Chapter 4 of On Guard is dedicated to an explanation of the kalam cosmological argument.  Craig introduces the chapter with some musings on his childhood.  He then contrasts the Greeks’ belief that the Universe is eternal with a quote from Genesis, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1 RSV).  He doesn’t use the rest of the sentence.  Here’s the full two verses from my copy of the NRSV:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

My quoting it here has nothing really to do with the kalam argument.  I just want to point out that, according to the Bible, there was water before there was anything else, which is manifestly untrue.

Craig quotes Abu Hamid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali: “Every being which begins has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning.”

Once again, we can summarize Ghazali’s reasoning in three simple steps:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

This argument is so marvelously simple that it’s easy to memorize and share with another person.  It’s also a logically airtight argument.
-p. 74

They’re simple steps, see?  So there’s no reason for Craig to repeat his advice to “read them out loud if that helps.”

Craig has again made the error of confusing soundness with validity.  Yes, if true, #3 follows from premise #1 and premise #2.  The argument is sound.  It is not valid and very far from “airtight.”  The problem is with the word ‘began’.

One possible permutation of the Extraverse, should such a thing exist.

The laws of physics that we have derived describe how matter behaves within the confines of our Universe.  We are woefully ignorant of what the conditions might be in what I’m going to call, for lack of a better term, the Extraverse.  Because  our physical laws do not apply, we can’t use the term began to describe anything that happens within it.  It might be roughly analogous to compare it to the legal concept of laws.  A law on the books in the United States has no weight once you step outside its borders.  The laws in the UK or in Kenya are wholly different from those in the United States.  International Law is unsettled; amorphous and constantly changing.  Think of the Universe as one country among many and the Extraverse as the international laws that govern the spaces around and in between.  However, this demands that we examine whether or not it is valid to think of the Universe as existing in anything at all since the idea of ‘in’ exists purely within the Universe.  This is all one roundabout way of saying that the Universe only began to exist when examined from the perspective of an observer inside it.  This is a concept Craig fails to take into account throughout the chapter.

At the bottom of page 75, a sidebar reads:

The kalam cosmological argument originated in the efforts of ancient Christian philosophers… to refute Aristotle’s doctrine of the eternity of the universe.  When Islam swept over Egypt, it absorbed this tradition and developed sophisticated versions of the argument.  Jews lived alongside Muslims in medieval Spain and eventually mediated this tradition back to the Christian West…  Since Christians, Jews, and Muslims share a common belief in creation, the kalam cosmological argument has enjoyed great intersectarian appeal and helps to build bridges for sharing one’s faith with Jews and especially Muslims. [emphasis in original]

This sidebar is notable because it explicitly states that, even if the argument is true, it supports no particular faith.  In fact, it supports no particular religious tradition whatsoever.  Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the Extraverse has within it something roughly analogous to cause and effect, suggesting that the formation of our Universe within it does indeed have a cause.  So what?  To take an example from within our Universe: fusion has a cause stemming entirely from the physical properties of our Universe.  The supernatural has no hand in it.  Why should we assume that the supernatural has anything to do with events that transpire within the Extraverse?

These two objections, the misuse of ‘began’ when applied to the Universe as a whole, and the lack of any religious implications within the argument itself, are enough to render the whole chapter pointless.  However, anticipating that I may be wrong about these objections, I’ll continue.

Chapter 4 is divided into two parts, each outlining one of the premises in the argument above.  For my own sake, I’m only addressing the first part in this post.

Premise 1

Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

For the reasons I just went over, in order for this to be accurate it should actually read:

1. Whatever begins to exist within the Universe has a cause

But wait, doesn’t that, right off the bat, open a door for Craig’s biblical God to step into?  A big uncaused First Cause?  Yes.  Yes, it does.  But it also admits anything else that did not come to exist within the confines of the universe.  Since the Universe did not come to exist within itself (because, for that to happen, it and all the physical characteristics that govern behavior within it would have to exist before it existed, which is silly), there is nothing wrong with claiming that the Universe has no cause, removing the need to postulate a god to cause it in the first place.

For something to come into being without any cause whatsoever would be to come into being from nothing.  That is surely impossible. Let me give three reasons in support of this premise:

1. Something cannot come from nothing. To claim that something can come into being from nothing is worse than magic.  When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, at least you’ve got the magician, not to mention the hat!  But if you deny premise 1, you’ve got to think that the whole universe just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatsoever.  But nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.
-p. 75

The monumental case of special pleading that Craig is making here (or, rather, will explicitly make very shortly) must be pointed out.  His claim is that since God, as Craig imagines him, never began to exist, his existence need not be justified.  It’s one big roundabout way of not really answering the question: Why the Universe?

This isn’t rocket science.  In The Sound of Music, when Captain Von Trapp and Maria reveal their love for each other, what does Maria say?  “Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could.”  We don’t normally think of philosophical principles as romantic, but Maria was here expressing a fundamental principle of classical metaphysics.  (No doubt she had been well trained in philosophy at the convent school!)
-pp. 75-76

Yeah, because the church is renowned for being at the forefront of the education of women.  Sure.  But no one is really arguing that the Universe sprang forth from nothing, as in from a void, ex nihilo.  Craig points to a quote from Quentin Smith that the Universe came “from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing”:

This is simply the faith of an atheist.  In fact, I think this represents a greater leap of faith than belief in the existence of God.  For it is, I repeat, literally worse than magic.  If this is the alternative to to belief in God, then unbelievers can never accuse believers of irrationality, for what could be more evidently irrational than this?
-pp. 76-77

I don’t think Smith meant ‘nothing’ the way a cosmologist means ‘nothing’.  I don’t know that for sure, but I think it’s a safe bet.

