The Kalam Cosmological Argument

God does not have to be the cause of our universeDescription of the cause of the universe & Occam's RazorPreviously I ask some questions if we assume the universe has a cause what justification do we have for believing it must be all powerful, personal, omi benevolent etc etc. As Pro mentioned Occams razor before. .. "Occam's razor, also known as Ockham's razor, and sometimes expressed in Latin as lex parsimoniae (the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness), is a principle that generally recommends from among competing hypotheses selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions. " [1]If its possible that the universe can be caused by something that is not maximally powerful, non personal & not all knowing then it would be a violation to of Occams razor to then say the cause is God. Now Pro seems to concede that the KCA doesn't provide sufficient justification to believe that the "cause" of the universe is omi benevolent. I will let Pro for the purpose of this debate allow God to be defined without any moral characteristics but will still hold Pro accountable for proving that God as defined with all the other descriptions exist. Must the cause be all powerful or maximally powerful ? If Pro wants to change all powerful to maximally powerful I can work with that. But the question still is, why must the cause be maximally powerful ? . There doesn't seem to be a necessity shown between cause of universe and maximally powerful. Must the cause be maximally intelligent and all knowing ? Pro mentions that choice proves intelligence. Well sure in the most general sense, I mean even a retarded puppy has "intelligence" but I don't think this is the intelligence we are talking about when talking about God. I don't think Pro has shown why its necessary for the cause to possess some sort of maximal intelligence and be all knowing. Must the cause be timeless and spaceless ? Pro mentions again that the cause must be outside of our time and space as within this universe. I can grant that, but that doesn't mean the cause can't occupy a time and space different from our own. Must the cause be personal ? Pro says. .. "In other words only timeless events could come forth from a timeless impersonal mechanism. " How does Pro know this ? Can Pro prove this or only assert this ? If Pro is free to make such assertions then I can also just assert that temporal events can come from a timeless impersonal state. A mind without a brain ? Pro makes the point that the observation that minds are dependent on brains is an inductive point and that it doesn't prove the impossibility of a mind without a brain. I find this to be an inadequate response, cause sure anything that is not a strict logical contradiction is "possible", such as a mind without a brain, but other things that are not a strict logical contradiction and thus "possible" include. ..100 foot invisible, immaterial dragons on pluto and an alien mother ship with a cloaking device hovering above the earth right now. Does the fact that these things are possible and have not been proved to not exist mean we should believe they exist ? of course not. They don't even establish they are even slightly probable to exist. Pro makes an appeal to religious experience, the trouble is religious experience gives many different contradictory answers. Such as this brainless mind wants us to find and burn witches, fly planes into buildings to get virgins in paradise, accept one of many human sacrifices as some how pleasing to a God, while rejecting the other human sacrifices and lets not forget that every now and then God sends a hurricane to punish homosexuals and abortionists. .. ""God caused Hurricane Katrina to wipe out New Orleans because it had a gay pride parade the week before and was filled with sexual sin. " [2] God never sends a hurricane against the rich and powerful for some reason. Its almost as if people are just making this stuff up eh ? There is also the problem of the religious experience making claims which are unfalsifiable and thus if they are wrong can never be proved to be wrong and thus giving false affirmation to the adherents of such claims. Evidence only ever affirms what they believe and can never prove what they believe is wrong. There is also the problem of why we don't have testable proven claims coming from some sort of supreme mind without a brain, maybe because it doesn't exist ? There is also the problem that minds are not capable of creating physical objects from nothing. If you doubt this feel free trying to create a physical cheese cake using only your mind. So I think on the scientific data and inductive grounds we have good reason to reject a mind without a brain and no good reason to believe it exists. Something from nothingPart of the argument here and within kalam is how its such a big problem to have something come from nothing. But assuming that Pro adheres to creation ex niliho that is to say God created the universe out of nothing and NOT any pre existing stuff, then this shows Pro and/or the KCA is not opposed to something coming from nothing in the general sense. Pro and the KCA have to make some metaphysical claims in order to justify the claim that nothing from something can't happen without God but can happen with God. But until those metaphysical claims are proven they are merely arbitrary assertions and can be rejected as such. Premise 1: Premise 1 (P1): Everything that begins to exist has a cause. Pro responds to my question about how can Pro know that OUTSIDE and BEYOND our universe that things don't begin to exist without a cause. Pro makes the point about how we don't observe cars popping into driveways and such. But that doesn't deal with my objection. I can grant Pro that in our universe things don't begin to exist without cause but how does this prove that other things beyond our universe can't begin to exist without a cause or even the universe as a whole began to exist without a cause. Premise 2 (P2): The Universe began to exist. Fallacy of composition and the universeIn response to my charge that Pro had commited the composition fallacy Pro says. .. The set I’m referring to is all temporal things. I state that every temporal thing has a cause. The universe is a part of this set and therefore had a cause. " I doubt Pro can reference any temporal thing outside the universe, as the Iron chariot article said before. .. "Unfortunately, we are stuck inside the universe, therefore any conclusions we can draw about individual components of the universe (within the set) do not necessarily apply to the set as a whole. " I submit that Pro can only base their observations on what happens inside the universe too. As such it doesn't necessarily follow that just because every part of the universe began to exist that means that the universe as a whole began to exist. What does it mean to say that something "began" to exist ? My previous argument was. ..1) Something begins to exist if there was a point in the past where it did not exist2) There has never been a time in the past where the universe did not existC) Therefore the universe did not "begin" to exist. Pro does agree that there has never been a time in the past where the universe does not exist, but Pro doesn't accept the conclusion as Pro says. .. "So yes the universe existed in all points of time, but the universe didn’t always exist. In fact this is implied in the standard model of the big bang. So as bizarre as the statement is, it is not contradictory. "Pro them self used examples of things that began to exist based on there been a time in the past where they did not exist such as rocks and babies. You can't just get rid of the began to exist principle when dealing with the univeres as a whole like dimissing a taxi once you have reached your destination. .. beep beep. I look forward to Pros reply. Sources [1] . http://en.wikipedia.org...'s_razor[2] . http://www.ranker.com...