The Kalam Cosmological Argument is unsound

A deductive argument can be unsound for one of two reasons--either it's logically invalid, or one or more premises are false. Pro only needs to refute one premise to refute the whole argument, so we can't fault him for not addressing all of my arguments. However, debate rules: "Drops will count as concessions." For the purposes of this debate, he has conceded all but the first premise.1. Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence.a priori defenseI argued that there are foundational items of knowledge we have that we know by rational intuition, the first premise being among them. Specifically, we can know by rational intuition that ex nihilo beginnings requires efficient causes.Pro responded by attacking a priori knowedge by rational intuition. Before addressing his arguments, let me give a more robust defense of a priori knowledge.Most of what we know is inferred from something else we know. If everything we know must be inferred, then all of our premises must be inferred as well. And the premises from which we infer our premises must also be inferred. Etc.One of two things can happen at this point. Either we will get ourselves into an infinite regress trying to justify all of our premises, or else we can finally arrive at a set of premises that can be known to be true without having to infer them from anything prior. If we get into an infinite regress, then knowledge is impossible because it's impossible to complete a beginningless series of inferences in order to arrive at a present state of knowledge. So the only way knowledge is possible is if there are some items of knowledge that don't have to be inferred from anything prior.The claim that we must be able to prove something before we can know it is self-refuting. It leads to global skepticism, which is the view that knowledge is impossible. If knowledge is impossible, then we can't know that any of the premises that lead to our global skepticism are true, nor that global skepticism follows from those premises. And we certainly can't know that we must be able to prove something before we can know it.Since the claim that we must be able to infer something from prior premises before we can know it is self-refuting, it must be possible to know things a priori.If Pro wants to bite the bullet and admit that we can't know anything, then his whole case against the KCA fails. If we can't know anything, then we can't know that his case against the KCA is sound. So if Pro rejects a priori knowledge, then his case against the KCA is self-refuting because he undermines the necessary preconditions to launch a case against the KCA.Now, I just ask you to be honest with yourself. Can you not close your eyes and rationally "see" that if A is bigger than B, and B is bigger than C, that A is bigger than C? And can you not see that this transitive property is universally true without having to go out in the world and verify it?There are some things you know with certainty that you don't infer from anything else. If you think of a number between 1 and 10, you know which number you're thinking of. You know that 2+3=5. You know that the law of non-contradiction is true. Not only do you know these things without having to prove them, but you know them with absolute certainty.Pro thinks the mere fact that somebody can claim opposite angles of intersecting lines are unequal is enough to refute a priori knowledge. But it's clearly not. People claim all kinds of silly things. There are people who deny the law of non-contradiction, but does that honestly cause you to doubt it? If somebody claimed that 2+3=6, would that cause you to doubt that 2+3=5? Surely not!I already pointed out in the last round that just because something can be known by rational intuition, it doesn't mean it will be known by all people. So I have already responded to Pro's argument even before he made it.Pro thinks that if there's no way to adjudicate between competiing knowledge claims, that those claims cannot be known by intuition. But again, I already responded to this when I explained that just because something can be rationally known doesn't mean it will be known by all people. The fact that somebody else doesn't grasp the truth of math, logic, geometry, or the causal principle is no reason for any of us who do grasp them to have doubts.If a person is unable to work out in their mind why something is true, it is possible to get them to see that it's true. For example, in the case of the Pythagorean Theorem, you can demonstrate it by drawing triangles on a sheet of paper and using algebra.[1] Once the person "sees" it, they recognize that it's a necessary truth that will apply to any right triangle anywhere in the universe.Likewise, I attempted to show that the notion that something cannot come from nothing without a cause is a necessary truth by showing that its denial entails a contradiction. Pro ignored that demonstration.a posteriori defensePro's only response to my a posteriori defense is to deny the validity of induction. That is quite the bullet to bite! Most of what we know is through induction. If induction were not a valid way of knowing, then it would be impossible to learn anything from experience. Science could not tell us anything about the world. Experiments could tell us nothing.Pro claims that David Hume showed the problems with induction. What David Hume actually showed was that the principle of induction (i.e. that the future will resemble the past) cannot be proved because the only way to prove it is to assume it, and that is circular reasoning.[2] The only way to deny induction on that basis is to assume that the only way we can know something is to prove it. But I already demonstrated above why that position is self-refuting.The principle of induction is part of our a priori knowledge. I just ask the reader and Noumena if you honestly doubt it. There is a tendency when people sit around talking about philosophy to play games by entertaining the most absurd ideas, but I want you to be honest with yourself. Think of all the things in your own life that you rely on knowing, and that you know because of past experience. Are you harboring any serious doubt about whether fire will burn you in the future? Are you harboring any serious doubt that the earth will continue to spin tomorrow? Are you harboring any serious doubts about whether gravity will continue to keep you on earth tomorrow?Hume showed that the principle of induction cannot be proved, but he did not show that it was false. He did not even show that it could not be known. It is only by assuming Hume's empiricism that we can conclude it can't be known, but that argument ought to be taken as a reductio ad absurdum against Hume's empiricism.Hume's argument against miracles rests on the principle of induction, so he obviously didn't deny the principle.[3]ConclusionThe resolution of this debate is that the KCA is unsound, so Pro has the burden of showing that the resolution is true. To be unsound, the KCA has to either have a false premise or invalid logic. He has dropped (and thereby conceded) everything but the first premise, so this entire debate rests on the first premise.Even if Pro's arguments so far are all sound, it does not amount to a refutation. At best, it shows that we cannot know that the first premise is true. If it's true, but we don't know it, then the KCA is still sound. To show that the KCA is unsound, he needs to show that the first premise is false, which so far he hasn't attempted.It's hard to imagine how he'll do it at this point either because he has dropped all of the arguments from quantum physics that I addressed. Those are usually what people use to attempt to disprove the first premise. Remember, drops count as concessions. [1] http://www.cut-the-knot.org... [2] http://www.marxists.org... [3] http://www.fordham.edu...