God, Time and the Kalām Cosmological Argument

Sophia 52 (4):593-600 (2013)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

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

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 100,061

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-05-03

Downloads
236 (#106,184)

6 months
16 (#164,418)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Christopher A. Bobier
Central Michigan University

Citations of this work

Toward a new kalām cosmological argument.Benjamin Victor Waters - 2015 - Cogent Arts and Humanities 2 (1).
Time Has Gone Today.Frank Piontek - 2019 - International Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Science 3 (5):69-78.

Add more citations