{"id":154,"date":"2006-04-21T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-21T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=154"},"modified":"2006-04-21T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-21T07:00:00","slug":"the-kalam-cosmological-argument-and-the-nature-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2006\/04\/the-kalam-cosmological-argument-and-the-nature-of-time\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Nature of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Lane Craig has done much in recent years to develop and defend what’s now known as the kalam cosmological argument<\/span> for the existence of God. The core of the argument runs as follows:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.<\/li>\n
  2. The universe began to exist.<\/li>\n
  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As it stands this argument won’t get one all the way to full-blown monotheism, but if it is sound, then naturalism is in serious trouble, for the natural universe would have been shown to be contingent and to owe its existence to an apparently transcendent cause.<\/p>\n

    The crucial premise is the second one, for it’s not obvious why the universe must have had a beginning. Here Craig offers four arguments – two philosophical, and two scientific. The latter two involve appeals to the Big Bang theory and to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I’m not going to get into those right now. What I’m interested in are the two philosophical arguments.<\/p>\n

    The first argument contends that actually infinite collections of actually existing things are impossible. (An actually infinite collection is one which can be put into one-to-one correspondence with one of its proper subsets, e.g., the set of natural numbers can be put into 1-1 correspondence with the set of even numbers.) Why? Without going into the details, Craig basically argues that actually infinite collections of actually existing things would generate all sorts of logical paradoxes and for that reason have to be barred from any coherent ontology. The relevance of this to the beginning of the universe is as follows:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. If the universe has no beginning, then an actually infinite number of events has elapsed.<\/li>\n
    2. If an actually infinite number of events has elapsed, then there is an actually infinite collection of existing things (i.e., past events). <\/li>\n
    3. But actually infinite collections of existing things are impossible.<\/li>\n
    4. Therefore, it is false that an actually infinite number of events has elapsed.<\/li>\n
    5. Therefore, the universe has a beginning.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      One worry about this argument premise 2, for if one holds to the version of the A-theory of time known as presentism, then past events simply don’t exist anymore, so it’s not clear why the elapsing of time would entail that there is an actually infinite collection of existing things. On the other hand, if the B-theory of time or any of the versions of the A-theory that retain past facts (e.g., the ‘growing block’ theory or the ‘moving spotlight’ theory), and if the universe has no beginning, then it follows straightaway that there is an actually infinite collection of existing things. It seems, then, that this philosophical argument for the second premise of the kalam argument must presuppose the falsity of presentism, ironic since Craig is a staunch defender of presentism.<\/p>\n

      The second philosophical argument for premise two of the kalam argument contends that an actually infinite collection cannot be sequentially run through or traversed by a series of finite steps. Here’s a straightforward formulation of the argument. <\/p>\n

        \n
      1. If the universe had no beginning, then an actually infinite collection would have been sequentially tranversed by a series of finite steps.<\/li>\n
      2. But it is impossible to sequentially traverse an actually infinite collection by a series of finite steps.<\/li>\n
      3. Therefore, the universe had a beginning.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Premise 2 can be defended as follows. If the universe had no beginning, then an actually infinite number of events has elapsed prior to now. The collections of negative numbers ending in zero {…, -3, -2, -1, 0} is an actually infinite collection. Since actually infinite collections can be put into 1-1 correspondence, let’s pair up the series of past events with the series of negative numbers ending in zero. To suppose, then, that the actually infinite collection of past events has been traversed in step-wise fashion is to suppose that it’s possible to get from -\u221e to 0 one number at a time. But that’s impossible, since -\u221e+1 = -\u221e. Hence, one could never arrive at 0 or the present moment.<\/p>\n

        Now, I think this is a pretty good argument, but here again, one’s view on the nature of time makes a big difference. Why? Well, if one is a B-theorist, then there is no such thing as the ‘flow’ or passage of time. All the events that ever have or will exist exist<\/span> (tenselessly). So if the past is infinite, then there timelessly exists<\/span> a completed actually infinite collection of past events. The collection isn’t formed successively in finite steps because it’s not formed <\/span>at all – it’s just there. On the other hand, if one is an A-theorist (of any sort), then this argument seems pretty compelling because then one would have to somehow run through or form an actually infinite collection by successive finite addition. It seems, then, that this philosophical argument for the second premise of the kalam argument must presuppose the falsity of the B-theory of time.<\/p>\n

        Finally, since only non-presentists are likely to find the first argument compelling, and since only A-theorists are likely to find the second argument compelling, only non-presentist, A-theorists are likely to find both arguments compelling. To my knowledge, no discussions of the kalam argument to date have noticed these connections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        William Lane Craig has done much in recent years to develop and defend what’s now known as the kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God. The core of the argument runs as follows: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause. As it stands\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}