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Dr. Craig's Unsupported Premise
By Francois Tremblay
Posted June 15, 2004
I think it is safe to say that Dr. William Lane Craig
is one of the most skilled debaters for Christianity. His most developed
argument, a version of the Kalam Argument, is very
extensive, sophisticated, and has been debated in various circles, and
therefore merits the utmost attention. In my opinion, it is the most rigorous
argument for theism that has ever been presented. This is the argument I will
examine in this article.
To my knowledge, the most extensive version of the
argument is available in Dr. Craig's opening case against Quentin Smith (see
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-smith1.html). While the
argument contains a great number of propositions, we can shorten it in the
- "Whatever begins to exist
has a cause of its existence."
- "The universe began to
exist [because infinite time is impossible]."
- "Therefore, the universe
has a cause of its existence."
- "If the universe has a
cause of its existence, then [we find that] an uncaused, personal Creator of
the universe exists, who sans creation is beginningless, changeless,
immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent."
- "Therefore, an uncaused,
personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is
"beginningless," changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and
enormously powerful and intelligent."
Dr. Craig usually shortens it
even more to only 1-3, but we will also examine a few parts of point 4.
This argument differs from
standard first cause arguments because it does not use things like change or
complexity as its basis. Rather, it uses temporality, which dispels the special
pleading fallacy that is so common to such arguments.
In debates, the common method
atheologians have used to criticize the argument has been to attack the set of
arguments that compose proposition 2. Although Dr. Craig's support for it is
uneven, I find the arguments used by atheologians in this regard to be
inadequate also. The energy used to argue "infinity" is energy
wasted, when modern cosmology does not posit that the universe is infinite, and
when the term itself is ontologically negatively defined. While infinity has
great use in mathematics, it is a mathematical abstraction, nothing more: and we
should not attempt to apply it any more than we should seek a perfect circle or
the square root of -1.
No, it is clear that the knot of
the argument is the first premise, and its use in deducing proposition 3. While
the deduction that the universe existed for a limited amount of time is
trivial, and we can accept that some of Craig's supposed divine attributes
follow, the passage from one to the other is extremely weak. What evidence does
he have to prove that whatever begins to exist must have a cause? In his
opening case, he states:
I really don't
think that it's necessary because the premise that whatever begins to exist
must have a cause of its existence I think is so intuitively obvious that
scarcely anybody could sincerely deny that it is false.
He does support it elsewhere by
using two arguments: our observation of the caused entities around us, and
causality as a principle of human thought. Dr. Craig is no doubt aware,
however, that to infer a necessary causality on a whole -- the universe -- on the
basis of observation of such attribute in the parts -- the existents around us -
is a fallacy of composition. The attribute being transposed here, being caused,
is relational and therefore cannot be transposed. Thus he cannot generalize
from caused entities around us to the universe in this matter.
We do agree that causality is a
necessary principle for our understanding of the universe. This does not mean,
however, that we are prevented from realizing that an entity or property breaks
this principle. In the same way, logic is a necessary principle for our
understanding of the universe, but we can still detect fallacies. Furthermore,
our understanding of causality is based on recombination of pre-existing
entities and properties, which does not apply for divine creation. Therefore
there is an equivocation here as well.
We have to conclude that there is
no evidence whatsoever to support the first premise, which is why I call it the
"unsupported premise". Furthermore, we already have counter-examples.
For instance, the radioactive decay of an atom is scientifically proven to be
both uncaused and have a beginning. Dr. Craig is aware of a general form of
this argument, since Quentin Smith used this in debate against him. To which he
The motions of
elementary particles described by statistical quantum mechanical laws, even if
uncaused, do not constitute an exception to this principle. As Smith himself
admits, these considerations "at most tend to show that acausal laws
govern the change of condition of
particles, such as the change of particle x's
position from q1 to q2. They state nothing about
the causality or acausality of absolute beginnings, of beginnings of the
existence of particles.
This is a highly unsatisfactory rebuttal, as it shifts
the goalposts of his first premise. Dr. Craig (by proxy) isolates
"absolute beginnings" as being important, but his first premise only
states that "whatever begins to exist" has a cause. He should very
well know that physics has shown that matter and energy cannot be created or
destroyed, thus making any such example impossible. But this does not detract
to the strength of the counter-example. The radioactive decay of an atom is
indeed "something", it is a property of the atom in question. Thus
something does begin to exist in an uncaused manner.
