Causality in the Kalam Cosmological Argument

Since I discussed the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) in my prior post, I thought it would be appropriate to go over the argument in a little more detail.  The KCA is an extremely powerful argument that describes how something cannot be caused from nothing.  To reiterate from my last post, the KCA’s three premises are as follows:

1)     Anything that begins to exist has a cause.

2)     The universe began to exist

3)     Therefore the universe has a cause.

In the above clip, Dr. William Lane Craig addresses the absurdity of denying the premises of causation.  If someone suggests that the first premise is incorrect, they would have to prove that anything (not just universes) can come into existence without a cause.  If the universe can come into being from nothing, what would stop anything from coming into existence from nothing?  Dr. Craig poses the question, if you came home to find a horse defiling the carpet in the living room; would you chalk it up to a horse popping into existence from nothing in the living room?  That would be an absurd conclusion!  Even if you came home to find such a scene, you wouldn’t conclude that the horse came into existence from nothing.  In the same manner, making the assertion the universe came into being from nothing would be equally absurd.  

 Many atheists say that the universe is excluded from this premise.  However, why would nothing be so discriminatory about what it creates?  If nothing had creative powers, there is no reason for nothing to be so discriminatory against creating anything other than universes.  Obviously, this is purely hypothetical.  Being does not come from non-being.  As they say, “From nothing, nothing comes”.  That is why it is completely absurd to deny causation in the KCA.

 When we look at the last premise of the KCA, it logically falls into place that the universe has a cause.  This is where our atheist friends have a problem because of the theological implications that are associated with cause.  It is good to have dialogue with our atheist friends on this issue; fortunately, the current state of cosmology is continually reinforcing the fact that the universe is finite and doesn’t show any sign of producing a result that can depict how universe truly came from nothing.