A Muslim Contemplates the Kalam

KEVIN HARRIS: Someone sent me a Facebook post from a Muslim known as Rasheed who spells out a couple of arguments similar to the kalam along with five questions for Christians. First off, apparently there's something in Muslim culture that makes them appreciative of the features of the kalam. Perhaps this is al-Ghazali’s influence. Bill?

DR. CRAIG: The kalam argument was very prominent in medieval Islam. That was why I adopted the name kalam to designate this particular version of the cosmological argument. So there is a long storied history in Islamic culture and thought of kalam. Recently, when I was in Turkey, I had the opportunity to speak at an institute of kalam. It was a sort of Islamic theological seminary. I spoke on the argument, defended it, and afterwards one of the professors came up to me and he said, “You are a better proponent of kalam than our theologians!” I said, “Coming from you, that's quite a compliment! Thank you very much.” So certainly this is a way of building bridges with Muslims.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the first part of the post. This is a lot of fun here. We've discussed so many illustrations of the kalam; I don't know if we've ever discussed this one. Quoting now, he says,

Imagine you walk out of your house and on your street you find a row of dominoes that stretch far beyond what your eyes can see. You start to hear a noise that gets slightly louder as time passes. This noise is familiar to you, as you used to play with dominoes as a child; it is the sound of them falling. Eventually, you see this amazing display of falling dominoes approaching you. You greatly admire how the basic laws of physics can produce such a remarkable spectacle; however, you are also saddened because the last domino has now fallen a few inches away from your feet. Still excited about what has just happened, you decide to walk down the street to find the first domino, hoping to meet the person responsible for producing this wonderful experience.

Keeping the above scenario in mind, I want to ask you a few questions. As you walk down your street, will you eventually reach where the chain of dominoes began? Or will you keep on walking forever? The obvious response is that you will eventually find the first domino. However, I want you to ask why. The reason you know that you will find the first domino is because you understand that if the domino chain went on forever, the last domino that fell by your feet would never have fallen. An infinite number of dominoes would have to fall before the last domino could fall. Yet an infinite amount of falling dominoes would take an infinite amount of time to fall. In other words, the last domino would never fall. Putting this in simple terms, you know that in order for the last domino to fall, the domino behind must fall prior to it, and for that domino to fall, the domino behind it must fall prior to it. If this went on forever, the last domino would never fall.^[1]

There's yet another illustration to add to the arsenal. I don't think we've used the domino illustration. Any changes or additions you'd make to his illustration?

DR. CRAIG: I agree with Rasheed that the final domino would never fall, but I would issue the correction that that is not the same as saying that it would take an infinite amount of time for that event to happen. I think it's very difficult to see though how an infinite amount of time could elapse any more than how an infinite number of dominoes could fall one domino at a time.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the second part of the argument. He says,

Sticking with the analogy, I want to ask you another question. Let’s say, walking down the street, you finally come across the first domino which led to the falling of the entire chain. What would your thoughts be about the first domino? Would you think this domino fell ‘by itself’? In other words, do you think the falling of the first domino can somehow be explained without referring to anything external to it? Clearly not; that runs against the grain of our basic intuition about reality. Nothing really happens on its own. Everything requires an explanation of some sort. So the first domino’s fall had to have been triggered by something else—a person, the wind or a thing hitting it, etc. Whatever this ‘something else’ is, it has to form a part of our explanation of falling dominoes.

So to sum up our reflections thus far: neither could the chain of dominoes contain an infinite number of items, nor could the first domino start falling for no reason whatsoever.

This above analogy is a summary of the argument from dependency. The universe is somewhat like a row of dominoes. The universe and everything within it is dependent. They cannot depend on something else, which in turn depends on something else, forever. The only plausible explanation is that the universe, and everything within it, has to depend on someone or something whose existence is in some ways independent from the universe (and anything else for that matter). Put differently, this thing must not be ‘dependent’ the way the universe is, because that would just add one more domino to the chain, which would then require an explanation. Therefore, there must be an independent and eternal Being that everything depends upon.^[2]

It sounds also like the argument from contingency.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, it does. I think unfortunately Rasheed has conflated these two versions of the cosmological argument. The analogy of the row of dominoes is illustrative of the kalam cosmological argument which says that anything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause. But the dependency argument, or the argument from contingency, is an argument to the effect that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. And if the universe has an explanation of its existence, it cannot be in the necessity of its own nature, and therefore it must be in an external transcendent cause. Therefore there is an external transcendent cause upon which the universe depends. I think that both of these versions of the argument are sound, but it is important to understand that these are two different cosmological arguments and therefore have a cumulative force in establishing the truth of theism.

