The KCA is a Sound Argument

“I will wait until the next round for Pro to connect “The problem of free will” and “Aristotle’s Four Causes” with the Kalam Cosmological Argument.”I would like to apologize to my opponent and the audience if I didn’t explain Aristotle and the problem of free will well. I will now go ahead and explain how they are both relevant to this debate down here below.Aristotle argued that there must be a cause for the Universe since it began to exist. He then gave four question to explain each cause 1) material cause 2) Efficient cause 3) Formal cause 4)Final cause. I linked that to show that God must be the final cause of all things material/immaterial.Aristotle posited an underlying ousia (essence or substance) of which the Universe was composed, and it was for this reason the ousia that the Prime Mover organized and set into motion. The Prime Mover did not organize matter physically, but was instead a being who constantly thought about thinking itself, and who organized the Cosmos by being itself the object of "aspiration or desire". Aristotle felt that the Prime mover was a "thinking on thinking", an eternal process of pure thought.I was using free will to show how someone has the ability to distinguish a over b.[1]The philosopher Wes Morriston conducted a survey of the philosophy faculty at Boulder, and ten out of sixteen responses stated that it was not obvious that everything which begins to exist must have a cause (http://tinyurl.com......). The philosopher Quentin Smith states that “the majority of graduate and undergraduate students I've had in my classes think this principle is false” (http://tinyurl.com......). Given these findings, it is not clear why we should believe that the first premise of the KCA is obviously true.”While I do agree that a survey is verifiable, the survey was taken under one University and one Philosopher, along with students of his. If my opponent had cited a survey of let’s say a majority of philosophers who have published work on this subject, and if they had agreed with him that not everything that begins to exist has a cause, then that would be more credible.“Assume that the first premise is intuitively true. Even then, this intuition would not allow us to say that the beginning of the universe had to have a cause. Our rational faculties are bred by our experience and the experience of our evolutionary ancestors. Let’s look at the Big Bang singularity; The Big Bang singularity is a zero-dimensional point of infinite density, curvature, and temperature. Humans, at no point, have had any first-hand or evolutionary experience with a singularity of infinite density, curvature, and temperature. Our rational faculties, as something bred by experience, cannot have anything to say about a Big Bang singularity, since nobody has ever experienced something so beyond the pale as the Big Bang singularity. Therefore, there is no justification for the proposition that “The beginning of the Big Bang singularity has a cause” from its obviousness to our faculties. Suppose that the first premise of the argument is construed as a metaphysical intuition. The history of science shows that many things which were once metaphysical intuitions and thought of as necessarily true have turned out to be false. Science, specifically physics, has overthrown our intuitions about reality.”How can there be potentiality without a causal agent? for a casual event to occur, you would need potentiality and an agent or object to actualize it. For that reason, something that comes into being spontaneously from nothing is metaphysically impossible. Non-being has no potentiality, attributes, properties,etc. It is absolutely zero if something has an absolute beginning of existence, there must exist an actual being which produces the thing in existence.I would propose that Ex Nihilo, nihil fit, and Creatio ex nihil are both compatible since God created the Universe from nothing. He is the cause for the beginning of the Universe. This makes more sense metaphysically and logically since it implies potentiality.[2]“Pro argues that if something can come from nothing, then we should expect to see things like tigers and bears popping out of nothing all of the time. We don’t see this, so something cannot come from nothing. The answer to this is that the first premise is false; if something can come from nothing, we should not expect to see things popping out of nothing all the time.”Actually, I’m saying that we should just see things appear randomly all the time. “The reason for this is that human beings occupy space-time and live under physical laws. If a tiger spontaneously appeared during a William Lane Craig debate, then it would have came from being.”So the tiger came from itself? How is that not a self-contradiction ? “Furthermore, the anti-Kalamist can state that the Big Bang could have came from nothing due to the absence of physical laws, but we do not see something coming from nothing today because physical laws exist. The Big Bang singularity is an instant at which all physical laws break down). However, our everyday life is governed by the laws of physics. We can therefore assert that the universe came from nothing because of the lack of physical laws, while explaining the fact that things don’t pop into being from nothing today by pointing out that physical laws prevent such a thing from happening.”Hawking and Mlodinow advocate what they call a “top down” approach to this question. The idea here is to begin with our presently observed universe characterized by the standard model of particle physics and then calculate, given the no boundary condition, the probability of the various histories allowed by quantum physics to reach our present stateThe top down approach calculates the probability of our observable universe given the no boundary condition. The top down approach doesn’t calculate the probability that the no boundary condition should hold but takes it for granted. Such a condition is not metaphysically or physically necessary. If the universe came into being uncaused from nothing, it could have had any sort of conceivable spatiotemporal configuration.Remember nothingness, or non-being, has no properties or constraints and is governed by no physical laws. If there were was a lack of physical laws, then there was not potentiality to for it to do anything at all in it’s state.[3]“The universe could have been brought into being by infinite simultaneous causation of elementary particles.” How can it be an infinite causation? Why can't the cause and effect exist at the same time in an asymmetric dependency relation? For example, a heavy chandelier hanging on a chain from the ceiling. The ceiling and chain hold up the chandelier; the chandelier and chain don't support the ceiling.My opponent also presents some other problems as well with the idea of an infinite simultaneous causation. Suppose that C is the Cause, and E is Effect. If C were to vanish before the time at which E is produced, would E nevertheless come into being? No. If time is continuous or infinite, then there will be a lapse or interval between C and E appearance/dissaperance. How could the Effect “E” come into being when there’s no cause to produce it? This is what makes my opponent’s argument all the more questionable.Sources:[1] https://www.princeton.edu... [2] http://www.bethinking.org... [3] A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking, pg.136