The Kalam Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God is Sound

Pro's arguments that he should not have to defend a specific religious conception fail, and he is losing he debate on that basis. The topic is that "The Kalam Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God is Sound. " For reasons discussed in my previous argument "God" through it's capital letter means the proper name of a particular deity. In the OP's second paragraph, pro refers to the "Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God" where only the proper names are capitalized, once again suggesting it refers to a specific deity. Even more obvious than that, is pro's attempt to explain the capitalization. Pro claims that he capitalized the term out of reverence because he is a Christian. I find it difficult to believe that pro is willing to show reverence to a vague and general concept by sharing with it the honor normally reserved for his own God. In fact, it would probably be a violation of the first, third, and arguably second commandments were he to do so. It's clear that Apologician reveres God, not a featureless first cause, and that is what he meant by the term. The term God was never explicitly defined in the OP, let alone in a 'very general sense. ' Pro spent time defining infinities, but never God, and thus the common definition should be used. Pro takes the text of an argument within his third premise, "There are, however, good reasons to believe that the cause of the universe was a personal cause with attributes that closely resemble a monotheistic conception of God," and tries to make this retroactively serve as his definition for God. This fails for two reasons: 1. This is not a definition. This is part of a larger argument attempting to establish that the Kalam argument actually proves God exists. Look at the immediately preceding sentence: "Some object that the first cause need not be God, but was rather an impersonal in nature. " Pro is anticipating that I will object to the need for a personal cause and attempting to bolster his contention that the cause is God through appeals to similarities between his interpretation of the KCA and the conception of God. He is not attempting to define God here, he is offering reasons to believe. 2. Even if we were to accept this as a definition, we must ask, which monotheistic conception of God? Monotheistic religions have far more characteristics of their chief deities than simply creating the universe. They are loving, angry, jealous, wrathful, sorrowful, etc. They place rules and interact with humanity. They create pantheons of other gods or angels and occasionally have conflicts and wars with them. They promote systems of morality, definitions of good and evil. If you are willing to grant pro a change of definition of God to "a personal cause with attributes that personally resemble a monotheistic conception of God," that still doesn't excuse him from choosing which, singular, conception of God he is referring to and proving that the KCA does indeed resemble the attributes of that conception. The resolution calls for the pro to use the KCA to prove the existence of a specific conception of God. Pro does not contest that he fails to do so. Instead he tries to argue that he should not have to. His arguments to that effect fail as described above. Thus, no further arguments need be considered to cast a negative vote. ------- Should you reject, for whatever reason, the arguments above, pro still does not win a vote due to his failure to adequately argue for his interpretation of the KCA. It is not, as pro suggested multiple times, that I have not read his arguments, but that his arguments are lacking. Pro has complained that I have not addressed his arguments regarding the impossibility of infinities, yet he has still not shown how they are relevant to any of the points under contention. He points out that he has tied it into a discussion of the impossibility of an eternal universe. However, since the existence of time zero has been granted and its significance debated in depth, pro has still failed to connect the impossible infinities argument to any points actually being debated. Pro goes on to agree that the initial conditions of the singularity cannot be known, but then argues that he never made claims about what those conditions were. As a point of fact, pro's formulation of the KCA relied on the initial conditions including "no prior determining conditions. " If pro is willing to concede that he cannot know if there were no prior determining conditions, then he is conceding the last paragraph of the OP, his third premise, and the debate. Timelessness: Pro claims that I have missed the point of his water analogy, that he was trying to demonstrate "that if the cause of the universe were a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then the effect also must exist eternally. " However, he agrees that the analogy assumed the existence of a causal physics, which may or may not have existed. That is the point of my criticism of the analogy, that it makes unfounded assumptions in order to demonstrate its point. Pro has not engaged my arguments about how agency is not a counter to timelessness. His response claims that a personal cause would be a free agent and thus timelessness would not hinder him. Pro uses the example of a sitting man in a state of timelessness who freely wills to stand up. In a state of timelessness the sitting man could not will to stand up. Willing involves a change of state. If changing one's mental state from wanting to sit to wanting to stand was possible, it would not be a timeless state, according to the definitions I discussed in my Round 2 argument. Pro's argument that a personal cause suggests free agency and thus avoids the problems of timelessness only holds if we allow a fallacy of equivocation using the word 'free. ' A free personal agent does imply that the agent is free to have its own thoughts, feelings, and actions in the sense that it is uncontrolled by other agents. However, it is fallacious to then change that understanding of 'free' to mean free from logical and physical constraints, as the agent would have to be to perform any action of thought or deed in a period of timelessness. Personal agency has not been shown to defeat the problems timelessness implies, and I repeat my conclusion from Round 2, that without agency as the deciding factor for circumventing timelessness, agency is no longer necessary in this scenario. With agency not necessary in this scenario, a cause with a sense of agency is not necessary in this scenario. Without a cause possessing a sense of agency being necessary in this scenario, pro does not show that the cause was a personal being possessing agency.