#806 Questions about the KCA
October 23, 2022Dear Dr. Craig,
I am currently reading your book reasonable faith (theologisch) in the endeavour of trying to understand whether the christian faith is true or not.
I wanted to ask for clarification about your conclusion of the Kalam cosmological argument, that the first cause must be:
Time- & Spaceless
Immensely powerful
And personal
What definition of time- and spaceless are you using? It is unclear for me whether you mean independent of space time in general or simply independent of our space time.
I wanted to ask for clarification about your use of the term unimaginably powerful (unvorstellbar mächtig). Do you mean to suggest that the cause is omnipotent, or do you conclude that the cause must be sufficiently powerful to create the universe?
Lastly you conclude the personal trait from the previous traits. It appears to me that many more options with these traits are possible (e.g. meta space time or energy itself).
Furthermore, I wanted to clarify why you see the possibility of a space and timeless mind. As far as i know, no such thing was demonstrated to exist.
I also wanted to ask for clarification of how causation would work with no space time.
Thank you very much in advance,
Cyril
Germany
Dr. craig’s response
A
I’m delighted to have a question from Germany, Cyril, and especially from someone who is investigating the truth of the Christian faith! I hope that I can be of help and encouragement to you in your quest.
What definition of “timeless” and “spaceless” am I using? I mean “having neither temporal location nor extension” and “having neither spatial location nor extension,” where something has a temporal and spatial location iff it exists at a moment of time and at a place in space, and something has a temporal and spatial extension iff it persists in time and is extended in space. These definitions are intended to be completely general.
I deliberately used the expression “unimaginably powerful” rather than “omnipotent” because we cannot infer from the First Cause’s creation of the universe that it is literally omnipotent in the philosophical sense; but in order to create the entire universe without a material cause it must be unimaginably powerful, if not omnipotent.
Ask for the personal traits of the First Cause, I’d recommend that you look again at the three arguments I give for the personhood of the Creator. My arguments are: (1) the cause of the origin of the universe must be either an abstract object or an unembodied mind, and abstract objects are not causes; (2) only a personal cause can explain the origin of a temporal effect with a beginning from an eternal cause; (3) there are two types of causal explanation, personal and scientific, and there cannot be a scientific explanation of a first physical state of the universe. As I reflect on these arguments, I think that they are quite compelling. The alternatives you mention (meta-spacetime or energy itself) are excluded by the philosophical and scientific arguments for an absolute beginning of the universe, including all matter and energy and time itself. So the question comes back to the arguments in support of the second premise of the KCA, that the universe began to exist.
The above three arguments just are arguments for the existence of an unembodied Mind which is the Creator of the universe. In fact we have confirmation of the existence of such a cosmic Mind in other theistic arguments, such as the argument from the fine-tuning of the universe, the argument from the applicability of mathematics to physical phenomena, and the moral argument from the objectivity of moral values and duties. This Mind must exist timelessly and spacelessly, since time and space began to exist. No incoherence has been demonstrated in the existence of such a Mind.
Finally, as for the truth of the causal principle, the key point is that it is not just a physical principle like a law of nature that applies only within our universe. Rather it is a metaphysical principle: being comes only from being. This metaphysical principle, as old as Parmenides, requires that anything that begins to exist has a cause.
Notice that causal priority does not entail temporal priority. In my view God’s causing the universe to come into being is simultaneous with the universe’s coming into being.
- William Lane Craig