I personally take the incredibly fashionable and obviously rational (if you’re a Christian William Lane Craig fanboi), or the increbibly unfashionable and obviously irrational (if you’re an angry atheist blogger) position that the Kalam Cosmological Argument is a sound argument. I also happen to believe that the “conceptual analysis” of the so-called “Cause No. 1″ that defenders of kalam (or mutakalim as they are dubbed in the section of the KCA in The Blackwell Companion To Natural Theology) engage in after arguing for the syllogism reveals the cause to be at least a deistic god: personal, powerful, immaterial, timeless and uncaused.
However, it is a fair criticism often levelled at kalam that it does not necessarily prove the god of classical theism, never mind a god of any particular religion. We are never able to identify Cause No. 1 as exemplying the “three omnis” for example (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence).
However, in pondering possible solutions to an objection I myself thought of to the KCA, I think that I may be able to move Cause No. 1 one step closer to exemplifying one omni- namely “omnipotence”. Bear in mind, these are incredibly preliminary thoughts, and so I am just throwing this out there for kicks (this is the main purpose of my blog) but hopefully I’m onto something here.
For the sake of this entry, I’ll have to ask my readers to concede kalam for the moment, as my intent is not to argue for its truth per se, but only increase its value as an argument for the existence of God. Therefore, you will have to concede for the sake of argument that I have given more than enough evidence for you to accept the premises:
(1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause
(2) The universe began to exist.
A potential objection I dreamt up to kalam today involved premise 1 (hereafter known as “the causal principle”) and the idea of a being utilising creatio ex nihilo.
Here is the dilema- we know the causal principle to be true based on pure scientific induction. We always observe it to be the case, and we never observe the opposite occuring. It is a physical law of the universe that something cannot pop into being out of nothing uncaused. Since the universe itself had a beginning, it must have a cause.
However, since the universe had a beginning, then material itself had a beginning, which means Cause No. 1 had no pre-existent material to work with when it caused the universe to come into being. Therefore, Cause No. 1 must have caused the universe to come into being via creatio ex nihilo.
The problem is, if we apply the same criteria we use to affirm the causal principle to the idea of creatio ex nihilo, namely the scientific induction I previously mentioned, the two are on equal footing possibility wise. We have never observed anyone creating something from nothing- in fact the opposite seems to be the case. People must use pre-existent material to cause something to come into being.
The mutakalim therefore seems to have a problem on his hands, since it appears inconsistent to affirm the causal principle yet also affirm that Cause No. 1 utilised creatio ex nihilo to cause our universe to come into being.
Here is my solution.
Firstly, the idea of creatio ex nihilo is obviously logically possible in the broad sense- it is not an incoherent notion.
Secondly, the negation of the causal principle is also broadly logically possible- however, it is physically impossible, and on naturalism only that which is physically possible is actually possible.
If we agree with my second contention, then it cannot be true that the universe popped into existence out of nothing. We must still afirm the existence of a Cause. Now, if it is possible that this Cause can actualise broadly logically possible things that are nevertheless physically impossible, we can solve this problem. I’ll lay this out more simply below:
We have three propositions:
1. The universe popped into being out of nothing
2. Cause No. 1 caused the universe to come into being, but it is bound only by what is physicaly possible
3. Cause No. 1 caused the universe to come into being, but is not bound by what is physically possible.
Since (1) and (2) are impossible, given what we know thus far, (3) must be true. This means Cause No. 1 can actualise things that are broadly logically possible, yet also physically possible.
Since the only barrier to actualising logically possible states of affairs (beyond ones own nature) is physical limitation, and since Cause No. 1 must obviously have no physical limitation, it follows that Cause No. 1 can actualise all logically possible states of affairs that arn’t rendered impossible by its own nature.
This is actually exactly what modern theologians mean by “omnipotence”.
Therefore, we may conclude that Cause No. 1 is omnipotent.
And there you have it. Feel free to tear me a new one on this. 
Spacefoetus to be honest I don’t understand your argument.
Would I be summarizing it accurately if I put it like this?
1)It is only physically possible for something to come into being out of pre-existing material
2)God created the universe but did not use any pre-existing material
p3) Therefore God can do things that are not physically possible
?????
If so then I think 1) is false. In Blackwell Craig gives other examples of things coming into being without a material cause . Virtual particles have a quantum vacuum as an efficient cause but no material cause. There is more space now that 13 billion years ago. However this new space did not come out of preexisting stuff.
If you are a platonist about abstractae you would have some solid cases of things coming into being too.
A platonist would say Beethoven’s fifth symphony is not identical to any of its printed copies and exists abstractly. But Beethoven created this symphony , but not out of any material.
“it is a physical law of the universe that something cannot pop into being out of nothing uncaused. ”
I think this isn’t true. When you think of physical laws you think of things like Boyle’s law and gravity that only hold true within the universe. I thing what Bill Craig says is that it is a deeper metaphysical truth.
Ahh yes, I do recall reading something like this during my skim through the kalam chapter in Blackwell. Your summary of my argument was pretty much accurate, and more concise than mine, and I concede that yes, one is false. This is good news for me though, as I considered the impossibility of creatio ex nihilo a potential defeater for kalam but now I know better. Cheers!