The little finicky bits around "begin" and "exist", normally of no import, are crucial for the Kalam Cosmological Argument. A quick reminder of the Kalam Cosmological Argument (“KCA”):
1. Everything that begins to exist has a causeWhy "everything that begins to exist" and not "everything that exists"? Because the role the KCA plays in arguing for God depends on differentiating God from the universe. There needs to be a causal problem with the universe that is not a problem with God so God can be invoked to solve that problem. “Everything”, though, includes God; the argument would fail if “everything that exists” were the first premise.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
What “began”?
Now we could take something "began to exist" as meaning that
Condition 1: that thing existsIf one accepts the arguments William Lane Craig (the main contemporary advocate of the KCA) takes from philosophy and modern physics then one has to accept that, in this sense, the universe did have a beginning. Modern physics theorises that not only did the universe begin, but time itself began.
Condition 2: there is an earliest time when that thing existed.
The philosophical arguments Craig refers to also posit a beginning of time:
- “In other words, the series of past events must be finite and have had a beginning.”If time began then there is an earliest time. If there is an earliest time then there is an earliest time when the universe existed. The universe exists (condition 1) and there is an earliest time when the universe existed (condition 2): the universe began to exist.
- “an actually infinite series of past events could never elapse; since the series of past events has obviously elapsed, the number of past events must be finite.”
And so, if He exists, did God.
If He exists He fulfils condition 1. As time itself began there is an earliest time when He existed, fulfilling condition 2.
If time itself began everything that exists began to exist. There is no difference between “everything that exists” and “everything that begins to exist” and, so, the argument fails.
An earliest time but no X
If the argument is to be saved another condition, condition “X”, must be added to the concept of “begins to exist”. Condition X must also be applicable to the universe but not applicable to God.
So:
Condition X1: and there must be a prior time when the thing did not exist
This seems fine. Almost everything, except God, fulfils the three new conditions. They exist, there was an earliest time that they existed and there was a time earlier than when they existed. Almost everything, though. There is no time earlier than the earliest time the universe existed. If we accept condition X1 then God did not begin to exist, but neither did the universe.
Craig’s “Solution”
Craig’s “solution” is along the lines of God “existing timelessly”.
Condition X2: and it must not exist timelessly.WTF, though, is “existing timelessly”? “Existence” seems to require persistence in time. Neanderthals, though they do not exist now, persisted for some quarter of a million years. Exotic particles produced in particle accelerators exist for nanoseconds. There is no time when Hobbits existed. Did Hobbits exist “timelessly” whilst Neanderthals and exotic particles happened to exist timefully?
It seems that Neanderthals and exotic particles do not so much exist in a certain time-related way but exist because they existed in time. Existing “timelessly”, à la Bilbo Baggins, is another way of saying “not existing”.
Let us, though, allow this idea of “existing timelessly” and allow that something that “exists timelessly” does not begin to exist. Why believe that the universe does not exist timelessly? After all, we’ve such little idea of what existing timelessly amounts to, we can hardly rule it out.
Conclusion
So there we have it. The KCA depends on the universe beginning to exist and God not beginning to exist.
But if we say that the universe must have begun, well so did God. If we say that God did not begin to exist, then neither did the universe.
5 comments:
Excellent post. I really enjoyed it
I like your angle. I have a litany of objections to the Kalam (I basically 'retired' from talking about the Kalam after that), but the most obvious one is that those employing it must constantly resort to equivocation.
Depending on when it's used in the argument, "things", "cause", "begin" and "exist" can all have slightly different meanings, and theologian just employs whichever definition is most useful at the time.
Hi Mike
Your critique of the KCA is pretty good too, and very different from mine. There are a lot of critiques out there different from either of ours and also very good.
It seems you can run a coach an horses through the KCA and that something is very wrong with it.
I was thinking that it might be that it is (deliberately?) sketchy. It establishes nothing of import.So the reader is forced to expand the argument himself. Which allows WLC to claim that they've expanded it in the wrong way.
Maybe the argument doesn't equivocate: it is equivocation!
Hi Tony, followed you here from Hezekiah's sad excuse for a blog.
I'm enjoying this post so far, but believe I know where a KCA advocate would say your argument/refutation falls apart. I'm curious about this bit:
If time itself began everything that exists began to exist
I follow what you're saying, but how would you respond to the fundamentalist who claims God exists outside of time?
Myself, I see apologists treating their deity as a temporal being. He "waits" to do things, and will be doing things for/to humanity in the future. By itself, I believe this soundly refutes the apologist's objection, for such a deity can not be outside of time if he acts contemporaneously. Yet my understanding of particle physics, M-theory in particular, suggests that other universes may exist independent of our conception of time.
In short, I think the "exists outside of time" claim can't be put completely to rest. Neither do I think, however, that it's a coherent objection.
Thoughts?
Hi Whateverman
Where people claim that God did not begin to exist because He exists "outside time" they are adopting the "earliest time but no X" definition.
In that case the arguments used to support the second premise fail to establish that the universe did begin to exist. The "outside timers" haven't shown that the universe does not exist outside time. As we have no clue what "existing outside time" is, no experience of "outside time"; I don't think they'd be able to do that.
And, as you say, there are reasons to accept the idea that the universe does exist outside of time.
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