God chose to create the world a finite amount of time ago, but could he have chosen otherwise?
According to defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument, the answer is no. He could not have done so, and the world must have a finite history. Even God could not create an infinite one.
Others, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, disagree and hold that God could have done this if he chose.
How can we navigate this issue?
The Burden of Proof
People who disagree sometimes get into squabbles about who has the burden of proof—that is, who needs to provide proof of their position.
While special rules may apply in a courtroom or in a formal debate, the answer for ordinary purposes is clear. It can be stated in the form of a simple and powerful rule.
The Iron Rule of the Burden of Proof: Whoever wants someone to change his mind has the burden of proof.
If I want you to change your mind, I need to give you evidence (arguments, proof) why you should do so. If you want me to change my mind, you need to.
Much needless squabbling would be avoided if people kept this rule in mind.
Applying this to our question:
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- If a Kalaam proponent wants to convince someone that God couldn’t create a world with an infinite history, he needs to provide evidence why he couldn’t.
- If a Kalaam skeptic wants to convince someone that God could create a world with an infinite history, he needs to provide evidence why he could.
- If they both want to convince each other, they both need to do this.
I’m a Kalaam skeptic, so let me give you the evidence that causes me to take this position.
“With God All Things Are Possible”
The Christian faith holds that God is all-powerful, or omnipotent. Jesus himself tells us, “With God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26).
Thus, the default answer for any question that takes the form “Could God create X?” is “Yes.”
If you want to move off that default answer, you’ll need to show something very specific. This is because, over the centuries, theologians have discerned that there is only one type of situation that falls outside the scope of God’s omnipotence: logical contradictions.
No, God can’t make married bachelors, square circles, or four-sided triangles. Each of these involves a contradiction in terms, or what philosophers call a logical contradiction.
They don’t represent possible entities. They’re just word salad. They may at first sound like something that could exist, but as soon as you think about the meaning of the words involved, you realize that they can’t.
So, while “with God all things are possible,” these aren’t things. “Square circle” and “four-sided triangle” are just nonsense phrases.
“Infinite History”?
In light of this principle, if I ask myself, “Could God create a world with an infinite history?” my default answer will be “Yes”—just as it would be on any other subject.
For me to move off that default answer, I’d need to be shown that the concept of a world with an infinite history involves a logical contradiction.
The same should be true of every Christian who understands God’s omnipotence.
Thus far, despite extensive research, I have not been able to find a logical contradiction. And, as a result, I am of the opinion that one does not exist.
Consider Craig
Consider the arguments proposed by William Lane Craig, the best-known defender of the Kalaam argument.
He has spent an enormous amount of time thinking, writing, and defending it. If anyone should have found a logical contradiction in the concept, it should be him!
Yet, in his books, debates, speeches, and videos, I haven’t found him asserting that the concept of an infinite history involves a logical contradiction. If anything, he seems to carefully avoid saying that.
He concedes that the mathematics of infinity are logically consistent—that they don’t involve a logical contradiction—so, it isn’t that the concept of infinity is problematic.
Instead, he asserts that actual infinities can’t exist in the real world, so the real world’s history can’t be infinite.
But what is it about the concept of “infinity” and the concept of “history” that prevents the two from being brought together? Both concepts are fine on their own. Where’s the logical contradiction?
Craig never seems to say. Instead, I find him saying two things:
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- An actual infinity that exists in the real world would be “metaphysically impossible.”
- If an actual infinity existed in the real world, the results would be “absurd.”
“Metaphysically Impossible”
Sometimes Craig states that it would be metaphysically impossible for the world to have an infinite history. What does this mean?
Philosophers and theologians speak about different types of possibility. For example:
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- Something is logically possible if it does not involve a contradiction in terms.
- Something is metaphysically possible if it could happen in reality, even if the world operated under very different physical laws.
- Something is physically possible if it could happen in our world, given the way its physical laws operate (e.g., the speed of light, conservation of mass and energy).
