William Lane Craig Defeated Part 3--The Kalam Cosmological Argument

First, ironically, the Kalam Cosmological argument has Islamic roots, so  one of WL Craig favorite arguments that he uses as a defense for Yahweh, is also a defense of Allah. However, the argument is weak in either case. The argument as stated below "presumes too much."

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2) The universe began to exist
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause

Many Christians believe the universe came from nothing, and that their god created everything from nothing, but they do not agree that the universe could come from nothing on its own without their god, or that the universe has always existed. Did the universe begin to exist? Not necessarily. As Stephen Hawking points out in "A Brief History of Time":

"...the quantum theory of gravity has opened up a new possibility, in which there would be no boundary to space-time and so there would be no need to specify the behavior at the boundary. There would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down, and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time. Once could say: "The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary." The universe would be completely self contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE." (A Brief History of Time, p. 175)

Thus, we have another plausible explanation for the existence of the universe , which makes P1 questionable, and makes this a very weak argument for the existence of any god. The universe did not necessarily begin, and therefore, does not necessarily require a cause.

In any case, if we assume it was caused by a god, that god would not necessarily be the Christian god, or the Islamic god, or the Jewish god--even though they ARE the same god! If this argument was a good argument, it would only prove that some gods and goddesses may have caused the universe. It could apply to Zeus, or Jupiter, or Brahman or any number of the thousands of gods and goddesses created by humanity. Via Ockham's razor, and quantum mechanics, the BEST plausible explanation in this case would be via science and the H-D method, in which case no gods or goddesses need apply.

* Diagram taken from: http://everythingforever.com/st_order.htm