the Heavens and the Earth” I can’t help but contrast this with how the universe actually started.  The Earth began to form billions of years after this universe began.  Heck, even light was not possible for 300,000 years!  While you have apologetics that cling to the first cause, first mover, etc. accepting any of these explicitly forces the speaker to reject the Biblical Earth creation narrative.  Accepting both accounts as true is like finding a square circle or a married bachelor.  A 6 day creation that also took billions of years, in the opposite order, is logically impossible.  There is also a misunderstanding of what begins to exist actually means.

Strictly speaking EVERYTHING came into existence at the same time, at T=0, the first instant of the big bang.  Energy and matter CAN NOT be created or destroyed, only change from one to the other, or the patterns can change.  Everything is the universe is the same age AS the universe.  It just has been changing forms and states for that entire time.  The matter in your body, stars, the electricity that powers your computer, all came into existence when the universe began.  I repeat:  NOTHING has come into existence since the universe began.  The whole concept of first cause or first mover is nonsense.  The universe started all at once and will eventually end up as all heat.  In all of those trillions of years, not a single atom will come into existence that was not there at the big bang, well, at least all the elemental particles that make up atoms was there.

 

 

CARM

Going through the 5 apologetics on CARM.org, my comments are in italics.  

Cosmological Argument

  1. Things exist.  Ok.
  2. It is possible for those things to not exist.  No, I do not agree with this.  This is a nonsense statement.  It is very likely it is NOT possible for something to not exist.  Energy and matter can not be created or destroyed.  After the first Planck second, all the was and every will be came into existence.  
  3. Whatever has the possibility of non-existence, yet exists, has been caused to exist.  There is no such thing as possible non-existence.  The sum total of the universe never changes, just changes form.
    1. Something cannot bring itself into existence since it must exist to bring itself into existence, which is illogical.
  4. There cannot be an infinite number of causes to bring something into existence.
    1. An infinite regression of causes ultimately has no initial cause, which means there is no cause of existence.  Yes, you can have an infinite series of causes.
    2. Since the universe exists, it must have a cause.  This is an assertion.  The universe does not need a  cause.  
  5. Therefore, there must be an uncaused cause of all things.  The very concept of an uncaused cause is contradictory.
  6. The uncaused cause must be God.  Why?  Why can’t the uncaused cause be a quantum fluctuation?  Or the intersection of two or more universes?  There are almost an infinite number of causes that are simpler than a god.

 

  1. Everything that has a beginning needs a cause.  How do you know that?  This universe started and all matter and energy started at once. 
  2. The universe had a beginning. Really?  How do you know that?  The most commonly accepted hypothesis is the universe most likely did not have a beginning, just a point of minimal entropy.  We will never know what came before.
  3. The universe needs a cause.  If the universe never began, it does not need a cause.
  4. There cannot be an infinite regress of caused causes.  Yes, there can be.  
  5. There must be a cause for all else which has no beginning and needs no cause for its own existence.  This is contradictory and makes no sense.  To postulate an uncaused cause is nonsense.

Paley’s argument is as follows:

  1. Human artifacts are products of intelligent design.   We only know this because we are familiar with intelligent designers, us.
  2. The universe resembles human artifacts.  No, it doesn’t, at all.
  3. Therefore the universe is a product of intelligent design.  Since 2 is not true, this is a non sequitur.  
  4. But the universe is complex and gigantic in comparison to human artifacts.   Since 2 is not true, this is a non sequitur, and childish to boot.
  5. Therefore, there probably is a powerful and vastly intelligent designer who created the universe.  Really?  Not even probably, and the very concept lacks any parsimony.

The Moral Argument for God’s Existence

The argument is a very simple one, and can be structured something like this:

  1. For an objective moral standard to exist, God must exist  Objective morals do not exist.  Morals are the product of thinking agents.
  2. An objective moral standard does exist.  If all multicellular life went extinct, would there be morals?  Of course not.  Objective morals, like objective colors, do not exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.  Therefore gods don’t exist.  Even if there were a objective moral standard, those morals, by definition, would have to be subjective to whatever creates those morals.  If the creature is bound by objective morals, it is not a god. 

Some Christians have found it helpful to structure the argument in the negative form1:

  1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.  Correct, they do not exist.
  2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.  No, they do not.  Can you even name what those objective morals are?  
  3. Therefore God exists.  Therefore, gods do not exist.

The Ontological Argument

This argument was first attempted by Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century. He approached it this way:

  1. God is by definition the greatest conceivable being.
  2. This is obvious, because if one can conceive of a being greater than God, then that being would be God
  3. If God exists only in the mind, something greater than God can be conceived: A God who exists in the actual world
  4. But God is the greatest conceivable being, so definitionally we cannot conceive of anything greater than God
  5. God must, then, be a being that exists not only in the mind but also in reality
  6. Therefore God exists

Anselm explained this another way, saying:

  1. A being whose non-existence is inconceivable is greater than a being whose non-existence is conceivable.
  2. God is the greatest conceivable being
  3. God, then, is a being whose non-existence is inconceivable
  4. Therefore, God exists

Many Christian thinkers still believe in and use various forms of this kind of argument. The most popular modern expression was published by Alvin Plantinga and popularized by William Lane Craig. It follows the approach of Anselm in using the concept of God’s definitional greatness and frames the argument this way:1

  1. It is possible that a maximally great being exits.
  2. If a maximally great being exists, then it exists in some possible world.
  3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world
  4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world
  5. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists
  6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists

All of the ontological arguments can be broken down into “I can imagine a god exists, so it has to exist in reality.”  Plug in daemon instead of god and the logic holds just as well.   Let me reword it:

  1. It is possible that a maximally evil being exits.
  2. If a maximally evil being exists, then it exists in some possible world.
  3. If a maximally evil being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world
  4. If a maximally evil being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world
  5. If a maximally evil being exists in the actual world, then a maximally evil being exists
  6. Therefore, a maximally evil being exists

I just proved the Devil exists.  Stop using this apologetic. It didn’t work 900 years ago, it does not work now.