the kalam cosmological argument

The development of big bang cosmology has led to renewed scholarly and global public interest concerning the question of first-cause and the traditional kalam cosmological argument (kca) for the existence of god. nevertheless, while the big bang is commonly understood as the beginning of space-time, many cosmologists are now discussing pre-big bang scenarios in which the big bang is not the absolute beginning. on the other hand, cosmologist george ellis (2007) notes, with respect to the criteria for a good scientific theory (internal consistency, explanatory power, etc.), that ‘these criteria are philosophical in nature in that they themselves cannot be proven to be correct by any experiment. rather their choice is based on past experience combined with philosophical reflection.’ in view of the importance of philosophical considerations, cosmologists should not ignore the philosophical problems associated with certain models of the universe, such as problems concerning traversing an actual infinite, the violation of causal principle, etc. indeed, scientists who are well-informed about the importance of philosophy have used philosophical arguments against an infinite regress to argue against cosmological models that postulate an infinite past (e.g. ellis et al. 2004). this indicates that philosophical arguments are relevant for modern cosmology. in this paper, i shall develop a new philosophical argument taken from my book god and ultimate origins, which demonstrates that, if every prior entity in a causal chain has a beginning, then given the causal principle ‘everything that begins to exist requires a cause’ nothing would ever begin to exist, therefore what is required is a beginningless first cause. in addition, i shall develop a new modus tollens argument for the causal principle which addresses the objections by oppy (2015) and others, and which demonstrates that, if something (say, the universe) begins to exist uncaused, then some other things which begin to exist would also begin uncaused, which is not the case, therefore the antecedent is not the case. i shall show how this argument can be modified to address the apparent challenge of fundamental physics to the directionality of causality and time (linford 2020) by understanding ‘beginning of existence’ more broadly as ‘finitude in temporal extension’. with these new arguments, it can be demonstrated that the kca is compatible with the static theory of time and hence has no problem with the theory of relativity. in response to hawking’s (2010) proposal that the initial state of the universe consisted of a timeless (no boundary) state, which can be understood as a beginningless impersonal first cause, i shall use these new arguments to show that an infinite regress of events is impossible and the first event did not begin to exist uncaused. thus the first change must have been caused by a first cause which was initially changeless, and which must have libertarian freedom in order to bring about the first event from an initially changeless state, and therefore is a personal creator. hence, it is rational to believe that a creator god of the universe exists.