We must now turn to point 2.
Before I continue, I have to clarify something about the shorthand I used:
2. "The universe began to
exist [because infinite time is impossible]."
In the actual point, the
arguments used to support that the universe began to exist, only prove that the
universe has existed for a finite amount of time, as they are both based on the
impossibility of an actual infinity.
Given this, we must answer that
we cannot justify going from
2a. The universe has existed for
a finite amount of time.
2b. The universe began to exist.
Dr. Craig seems to assume that
the passage from 2a to 2b is obvious, since he does not even bother to make it
explicit, but a finite past is not a sufficient condition to deduce the
existence of a beginning. It is perfectly coherent to posit, as many atheists
do, that the universe has a finite past and yet had no beginning. Modern
cosmology agrees with this position. As Mark Vuletic correctly points out in
"Does Big Bang Cosmology Prove the Universe Had a Beginning?", we cannot
explain with any precision what happened prior to Planck time:
The problem is
that prior to the Planck time, the universe is so small that quantum mechanical
effects become very important. Therefore, a correct description of the behavior
of the universe prior to the Planck time requires a synthesis of quantum
mechanics and general relativity--a theory of quantum gravity, in other words.
And to this date, no full theory of quantum gravity has been developed, much
less attained the consensus status that post-Planck-time Big Bang theory
enjoys. Without such a theory, we cannot draw from cosmology any conclusions
about whether the universe had a beginning or not.
He concludes that there are, as
of present, four possibilities: there may still be a first moment, there may
not be a first moment, there may not be any time, or there may not be a Big
Bang singularity at all.
Interestingly, to assume that the
universe began is incorrect even from Dr. Craig's perspective, since he states
in many places that he holds the position that the Creator is atemporal
"prior" to divine creation (whatever this means in such a context).
Therefore the universe cannot exist within a larger framework of time, and thus
cannot have a beginning.
The underlying fallacy of the
first half of his argument is simple, and can be observed in less sophisticated
cosmological arguments also. The latter simply assume that non-existence has
priority over existence, and then ask bemusedly why anything exists. It is a
non-issue since non-existence is simply not a possibility. The same thing is
true with Dr. Craig's argument as it relates to atemporality as a privileged
position over temporality, and demands an explanation -- a cause -- for entities
having a beginning. As we will see, atemporality is simply not a possibility
for a Creator.
I will now examine some of the
properties deduced as belonging to the Creator implied by proposition 3. These
properties are: personal being, atemporal, powerful, and intelligent.
that the cause of the universe is a personal Creator:
4.11 The universe was brought
into being either by a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient
conditions or by a personal, free agent.
4.12 The universe could not have
been brought into being by a mechanically operating set of necessary and
4.13 Therefore, the universe was
brought into being by a personal, free agent.
To explain why a mechanical set
of conditions cannot give rise to the universe, he gives the following argument:
For how else
could a timeless cause give rise
to a temporal effect like the
universe? If the cause were an impersonal set of necessary and sufficient
conditions, then the cause could never exist without the effect. If the cause
were timelessly present, then the effect would be timelessly present as well.
The only way for the cause to be timeless and the effect to begin in time is
for the cause to be a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in
time without any prior determining conditions.
But this is a complete non
sequitur. Nothing tells us that a mechanical set of conditions must remain
unchanging: and if it must, then so must the Creator's context as well. Other
facts tell us that this distinction is purely semantical:
* Whether the Creator is a
mechanical set of conditions or a personal being, the fact remains that an
atemporal being cannot effect anything, since actions require change.
