The Kalam Argument is logically sound.
in Religion

Arguments

• MayCaesar 1699 Pts

  September 2018

  
  The argument itself is sound. The conclusions from it in the article, however, are not.
  
  

  Conclusion: “Therefore, the universe has a cause of its beginning” (Craig, 2015).
  This cause must be:

  • Powerful (it can create the universe)
  • Uncaused (it is the first cause)
  • Timeless (it transcends time)
  • Personal (it has free will to choose to make the universe when it wants to)
    

  • "Powerful" - The concept of "power" does not have any application beyond the Universe, since it is defined by such units as energy, that are only defined for the matter existing in the same boundaries as its observer (us) exists.
  • "Uncaused" - Not at all; there could very well be an infinite chain of cause-effect connections.
  • "Timeless" - Same as powerful: "time" outside the Universe does not have a meaning.
  • "Personal" - This one is absolutely unfounded. When we hold a stone and then let it go, the stone does not have "free will to choose to drop down when it wants to", it just does due to the properties of the Universe. Similarly, the Universe could have appeared from a more fundamental property of the world, dictating how and when Universe(s) appear(s).

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• Joeseph 554 Pts

  September 2018 edited September 2018

  It’s much favored by people like Willian Lane Craig but it’s a poor argument , it reads ok until we get too .... Whatever begins to exist has a cause........How is a god exempt from this step in the argument ? How do you prove something cannot come from nothing?

  

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• Ampersand 648 Pts

  September 2018

  Even back in the day, the Kalam argument wasn't great as it relies in unprovable assumptions about how magical divine power works despite this being something we have no frame of reference for.
  
  However in the last couple of decades it's become totally irrelevant. Although the link in the OP mentions quantum theory, it makes no mention of general relativity which is what is actually key. As per general relativity, space and time are linked. So when you get to the big bang and all of existence being a single micro-singularity not only is there no real space for the universe to exist in there is no time either for there to be causality.
  
  To quote Stephen Hawking From A Brief History of Time:
  
  “The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a Grand Designer, and revealing how the universe created itself. … Time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the big bang, because there was no time before the big bang. We have finally found something that does not have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed. Since time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang, it was an event that could not have been caused or created by anyone or anything."
  
  This shows that the initial premise the argument relies upon is actually false and the theory can therefore be disregarded.
  
  While the Kalam cosmological argument is only inductive logic, a hundred years ago the reasoning of "In every single moment of human history causality has applied, therefore causality will apply to the creation of the universe" made a certain intuitive sense and I can understand why people thought it was relevant. Of course this was regardless of the logical hole that they're applying a set of rules that apply in one situation (a universe exists) to another situation where you have no idea if those same rules will apply (the universe doesn't exist". It's like saying "Water boils at 100 degrees CC every single time I boil it, therefore all water everywhere boils at 100 degrees C" and being ignorant of the fact that water only boils at that temperature in Earth's standard atmospheric pressure. Just like someone who has never tried to boil water outside of Earth's atmosphere and doesn't have the scientific knowledge to analyse the situation would be making a reasonable but false claim, the same applies to someone who has never experienced causality outside of the existence of the universe but imagines it will be the same. It's understandable that people made that error back in the day but even then it was wrong. Now we have no excuse and the Kalam cosmological argument can be discarded entirely.

  

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