The Kalam Cosmological Argument is Sound

Thanks Pro. Everything that begins to exist has a cause This premise is undermined by quantum mechanics. Quantum vacuum fluctuations under the mainstream interpretation of QM begin to exist with no cause "In the everyday world, energy is always unalterably fixed; the law of energy conservation is a cornerstone of classical physics. But in the quantum microworld, energy can appear and disappear out of nowhere in a spontaneous and unpredictable fashion."- Paul Davies [God and the New Physics] Uncaused, random quantum fluctuations in a flat, empty, featureless space-time can produce local regions with positive or negative curvature. - Victor Stenger [ http://www.colorado.edu...] This refutes Pro's sub argument (1). Sub argument (2) and (3) are refuted by Paul Davies. The reason why (2) and (3) seem true is because the macro world is governed by the conservation of energy. I want everyone to understand, my argument would still stand with other interpretations. I'm not arguing that virtual particles are a definite take down. In arguing that it damages premise one. However even under deterministic interpretations I still have a case a against the KCA idea of causality. When dealing with the interpretations of QM, we can take 3 broad approach. The indeterministic, the deterministic non local hidden variable, and deterministic local hidden variable approach. Quantum fluctuations may very well be caused under the last 2. However, local hidden variable theories are discredited because of Bell's theorem [Essential Quantum Mechanics By Gary Bowman, page 31]. Non local hidden variables say the hidden variables travel faster than the speed of light [Ibid]. This still undermines our intuitions about causality [http://www.theculture.org...]. Under quantum mechanics premise one is undermined. I'm not disputing premise 2 or 3. Epistemological error Your arguments attempt to inquire about the unknown. Time, space, and matter as we know it may have began at the Big Bang. What was before the Big Bang, we"re completely in the dark about. We can only know what was at the starting point of the Big Bang. We don"t know if time, space, and matter were existing before the Big Bang, only that they were brought about in our Universe by the Big Bang. We have no idea what was before, to inquire what was, is simply meaningless. Our understanding is because of the Universe around us. We can reason because we observe the Universe around us and come up with things like causality. However, to apply our understanding outside the Universe, by using the understanding that we obtained by the Universe itself cannot be tested and therefore not trusted. Let's say, in my room there"s a door, behind this door is a portal into another dimension. In this dimension there can be anything, things which we have no understanding, things which are not possible in this world, things we could never conceive. There could be another set of laws, or they could be the same as ours. Is it really reasonable to make a positive claim of what"s in that dimension? I don"t think so. One can make arguments for what exists in it, but the conclusion can never be rationally accepted and such tasks would be useless since we"re ignorant of what"s in there. We can have inquire what"s in it, but we can never claim for sure what"s in there, without going in. Any claim is just as possible as another, since inside the dimension is meaningless to us. Now, this dimension is before the universe. This debating over the cause is the same as debating what"s in the dimension. Claiming that a personal being caused it can"t be accepted, since there could be something that fits these attributes and not be personal. It's simply not a coherent concept. Why God? Pro tries to prove God is the cause. However, at best he only showed an abstract object can't be the cause. He just asserts that an unembodied mind is the cause. This is the argument from ignorance and a bare assertion fallacy. Just because we know abstract objects can't cause the universe doesn't instantly mean an unembodied mind did, because there could be some unknown cause. Pro has yet to prove his case. Why can't the cause an immaterial, causeless, eternal, powerful, spaceless, timeless, uncaused, non-sentient force that randomly creates things? Since this force was eternally creating things, one day the inevitable happened, energy, space, and time was created in a powerful reaction destroying everything including this force to create the two. The rest is history. Why should we think God caused the Universe instead of this force? Why should we accept God created the universe over retro-causality? Retro causality is a valid and real concept in quantum mechanics [http://prola.aps.org...] [ http://arxiv.org...]. Even if it wasn't, my argument would still stand because I'm arguing from the possibility. Why accept God over simultaneous causation? It is similar to retro-causality, but cause and effect happen simultaneously. DDO user Sargon says "Imagine atoms A, B, and C. A comes into existence and instantaneously causes B, which instantaneously causes C, which instantaneously causes A. All of the atoms have causal explanation, and they all begin to exist at the exact same time." [ http://www.debate.org...] Such a thing is supported by EPR correlations [http://www.worldscientific.com...]. Again, even if it wasn't, the argument still stands. The cause can't be God God is defined as a timeless mind. However, such a thing is impossible and thus the cause cannot be God. I will justify this. A mind needs mental processing to be called a mind. This is evident in the very definition of a mind. The element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought. [http://oxforddictionaries.com... ] Mental processing requires changes to occur. This doesn't mean such a mind changes things about itself, just change from one thought to the next. In order for change to occur, time must be present. If we go from thought A to thought B, there needs to be a state of before thought B. However, we don't have that. Let's assume we have change A, goes to > B, goes to, > C, goes to > D The problem is, this means we have time. We have a present (state D) a past (A,B,C) and possibly a future with state D or another state. If change can't exist without time and mental processing needs change, then a timeless mind can't exist. Thus, the KCA is unsound Thanks to DDO user Rational_thinker9119 for originally coming up with this argument. Thanks, now back to Pro.