Kalām cosmological argument

The Kalām cosmological argument (KCA) is a modern formulation of the cosmological argument for the existence of God rooted in the Ilm al-Kalam heritage in medieval Islamic scholasticism. An outspoken defender of the argument is William Lane Craig, who first defended it in his book The Kalām Cosmological Argument in 1979. Since then the Kalam cosmological argument has elicited public debate between Craig and Graham Oppy, Adolf Grünbaum, J. L. Mackie and Quentin Smith, and has been used in Christian apologetics. According to Michael Martin, Craig's revised argument is "among the most sophisticated and well argued in contemporary theological philosophy", along with versions of the cosmological argument presented by Bruce Reichenbach and Richard Swinburne.

In defending the argument, Craig has argued against the possibility of the existence of actual infinities, tracing the idea to 11th-century philosopher Al-Ghazali. He named this variant of cosmological argument the Kalam cosmological argument, from Ilm al-Kalām "science of discourse", the Arabic term for the discipline of philosophical theology in Islam.

Craig states the Kalam cosmological argument as a brief syllogism, most commonly rendered as follows:

From the conclusion of the initial syllogism, he appends a further premise and conclusion based upon ontological analysis of the properties of the cause:

Referring to the implications of Classical Theism that follow from this argument, Craig writes:

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