The Kalam Cosmological Argument proves the existence of a Personal Creator

I appreciate my opponent's intensity and commitment in this debate. I do hope it has been worthy of everyone's time and energies. P1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence. The most interesting thing about his premise is how it's so widely accepted in all fields of academia as well as everyday living until it comes to the KCA. Only when the principle is used in support of the idea of God's existence is it so vehemently denied. The beauty of this premise is that it makes perfect sense just as it is. It's intuitive, it's not extravagant, and it's been observed to be true in every case of human experience. KCA: Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence. CON: Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence, except matter and energy. These are the competing premises. My opponent wants you to abandon something so innately reasonable for something else heretofore unnecessary. Both premises are equally confirmed through our observations. Both premises completely lack evidence to the contrary. These two premises are the precisely same in all other ways except one: that Con's premise prohibits the possibility of the creation of matter itself. That's it. That's the one difference: a needless complication to an already reasonable premise. This is precisely the scenario Occam's Razor was designed to address. Only if Con's evidence could support the need for the exception should we embrace it. The First Law of Thermodynamics is a law of the cosmos and is therefore contingent upon it. No cosmos, no First Law of Thermodynamics. Con is using the universe's existing properties to formulate a premise that asserts that only the universe's properties are to be permitted as evidence. Con cannot refute KCA's first premise without begging the question. Regarding quantum fluctuation: I didn't downplay anything. I simply corrected my opponent's less than scholarly appeal. Note how he doesn't actually explain how I've downplayed its importance. He just says as much and moves on. If my opponent really believes this evidence to be so vital, I would have expected a reasoned defense. Since we are not given the privilege of one, then my objections should carry greater sway. P2. The universe began to exist. Con's tactic in this segment of the debate is to just repeat himself. He has said in every rebuttal that I haven't demonstrated that a realized actual infinite is impossible. He says I need to "show the contradiction not simply [highlight] the quirky nature of infinity. " I did show the contraction. In Round 1 I clearly stated that an actual infinity leads the following statement: "I've added more, and it's the same. Then I removed a lot more than I originally added, and it was still the same. " Which is equivalent to saying: A is simultaneously A and ~A. That is a direct violation of the Logical Law of Identity. It is a contradiction, not a quirk, and my opponent has done nothing to show why we shouldn't see it any other way. He keeps saying that it's possible, but he doesn't offer any counter evidence other than to say that it's possible in math, despite my objections. "Because it's mathematical" is not a reason, it's ipse dixit. Of course, all of the arguments regarding an infinite past are rather moot since my opponent says that space-time does indeed have a beginning though he denies that matter and energy do. This is a textbook case of special pleading. He doesn't give us any reason to accept that matter and energy must have always existed. As I stated before, using the Laws of Thermodynamics is not a valid reason due to their contingent nature. His appeal to Vilenken offers no relief either. Contrary to Con's proposal, Vilenken's 2003 theory does not comport with the 1982 theory because it was independent of any known universe. That is, independent of matter, energy, and time as we know it. It proved that any expanding universe inescapably has a beginning. P4. All eternal causes of temporal effects must be personal. I rebutted my opponent's attempt to redefine a will to be a set of intentions. He insists, however, that thinking itself is a temporal activity and cannot therefore occur in an eternal mind. To be honest, I'm intrigued by the contention and was interested in the support for this reasoning. To my surprise, he bases this principle on our human experience. "If we think temporally," he reasons, "the all thinking must be temporal. "Wait a second. Isn't that the exact same reasoning I gave for P1? Can this be so? He is using human experience to support an abstract premise! It's amazing how unconvincing I was to him in P1 only to be given a return volley of the very same logic here. I will let the readers decide if Con should be allowed to have it both ways. ConclusionMy opponent was in the habit of re-asserting many of his positions as though they were self-evident. He frequently engaged in question begging to refute P1 only to turn around and use my P1 approach to refute P4. He wanted to reconcile Vilenkin's later work with his earlier work by ignoring the nature of Vilenkin's later work. He repeatedly denied that a realized actual infinity was impossible by appealing to its usefulness in mathematics. On the other hand, I showed how the KCA is parsimoniously consistent with both our human experience and logic. Con was tasked to show that the KCA fails, and I hope the readers agree with me that, on balance, he failed to meet his burden.