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SOPHIA (2013) 52:593600
DOI 10.1007/s11841-013-0362-4
Christopher Alan Bobier
Published online: 3 May 2013# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract The Kalm cosmological argument deploys the following causal principle: whatever begins to exist has a cause. Yet, under what conditions does something begin to exist? What does it mean to say that X begins to exist at t? William Lane Craig has offered and defended various accounts that seek to establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for when something begins to exist. I argue that all of the accounts that William Lane Craig has offered fail on the following grounds: either they entail that God has a cause or they render the Kalm argument unsound. Part of the problem is due to Craigs view of Gods relationship to time: that God exists timelessly without creation and temporarily with creation. The conclusion is that Craig must abandon either the Kalm argument or his view of Gods relationship to time; he cannot consistently hold both.
Keywords Kalm argument . God . Time . William Lane Craig . Creation
It is not unsurprising that in the history of philosophy almost every philosopher has had something to say about the arguments for Gods existence or Gods relationship to time. Of the arguments for Gods existence, the Kalm argument has enjoyed resurgence in interest in recent years. Rather than relying on the contentious claim that everything that happens must have a reason, or on the unintuitive maneuvers allowed for by modal logic, the Kalm argument (hereafter, KA) is concise, clear and plausible. William Lane Craig, a prominent defender of the KA, presents it as follows (Craig 2002a):
1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.2) The universe began to exist.3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
The causal principle invoked in premise (1) is grounded in the intuition that out of nothing, nothing comes. Craig thinks that this intuition is a first principle of reason: it is so obvious that any attempted defense of it will be less obvious than the principle itself (Craig 2002a, 92). Thus, it is no surprise that critics debate over premise (2). In
C. A. Bobier (*)
University of California, 85 Humanities Instructional Building, Irvine, CA 92697-4555, USA e-mail: [email protected]
God, Time and the Kalm...