The Kalam Cosmological Argument

Thank you Con for your round and I would like to apologize for how long this one has taken for me to present. So having said that here we go.Ockham's Razor To start off I would like to quote one of Con’s statements that he started with last round. “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.” The wrong idea is being presented here. For one the KCA does not provide evidence of a being that is maximally powerful or all knowing. In stead it does provide evidence for an extremely powerful being that is a personal one, and intelligent enough to create a functioning universe. Now these attributes are not necessarily limitless, but they are most closely identified with attributes that are. This is the exact reason why my resolution states that God is the best entity to fit the description. You stated that if it’s possible that the universe could be caused by something that is not personal…I want to point out that I think the KCA shows that the cause is a personal cause. I will expand in the end of this round further why the attributes that must be dictated to the cause are best attributed to God, and therefore Occam’s razor does apply.Maximally Powerful?God being maximally powerful is the only entity that fits the description of one that is powerful enough to create the universe. Again this is my original line of thought expressed in my resolution. Now if you want to try and fit these abilities into another entity then why not call that entity God? Here is where Ockham’s Razor played into my reasoning in that I was showing it not to be necessary to create other “Gods” to fill all of these attributes. So does the cause have to be maximally powerful? Maybe…maybe not, but God does fit the bill better than any other potential cause.All Knowing? Does the cause have to be all knowing? Again not necessarily…at least not concluded specifically out of the KCA. But again God does fit the description and is the most reasonable answer thus far. We can conceivably say that this cause is extremely intelligent in that it created a functioning universe capable of supporting life. Also that it was able to create a functioning system from nothing shows that the intelligence is so vast that a maximally intelligent being, as we believe God to be, again is the best fit of the abilities of this cause. Spaceless and Timeless? God is spaceless and timeless in that he created space and time. Now can He occupy space and time? I see no logical reason why God can’t. Why shouldn’t a creator be able to interact with his creation? Just because He is not subject to the boundaries that are imposed onto his creation, does not mean that he cannot interact with every individual piece of it. Also creating the universe shows that he can interact with it because he created a system subject to space and time, even though he is not. Therefore if he can create a space-time system, he can also interact with it. Personal? I demonstrated how only a state to state event could occur from a non-personal cause. I gave the example of the wood floating in water. To say that I’m only asserting this line of logic is invalid because I have given an example for a demonstration. The cause must be a personal one to make a state to event occurrence such as a temporal system coming from a non temporal state. You have not rebutted this.An Unembodied Mind? As for religion verifying the existence of an unembodied mind I want to make clear that I was not intending for this line of logic to do that. In fact to assert that there is an unembodied mind would being using the conclusion that God exists as a premise to that conclusion. What is happening with the KCA however is showing evidence on where we can conceive of an unembodied mind existing. There is no evidence to show how one cannot exist. Using inductive logic by comparing all bodied minds with the idea of an unembodied mind is comparing apples and oranges. In using religion I was showing how if you purely speculate there are both sides of the argument that believe in their truth. Showing how the KCA is sound is key evidence in showing the truth behind the existence of an unembodied mind. This argument uses deductive logic and therefore outweighs the improperly placed inductive reasoning used by comparing all bodied minds with the possibility of an unembodied one. Something Coming From Nothing? You ask for a metaphysical claim for the truth behind something coming from nothing. Here we have as I stated before philosophical and scientific evidence for this. For one the idea that something can come from nothing without a causer that can bridge this gap makes no sense. How could this happen? Why with inductive evidence have we never observed anything else of this nature happening. Now Con says sure nothing like that happens in our universe, but what about outside of it? Well I think we have great reasons to say why it doesn’t happen. Or if it does happen we have philosophical reasoning to believe that it was caused by a being that can bridge the gap between nothing and existence. Simply asking about a hypothetical something from nothing outside of our universe and beyond our observable parameters is a weak objection to premise one. Premise one still holds. If the two ideas were placed on a scale a rational man would have to side with the idea that only nothing comes from nothing if by nothing. I’m not saying to abandon the idea of it being a possibility, but until there can be evidence of such an event we are subject to the logic behind the universe having a cause.The Universe Began to Exist? Now in regards to the universe beginning to exist I think it is evident in showing that it began to exist in relation to itself. It had a 0 moment. Also it began to exist in the form of existence as a whole in comparison to non-existence. So even if you take away the time table of all of existence you still have a beginning of a temporal system, even if it came from a state of non-temporal. You rewind the clock back far enough we get to the beginning of our universe. Can you ask what happened before that? Well kind of, but not with the sense of time that is subject to our universe. Rather you have to understand God and his existence is timeless yet created an existence that is subject to time. Therefore this universe had an absolute beginning even though there was no time before the universe. I also showed how there can’t be an infinite number of past events in a philosophical manner further expanding upon the point of there being an absolute beginning. So no I’m not dismissing the universe as a whole when it comes to terms of having a beginning, rather the contrary. It began to exist. Can All of This Mean God?So we have a universe that through the KCA we can conclude that the cause was extremely powerful, extremely intelligent, and a personal unembodied mind. Now lets look at God’s associated attributes:- Maximally powerful- Omniscient (all knowing)- A personal spirtSo does extremely powerful fit into maximally powerful? Quite nicely actually. Does extremely intelligent fit into being omniscient / all knowing? Also very nicely. Does a personal unembodied mind fit into a personal spirit? Bingo! God is therefore as stated in my resolution the best thus far fit for the cause of our universe. Back to you Con!