Reasonable Faith

Chris: The Kalam cosmological argument, like many arguments about the present existence of God, has a fatal fallacy. The fallacy is found in the third premise: that because God has made the universe, in which case he must still exist. It seems that you don't really need God to exist. You can assert that he must because you decided it. Your decision that he must be so great, he must therefore still be here, dismisses his own agency to make the universe and then decide to leave us to it.

I have no expectation of you answering this question because your ministry relies on a universe where God still exists. If he did not, there would be no one to worship. Your interests are too vested and conflicted to ever move to a position where God has created and then moved on. So, absent any logical reason to say so, you are obliged to assert he is still here.

This is the deep fallacy of the Kalam and other arguments. If you live in an 18th-century house, the builder is no longer here. You cannot assert they are still alive because the house still stands. Sure, go ahead and be grateful in remembrance of the builder, but can you see that neither the fact of the house nor the fact of your regard for the builder means he is still alive?

The Kalam argument and the other arguments you put forward are all arguments that God once existed. Do you have any arguments that he exists now in our universe? Maybe he moved on and is busy making other universes, or maybe he deconstructed himself after building ours. It is not for you to assert he could not. So, do you accept we must set aside arguments showing that he once existed and find a convincing argument that either A, he still exists in our universe, or B, he cannot leave our universe once he has made it? Chris, United Kingdom.

Dr. William Lane Craig: As a matter of fact, Chris, I have already addressed your question in my published work on the Kalam cosmological argument. Your snide personal comments in your fourth paragraph are quite uncalled for and therefore I shall ignore them.

Technically, your objection is, or should be, that the tense in the conclusion of the Kalam cosmological argument is wrong. It should be that the universe had a cause, not that the universe has a cause. The argument's proponent assumes that the cause of the universe still exists, but maybe he has ceased to exist and so is no longer around.

Now notice that this objection, contrary to your assertion, is inapplicable to any theistic argument that demonstrates the existence of a metaphysically necessary being. For it is impossible that a necessary being cease to exist. Once you have demonstrated the reality of such a being, you need not be concerned that he may no longer be around. Among the various theistic arguments that I have defended, minimally the Leibnizian cosmological argument from contingency, the moral argument, and the ontological argument all imply the existence of a metaphysically necessary being.

These fulfill your request for arguments that he exists now, that is, has not ceased to exist. Whether God exists in our universe is another question concerning God's relation to space. I am inclined to think that he does not exist in our universe, but rather transcends space.

Now, the Kalam cosmological argument is part of the cumulative case for the existence of God. I have compared it to one link in a coat of chain mail where the various links reinforce one another. Even if the Kalam cosmological argument does not prove the existence of a metaphysically necessary being, that feature is supplied by other arguments such as those mentioned above. Similarly, the Kalam cosmological argument says nothing about the moral qualities of the creator of the universe, but that's not a fallacy in the argument. In a cumulative case, that feature is supplied by the moral argument for God's existence.

But even if we consider the Kalam cosmological argument in isolation, it leaves it an open question whether the creator of the universe is metaphysically necessary or contingent. Assuming for the sake of argument that the creator of the universe is contingent, is there any reason to think that he still exists, or should we fear that at some time in the past he ceased to exist?

It seems to me that a being who transcends time and space and who had the power to bring the entire universe into existence without a material cause, in all probability, continues to exist. For there is nothing in the entire universe over which he does not have control and, as an immaterial being, he has no inner disposition to decay or corruption. So, we have no reason at all to think that he has ceased to exist.

So, despite your evident confidence in your objection, Chris, you really need to ask yourself why no philosopher that I know of, no matter how hostile or skeptical, propounds your objection. It is universally assumed that if a transcendent creator brought the universe into being, then in all probability, he is still around to be reckoned with.

Now, you seem to come to terms with that fact when you say that the person who says that, "He must be so great, he must therefore still be here," dismisses his own agency to make the universe and then decide to leave us to it. But once again, Chris, you're simply displaying your ignorance of the relevant literature. I explicitly considered this hypothesis lo those many years ago in the final words of my 1979 book, *The Kalam Cosmological Argument*. I quote from pages 152 to 153:

"But if our argument is sound and a personal creator of the universe really does exist, then surely it is incumbent upon us to inquire whether he has specially revealed himself to man in some way that we might know him more fully or whether, like Aristotle's unmoved mover, he remains aloof and detached from the world that he has made."

That paragraph set the table for my subsequent work on the historicity of Jesus' resurrection. My claim is that the best explanation of Jesus' fate is that God raised Jesus from the dead, just as the original disciples claimed. In its religio-historical context, that event provides dramatic and public divine vindication of Jesus' radical personal claims whereby he put himself in the place of God himself. If Jesus really was who he claimed to be, as the evidence suggests, then God is clearly still involved in our universe and even wants to be active in your life, Chris, as well.