I was searching the web for a particular William Lane Craig quote this morning when I came across an article on a philosophy of religion website discussing the Kalam Cosmological Argument as defended by WLC. The author seemed to be giving a decent summary of the argument, but I was astounded when I read the following:

The problem here is that God is not required to provide reasons as to why anything is here. In fact, modern cosmology is grounded precisely in the notion that everything came from nothing, and that prior to the singularity which caused our present universe to come into existence, there literally was nothing (no-thing) there. So science provides a perfectly adequate naturalist account of the origins of the universe, which does not requires us to posit the existence of anything prior to it being here in order to justify why it now does. [emphasis mine]

To quote Homer Simpson, "Well I guess everything is wrapped up in a nice little package!" First of all, what does it mean to say "prior to the singularity"? Second, how did the singularity cause our universe to come into existence? Is not the singularity the universe? Third, and most critically, how can we make sense of the idea that the singularity suddenly came into existence out of nothing (the author even clarifies "no-thing") with no cause whatsoever? Such a thing seems utterly ridiculous. I can't even begin to make sense of this "explanation".

If someone wants to say "we just don't know what caused the universe to exist, but I don't think it was God," at least I can understand that, even though I disagree. But to say it began to exist, uncaused, out of literally no-thing, and posit that is "a perfectly adequate naturalist account" … puh-lease.

For videos of WLC explaining the Kalam cosmological argument, visit here: William Lane Craig & the Cosmological Argument (the videos were recorded at Saddleback Church and his presentation is at a lay-level, there is also a link near the bottom of the post to WLC's more academic presentation at a university) UPDATE: Here is a shorter video by Craig on the same subject.