(I’ve got a fascination with Natural Theology and how it can be used to argue for the existence of God. For the next few weeks I will be exploring many of these arguments and how we, even HillBilly Theologians, can use it to make good arguments for the existence of God.)
I think one of the clearest and simple arguments for the existence of God in Natural Theology is the Kalam Cosmological Argument (hereafter KCA). Natural Theology is one branch of theology that relates to understanding God, or that there is a God. It is using the ‘world’ (actually- the entire Universe) around us, and showing how it points to God. A good definition is:
“Traditionally natural theology is the term used for the attempt to prove the existence of God and divine purpose through observation of nature and the use of human reason. Seen in a more positive light natural theology is the part of theology that does not depend on revelation.”î
Natural theology uses various types of arguments, such as cosmological ones. Philosophers and theologians have argued various cosmological arguments, such as; Aristotle’s ‘Unmoved Mover’, Anselm’s (he had various arguments from goodness, works from perfection, and Perfect Being-type theology), and Aquinas’ Five Ways, to name a few. The great philosophers of the past two thousand years of the Church’s existence have offered deep thinking ideas for God’s existence (and here we are dealing with only cosmological), the list can go on and on, in other forms of arguments for God’s existence.
The KCA is unique and again one reason I find it so appealing is its simplicity. It can be formulated as such:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The Universe began to exist
3. The Universe had a cause
This argument has a long history that spans both Christian and Islamic scholarship. It should be noted that it is only a theistic argument, bringing someone to the idea of God, not necessarily the Christian one (thus; Muslims, Jews, and many other theistic traditions can use this argument as well).
“The kalam (Arabic: “eternal”) argument is a horizontal (linear) form of the cosmological argument. The universe is not eternal, so it must have had a Cause. That Cause must be considered God. This argument has a long and venerable history among such Islamic philosophers as Alfarabi, Al Ghazli, and Avicenna. Some scholastic philosophers also used it, especially Bonaventure. The argument, however, was opposed by Thomas Aquinas, who believed it philosophically possible (though biblically untrue) that God could have caused the universe from eternity.”îî
PREMISE 1
Dr. William Lane Craig has argued the KCA for many decades now, and the only true defense against it is either an eternal Universe, which seems illogical, or a multi-universe generator, which has little to no evidence for. Notice one atheist’s argument against premise 1:
“The problem comes when the theist tries to apply natural laws to the universe itself. He is doing the same thing that I did with the number sets above. He is finding a rule that is true inside the universe (i.e. inside “the set”) and saying that it must apply to the universe itself (i.e. to “the set” itself). There is no way to prove that that is the case, though. There is no way to prove that a rule inside the set (i.e. the universe) must apply to the set itself.”îîî
Notice the ‘premise’ of the argument against the KCA; “well…it might not be that way!” The problem with many arguments against the KCA stand on the ‘well-maybe-not-ground’. Why think that the “natural laws” of the Universe don’t apply to the Universe? Matter-of-fact, it would seem to me that the Laws that govern and make our Universe work are Laws that are necessary that the Universe works. We don’t see things ‘pop-into-existence’ on a regular (or irregular) basis. I think premise one is only argued against as people make imaginative assumptions and appeal to assumptions that have no real scientific basis.
Premise 2
The Universe is verifiable as having a beginning, it is observed and documented. For many years one of the argument against there being a God was an eternal-past Universe. One of the most damaging discoveries to this idea was the Big Bang Theory.
“All throughout history men have assumed that the universe as a whole was unchanging. Of course, things in the universe were moving about and changing, but the universe itself was just there, so to speak. This was also Albert Einstein’s assumption when he first began to apply his new theory of gravity, called the General Theory of Relativity, to the universe in 1917.
