As discussed in earlier posts, Alex Vilenkin's book, Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), has a lot of relevance to the Kalam cosmological argument, although he doesn't discuss it directly. The argument can be formulated as follows:
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
First, he presents a theorem that he developed with two other physicists that proves that any universe that is (on average) expanding must have a beginning. So he would agree with the second premise of the argument. Second, he presents his own theory for the beginning of the universe, which holds that the universe tunneled into existence out of nothing, without a cause. So he would disagree with the first premise of the argument. I've already discussed those issues and expressed my agreements and disagreements. But to wrap up my discussion of this book, I wanted to share my thoughts about what Vilenkin says about God.
To begin with, Vilenkin observes that every explanation for the origin of the universe faces a problem, whether we appeal to God or to a naturalistic big bang model. The problem (and I am paraphrasing here but his words are found on pp. 169–70) concerns the fact that, if the origin of the universe is the origin of time itself, then it makes no sense to speak of a cause of the universe, since we could always ask where the cause was before the creation event, and since there can't be any moment before the first moment of time, it seems that no answer can be given. Furthermore, if the origin of the universe is the origin of all physical reality, then there wouldn't be any raw materials for the cause to work with. In other words, there was nothing to make a universe out of.
Thus, while many people see the beginning of the universe as powerful evidence for the existence of a creator, Vilenkin does not share their optimism. He writes:
So, what do we make of a proof that the beginning is unavoidable? Is it a proof of the existence of God? This view would be far too simplistic. Anyone who attempts to understand the origin of the universe should be prepared to address its logical paradoxes. In this regard, the theorem that I proved with my colleagues does not give much of an advantage to the theologian over the scientist. . . . [R]eligion is not immune to the paradoxes of Creation. (p. 177)
Since Vilenkin sees the logical paradoxes of creation as applying to any proposed cause of the universe's origin (and not just God), we can perhaps understand why he gravitates toward the view that the universe somehow popped into being uncaused, although I certainly don't think that view is any less problematic than the issues he raises (I will come back to this point, but also see my previous post). But do the concerns expressed by Vilenkin really undermine any attempt to explain the origin of the universe by appealing to some sort of cause?
The questions Vilenkin raises are obviously important and understandable, but they are starting points for further discussion, not stopping points. It's like when a child asks, "Well if God created everything, then who created God?" Theists typically do have an answer, and it's not all that complicated. Whether you find the answer convincing or not is a separate issue, but it's not as if nobody has ever attempted a rigorous, serious, grown-up answer to these sorts of questions. To simply ask, "Well what was God doing before he created time," as if that were a refutation of theism, is sort of similar to when ill-advised creationists think they've dropped a trump card by asking, "If humans evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?" Anyone who understands biology will know that this question is not the mic-drop moment that the questioner thinks it is.
Alright, so what can we say about Vilenkin's paradoxes? Think back to the first premise of the KCA: "Everything that begins to exist has a cause." This premise is meant to articulate a universal causal principle: everything that begins to exist has a cause. If the universe has a cause, then whatever that cause is, it cannot be an exception to the causal principle. If it had a beginning, then it must have its own cause. And if it did not have a beginning, then maybe it did not have a cause.
It's important not to rush into talking about God here. The KCA leads to the conclusion that the universe has a cause, not that God caused the universe. Of course, theists will want to offer certain reasons for why the cause of the universe can plausibly be identified as God, but that's a step that comes later. To start complaining about God's plausibility as the cause of the universe before we decide if the argument is any good seems too hasty to me. We are simply trying to determine if the universe has a cause. Then, if it does, we can see if we are able to determine anything interesting about the nature of that cause, like whether the causal principle stated in the first premise applies to it. Then, finally, we can deal with the question of whether this cause should be identified with God.
With all that in mind, I find it odd that Vilenkin dismisses the causal principle due to concerns about logical paradoxes if he is just going to end up affirming an absurd conclusion anyway (i.e., that the universe tunneled into existence from nothing without a cause). I am much more confident in the two premises of the KCA than I am in the possibility that anything (much less a universe) could come into being from nothing without a cause.
Of course, we still have to address Vilenkin's logical concerns. So let's first consider whether there is any good reason to identify the cause of the universe as God. Here it is important to remember that defenders of the KCA typically offer philosophical arguments against the possibility of an infinite regress of causes or an infinite series of temporal events. These arguments are used in defense of the second premise of the KCA. But notice that if these philosophical arguments go through successfully, they imply that there must be a first cause that is itself uncaused. This is not a religious doctrine; it is the logical consequence of thinking that there cannot be an infinite series of causes or temporal events. If those arguments work (and remember, those arguments make no reference to God), then it follows necessarily that there must be an uncaused first cause.
Can we say anything else about the nature of this uncaused first cause? Well, anything that brings space and material reality into being must be spaceless and immaterial. If it brings time into being, it must be timeless and therefore eternal and changeless. It must also be enormously powerful if it can bring physical reality into being without any material, physical causes. And finally, it is plausible to think that this cause is a personal being, for a couple of reasons (and notice that these reasons are independent of each other):
- If the timeless, changeless, immaterial cause of the universe was not a personal being, then the necessary and sufficient conditions for the creation of the universe would exist timelessly and changelessly, and it would be impossible for the universe to have come into existence a finite amount of time ago. If the cause is eternal, the effect should be eternal—at least, that's the argument. The only way around this is to say that this timeless, eternal cause somehow freely decided to create the universe, even though it did not have to. In that case, it must have free will, which implies that it is a personal being.
