What is the cosmological argument?
Question 60099
The cosmological argument is one of the oldest and most debated arguments for God’s existence, and it begins with a question that turns out to be surprisingly resistant to any answer that does not involve God: why is there something rather than nothing? The universe exists. Matter, energy, space, and time all exist. Where did they come from? Any serious attempt to answer that question leads somewhere interesting.
This is not a question invented by theologians to smuggle God in through a philosophical back door. It is the question that honest cosmology and philosophy cannot avoid.
The Basic Argument
The argument in its simplest form observes that everything that exists within the universe has a cause outside itself. The universe itself exists. Therefore the universe has a cause outside itself. That cause, by definition, must exist outside space, time, matter, and energy, since it brought all of these into existence. It must itself be uncaused, otherwise we have simply pushed the problem back a step. The uncaused first cause is what Christians mean by God.
Thomas Aquinas developed the most systematic classical form in his Five Ways, written in the 13th century, though the underlying logic traces back to Aristotle’s concept of an unmoved mover. Aquinas argued from motion, from causation, and from contingency. Everything that moves is moved by something else. Every effect has a prior cause. Everything that exists contingently might not have existed, which means something must exist necessarily to explain why anything contingent exists at all. These converge on the same conclusion: a being that is itself uncaused, unmoved, and exists necessarily.
The Kalam Version
The most widely discussed contemporary form is the Kalam cosmological argument, developed initially by medieval Islamic philosophers and brought into modern apologetics principally by William Lane Craig. Its structure is deliberately simple. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause.
The first premise seems almost self-evident. Nothing in our experience or observation pops into existence without cause, and the mere idea violates basic rational intuition. The second premise is supported from two directions. Philosophically, an actually infinite series of past events appears to generate genuine logical problems, suggesting the past cannot be literally infinite. Scientifically, the standard cosmological model indicates that space, time, matter, and energy all came into existence at a finite point in the past. Stephen Hawking acknowledged that if the universe had a beginning, this implies the existence of a creator, even if he found the implication uncomfortable.
The question then becomes: what must this cause be like? It must exist outside space and time, since it produced them. It must be extraordinarily powerful, since it produced the entire physical universe from nothing. It must be personal, because only a personal agent can choose to act. An impersonal force cannot initiate anything before the laws governing forces exist.
What the Argument Does and Does Not Establish
The cosmological argument establishes that something very much like what Christians mean by God is required to account for the universe’s existence. It does not by itself establish the Trinity, the inspiration of Scripture, or the resurrection of Jesus. Christian apologetics never claimed it did. Its work is more limited and more important: it demonstrates that the atheist has a serious unresolved problem in accounting for why anything exists at all.
Scripture does not use the language of formal philosophy, but Romans 1:20 makes the same substantive point: “his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made, so that they are without excuse.” The cosmological argument is, in one sense, a philosophical unpacking of what Paul states as a straightforward fact about creation.
Common Objections
The most common objection is: who made God? But this misunderstands the argument. The cosmological argument does not claim that everything has a cause. It claims that everything that begins to exist has a cause. God, on the Christian understanding, did not begin to exist. He exists necessarily and eternally. The objection, if taken seriously, would prevent any explanation of anything, since any proposed explanation could always be met with the demand for a further explanation of the explanation.
A second objection appeals to quantum mechanics, where virtual particles appear to pop into existence spontaneously at the subatomic level without apparent cause. But these events are not causeless. They occur within an already-existing quantum vacuum, governed by already-existing physical laws. This does not address the question of where the quantum vacuum and its laws came from. It relocates, not resolves, the problem.
So, now what?
The cosmological argument does not convert anyone. A valid philosophical syllogism does not produce saving faith, and it was never intended to. Its value is different: it removes an intellectual excuse. The person who claims that science has made God unnecessary is confronted with the reality that the science of the past century has done the opposite. The universe had a beginning, which is precisely what Genesis 1:1 has always stated. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” is not a primitive cosmology waiting to be superseded by physics. It is the answer that honest physics keeps pointing toward.
“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made, so that they are without excuse.” Romans 1:20
Bibliography
- Craig, William Lane. The Kalam Cosmological Argument. Wipf and Stock, 2000.
- Craig, William Lane and Moreland, J.P. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. InterVarsity Press, 2003.
- Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Translated by the English Dominican Province. Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1920.
