Happy end of January to you. I am in an email discussion with two friends on the philosophical argument showing God's existence. The first argument that is being used is called the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The Kalam argument was named after the Kalam tradition of Islamic discursive philosophy through which it was first formulated. In Arabic, the word Kalam means "words, discussion, discourse." The cosmological argument was first introduced by Aristotle and later refined by Al-Kindi, and Al-Ghazali. In Western Europe, it was adopted by the Christian theologian and Saint of the Roman Catholic Church, Thomas Aquinas. (this from Wikipedia.) And the argument is summarized as follows:
Angelfire website: M. Sheffield
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What evidence is there that God exists? here is one proof; it's called the Kalam cosmological argument. It is a cosmological argument because it has to do with the cosmos, or the universe. The argument may be formulated as follows:
- Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
After establishing the first two premises, the conclusion, that the universe has a cause, logically follows, forming a valid argument. So how does this outcome act as evidence which points to God's existence? As we will see, many inferences can be made about the characteristics that can be applied to this First Cause, absent of any special revelation.
What ever begins to exist has a cause. This is called the Law of Causality and is usually non-controversial, for most realize intuitively that a cause is necessary for the existence of something. Imagine a police chase down a busy express-way where a bank robber is accelerating at dangerously high speeds. The thief soon looses control, slamming into the concrete wall, ending the pursuit. As police enter the vehicle they drag the man out, immediately handcuffing him, and locate the hulking bag of stolen money in the passenger seat. When questioned about where the money came from, the bank robber calmly replied, "Nowhere."
"Nowhere?" the officer asked.
"Yeah, it came from nowhere," the robber repeated. The officer paused and looked at the overflowing sack of cash, then back at the thief.
"Okay." And he released the man.
A story like this is extremely unlikely, unless the police officer is trying to lose his job of course. Why? Because most people realize that something cannot come from nothing. What may be important is to try and picture nothingness in your mind. If you have succeeded in imagining nothingness, then you have already failed because nothing is nothing, and if you are picturing something, then that is clearly not nothing. Absolute nothingness is not some vast empty space, because even empty space is something. Once one grasps the concept of absolute nothingness, it is clear that something cannot pop into existence from nothing without some cause to explain its existence.
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Ex nihilo, nihil fit, "nothing comes from nothing."
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We can be confident in the Law of Causality for a couple of reasons. First our everyday experience confirms it and it is never falsified. Have you ever witnessed something pop into existence, out of thin air without a cause? Me neither. Actually, the exact opposite always happens. When something begins to exist, that is, something at one time did not exist, and then later on it does exist, a cause is always involved. Take a table for example. When you look at a table, do you ever think to yourself, "I wonder if someone made that table, or if it just popped into existence uncaused?" No, because we know by experience that the Law of Causality is true. Someone had to have made that table. Secondly, the Law of Causality is verified by Science. Science would be impossible if not for the Law of Causality, for what is science if not a search for causes? The point is that something cannot come from nothing. What does come from nothing? Ex nihilo, nihil fit, "nothing comes from nothing." …
