The Kalam Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God is Sound

For the purposes of this debate, I will concede the first two premises, reserving the right to contest them later. I will constrain myself to debating Apologician's interpretation of the third premise, that whatever caused the universe to exist was God. My central argument for this debate will be that you can't get from the Kalam Cosmological Argument to capital-G God. Response to Arguments: Knowing nothing? Apologician begins his interpretation of the Kalam Cosmological Argument by asserting that there was nothing prior to the creation of the universe. This is an unsupported assertion. Current scientific thought holds that prior to the causation of the universe, there existed a singularity which we can only speculate about since it existed outside of this universe [1]. Whether the existence of this singularity assists or opposes the existence of God is a separate argument, but if one is to base argumentation on pure nothingness one must overturn the current consensus on the universe's origin or the remainder of the arguments fail immediately. Even if we were to take the minority position that the singularity is a mathematical artifact, that position asserts that there was always a moment in the universes existence prior to each previous moment, and to accept that would refute the first two premises of Kalam [2]. At this point, all of Apologician's interpretive arguments can be dismissed on this basis. Lack of Antecedents, Lack of Argumentation In Apologician's defense of the interpretation that the Kalam Cosmological Argument indicated God, he asserts that prior to the formation (cause) of the universe, there were no antecedent conditions. I disagree that this can be asserted as fact as discussed above, but Apologician's claim that the lack of antecedent conditions logically necessitates a personal and uncaused cause is a non-sequitur, even apart from the problematic premise. There is no chain of argumentation linking a lack of antecedent conditions to a need for personality and non-causation, thus this argument can be dismissed. Timelessness =/= Personal Cause Apologician tries to justify the need for a personal cause shortly thereafter, arguing that the timelessness of a pre-universe state necessitates a personal agent because only personal causes can be timeless and create temporal effects. This is an unsupported assertion and I have no need or desire to grant it. Just because we cannot access events which happened prior to the big bang, outside our time frame, does not mean that that no events happened and nothing changed [3]. There very well could have been time involved, just not our time in our time-frame. Even if we accept that timelessness necessitates a personal cause, Apologician hasn't demonstrated timelessness. However, there's no need to accept that. Apologician gives no supporting arguments to his assertion that timelessness requires a personal agent, asserting that if the cause was impersonal it would not have happened, but not supporting that view. Perhaps Apologician addresses this in his phrase "Moreover, the cause must transcend space both matter and time to create both matter and time." I find this grammaticality and semantically incoherent and believe it must be the result of an error while typing. If Apologician would like to correct this, I will be happy to reply in Round 2. Until then, the argument for a personal cause based on timelessness can be dismissed. Arguments Against: At this point, I have rebutted Apologician's interpretive arguments on Kalam supporting the existence of God. That is all that is required from the contender, to defeat the arguments of the instigator. However, I will go on to make three more arguments about why the Kalam Cosmological Argument's case for God should be rejected. [4] The Believer as Astrophysicist The Kalam Cosmological Argument for the existence of God requires it's proponents to be able to comprehend and understand a high degree of physics in order to be legitimately confident in their argument. Understanding the beginning of the universe is a highly advanced field of study requiring skills in mathematics and a variety of sciences. Even then, the theories are shifted and modified regularly. Is it good practice to make one's theology contingent on the consensus supporting weak vs averaged null energy conditions for theories of singularities? Is it good practice to make belief in God contingent on how well nonminimally coupled scalar fields and massive gravity can be justified in light of their apparent violation of local or universal energy conditions? I argue that it is not good practice, that the Kalam Cosmological Argument far overextends itself when it tries to place theologians in the same conferences as physicists. For a believer, this is irrelevant as I'm sure your faith is not based on whether current cosmological theory is compatible with your conception of God and creation. However, since you are using the argument as a tool to convince others, the theories it relies on are either tentative in an experts view or simply inaccessible to a layman. An argument that relies on fluctuating and/or inaccessible data to support its premises and conclusion is a bad argument, and should be rejected. Heads You Win, Tails God Exists While I have no reason to suspect that the argument made by Apologician is made in anything but good faith, defeating this argument is pointless from the perspective of a skeptic of monotheism. Today, some people know something about the cause of the universe and we can struggle to understand what they say and make theological interpretations based on that. However, the argument itself has it's roots in Aristotle's Prime Mover argument, and was first expressed (I believe) closest to its present form by the Islamic Mu'tazilah school of theology in the 10th century. This argument did not enjoy universal acceptance, because when trying to rationalize the existence of an all-powerful-being one already believes in, access to how the world really works is unnecessary. If I was to irrefutably prove that the universe had no beginning, that the singularity model was false, that each moment of the universe's existence was preceded by a previous moment, and that the premises to the Kalam Argument were just false, it wouldn't matter. God created it that way. God created it to look that way. God exists outside the realm of existence in which that matters and started it causally from there. God has presented those facts as a test of faith. I've heard these, or close analogues, when arguing evolution, which has a similar dynamic to arguing Kalam ('only God could create life like this' vs 'only God could create the universe') and it suggests to me that arguments like this are pointless. God-belief is based on faith. Legitimate debates on the subject should be about whether such faith is justified, not about whether tertiary argumentation exists that isn't the basis for God-belief in the first place. For that reason, the Kalam Cosmological Argument should be rejected. Pick a God, Any God! As stated, the Kalam Cosmological Argument could be an argument for Allah; Atum; Brahma; Jehovah; God; Ranginui and Papatuanuku; Rod; or Vishvakarman. Nor does it rule out the possibility of multiple causes working together at the same time. With such a wide variety of interpretations in addition to supporting the capital-G God, it should be dismissed. [1] Bojowald & Kennedy, What Happened Before the Big Bang? http://www.science.psu.edu... [2] J. Brian Pitts. "Why the Big Bang Singularity Does Not Help the Kalam Cosmological Argument for Theism." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Volume 59, Number 4 [3] Hawking, The Beginning of Time. http://www.hawking.org.uk... [4] Following my opponents lead, my response uses edited excerpts from [2].