The Cosmological Argument in the Kalam Tradition
Created | Updated May 26, 2004
The Kalam tradition is a part of Muslim philosophy, which aims to address religious concerns arising from the Qur’an. The cosmological argument in this tradition encompasses three of the ninety-nine most beautiful names for God derived from the Qur’an. The Creator1, The Permanent2, and the Independent3. These stress God’s supremacy, being the originator of the universe, non-contingent, and on whom everything is dependant. As these properties are not deduced from a chain of causality and are matter of faith, then they become indisputable beliefs. In the late eleventh century, however, discussion arose as to how creation by a process of divine causality functioned. In the 1090s, the Islamic philosopher Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers, which aimed to address this question. In this essay, we shall examine his argument, and see how valid it seems compared to the criticisms levelled against St Thomas Aquinas' Cosmological Argument.
Al-Ghazali claimed that creation is done by God’s will. He stated that had it been a necessary part of God’s nature to create the world, then like God, this nature would be eternal; ergo the world would be eternal. If, however, the world was eternal (i.e. it had an infinite regress), then it would always have existed, so could not have been created. As the world was contingent (things are born, die etc.) it could not be eternal, and therefore cannot exist as part of God’s nature, but must have been created of God’s will, so God is therefore the first cause. Al-Ghazali’s argument therefore sidesteps the question of whether an infinite regress is intelligible, by postulating that intelligible or not, this universe is not infinite/eternal, and must have been created by a being with a will. God would therefore be an obvious suggestion.
Al-Ghazali extends the idea of God as the first cause to God being the first and only cause. To Al-Ghazali, as to Hume, a chain of causality is just an illusion. Al-Ghazali saw every event being directly caused by God, and that something happens in a particular order because God consciously decides to make each event happen in that order. When God makes the decision to cause events in a different way to the usual pattern, then a miracle occurs. This view of causality concurs with Hume’s idea of each event being independent of the one preceding it, so avoids that criticism of the cosmological argument. This view also agrees with the simplicity principle of Occam’s razor, as stating that each event is caused purely by one entity is a particularly noncomplex idea. We can therefore see that the Kalam version of the cosmological argument is able to avoid the main criticisms often directed at Aquinas’ version. There are, however, two criticisms which not even Al-Ghazali’s hypothesis can evade.
Kant argues that an argument for non-empirical proof based on empirical proof is flawed, and this disparagement is still true. Al-Ghazali does argue for the existence of God (non-empirical) from observations of causality and the contingency of life, which would be empirical evidence. Kant’s criticism is therefore still relevant. The reductionist argument also applies, as Al-Ghazali is stating that God is the cause, making the whole greater than its elements. As previously mentioned, however, reductionism does usually deny most religious arguments, so this is no exception.
In conclusion therefore, whilst Al-Ghazali’s expression of the Kalam tradition does still fall foul of two of the Aquinian condemnations, it does manage to satisfy four other arguments against the cosmological argument, so could be said to be getting closer to the truth.
