Many Christian apologists love to present the so-called "Cosmological Argument" for the existence of God, as if it were some kind extremely strong and irrefutable slamdunk argument that's completely logically solid and sound, and which can't be counter-argued. The most common form goes like this:
- Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe had a cause.
Some apologists will add a fourth clause adding a boatload of (obviously completely unfounded) characteristics to that "cause".
However, the entire argument is unsound and invalid, through and through. Here is a full refutation:
"Whatever begins to exist has a cause"
This has several problems, not the least of which is that this is an ambiguous sentence. The main ambiguity lies in that "begins to exist", as it doesn't specify what kind of "beginning to exist" we are talking about.
Many apologists actually deceitfully play with and abuse this ambiguity, including big-name apologists who demonstrably know better (and thus have no excuse for their deceitful arguments), such as William Lane Craig.
In an interview discussing this argument he said (slightly paraphrasing): "Atheists often try to present a counter-argument that we don't have any example of something beginning to exist. Didn't dinosaurs begin to exist? Didn't I begin to exist?"
This kind of "beginning to exist" is so-called ex materia, in other words, matter and energy transforming to make something different that wasn't there before, fully within this existing universe. Craig is being deliberately deceitful here because in other contexts he has very clearly expressed that he perfectly well understands the difference between creation ex materia and creation ex nihilo, ie "out of nothing".
And that is the main problem with this clause: We indeed do not have a single example of something beginning to exist from nothing, we only have examples of things beginning to exist from existing matter, ie. existing matter and energy, fully within this universe, transforming from one form to another. But the premise isn't talking about the universe appearing ex materia, it's talking about it appearing ex nihilo, out of nothing.
We do not know if something can appear from nothing, and even if it can, we don't know if some kind of "cause" is needed for that to happen. Heck, we don't even know if absolute "nothingness" is even possible in this reality where we exist. Apologists (and many other people) merely assume that absolute nothingness, the complete non-existence of anything, is possible. But we don't know even that! This reality where we exist might as well be of a nature where absolute nothingness is impossible, and there must always exist something. We don't know!
The premise, thus, is completely unjustified. We cannot take it for granted, even though the argument in question does exactly that. We have no examples of things coming into existence from nothing, and we don't know if that's even possible, and we don't even know if "nothingness" itself is possible in this reality where we exist. We just don't know. We cannot assume it to be so.
That, in itself, completely nullifies the entire argument. However, for the sake of the argument, let's assume for a moment that it might be valid and continue to the next premise:
"The universe began to exist"
We don't know this either!
The apologists will hurry to argue from the Big Bang model, and "infinite regress" being impossible. However, the Big Bang theory only tells us that a long time ago the entire universe, including space and time itself, was compressed into an infinitesimally small point, which rapidly expanded, forming this universe. It does not tell us where that point, with all of its energy, came from.
Most particularly, it does not tell us that the initial point came into existence from nothing (which is the entire premise of this argument). The fact is that we don't know anything at all about that initial point. We don't know why it existed, we don't know how long it existed, we don't even know if it makes any sense to talk about a time "before" it existed (because time itself was created by the expansion of that point). It might or might not be completely nonsensical to talk about a time "before" the Big Bang. And even if there indeed was a time "before" it, we have absolutely no idea what it was like, and what was there, if anything.
We also don't know if there's some kind of "outside" to this universe of ours, or even if such a concept even makes sense. There might be, or there might not be. It might be that this universe is everything that exists, or it might be that there are other universes, and/or it might be that this universe of ours is inside some kind of "metaverse" of sorts, for the lack of a better term. We just don't know. Nor do we know anything about the nature of those other things, if they indeed exist at all.
There are hypotheses that this universe might not be the only one, and there may well be countless (perhaps even infinite) "parallel universes", or perhaps there's an "anti-universe" that's a kind of "negative" version of this universe of ours which formed at the same time (to balance things out). There are also hypotheses that this universe might have resulted from the collapse of another universe. But all these are just hypotheses, and the fact is that we just don't know.
In summary, stating as a fact that "the universe began to exist" is just false. It's not a fact. We don't know if this universe began to exist!
"Therefore, the universe had a cause"
The conclusion is unjustified because both premises are unjustified. For this kind of formal argument to be valid, the premises need to be valid. In this case, they are not.
The argument could be made logically valid if we reword it slightly: "If beginning to exist (ex nihilo) is possible, and if everything that begins to exist (ex nihilo) has a cause, and if this universe began to exist (ex nihilo), then this universe had a cause."
But that's a lot of assumptions to make, and it's kind of a trivial argument to make. It's like saying "if I had a lot of money I would be rich." Well, duh. Of course. It's a completely trivial and self-evident argument to make.
But even if we granted all the assumptions made in the premises, for the sake of argument, the argument would still not work.
Why? Because it's trying to argue for the existence of the Biblical God. In fact, it wouldn't work even if it were arguing for the existence of some unspecified "god".
This is because even if there was a cause for the existence of this universe, we don't know anything about it. Nothing. Nada. Nil. Christian apologists love to attribute characteristics to this "cause", but they are all just unfounded unjustified speculation and guessing, based on even more assumptions. (For example, they assume that this universe is the only one that exists, and that there are no other universes, or any kind of "metaverse" inside which this universe exists. This is not an assumption we can make because we just don't know.)
Some apologists love to say "we call this cause God." Why call it that? Even if there was a cause, it's a complete unknown. You should be calling it "an unknown", not "God". This is because that name, "God", carries with it a huge amount of assumptions, presumptions and extra claims, none of which can be factually attributed to that unknown "cause".
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