I want to use the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Please create this entire scenario. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is as follows:Kalam Cosmological Argument Our first argument is one version of a family of arguments called “cosmological” arguments. We see that the universe exists, and that fact demands some explanation. Cosmological arguments seek to demonstrate that God exists as the cause of the existence of the cosmos (or universe). Largely the product of medieval Arabic philosophers, the kalam cosmological argument contends that the universe’s having a beginning implies the existence of an ultimate Cause. Marveling at the enormity and splendor of the universe naturally evokes questions: did the universe have a beginning, or is it simply beginningless? If it began, was its beginning caused or uncaused? If caused, what was the nature of that cause? Ancient Greek philosophers held that, while God may have been needed to bring order to the universe, the materials composing the universe are themselves uncreated and eternal. Long before the Greeks, ancient Hebrew cosmology held the sharply contrasting view that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). This view of a caused beginning of the universe was later affirmed by New Testament Christians, evidenced, for example, in John 1:1–3. William Lane Craig’s formulation of the kalam argument is straightforward. Figure 3.2 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence. William Lane Craig The argument is logically valid (to see this, notice that if the two premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true), but does it contain plausible premises? One of the historically most well-established philosophical principles is ex nihilo nihil fit (“from nothing, nothing comes”). The idea is that something simply cannot derive from nothing, and this is the claim of our first premise. The concept of “nothing,” after all, just means “non-being” (or “absence of existence”). In other words, existence does not—indeed, cannot—come from nonexistence; if some X begins to exist, then X’s existence is not the result of just nothing at all. Whereas this principle seems, to us, at least, intuitive and noncontroversial, it has nevertheless faced challenge of late. Consider the apparent absurdity of denying premise (1), that is, the possibility of things (staplers, babies, galaxies) suddenly beginning to exist from nothing. Are any of us genuinely open to this possibility? Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss, for one, insists the universe did come into existence from “nothing.” Tellingly, though, his claim rests on a redefinition of “nothing” as being “every bit as physical as ‘something,’ especially if it is to be defined as the ‘absence of something.’ ” This is probably as unclear to you as it is to us! It is not hard to detect the error: if some X (a quantum vacuum, say, or just empty space and energy) has any properties whatsoever, then that X is not nothing; if some X has physical properties, then that X is, in fact, something. What about the claim that the universe began to exist? In addition to amazing discoveries in physics and cosmology, we have strong philosophical evidence that the universe must have begun at some point in the finite past. To see this consider the denial of premise (2): the claim that the universe is beginningless. If the universe had no beginning, then its past consists of an actually infinite number of temporal events (or, if you prefer, has existed through an actually infinite number of days). Obviously the collection of events comprising history did not occur all at once. Rather, it is a collection that has been formed successively, that is, by adding one event at a time, one after another, sequentially (event after event, day after day, year after year), until we arrive at the present moment. Therefore, to claim that the universe is beginningless is to claim that the collection of past events has been growing this way from infinity past up to the present. A little careful thinking, however, reveals this is problematic. Imagine you’re taking a road trip. You’ve been driving for some time, and you begin to wonder how much farther away is your destination. You pull into a rest stop to calculate how many miles you’ve already driven and to deduce the remaining distance, but notice: this is only possible because there is a fixed distance between your starting point and your destination. Now imagine that your destination is an actually infinite number of miles from your starting point. In this case, regardless of how many miles you’ve driven before pulling into the rest stop, an actually infinite number of miles remain—you’ll literally never arrive! What happens when we apply that reasoning to the history of the universe? If the universe’s history is actually infinite, then today would never arrive because an actually infinite number of days would first have to come and go. Yet here we are at today, and so it seems the denial of premise (2) is implausible. From the premises of the kalam argument, therefore, we conclude that the universe did have a beginning in the finite past and that beginning requires a cause. Not just any cause will do, however. For example, no cause that is merely physical, spatial, or temporal will do because “the universe” includes matter, space, and time; each of these stand in need of a transcendent Cause. When we consider that this Cause brought the universe into existence a finite time ago out of nothing, we realize this Cause must have chosen to do so and is therefore personal in nature. In addition to being transcendent and personal, the Cause of the universe must also be breathtakingly intelligent and powerful—if not omniscient and omnipotent. Paul Gould, Travis Dickinson, and Keith Loftin, Stand Firm: Apologetics and the Brilliance of the Gospel (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2018), 38–41. Book title: Apologetics STAND and the Brillance Firm of the gospel by Paul M. Gould/Travis Dickinson/R. Keith Loftin
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