- If the cause of the universe is a spaceless, timeless, unchanging, immaterial being, then what sort of being could it possibly be? There only seem to be two candidates. On the one hand, it could be an abstract object (like a number), since these objects (if they exist) are spaceless, timeless, unchanging, and immaterial. But the problem here is that abstract objects can't cause anything. They have no causal powers. The number eight can't cause anything. You can't trip over it. This leaves us with the only other possible candidate for a spaceless, timeless, changeless, immaterial being: an unembodied mind. If the cause of the universe is an unembodied mind, then it is a personal being.
One more thing: In the absence of any reason to speculate about multiple causes, it is simpler to suggest a single cause. Why speculate about multiple transcendent personal creators when you can get the job done with one?
Of course, these arguments could all be debated, but my point is that if the reasoning is sound, we end up with a transcendent, timeless, eternal, incredibly powerful, personal creator of the universe. Whether we call it God or not, we are still in the realm of something that is at least Godlike. This sheds light on why defenders of the KCA aren't much bothered by the question, "If God created everything, then what created God?" The argument, which is based on two premises that make no reference to God, leads us to the conclusion that there is a cause of the universe, and further reflection (which, again, is not grounded in any assumptions about God) leads to the conclusion that there must be an uncaused first cause. If the logic is sound, then we have arrived at that conclusion by a careful process of reasoning. It just makes no sense to ask, "Well, if the uncaused first cause created everything else, then what created the uncaused first cause?" We've already seen why the first cause must be uncaused (again, assuming that the logic of the KCA is sound).
Now we are in a good position to revisit Vilenkin's logical paradoxes of creation (and remember, these paradoxes are thought to apply to any cause, not just God). The first paradox is that anything that creates time cannot exist before time. But the defender of the KCA will gladly agree that the cause of the universe does not exist before time, at least not in a temporal sense. Rather, the cause is timeless. So what's wrong with having a timeless cause? Vilenkin doesn't even deal with this possibility, which is very strange since he quotes directly from Augustine:
Augustine's final conclusion was that "[t]he world was made not in time, but simultaneously with time. There was no time before the world." And thus it is meaningless to ask what God was doing then. "If there was no time, there was no 'then.'" This is very close to what I argued in my tunneling-from-nothing scenario. (p. 186)
Even more strange is Vilenkin's bizarre claim that Augustine's view of the creation of the world is very close to his own. This is obviously wrong because Augustine believed that the universe was created by God, whereas Vilenkin says that it tunneled into existence from nothing, without a cause. Vilenkin seems to equate a timeless being with nothing, but he doesn't say anything to justify this assumption.
Whatever else one thinks about the concept of a timeless creator, we could at least say that it avoids the first paradox. If God is timeless, then there is no sense in which he was doing anything before he created time. Of course, theists who accept the KCA have differing views about whether God remains timeless or whether the act of creation brings God into time. But either way, there is no suggestion here of events happening before the beginning of time.
The second logical paradox mentioned by Vilenkin is that the cause of physical reality would not have any raw materials to work with. But this seems to miss the point of the KCA. If the argument is sound, then we have good reasons to think that a timeless, non-physical cause brought physical reality into existence—so of course it wasn't using raw physical materials, since this would contradict the argument! This is why defenders of the KCA conclude that the cause of the universe must be extremely powerful.
Now, someone like Vilenkin might object that it's just very difficult to imagine how anything could bring physical, material reality into existence. But there are three important things to keep in mind here. First, there are lots of things that are difficult to imagine, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are logically incoherent, much less that they can't be true. Otherwise, we would have to reject much of what we know about quantum mechanics, and that would only work against our scientific understanding of the universe.
Second, if we accept the second premise of the KCA (as Vilenkin does) then there is no getting around the fact that physical reality did indeed have a beginning. Whether we like it or not, physical reality was not made out of pre-existing physical materials. It just, somehow, began. Whatever else we may think, that difficulty is not going to go away.
Finally, it is helpful to remember Aristotle's distinction between efficient causes and material causes. A material cause refers to the stuff a thing is made out of, whereas an efficient cause is an agent or process that brings something into being. The second premise of the KCA rules out the universe having any sort of material cause. So if the first premise of the KCA is also true, then it inescapably follows that there is an efficient cause that brought the material universe into being. To point out that the cause of the universe had no physical materials to work with is no refutation of the KCA, since the defender of the KCA will readily agree. But what the defender of the KCA will not agree with is that the universe popped into existence without any sort of cause at all, efficient or otherwise. This is why Vilenkin's concern about the second paradox seems so puzzling to me. If it is troubling that a physical universe should come into existence without a material cause, why is it somehow less troubling to deny that it even had an efficient cause? It would be like a game of Clue where a player declares that, since Colonel Mustard isn't the killer, then there must not be a killer at all, and Mr. Boddy therefore must have died for no reason.
So here are my final thoughts on Vilenkin's book, at least for now. I think his theorem is fascinating and it gives me all the more confidence that the second premise of the KCA is true. I am actually very eager to spend more time thinking about what he says here. But his logical paradoxes of creation seem to be very easy to resolve, and I can't see any wisdom in his claim that the universe popped into existence without a cause.