The Kalam Cosmological Argument, Volume 1

Philosophical Arguments for the Finitude of the Past

Paul Copan, William Lane Craig, Paul Copan, William Lane Craig

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781501330803
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Did the universe begin to exist? If so, did it have a cause? Or could it have come into existence uncaused, from nothing? These questions are taken up by the medieval-though recently-revived- kalam cosmological argument, which has arguably been the most discussed philosophical argument for God's existence in recent decades. The kalam 's line of reasoning maintains that the series of past events cannot be infinite but rather is finite. Since the universe could not have come into being uncaused, there must be a transcendent cause of the universe's beginning, a conclusion supportive of theism. This anthology on the philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past asks: Is an infinite series of past events metaphysically possible? Should actual infinites be restricted to theoretical mathematics, or can an actual infinite exist in the concrete world? These essays by kalam proponents and detractors engage in lively debate about the nature of infinity and its conundrums; about frequently-used kalam argument paradoxes of Tristram Shandy, the Grim Reaper, and Hilbert's Hotel; and about the infinity of the future.

Part One

Whatever Begins to Exist Has a Cause

1

A New Critique of Theological Interpretations of Physical Cosmology

Adolf Grünbaum

1 Introduction

In Richard Gale’s ([1991]) book On the Nature and Existence of God, he devotes a very penetrating chapter ([1991], Ch. 7) to a critique of cosmological arguments for the existence of God, after giving a generic characterization of all such arguments. As is well known, there are different species of such arguments. But Gale reaches the following negative verdict on the genus (p. 284):

My two arguments [. . .] constitute ontological disproofs of the existence of the very sort of being whose existence is asserted in the conclusion of every version of the cosmological argument, thereby showing that these arguments are radically defective. These ontological disproofs, however, do not pinpoint the defective spot in these arguments.

My initial aim in this paper is precisely to pinpoint the defects of the time-honored arguments for perpetual divine creation given by a succession of theists including Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, as well as by the present-day theists Richard Swinburne and Philip L. Quinn. One of these defects will also turn out to vitiate a pillar of the medieval Arabic kalām argument for a creator (Craig [1979]).

2 The nonexistence of the actual world as its purported ‘natural’ state

2.1 Swinburne and Leibniz on the normalcy of nothingness

In Richard Swinburne’s extensive writings in defense of (Christian) theism, notably in his books ([1991], [1996]), he presents two versions of his argument for his fundamental thesis that ‘the most natural state of affairs of the existing world and even of God is not to exist at all!’ As he put it ([1996], p. 48): ‘It is extraordinary that there should exist anything at all. Surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing: no universe, no God, nothing. But there is something.’ It will be expeditious to deal first with the more recent ([1996]) version of his case, and then with his earlier ([1979], [1991]) substantial articulation of Leibniz’s argument from a priori simplicity.

Surprisingly, Swinburne deems the existence of something or other to be ‘extraordinary’, i.e. literally out of the ordinary. To the contrary, surely, the most pervasively ordinary feature of our experience is that we are immersed in an ambiance of existence. Swinburne’s initial assertion here is, at least prima facie, a case of special pleading in the service of a prior philosophical agenda. Having made that outlandish claim, Swinburne builds on it, averring that ‘surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing.’ Hence he regards the cosmic existential question ‘Why is there anything at all, rather than just nothing?’ as paramount.

As we know, the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament starts with the assertion that, in the beginning, God created heaven and earth from scratch. And, as John Leslie ([1978], p. 185) pointed out, ‘when modern Western philosophers have a tendency to ask it [i.e. the existential question above], possibly this is only because they are heirs to centuries of Judaeo-Christian thought.’ This conjecture derives added poignancy from Leslie’s observation that ‘To the general run of Greek thinkers the mere existence of a thing [or of the world] was nothing remarkable. Only their changing patterns provoked [causal] inquisitiveness.’ And Leslie mentions Aristotle’s views as countenancing the acceptance of ‘reasonless existence’.

Yet there is a long history of sometimes emotion-laden, deep puzzlement, even on the part of atheists such as Heidegger, about the mere existence of our world (Edwards [1967]). Thus, Wittgenstein ([1993], p. 41) acknowledged the powerful psychological reality of wondering at the very existence of the world. Yet logically, he rejected the question altogether as ‘nonsense’, because he ‘cannot imagine its [the world’s] not existing’ (pp. 41–42), by which he may perhaps have meant not only our world, but more generally, as Rescher ([1984], p. 5) points out, some world or other. Wittgenstein could be convicted of a highly impoverished imagination, if he could not imagine the nonexistence of just our particular world.

Before turning to the logical aspects of the cosmic existential question, let me mention a psychological conjecture as to why not only theists, but also some atheists, find that question so pressing. For example, Heidegger ([1953], p. 1) deemed ‘Why is there anything at all, rather than just nothing?’ the most fundamental question of metaphysics. Yet he offered no indication of an answer to it, and he saw its source in our facing nothingness in our existential anxiety.

I gloss this psychological hypothesis as surmising that our deeply instilled fear of death has prompted us to wonder why we exist so precariously. And we may then have extrapolated this precariousness, more or less unconsciously, to the existence of the universe as a whole.

