The kalām cosmological argument proceeds from the claims that everything with a beginning has a cause of its existence, and that the universe has a beginning. It follows that the universe has a cause of its existence. Presumably, this cause is God. Some defenders of the argument contend that, since we don’t see things randomly coming into existence, we know from experience that everything with a beginning has a cause of its existence. Against this, some critics argue that we may (...) not legitimately move from observations of material things within the universe to conclusions about the universe itself. I argue that these critics are mistaken. We can after all draw cosmic conclusions from everyday experiences in support of the kalām argument. (shrink)

The Kalām cosmological argument deploys the following causal principle: whatever begins to exist has a cause. Yet, under what conditions does something ‘begin to exist’? What does it mean to say that ‘X begins to exist at t’? William Lane Craig has offered and defended various accounts that seek to establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for when something ‘begins to exist.’ I argue that all of the accounts that William Lane Craig has offered fail on the following grounds: either (...) they entail that God has a cause or they render the Kalām argument unsound. Part of the problem is due to Craig’s view of God’s relationship to time: that God exists timelessly without creation and temporarily with creation. The conclusion is that Craig must abandon either the Kalām argument or his view of God’s relationship to time; he cannot consistently hold both. (shrink)

Hypotheses about the shape of causal reality admit of both theistic and non-theistic interpretations. I argue that, on the simplest hypotheses about the causal shape of reality—infinite regress, contingent initial boundary, necessary initial boundary—there is good reason to suppose that non-theism is always either preferable to, or at least the equal of, theism, at least insofar as we restrict our attention merely to the domain of explanation of existence. Moreover, I suggest that it is perfectly proper for naturalists to be (...) undecided between these simple hypotheses about the causal shape of reality: contrary to the proponents of cosmological arguments, there are no decisive objections to any of these simple hypotheses. (I argue this case in detail in connection with objections offered by William Lane Craig; however, I believe that the case holds quite generally.). (shrink)

This paper considers two problems -- one in philosophy of religion and another in philosophy of physics -- and shows that the two problems have one solution. Some Christian philosophers have endorsed the views that (i) there was a first finitely long period of time, (ii) God is in time, and yet (iii) God did not have a beginning. If there was a first finitely long period of time and God is in time then there was a first finitely long (...) period of time in God's life. But if God's life includes a first finitely long period of time, then, on one initially intuitive conception of beginning to exist, God began to exist. Thus, at first glance, (i)-(iii) are not mutually compatible. Meanwhile, on a variety of proposals for quantum gravity theories or interpretations of quantum theory, space-time is not fundamental to physical reality and instead can (somehow) be explained in terms of yet more fundamental physical substructures. As I show, there is a strong intuition that if space-time is not fundamental to physical reality, then, even if there were a first finitely long period in the life of physical reality, physical reality would be beginningless. Thus, both theistic philosophers and philosophers of physics have developed theories on which some beginningless entities have a first finitely long temporal period in their lives and so both groups should be interested in developing criteria that distinguish such entities from entities with a beginning. In this paper, I offer one necessary (but not sufficient) condition, namely, that entities that begin to exist are absent from the closest possible worlds without time. The view that I defend has one significant upshot: no sound argument can use the mere fact (if it is a fact) that past time is finite to reach the conclusion that the totality of physical reality had a beginning. (shrink)

The modern belief that mindless forces can be ultimate efficient causes of natural events is a conceptual impossibility. The logically ultimate cause of any change, the something that is ultimately making it occur in the present moment, is either a mind or not. More specifically, the cause either chooses to act or it does not. By choice here, I mean an act of free will in the libertarian sense. Where there is choosing in this sense there must be a mind. (...) And when we say that an agent acts thus freely, we mean that it acts without being causally determined to act by anything beyond itself. However, this is conceptually indistinguishable from the idea of an ultimate efficient cause. To say that an agent is the ultimate cause in a causal chain is, by definition, to say that it acts without being caused to act by anything beyond itself. It is the head of the causal chain. It is, therefore, a matter of conceptual necessity that ultimate causes be minds, a fact that we have been blind to since the Scientific Revolution on the bad analogy of machines. Thus, every force ultimately governing the universe must be a mind corresponding either to the polytheist’s or the monotheist’s generic definition of divinity, and monotheism’s eternal mind will always be the most complete and justifiable explanation for the existence of the universe as a whole, even for the existence of the gods themselves. (shrink)

God’s temporality is still debated today by theologians and philosophers with whether God is temporal, atemporal, or some other form of temporality. The context of this paper is the topic of God’s timelessness with the idea of William Lane Craig’s idea of “omnitemporality.” The paper discusses a few of the major arguments for God’s temporality and also God’s timelessness. The paper then analyzes Craig’s article defending the omnitemporality of God declaring that God is non-temporal without creation and then becomes temporal (...) with creation. Though this idea may seem as a possible solution to the question of God’s temporality, it fails to follow with the Kalam argument and the relationship of time and change, for any possibility of change requires some duration of time. (shrink)