A Reply to Wielenberg on a Timeless First Cause

Erik Wielenberg seeks to advance his critique of the kalām cosmological argument by putting forward three further criticisms of the view that God is temporal since the moment of creation. It is seen that these criticisms are misconceived and do not take cognizance of what I have written elsewhere.

THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: CRITIQUING A RECENT DEFENCE

ABSTRACTIn the late 1970s the big bang model of cosmology was widely accepted and interpreted as implying the universe had a beginning. At the end of that decade William Lane Craig revived an argument for God known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) based on this scientific consensus. Furthermore, he linked the big bang to the supposed biblical concept of creation ex nihilo found in Genesis. I shall critique Craig's position as expressed in a more recent update and argue that contemporary cosmology no longer understands the big bang as the ultimate beginning, seriously undermining the KCA. I will further contend that book of Genesis should not be understood as describing creation ex nihilo anyway.

Craig's Contradictory Kalam: Trouble at the Moment of Creation

William Lane Craig’s much-discussed kalam cosmological argument for God’s existence is intended to provide support for a particular theistic explanation of the origin of the universe. I argue here that Craig’s theistic account of the origin of the universe entails two contradictions and hence should be rejected. The main contribution of the paper is the identification of some relatively straightforward but previously unrecognized problems in Craig’s hypothesis that the beginning of the universe was a temporal effect of a timeless personal cause.

Finite-length timelike paths and Kalam cosmological argument

Suppose one accepts the argument that past infinity is not acceptable. This does not eliminate the possibility that the beginning of time is not equivalent across objects. Along with breakdown of absolute simultaneity of events in relativity, there may even be no agreement on whether an event existed. There may be no consistent way to totally order events. In such a case, despite every object, conscious or not, having finite lifetime, there may be no single point called 'the beginning', and the universe stays as it is without requiring a cause of existence.

Review of P. Copan and Craig, W. (eds.) The Kalām Cosmological Argument Volume Two: Scientific Evidence for the Beginning of the Universe

This is a commissioned review of Copan, P. and Craig, W. (eds.) The Kalām Cosmological Argument Volume Two: Scientific Evidence for the Beginning of the Universe New York: Bloomsbury, US$172.50, ISBN 978-1-50-133587-7