DIALOGUE EDUCATON
THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
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ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY
------------------The Holy Qu’ran called Muslims to reasoning and to seek learning. This led to philosophy being
taken seriously by Islamic scholars and ancient Greek philosophic texts were translated and
were available in Arabic. In fact it was due to Islamic philosophers that many of the works of
Aristotle were preserved when they had been lost in the West. Wealthy and influential rulers
and their patronage led to the establishment of centres of learning in Cairo and Baghdad and
these still remain the centres of Islamic scholarship down to the present day.
Islamic philosophy had an identity separate from Theology and was referred to as kalam but
the kalam approach also existed in mutual dependence on religion. It saw itself as in the
service of religion and in no way attempted to critically evaluate Islamic theology from
without.
Shia and Sunnis form the two main branches of Islam. The SHIA, particularly the ISMAILI
branch of the Shia, had a particular dedication to philosophy and its application to expanding
understanding of religion and revelation. Today many Shia do not consider Ismailis to be
genuine Muslims, but it remains the case that Ismailis have a particular dedication to
philosophy and to education.
In the 12th Century, many of the Arabic philosophic works were translated into Latin and, to
an extent, into Hebrew. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Contra Gentiles partially in
response to these works.
Ibn Saud and Al Ghazali
-------------------Ali Ibn Saud (980 - 1037), or AVICENNA as he became known in the West, was strongly
influenced by Aristotle. Ibn Saud (like Aquinas) considered that the Universe depended on
God BUT he also considered that the Universe and many other things such as souls were
eternal and not created. Aristotle had held that the Universe had always existed and Jewish,
Christian and Islamic philosophers had great difficulty reconciling this with their Scriptures
which saw the Universe being created by God from nothing.
Al-Ghazali (the Sunni philosopher) went so far as to declare Ibn Saud’s philosophy un-Islamic.
Ibn Saud was writing at a time when there was considerable openness to new ideas. There was
no clearly defined orthodoxy and this led to a liberal and open-minded approach to the
relationship between philosophy and religious belief. After Al-Ghazali, however, Islamic
orthodoxy came to reject Ibn Saud’s approach and to insist on the view that the world was
created from nothing by God. After Al-Ghazali, the previous openness in Islamic philosophy
was radically circumscribed and philosophers had to operate within relatively narrow limits
which represented what by then had been determined as orthodoxy.
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Al-Ghazali’s insistence that Aristotle and Ibn Saud were mistaken and that God brought the
world into existence led to the Kalam argument, although the order of the assumptions was
reversed.
Essence and Existence
-----------------Three major figures from three different monotheistic traditions all insisted on the same
position regarding God:
- Philo (the Jewish philosopher strongly influenced by Plato),
- Kalam philosophers after Al-Ghazali, and
- The Thomist tradition stemming from St.Thomas Aquinas
all affirmed that, in God, essence and existence are not distinct. In Christianity this was to
give rise to the emphasis on God’s SIMPLICITY which was to form the core idea in the Roman
Catholic theological understanding of God. This holds that God is not a being who has
attributes. God is not a being who happens to exist, in God essence and existence are not
distinct. God’s essence is to exist.
However they claimed that in the case of all created things (including the Universe as a
whole) essence and existence are distinct. This meant that the existence of the Universe
had to depend on God and the Universe had to be brought into existence by God. The
Universe could not necessarily exist - instead the Universe, like all other created things,
depended for its existence on God.
Again this pointed to the Kalam argument as the world had to be brought into existence
(something Aristotle had denied). It is, perhaps, significant that Aquinas held that there was
no way of proving that the Universe was created and began to exist - he held this to be true,
but the truth depended on revelation from God and not on reason.
From the above it can be seen that the Kalam philosophers had reason to take as their
starting point the claim that the Universe had a beginning and it is this that is the starting
point for the Kalam argument.
WILLIAM CRAIG’S KALAM ARGUMENT
--------------------------------Craig has put forward a new version of the so-called KALAM ARGUMENT1 because it
originated among Islamic philosophers. This can be summarised in three statements:
1.
1
Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence,
W.L. Craig ‘The Kalam Cosmological Argument’
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2.
The universe began to exist,
3.
Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence.
It is difficult to prove (1), although one may feel that it is intuitively probable. Craig says:
...it is so intuitively obvious that I think scarcely anyone could sincerely believe it to be false.’ 2
yet some hold that at the micro-particle level there are uncaused events and if even ONE
beginning could be shown not to have a cause, then premise (1) is false and the argument
collapses. Paul Davies has argued that premise (1) is false3 - it appears that electrons can pass
out of existence at one point and re-appear somewhere else. Craig has replied to this4 saying
that this does not affect the Kalam argument, as in modern physics a vacuum is not nothing,
but rather a state of minimal energy - the electron fluctuations, he holds, are due to vacuum
fluctuations and these electrons are not coming into existence from nothing as his critics
maintain.
Craig puts forward a number of arguments to support premise (2). The main ones are:
1.
An actual infinite cannot exist
2.
A beginningless temporal series of events is an actual infinite
3.
Therefore a beginningless series of events cannot exist.
Craig’s argument for the first point appeals to a library with an infinite number of red books
and an infinite number of black books. It follows that there are as many red books as black
books and as many red and black books together as there are red books. This is absurd as the
situation would arise that the subset of red books which is half the total of red and black
books is both half the total and yet is equal to it. So, Craig maintains, an actual infinite is
impossible - it is a possibility in the world of mathematical ideas but nowhere else. This seems
persuasive, but the real problem occurs with the second of the above steps - i.e. with the
claim that a beginningless temporal sequence is an actual infinite. Aristotle considered that
there was a difference between an actual and a potential infinite - an actual infinite was one
that existed at a particular time whereas a potential infinite was one that was never arrived
at but which one could move towards through the passage of time. If Aristotle is right, then
Craig is wrong, however Craig’s point is that the Universe is actual and if the Universe did not
have a beginning then the universe is an actual infinite - and this is absurd.