KEVIN HARRIS: Completing the article, “Some questions for my Christian friends.” Bill, you can be the Christian friend and answer these.

Does your religion teach that Jesus Christ was a man from all eternity? If so, how would a human being fit into the eternal Trinity?

DR. CRAIG: It's just shocking to me how an intelligent Muslim like Rasheed could display such ignorance of Christian doctrine as is betrayed by this question. In Christian theology Jesus Christ is a divine person. He is the second person of the Trinity, and therefore he is eternal in the Trinity. Then about 2,000 years ago this divine person assumed a human nature in the virginal conception of Jesus. So the person is from eternity, part of the Trinity. But the human nature of Christ begins to exist only around 2,000 years ago with his incarnation.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Does your religion teach that the Holy Spirit is to be worshiped, or is his function just utilitarian in some ways? In other words, do you believe the Holy Spirit performs certain roles or functions but it's not necessary to worship the Holy Spirit?

DR. CRAIG: I would say that as God the Holy Spirit is to be worshiped along with the Father and the Son. He is a divine person and therefore shares in the divine nature with all of its superlative great-making properties. Therefore the Holy Spirit is to be worshiped just as the Father and Son are to be worshiped.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next he asks,

Did Jesus Christ know he was divine even when he was a baby, or did he find out later? If he was God in the flesh, it would seem that his mind would be superior even as a baby, and he would know who he was while reclining in that manger.

DR. CRAIG: According to standard Christian doctrine, Jesus knew that he was divine according to his divine nature but not necessarily according to his human nature. The doctrine of the incarnation is not like Superman disguised as Clark Kent. Rather, the man, Jesus of Nazareth, had an authentic human consciousness that grew from infancy to adulthood. In my own work, I have attempted to provide a model of this by distinguishing in a theologically significant way between the conscious and the subconscious life of Jesus. We are much more as human persons than our waking consciousness. There are deep springs of our behavior in our subconscious, and we all experience this when, for example, someone's name slips our mind and we say, “It is right on the tip of my tongue and I can't bring it back” and then some time later it suddenly comes to us. We knew it all along but it was in our subconscious. So my suggestion is that much of Jesus’ uniquely divine knowledge (knowledge that would be inconsistent with an authentic human experience) was subliminal or subconscious during his so-called state of humiliation from the virginal conception through his death. Therefore we should not imagine Jesus in his conscious waking existence to be reclining in the manger contemplating the infinitesimal calculus.

KEVIN HARRIS: Final question,

The New Testament teaches that all of Christ's enemies would eventually be placed under his feet. Doesn't that sound like warfare and violence are required to accomplish this? So isn't the Christian hypocritical when criticizing Islam for being violent?

DR. CRAIG: When it talks about God putting all things under Jesus' feet, this is at the Judgment Day where God subjects all things to Christ. Then, in turn, Christ delivers the Kingdom to God the Father. This is not an event that takes place in human history brought about by men through jihad. The Christian ethic is very different from the Muslim ethic of evangelism by violence and and warfare. The ethics of Jesus do not permit that. The final Kingdom of Jesus is something that God the Father will bring about after the end of human history when Christ returns again.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we wrap it up today, I think this shows (like you mentioned earlier) for one thing that the kalam cosmological argument proves to be a very fruitful avenue for dialogue between Christians and Muslims and opens the door to further discussion on questions like these others.

DR. CRAIG: I absolutely agree. When I first started reading these questions, I didn't think they were sincere. I thought these were just the trite sort of objections that you often hear from Muslim apologists. But as I read them, I thought he really is sincerely asking these questions to be informed about what Christians believe. So I think we should welcome questions like this, and I'm thrilled that the kalam cosmological argument has proved to be so effective a bridge to Muslims in sharing the Gospel.^[3]