The Kalam Cosmological Argument is unsound

He defended the KCA remarkably well in spite of having to deal with objections which normally don't come up in this tired old topic. I'll make this round a bit shorter since it's meant mostly as a conclusion to our arguments. Burden of Proof. Again, my points *did* go to show that Con's premises were false. On his a priori defense, I showed the epistemic problems with extrapolating ultimate foundational criterion, and furthermore, in extrapolating the causal principle as among them. If Con fails to defend his claim against this, then I have shown the futility of a priori arguments for P1 just as I would have done if I had brought a counter-argument for, say, the existence of parts or objects that are a-causal. On Con's a posteriori defense, I further showed the incoherence of induction, instead supplanting it with a falsificationist methodology. As with the first point, this one shows that Con's methodology is severely flawed. I think the confusion on Con's part here stems from his insistence on staying within the "normal" framework for most KCA debates. That is, debaters generally only argue from a metaphysical standpoint. I've done things differently here, insisting on holding the premises up to an epistemic justificatory lense. Can we even prove them? My arguments, if successful, show that we cannot. So I need not argue metaphysics proper in order to win this debate, I need only to show why they cannot be rationally justified. This doesn't amount to me just saying Con's specific arguments are false (thus leaving room for further arguments in support), but amounts to a full-scale refutation of the entire methodology and epistemic presumptions behind the argument. My arguments are meant to show that the KCA is an unsound attempt at proving its conclusion because its premises are inherently unsupported or unprovable. A priori Defense. On Con's problem of "impasse" I detect a bit of misinterpretation on my opponent's part. My point was that appealing to intuition itself doesn't argumentatively help in justifying a proposition. The "Pythagorean Theorem" point is a bad example and in fact presumes going back to non-contradiction as its foundation. You must accept so and so because the opposite entails contradiction is exactly what I'm saying. But that's very different from Pro's methodology wherein one accepts so and so *because* it is intuited. Con has failed to defend this methodology against the problem of inter-subjective justification. Con is confused (perhaps understandably) about my methodology in choosing the law of non-contradiction as my starting point. And while not necessarily relevant to this debate, a little bit of explanation might be in order to clear up any confusion. Non-contradiction doesn't necessarily filter into knowledge since it can't be justified by recourse to anything other than itself. However, argumentatively it's impossible not to assume. Contradictions may or may not exist externally from us but we'd have no way of knowing, and worse, we'd have no way of arguing for that being the case. Con is attacking a strawmann *again* in describing my position as that inference is the only sound way to debate around an issue. In fact, if you look at the "impasse" point directly above this you can see that I defended non-contradiction as an argumentatively necessary alternative. Con also constantly alludes to some a priori argument for causality in his P1. I've read through it several times and fail to find one of any sort. Con provided arguments for (1) us rationally intuiting causality which I responded to, (2) an argument from potentiality/probability which was responded to in my refutation of the first point i. e. , attacking the epistemic presumptions behind it, (3) that science relies on induction, responded to by critical rationalism, and (4) that the universe had a beginning which as both my opponent and myself have agreed, is irrelevant if I can show that P1 is false. A posteriori Defense. Con's attack on critical rationalism attacks a strawmann of the position, not anything it actually claims. Yes, we are still left a blank as to the problem of justification even assuming the falsification standard has been adhered to. But the point is that Popper's system leaves "foundationalist epistemology" entirely. Hume's problem of induction showed that trying to ground a posteriori beliefs with certainty is inherently fallacious. So instead, we just change what we look for as a standard. This isn't running away from the problem since one also leaves out claims to ultimate certainty in scientific problems. One simply accepts scientific conclusions tentatively, as they are always open to revision. Con's reliance on how we act in the everyday world is furthermore irrelevant to this debate. I'll admit that we generally rely on this in our everyday goings. Green lights have always meant go, so when I see a green light I "know" instinctively that that means I'm free to pass. But jumping from this to philosophical soundness of the principle is quite the leap my opponent is trying to make. We act on this principle, and perhaps there's no way we could ignore it, but that doesn't mean it's philosophically justified and my opponent has failed to show that it is. Con's overarching point then, is that we don't need to prove induction to be a valid principle to operate on, because we already do it regardless. This would be akin to me saying that we *have* free will because we already presume that we have it. Our subjective inclinations, however "natural" they may be, are no substitute for a rational defense of principle. And that, Con has failed to provide.