Craig’s second argument stems from the discovery of background radiation in the Universe by
Bell Laboratories scientists in 1965. This pointed to an initial explosive creation of the
Universe which has been termed the ‘Big Bang’.
The Big Bang seems to support the origin of the Universe from a singularity. However this is
by no means proven and there may have been a preceding state (even if we do not know what
W.L. Craig Reasonable Faith p. 92
Paul Davies Superforce (Simon and Schuster New York, 1984) p. 200
4
W.L. Craig and Q. Smith Theism, Atheism and the Big Bang Cosmology Oxford 1993 p. 121-3
2
3
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it was) which would explain the eventual existence of the Universe. We can express this by
asking whether, if the Universe began with a Big Bang, there was a preceding state of affairs
that caused the Big Bang. This is problematic as in the first few hundred thousandths of a
second, time ceases to exist and no-one quite knows what happens. It may even be nonsensical
to talk of a ‘preceding’ state of affairs as many scientists hold that time came into existence
with matter immediately after the singularity and if this is accepted then there can be no
preceding state.
The Big Bang
----------At the Big Bang, the initial singularity exploded at a rate faster than the speed of light.
Nuclear explosions took place giving rise to concentrations of hydrogen and helium and some
of the lithium found in inter-stellar space. After, perhaps, 300 000 years, the initial fireball
dropped to a temperature a little below the present temperature of the sun allowing
electrons to form orbits rounds atoms and releasing photons or light. This initial flash can
today be measured as background radiation at microwave frequencies equivalent to a
temperature of about 2.7 kelvin (The kelvin scale begins at absolute zero and this
temperature is equivalent to -273.16 degrees centigrade).
The Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe is widely accepted and appears to explain a
great deal, but recent observations also cast doubt on it and it is far from clear that the
theory is adequate. Even if it is adequate, it seems that a great deal still remains to b
explained which the conventional Big Bang theory cannot explain. The problems with the Big
Bang theory include the following:
1) The Hubble Space telescope has been measuring distances to other galaxies and these
observations suggest that the universe is much younger than the big bang theory implies. This
is because the universe is expanding much faster than previously assumed - this implies a
cosmic age of as little as eight billion years - about half the current estimate. On the other
hand, other data indicates that certain stars are at least 14 billion years.
2) A group of astronomers who have become known as ‘The Seven Samaurai’ have found
evidence of what they call ‘The Great Attractor’ located near the southern constellations of
Hydra and Cantaurus which draw stars towards it. There seems no basis for such a ‘great
attractor’ on the Big Bang Theory which sees galaxies and stars flying apart after the initial
explosion.
3) Big Bang theorists maintain that the initial explosion was extremely smooth - this is based
on the uniformity of the background radiation left behind as throughout the Universe this
background radiation seems (according to current measurements) to be much the same.
However Margaret Geller, John Huchra and others at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophy’ have found a great wall of galaxies about 500 million lights years in length across
the northern sky and if these observations are accurate than the smoothness and uniformity
of the Big Bang would seem to be questionable. If the Big Bang was NOT smooth, then
questions arise as to why the variations occur and, indeed, whether there was a Big Bang in
the first place.
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There are a number of alternatives to the Big Bang theory including the idea of ‘continuous
creation’, whereby matter is continually coming into existence perhaps in different parts of
the Universe. No certainty is possible - the Big Bang theory remains at best a plausible
theory, but no more than that at present and there is too much evidence against it to have
any certainty. It is important to remember that for hundreds of years a Newtonian
understanding of the Universe which held that light travels in straight lines and that time is
an absolute was considered to be ‘obviously’ true - all the evidence seemed to support Newton
until Einstein came along and showed the theory to be false. Today there is much more
evidence against the Big Bang than there was against a Newtonian understanding of the
Universe and the chances of the Big Bang theory being mistaken are correspondingly higher.
Even if the Big Bang theory is accepted, it is compatible with two rival hypotheses:
1. The Oscillating Universe model. This holds that the universe goes through an infinite
series of cycles, expanding and then contracting into a singularity before expanding
again.
2. The Infinitely expanding Universe model. This holds that there was an initial explosion
from the singularity and the Universe will keep expanding forever from this.
There is now some evidence that the Infinitely Expanding Universe model is more likely than
the Oscillating model. IF this is right - and it is still far from clear - this could point to the
Universe having had a beginning and thus support the Kalam argument’s second premise.
However there is no certainty about whether even the Big Bang theory is correct. It must be
recognized that science really cannot help to decide questions in philosophy. There is no
certainty from science on the origins of the Universe. The Big Bang theory still seems
plausible but there are many alternatives. One theory is ‘continuous creation’, that matter is
continually coming into existence. One trouble with the Kalam argument is that the more it
seems to rely on science, the more vulnerable it is to science offering alternative
explanations.
It is also significant to note that all the argument ends up with is the claim that there is a
cause of the universe - the identification of this cause with God is, as with Aquinas'
arguments, problematic. It also depends on holding that God did not begin to exist (as clearly
then one could ask what caused God?). God, to fulfil the requirements of the Kalam argument,
needs to be the uncaused cause, the de re necessarily existent being - in other words the
argument points to the sort of God that the kalam philosophers wished to establish, a god
whose essence included existence. The cultural relativity of the argument and the reasons for
its origins should be clear from these notes. The issue today is whether, freed from the
assumptions that underlay the world view of the time, the argument can succeed in
establishing the existence of the God to which it is intended to point.
Dr. Peter Vardy
Vice-Principal
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Heythrop College
University of London