* There is no reason to posit
that a mechanical set of conditions could not effect the same states of affairs
than a personal being. To put such limitations on immaterial properties
implies that Dr. Craig can define immateriality positively, which he obviously
cannot do since it is a negative term. As Michael Martin concludes:
Why these events are created at one moment rather than
some other by these mechanical causes is surely no more mysterious than how a
personal agent operating timelessly creates something at one moment rather than
(Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, p. 104)
* An atemporal being cannot be a
personal being. Dr. Craig has attempted to address such concerns elsewhere, and
he states, for instance:
Lucas is clearly correct, I think, in maintaining that a succession of contents
of consciousness in God's mind would itself be sufficient to generate a
temporal series (...). But what if God's mental life in the absence of any
created world is not discursive, but changeless? Why could the contents of
God's consciousness not be comprised of tenselessly true beliefs (...) and be
such that He never acquires and never loses any of His beliefs? Would not such
a changeless consciousness of truth be plausibly regarded as timeless?
And by saying so, claims that God
can know everything and be conscious of everything. He also gives similar
arguments in reply to other objections, especially in assuming that God can
create other beings, despite such creation being inherently temporal.
But it is easy to see the error
in the quote above. Obviously there is an equivocation on consciousness here.
No one disputes that God may very well possess all knowledge, but in the
absence of temporality, it cannot be conscious of such knowledge. Atemporality
entails that specific states are possible, but not actions. Thus the notion of
an atemporal Creator fails even the most basic test for consciousness.
Creator is timeless.
4.251 In the complete absence of
change, time does not exist, and the Creator is changeless.
I have noted a few times before
that atemporality contradicts divine creation. If we accept the conclusion in
4.251, then we must conclude that the only possible first causes are first
causes that begin to exist, thus contradicting premise 1.
Dr. Craig does have a
counter-argument, however, in that his position is more complex than "God
is timeless". Rather his position is that "God is timeless sans creation and temporal since creation":
creation of the universe, time began, and God entered into time at the moment
of creation in virtue of His real relations with the created order. It follows
that God must therefore be timeless without the universe and temporal with the
But this does not solve the
problem of the act of divine creation being performed by an atemporal being,
since God was still timeless before the act of divine creation. Rather, it
introduces a further problem of how an atemporal, changeless being can be
transformed into a temporal being. This is as contradictory as a person in a
painting suddenly rising up and leaving his material frame.
Given this, how are we to make sense of argument such
God had a
timeless intention to create a Big Bang, but in terms of the actual causal
exercise of His power, the actual volition, "Let there be...!" that
would occur simultaneously with the Big Bang singularity.
When no actual causal exercise or volition can exist,
by definition, in an atemporal state?
4.271 He brought the universe
into being out of nothing. (3)
It seems here that Dr. Craig is committed to the
illogical position that something can come out of nothing. As I point out in my
Incoherency of "Divine Creation"", a hypothetical
Creator acting on nothing cannot bring something out of it, in defiance of the
laws of logic. If we accept this fairy tale, we might as well accept any
hypothetical belief, since we have lost all criteria for reasoning. Nothing can
come from nothing.
Creator is enormously intelligent.
4.281 The initial conditions of
the universe involve incomprehensible fine-tuning that points to intelligent
Surely Dr. Craig realized that by bringing up
intelligent design and fine-tuning, he is foregoing all credibility. The belief
that the universe is "fine-tuned" -- for what, we cannot say -- rests
on no scientific ground. We simply do not know if any "tuning" is
possible at all, and if so, what is its range and its effects.
Even if we assume that this
"tuning" is possible and relevant, the argument from fine-tuning
reduces itself to an argument from design, in that it attempts to prove design
from natural facts. But it is never sufficient to jump from complexity to
design, one must demonstrate that natural law is insufficient. We have
sufficient evidence, in Big Bang cosmology as well as more advanced theories
such as the Hartle-Hawking wave function model of the universe, that natural
law is sufficient.
Despite being a sophisticated and, at least in spirit,
scientifically-oriented argument, Dr. Craig's version of the Kalam Argument fails to justify any of its premises. It is based on
a number of assumptions -- that temporality implies the existence of a
beginning, and that the existence of a beginning implies a cause -- which are
not logical or scientific. Its only valid finding -- that infinity cannot be
actualized -- is trivial.
Furthermore, the conclusion that the hypothetical
Creator is changeless is also unsupported and contradicts the rest of the
argument. It is unclear how the only alternatives for an atemporal being are to
be changeless or to experience an infinite regress of changes.
Therefore, I must conclude that this argument fails
completely in demonstrating that a god exists.