Kalam cosmological argument
[1] Philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig was principally responsible for revitalising these ideas for modern academic discourse through his book The Kalām Cosmological Argument (1979), as well as other publications.
The argument's central thesis is the metaphysical impossibility of a temporally past-infinite universe and of actual infinities existing in the real world, traced by Craig to 11th-century Persian Muslim scholastic philosopher Al-Ghazali.
This feature distinguishes it from other cosmological arguments, such as Aquinas's Second Way, which rests on the impossibility of a causally ordered infinite regress, and those of Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, which refer to the principle of sufficient reason.
[3][4] According to Michael Martin, the cosmological arguments presented by Craig, Bruce Reichenbach, and Richard Swinburne are "among the most sophisticated and well-argued in contemporary theological philosophy".
[5] The most prominent form of the Kalam cosmological argument, as defended by William Lane Craig, is expressed in two parts, as an initial syllogism followed by further philosophical analysis.
[12] In his landmark thesis, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Persian Muslim theologian Al-Ghazali characterised the absurdity of a beginningless universe and of the existence of actual infinities, articulating a prototypical formulation of the modern Kalam cosmological argument:[13] In the 13th century, the cosmological argument was introduced to medieval Christian theology, wherein it would be examined by St. Bonaventure as well as Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica (I, q.2, a.3) and Summa Contra Gentiles (I, 13).
He states:[33] Craig responds that causal laws are unrestricted metaphysical truths that are "not contingent upon the properties, causal powers, and dispositions of the natural kinds of substances which happen to exist", remarking:[34] For scientific evidence against the first premise, Paul Davies refers to the phenomenon of quantum indeterminacy wherein subatomic processes appear to contradict a deterministic model of cause and effect.
[37] Philosopher Quentin Smith illustrates the example of virtual particles, which appear and disappear through fluctuations in the quantum vacuum, apparently at random, to assert the tenability of uncaused natural phenomena.
On the topic of virtual particles, he writes:[41] Cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin has stated that even "the absence of space, time and matter" cannot truly be defined as 'nothing' given that the laws of physics are still present, though it would be "as close to nothing as you can get".
[55] In correspondence with Stenger, Vilenkin remarked how the Aguirre–Gratton model attempts to evade a beginning by reversing the "arrow of time" at t = 0, but that: "This makes the moment t = 0 rather special.
[63] He also distinguishes between actual infinities and potential infinities, stating that it is fully possible for potential infinites to exist in the real world, in contrast to the former:[64] Thomist philosopher Edward Feser has stated that the Kalam argument is based upon a presentist theory of time in which past and future events do not exist, remarking that this would be incompatible with objections against an eternal past based upon Hilbert's Hotel:[65] Craig affirms that the simultaneous existence of the enumerated objects is irrelevant, so long as past events have been real, thus instantiated in reality, they can be counted.
[81][82] He refers to the neo‐Lorentzian interpretation of the Special Theory of Relativity, which he contends has become tenable in light of recent findings in quantum mechanics concerning Bell's theorem.
Importantly, Lorentz's view of time as dynamic, and distinct from space, renders it compatible with the A-theory conception of a tensed universe.
[85] Philosopher Yuri Balashov asserts that both consensus and evidence support Minkowski's interpretation of relativity, which posits a 4D geometric universe inhabited by objects extended in time as well as space.
[86] In spurning the notion of a 3D universe existing in time, Minkowskian relativity rejects the A-theory, correlating instead with the B-theory conception of a tenseless spacetime.
Craig articulates a B-theory version of its syllogism:[90] Philosopher Ben Waters has also argued that the Kalam cosmological argument does not require a commitment to the A-theory.