For a moment, though, let’s assume that that is exactly what Quentin Smith meant.  Like Craig said, that is the view of an atheist, one atheist.  It is my guess that, if that is in fact what he believes, then he is most likely wrong.  Any cosmologist will simply state that we don’t know whether or what caused our Universe to be and will go on to provide several hypotheses.  A lack of knowledge at the present, however, is not evidence for gods.

What’s more important is that I most assuredly can accuse theists, spiritualists, believers of flagrant irrationality and be justified in making that charge.  Science is a method for finding answers.  It is the only reliable method for seeking the truth that we have yet to find.  It is indeed irrational to stumble onto a question and, rather than seeking out an answer wherever the evidence may take you, see your ignorance of the answer as evidence and plug in God.  God is not an answer.  God is unknown, unknowable even, according to Christians, and therefore provides no useful information.  What’s more, the choice of the Christian God over Shiva or Ra or Inana has no basis in reason.  It is merely through a coincidence of birth that Craig chooses to fill that gap with Yahweh and not Quetzalcoatl.

2. If something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn’t come into being from nothing.

Once again, this question stems from Craig’s special pleading (which I assure you, is just ahead).  Since God always existed, there’s no need to ask this question of the deity, but Craig has no evidence whatsoever that a god, if one does exist, has existed always.  He must demonstrate how that is the case before he can justify making exceptions.  Science has provided cogent hypotheses as to how the Universe might not have actually begun to exist and only appears to from our point of view.  Theists have done no such thing for gods.  Simply claiming the title of the alpha and the omega is not enough.

Here, Craig attempts to respond to the point I’ve been making:

I’ve heard atheists respond to this argument by saying that premise 1 is true of everything in the universe but not of the universe.  But this just the old taxicab fallacy that we encountered in chapter 3.  You can’t dismiss the causal principle like a cab once you get to the universe!  Premise 1 is not merely a law of nature, like the law of gravity, which only applies in the universe.  Rather, it is a metaphysical principle that governs all being, all reality.
-p. 77

Newton's cradle, an elegant example of cause and effect.

You fail, Mr. Craig.  Wow, do you fail.  To be so close and yet fall so far short.  Yes, the law of gravity only applies within the Universe.  And so does everything else.  Including causality.  I’ll illustrate: A while back I had a Motorola RAZR.  I liked that phone.  Unfortunately I ran it through the washing machine.  As a result, it no longer worked.  What caused it to stop working?  Ultimately, my forgetfulness.  But the proximal cause, the immediate cause, was that water came into contact with the circuits of the phone, creating an electrical short that prevented the circuitry from carrying their currents in the way they were designed.  The result, a very sleek paperweight.  This is cause and effect.  Water is a conductor and allows electrons to move freely, creating a current.  Outside of the Universe, none of the physical characteristics of the Universe exist to govern these interactions.  Therefore, no cause and effect.  In short, metaphysical principle or no, all being, all reality are contingent on the Universe therefore that is the only realm in which Premise 1 applies.  Just because you don’t understand doesn’t make it not true.

At this point the atheist is likely to retort, “All right, if everything has a cause, what is God’s cause?”  I’m amazed at the self-congratulatory attitude of students who pose this question.  They imagine that they’ve said something very important or profound, when all they’ve done is to misunderstand the premise.  Premise 1 does not say that everything has a cause.  Rather it says that everything that begins to exist has a cause. Something that is eternal wouldn’t need a cause, since it never came into being.

Ghazali would therefore respond that God is eternal and uncaused.  This is not special pleading for God, since this is exactly what the atheist has traditionally said about the universe: It is eternal and uncaused.  The problem is that we have evidence that the universe is not eternal but had a beginning, and so the atheist is backed into the corner of saying that the universe sprang into being without a cause, which is absurd.
-pp. 77-78

See?  There’s Craig’s special pleading laid right out in front of you.  Until Craig can prove that a god has existed always or comes up with other things that have always existed, I’m calling him on his bullshit.  If you can make special pleading arguments for gods, you cannot object if I do it with the Universe.

The Universe, for what it’s worth, may very well be eternal.  We do not know if we are simply living in one iteration of it.  And if the universe were, in fact, eternal, then there’s not need to posit an eternal god to cause it.  But, ultimately, at the moment, we don’t know.  That is not special pleading.  That is an argument for continuing to search for the actual answer, even if we never find it.

Furthermore, as I’ve said, since cause and effect do not, nay, cannot, exist outside the bounds of our Universe in any recognizable form, it is completely rational for me to state that the Universe, eternal or not, is uncaused.

3. Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise 1.
-p. 78

Until you bring me someone who has experienced something outside the boundaries of the Universe, or have sent a probe beyond the red shift, then I submit to you that scientific evidence and common experience confirm nothing of the sort.

So I think that the first premise of the kalam cosmological argument is clearly true.  If the price of denying the argument’s conclusion is denying premise 1, then atheism is philosophically bankrupt.
-p. 78

Premise 1 is by no means clearly true.  Even if we were to grant that the Universe did begin to exist, there is no evidence that causation would apply at all.  And atheism, in and of itself, is the negation of a philosophy and therefore cannot be philosophically bankrupt because it makes no claims.  Explicit, positive atheism does make a claim:  There are no gods.  This, though, is no more radical than saying, “There are no leprechauns.”

Gods or leprechauns, which are more likely?

Watch out for Part Two of this chapter in the coming days. Stay rational everybody!