hot seat, persuasive, argument

Is the Kalam Cosmological Argument Persuasive? (Hot Seat, Part 2)

An atheist (or maybe agnostic?) posed this question to me in the video below. Honestly, I do find the Kalam argument (KCA) powerful, but of course I first encountered it from the perspective of a believer. My response in the video includes more detail. If you aren’t familiar with the KCA, here is a version of it:

  1. Everything that begins to exist has a transcendent cause of its existence.
  2. The universe began to exist at some point in the finite past.
  3. So, the universe has a transcendent cause of its existence.

The video is about 8.5 minutes and features me answering questions at a meeting of atheists and skeptics at the University of Missouri.

Persuasiveness Is Relative?

Here’s a point worth making, I think: the persuasiveness of an argument is relative to the individual. Each of us holds a collection of beliefs and desires inside us. How a new idea appears to us will depend, in large part, on the make-up of that collection. None of us can have exactly the same collection, and thus new ideas appear differently to each of us.

horse, dogFor example, I remember when my daughter Phoebe saw a horse for the first time. At that point, she only had categories for ‘cat’ and ‘dog.’ So, she pointed to the horse and said, “Doggy!” It wasn’t that she needed glasses–she was perceiving the horse according to the collection of beliefs and desires she possessed. In a much more complex way, we perceive and evaluate new ideas according to our collection. Another example: if I approached first a stranger and then my wife with photos of me dunking a basketball, the stranger might respond very differently than my wife. Based on what she knows, she might laugh harder than the stranger.

Be Kind

slow, patienceI appreciate the saying: “Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” I propose an epistemic corollary: “Be kind, because everyone you meet is working with a different set of evidence.” This principle encourages me not to get upset with those who disagree with me. Even those who just “can’t see reason,” deserve my patience and charity, since I generally don’t know where they’re coming from. Moreover, when I am slow to understand or accept an argument, I give grace to myself as well.

Here’s a takeaway: don’t be frustrated when others don’t see things the way you do. 

The person you speak with may be believing as well as he or she can, given the information, background, and psychology they have.

But Is It Persuasive?

Ultimately, you’ll have to answer that question for yourself. But I do think that some arguments are better than others, and probably should be persuasive to most reasonable, well-informed people. The KCA falls into that category. That doesn’t mean that a reasonable atheist will immediately become a theist. But it should make the idea of God’s existence a little more plausible.

big bang, evidence, persuasive, KalamThe biggest reason I hear for outright rejection of the KCA is a commitment to Stephen Hawking’s cosmology, or perhaps a denial of Big Bang cosmology. If Hawking is right, then perhaps the universe does not need a transcendent cause. And if the Big Bang model proves incorrect, then maybe the universe had no beginning. Unfortunately, I admit I’m in no position to evaluate these claims scientifically. I’ll let the experts duke it out. But regardless of the science, which changes from decade to decade, there are excellent philosophical reasons to accept both premises of the KCA. Given that, and the expert testimony I am familiar with, I find the KCA powerful.

(For an in-depth discussion of Hawking’s cosmology, listen to my podcast with Dr. Kenny Boyce. For more serious discussion of the KCA, I recommend William Lane Craig’s website, Reasonable Faith. Dr. Craig does an excellent job of responding to critics of the KCA. Here, for example, and here.)

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