08.24
Mere Agnosticism – Part VI (Cosmological Arguments)
*Part 1, *Part 2, *Part 3, *Part 4, *Part 5
Wow! What a long neglected thread of posts. I’m ashamed that I left this one swinging in the wind like that. I’ll do my best to pick up where I left off. I think that was going to be the so-called cosmological arguments. There are variations of these, but the main one seems to be the Kalam(an arabic word meaning “speech”) cosmological argument. Here is it’s basic form as outlined by William Lane Craig:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
-2.1 Argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite.
–2.11 An actual infinite cannot exist.
–2.12 An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
–2.13 Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.
-2.2 Argument based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition.
–2.21 A collection formed by successive addition cannot be actually infinite.
–2.22 The temporal series of past events is a collection formed by successive addition.
–2.23 Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
–William Lane Craig, 2002, Article
This argument is pretty simple, but it’s also extremely powerful. Step two might look tricky but it’s not. It’s broken down into two proofs for the impossibility of the infinitude of the universe. The first is the impossibility of actual infinites. Everyone is taught in grade school that infinity is just a concept. It’s not even a psuedo-number. The universe, therefore, had to have a beginning since not having one is an infinite regress(lack of a first cause in a causal chain). The second argument is an extension of the first and specifically addresses the only way an infinite could exist. And since successively adding to a collection will never “actually” achieve infinity then infinity’s can’t exist.
