Symposion. Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences Symposion. Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences
Ward Blondé
ABSTRACT: According to the Kalam cosmological argument, the universe began to exist and therefore requires God as an initial cause. Here, the universe is the causally interrelated physical whole that we inhabit. In this paper, a past-infinite metaphysics is proposed that is based on five successively derived a priori principles: A) non-isolating physical plenitude, B) hierarchical hyperspacetimes, C) cosmological natural selection, D) cosmological evolutionary conservation, and E) anti-empiricism. Three argument routes to counter the claim that the universe began to exist are distilled from an analysis of this metaphysics: I) in a plenitude P with a beginning B, it is always possible to conceive of a plenitude P’ that has some events that happen before B; II) hierarchical hyperspacetimes combined with cosmological natural selection assert that every hyperspacetime reproduces in a larger and older hyperspacetime with more spatial dimensions, which results in an infinite regress into the past; and III) the infinite reality of higher-dimensional, physical life that came before our observable big bang remains undetectable due to cosmological evolutionary conservation. The focus of the paper is both on the Kalam argument and on the far-reaching consequences of the metaphysics that refutes it.
