Causation, existence, and creation in space-times with non-trivial topology

GUSTAVO E. ROMERO

Vatican City

Simposio; Proceedings of the International Symposiumon Astrophysics; 2003

The Kalam Cosmological Argument is perhaps the most solid and widly discussed argument for a caused creation of the universe. The usual objections to the argument mainly focus on the second premise. In this paper we discuss the dependency of the first premise on the topological structure of the space-time manifold adopted for the underlying cosmological model. It is shown that in chronology-violating space-times the first premise is also violated. The chronology-violation, in turn, requires a massive violation of the so-called energy conditions which could have observational effects that are briefly discussed here. Hence, astronomical observations could be relevant for the validity of the metaphysical argument. In this sense, it is possible to talk of “observational theology”.