Posted: Jul 30, 2011 12:24 am
murshid wrote:.
Did anyone ever ask Craig why the Kalam Cosmological Argument is not an argument for the existence of Allah?
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It is.
If I understand Craig's apologetic strategy correctly, it is as follows:
1. argue for the existence of a supreme being, transcendent to spacetime, who created the universe (Kalam)
2. argue that the being in 1 is probably a mind (Craig's tack-on argument to the Kalam)
3. use the design argument and the moral argument to bolster 1 and also to argue that god must be (a) interested in us (because he designed the cosmos for us) and (b) likes making rules for us (the moral bit)
4. now turn to the scriptures regarding Jesus and argue for the resurrection. He knows these arguments are weak because of the 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' factor. However he then argues that - if you already believe in an all-powerful, interested, interventionist god, then the resurrection is not so extraordinary at all. In fact, it is just the sort of thing such a god might do, and hence doesn't require extraordinary evidence at all. Hence he uses 1, 2 and 3 to help get his argument for Christianity across the line.
Stages 1-3 of this strategy are entirely compatible with Islam, in fact supportive of it. I don't think Craig would deny that. It's only argument 4 that argues for Christianity and against Islam.