- Something is practically possible if we could realistically do it, given our limitations (e.g., how much time we have, how big our budget is).
Philosophers often say that metaphysical possibility is notoriously hard to define, and from a secular perspective, this might be true.
However, for a Christian who understands God’s omnipotence, it shouldn’t be.
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- God can do anything that doesn’t involve a logical contradiction.
- Therefore, God can make any world that doesn’t involve a logical contradiction.
- Therefore, anything that is logically possible is metaphysically possible.
For the Christian, logical possibility and metaphysical possibility are really two ways of describing the same thing.
If—on the logical level—there’s a contradiction in terms, then that means—on the metaphysical level—that there is a contradiction in the nature of the things those terms describe.
Let’s suppose that you want to draw a four-sided triangle. On the logical level, there is a contradiction between four-sidedness and being a triangle, and on the metaphysical level, triangular objects are such that they cannot have four sides.
As a result, the question of metaphysical impossibility collapses into the question of logical possibility.
Consequently, logical impossibility is what Craig needs to show if he wants to deny that God can’t make a world with an infinite history.
To say that such a thing would be metaphysically impossible is, for the Christian who understands God’s omnipotence, just another way of saying that it involves a logical contradiction.
“Absurd”
What about Craig’s other claim—that an actual infinity in the real world would result in “absurd” situations?
Craig makes this charge in connection with a famous thought experiment known as Hilbert’s Hotel, which was proposed by the mathematician David Hilbert.
It involves a hotel that has an infinite number of rooms, and—because of the strange properties that infinity has—you can imagine some very strange things happening at the hotel. (You can read about them at the link.)
There are various ways of responding. Hilbert’s Hotel actually isn’t as strange as it sounds once you think about what “infinite” means. Also, it’s just a physicalization of the concept of infinity, with one room for every natural number. So, if the idea of an infinite set of natural numbers doesn’t involve a logical contradiction, neither should a physical representation of it.
However, to keep our discussion concise, I want to focus on this: “Absurd” does not mean “logically contradictory.”
Something is absurd if it strikes us as surprising, counter-intuitive, and contrary to our expectations—prompting us to have an impulse to reject the idea out of hand.
But it turns out that the world contains many things that strike us as absurd and yet turn out to be true. This is the case regardless of one’s persuasions. One can be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, or anything else, and the world still contains a lot of strange, “absurd” things.
Lots of people—in history and today—have found each of the following claims absurd:
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- An infinitely loving God would allow innocent people and animals to suffer.
- God would send someone to hell.
- God became man.
- God died on a cross.
- There is one God, who is a Trinity of Persons.
- Transubstantiation occurs.
- God created the world out of nothing.
- The earth is a sphere.
- The sun does not orbit the earth.
- Man can build machines that will enable him to fly.
- Man can go to the moon.
- Modern life forms are the product of a process of evolution stretching back billions of years.
- There was a beginning to time.
- Space and time are not absolutes but can be warped by gravity.
- When you move faster, time slows down.
- Heavier objects do not fall appreciably faster than lighter ones.
- Atoms exist.
- In the Monty Hall Problem, the best strategy is to switch your bet after the first door is opened.
Yet each of these is true. So, from a Christian perspective, we can say that God has created a world where a lot of “absurd” things in it.
Consequently, if we want our beliefs to be accurate, we need to be willing to consider ideas that strike us as absurd and not simply dismiss them on this basis.
The fact that something seems absurd is not a reliable guide to what God can do, and so it’s not enough to allow us to say, “God can’t do that.”
If we want to say that God can’t make a world with an infinite history, we need more than gesturing at a situation and saying it’s absurd.
We need to know what logical contradiction it involves. We need to be able to name the terms that produce a logical contradiction.
So far, Craig hasn’t identified one, but that’s what we need to see.
Until he or someone else can show that the idea of infinite history involves a contradiction in terms (and name the terms that conflict!), any Christian who understands God’s omnipotence should remain with the default position that this would be within God’s power.
This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 1 September 2021 to 8 September 2021.
