Cosmological argument

=== Kalām cosmological argument ===
{{Main|Kalam cosmological argument}}
[[William Lane Craig]], who was principally responsible for re-popularizing this argument in [[Western philosophy]], presents it in the following general form:<ref>{{cite web |last=Craig |first=William L. |title=The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe |work=Truth Journal |publisher=Leaderu.com |access-date=22 June 2008 |url=http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html }}</ref>
# Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
# The universe began to exist.
# Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

Craig analyses this cause in ''The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology'' and says that this cause must be uncaused, beginningless, changeless, timeless, spaceless, extraordinarily powerful, and personal.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Craig |first1=William Lane |title=The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology |last2=Moreland |first2=J.P. |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-4051-7657-6 |location=UK, Croydon, CR0 4YY |pages=194}}</ref><!--
# the form advocated by Aquinas based on the impossibility of the "essential" ordering of an infinite regress; Aquinas argues that  only an "incidental" ordering among causes, but not an "essential" ordering, can reach back forever.
# the argument that an infinite regress is impossible because an [[actual infinity]] is impossible; this form is called the [[kalam cosmological argument]] by Craig, as he traces its first formulation to [[Al-Ghazali]].
# the argument from the [[principle of sufficient reason]], presented by Leibniz and Clarke.

A version of the cosmological argument could be stated as follows:

# Every finite and [[Contingency (philosophy)|contingent]] being has a cause.
# A [[Causality|causal]] loop cannot exist.
# A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
# Therefore, a first cause (or something that is not an effect) must exist.
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