Psychological motivations aside, let me recast Swinburne’s aforecited statement ‘The most natural state of affairs is simply nothing’ to read instead ‘The most natural state of the existing world is to not exist at all’. This reformulation avoids the hornet’s nest inherent in the question as to the sheer intelligibility of utter nothingness qua purportedly normal state of our world.¹

Yet my reformulation is still conceptually troublesome: How can non-existence at all be coherently a state, natural or otherwise, of the actual, existing world? Swinburne speaks vaguely of ‘the most natural state of affairs’, leaving it unclear whether his ‘state of affairs’ pertains only to our actual world or also to any other logically possible world that might have existed instead. But it is clear that he has in mind at least our actual world, in which case my reformulation of his claim is incoherent and not helpful. The stronger claim pertaining to any alternative world as well was perhaps intended by Derek Parfit ([1998]), who wrote (p. 24): ‘why is there a Universe at all? It might have been true that nothing ever existed: no living beings, no stars, no atoms, not even space or time [. . .] No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing.’

No matter whether one is considering Swinburne’s original formulation, or Parfit’s ‘It might have been true that nothing existed’, it is surely epistemically appropriate to ask for the grounds on which Swinburne and Parfit respectively rests his assertion. Parfit does not tell us, whereas Swinburne does. Therefore, I shall scrutinize Swinburne’s argument for it, and also Leibniz’s.

I shall offer my own reasons for endorsing Henri Bergson’s injunction as follows: We should never assume that the ‘natural thing’ would be the existence of nothing. He rested this proscription on grounds radically different from mine, when he declared: ‘The presupposition that de jure there should be nothing, so that we must explain why de facto there is something, is pure illusion.’² But Bergson’s reasons for charging illusoriness are conceptual and a priori, whereas mine will turn out to be empirical.

As we know, a long theistic tradition has it that this de jure presupposition is correct and that there must therefore be an explanatory cause external to the world for its very existence; furthermore, it is argued that this external cause is an omnipotent, omni-benevolent and omniscient personal God.

But, in outline, my challenge to this reasoning will be as follows: (i) In this context, the question ‘What is the external cause of the very existence of the universe?’ is avowedly predicated on the doctrine that, in Swinburne’s words, ‘Surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing’; (ii) Yet, as I shall argue in detail, just this doctrine is ill-founded, contrary to the arguments for it offered by Leibniz and Swinburne; and (iii) Therefore, the question calling for an external cause of the very existence of the world is a non-starter, i.e. it poses a pseudo-problem. By the same token, the answer that an omnipotent God is that cause will turn out to be ill-founded.

What are the appropriate grounds for gleaning what is indeed the natural, spontaneous, normal state of the world in the absence of an intervening external cause? In opposition to an a priori conceptual dictum of naturalness, I have previously argued from the history of science that changing evidence makes the verdict inevitably empirical rather than a priori (Grünbaum [1996], [1998]). Here, a summary will have to suffice.

I welcome Swinburne’s use of the phrase ‘natural state of affairs’ ([1996], p. 48), which dovetails with the parlance I used, when I elaborated on the notion of ‘natural state’ by speaking of it as the ‘spontaneous, externally undisturbed, or normal’ state. In essence, Swinburne’s claim that ‘the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing’ had been enunciated essentially by Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, and a host of other theists. Hereafter, I shall designate this thesis as asserting ‘the spontaneity of nothingness’, or ‘SoN’ for brevity.

In my parlance, the terms ‘natural’, ‘spontaneous’, ‘normal’, and ‘externally unperturbed’ serve to characterize the historically dictated theory-relative behavior of physical and biological systems, when they are not subject to any external influences, agencies or forces. In earlier writings (Grünbaum [1954], [1990], [1996], [1998]), I called attention to the theory-relativity of such naturalness or spontaneity by means of several examples from physics and biology.

Thus, I pointed out ([1996], [1998], sections 3 and 4) that the altogether ‘natural’ behavior of suitable subsystems in the now defunct original Bondi & Gold Steady-State World is as follows: Without any interference by a physical influence external to the subsystem, let alone by an external matter-creating agency or God, matter pops into existence spontaneously in violation of Lavoisier’s matter-conservation. This spontaneous popping into existence follows deductively from the conjunction of the theory’s postulated matter-density-conservation with the Hubble law of the expansion of the universe. For just that reason, I have insisted on the use of the agency-free term ‘matter-accretion’ to describe this process, and have warned against the use of the agency-loaded term ‘matter-creation’.

In the same vein, I emphasized that according to Galileo and to Newton’s first law of motion, it is technically ‘natural’ that a force-free particle moves uniformly and rectilinearly, whereas Aristotle’s physics asserted that a force is required as the external cause of any sublunar body’s non-vertical uniform rectilinear motion. In short, Aristotle clashed with Galileo and Newton as to the ‘natural’, spontaneous, dynamically unperturbed behavior of a body, which Aristotle deemed to be one of rest at its proper place. Thus, Galileo and Newton eliminated a supposed external dynamical cause on empirical grounds, explaining that uniform motion can occur spontaneously without such a cause.

But, if so, then the Aristotelian demand for a causal explanation of any non-vertical motion whatever by reference to an external perturbing force is predicated on a false underlying assumption. Clearly, the Aristotelians then begged the question by tenaciously continuing to ask: ‘What net external force, pray tell, keeps a uniformly moving body going?’ Thus, scientific and philosophical questions can be anything but innocent by loading the dice with a petitio principii!

An example from biology yields the same lesson. It has been said that Louis Pasteur ‘disproved’ the ‘spontaneous’ generation of life from nonliving substances. Actually, he worked with sterilized materials over a cosmically minuscule time-interval, and showed that bacteria in an oxidizing atmosphere would not grow in these sterilized materials. From this he inferred that the natural, unperturbed behavior of nonliving substances precludes the spontaneous generation of living things. That was in 1862. But in 1938, A. I. Oparin in the then Soviet Union, and in 1952, H. Urey in the United States rehabilitated the hypothesis of the spontaneous generation of life to the following ef...