Abstract
A key premise of the kalām cosmological argument is that the universe came into existence. In this chapter I defend three arguments in support of this premise, namely, the argument based on traversing infinite time, the argument based on ungrounded causal chains, and the argument based on the paradoxes of beginningless time. Before defending these arguments, however, I offer a detailed analysis of what it means for the universe to come into existence.
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Notes
- 1.
There is, however, a good reason to favour substantivalism over relationism with regard to space: relationism is consistent with Special Relativity (SR) but it is inconsistent with General Relativity (GR), whereas substantivalism is consistent with both SR and GR (Maudlin 1993). Tim Maudlin (1993:199) notes that the geometrical structure of spacetime is given a priori in SR but not in GR. In GR the spacetime structure needs to be resolved to allow prediction. However, there is insufficient information in the collection of all relations between objects alone to resolve the geometry of the embedding spacetime in GR. Therefore, as Dean Zimmerman (2011:180) remarks, ‘The relationalist needs a “plenum” of entities—a field of some kind—upon which to hang GR’s web of spatiotemporal relations; and the best candidate for this field is very hard to distinguish from the kind of entity substantivalists have always wanted’.
- 2.
I am indebted to Laureano Luna for his helpful suggestions in respect of the argument in this section.
- 3.
For a more detailed response to Cohen’s objections to the kalām cosmological argument, see Erasmus (2016).
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Erasmus, J. (2018). Philosophical Arguments for a Beginning. In: The Kalām Cosmological Argument: A Reassessment. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73438-5_8
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