But Einstein found there was something terribly amiss. His equations described a universe which was either blowing up like a balloon or else collapsing in upon itself. During the 1920s the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman and the Belgian astronomer Georges LeMaître decided to take Einstein’s equations at face value, and as a result they came up independently with models of an expanding universe. In 1929 the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, through tireless observations at Mt. Wilson Observatory, made a startling discovery which verified Friedman and LeMaître’s theory. He found that the light from distant galaxies appeared to be redder than expected. This “red shift” in the light was most plausibly due to the stretching of the light waves as the galaxies are moving away from us. Wherever Hubble trained his telescope in the night sky, he observed this same red-shift in the light from the galaxies. It appeared that we are at the center of a cosmic explosion, and all of the other galaxies are flying away from us at fantastic speeds!”îîîî
This great discovery, that our Universe is expanding, by the “red-shift” that was observed, lead to what would be called the Big Bang Model. This discovery was resisted by many in the scientific community, as it implied a BEGINNING! Of course, many will note that the Big Bang is a theory, and theories are often later proven to be wrong. Craig notes that the scientific community has wrestled with the idea of a beginning since the Big Bang’s emergence (the theory, of course!).
“In a sense, the history of twentieth century cosmology can be seen as a series of one failed attempt after another to avoid the absolute beginning predicted by the standard Big Bang model. That prediction has now stood for nearly 100 years, during a period of enormous advances in observational astronomy and creative theoretical work in astrophysics.”∨
Premise 3
This, of course, is the most controversial premise of the whole argument, that the Universe would have a cause-as what it implies. Often the KCA is ‘expanded’ to say something like; well if the Universe has a cause then the cause must be time-less, space-less, matter-less…and this implies God by all these categories. Again, it should be noted this argument is leading to a theistic notion, not necessarily the Christian version, but one should use this as part of the cumulative case for God’s existence. Other arguments, such as the Resurrection of Jesus, then points more clearly to the Biblical/Christian God. Many have argued that premise 3 doesn’t imply a god (or God) anyways. Notice a line of argument by a skeptic:
“Imagine there are 5 billiard balls A-E and nothing else. These came to exist at point t0 with an ‘introductory force’. At each point t1, t2 etc, every ball hits another ball. At point t5, B hits E at 35 degrees sending it towards C. Craig’s own point about causality seems to be this: the cause for B hitting E at 35 degrees is the momentum and energy generated in B as it hits E. That is his ‘efficient cause’. My point is this: the cause of B hitting E is at t0. No cause has begun to exist or has been created out of nothing. The causes transform – what is called transformative creation.”∨î
You should notice a few obvious issues with this argument. First, what is an ‘introductory force’? That is THE cause, the premise denotes…we could call ‘God’. Next question is, where do you get the “billiard balls” from? No matter how you kick the can, how far back you keep kicking it, there has to be a place the can came from! The issue that science can never address is the cause. Science can never step outside the arena of ‘nature’ and it can never test for the ‘other-natural’ or ‘super-natural’.
CONCLUSION
Again, we are using Natural Theology as an argument for the existence of God. Christians do not have to even go to ‘Revelatory’ Theology (using scriptures) to show God existence, or the idea that God exists. We should not forget the KCA is not an end-all-be-all argument to the idea of a Creator (and thus God). Many will complain that we are rejecting the Gospel to point people to God, or think that cosmological arguments are replacing the Gospel in doing this. What I think we are doing is breaking barriers, as scripture itself teaches, 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 (KJV) “(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) 5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” Nothing will ever replace the Gospel for, “it is the power of God unto salvation.”∨îî What we ‘need’ to do, in using the KCA, is breaking down walls in the mind (“imaginations”), then we may then introduce the Gospel. Apologetics are not to win an argument but to point people to the TRUTH!
î. https://www.giffordlectures.org/overview/natural-theology
îî. Geisler, N. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (© 1999 by Norman L. Geisler. Database © 2008 WORDsearch Corp.)
îîî. http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2006/03/kalam-cosmological-argument-premise.html
∨. ibid
∨îî.
Common Sense & HillBilly Logic 
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