The KCA is Sound

Thank you, Apeiron, for presenting your case and thank you, DDO-coding, for refusing to let him present it in the form of a comic-book. Now to delve in (apologies in advance for not having any pretty pictures to substantiate my points):(Nota bene: For simplicity's sake, I will be assuming the Big Bang of our universe was the first point in the cosmos' finite past in order to avoid talking of convoluted things like the "bang-crunch model" and the "multi-verse model," things which Apeiron and I are certainly mere laymen.)P1: The cosmos began to exist.Apeiron spent the majority of his previous round proving the cosmos must have a finite past (probably because this is the only claim he made that actually can be proven). Relax, Apeiron, I wholly agree: the cosmos must have a finite past.And if the only condition which must be met for something to "began to exist" is "has a finite past" (making the terms synonymous), then by extension, I agree the cosmos began to exist. However, note that Apeiron has made no such attempt to define what "began to exist" means.P2: If the cosmos began to exist, then it has a transcendent cause.There are three types of existence: necessary (in which X exists in all possible worlds), impossible (in which X exists in no possible worlds), and contingent (in which X exists in some possible worlds but not others; it may or may not exist in the actual world).So which describes the cosmos? Obviously, it's not impossible; the cosmos does exist! To figure out if it's contingent or necessary, let's take a look at the definitions of "contingent" Apeiron provided in his previous rounds:"But contingent things on the other hand do come to be and pass away. Parmenides argued that what is cannot come to be or perish: If it comes to be, then it was not, if it perishes it will not be … to begin, it first had to not be and to end, it has to stop existing […]""such things [that have contingent existence] are generated and later corrupted. A thing is generated just if there is a time when it exists and an earlier time when it does not."We can conclude from both of these definitions that there are at least two conditions X must meet in order for us to sensibly say X exists in the actual world and is contingent:(i) there must be a time T in which X exists, and(ii) there must be a time prior to T, -T, in which X does not exist.Patently, condition (ii) does not apply to the cosmos, since there was never any time prior to time existing when time did not exist! (In other words, for all actual points in time, time has existed, which is simply tautological.) Because condition (ii) does not apply, Apeiron must agree the cosmos is therefore not contingent.This demonstrates the salient difference between (a) X having a finite past, and (b) X being contingent or having a cause. While it is the case that all actually-existing contingent things have finite pasts, it may not be the case that all things with finite pasts, like time itself and the cosmos, are contingent."What? No cause to the universe?" I hear the fool shouting at me from atop the hill. "What about the beautiful casual principle (CP) Apeiron mentioned? From nothing, nothing comes, you imbecile!"Indeed, nothing can pop into existence "ex nihilo" (from some previously or alternately existing state of non-existence). I find the idea of a state of non-existence existing absurd anyway, and I do not posit that such a thing ever did exist or that the cosmos came from it. In short, while Apeiron’s CP is true, it's ultimately irrelevant in this case since neither I nor any reasonably person I know would argue the cosmos popped into existence from a previous state of absolute nothingness.Instead, I posit that there was no previously existing state of affairs before the cosmos existed or, at least, that there is no good reason to believe there was. Because of this, there is no good reason to believe the cosmos must have been caused. (If Occum's Razor is smiling at Apeiron's argument like he said, then it must be giving my argument head or something.)Now the question becomes: is it reasonable to claim the cosmos' existence is necessary instead of contingent?Well, as Apeiron so wilily quoted earlier, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." We have eliminated the possibilities of it being either impossible or contingent, so however seemingly improbable, the cosmos must be necessary (and therefore uncaused).Simply put, there are only two possibilities: either (1) there was no state of affairs before the cosmos' beginning and so it didn't need to be caused, or (2) there was a state of affairs before the cosmos' beginning and so it did need to be caused. Apeiron must show that (2) is in fact the case, that there was a state of affairs before the cosmos' finite past. But he can't merely state that there existed some previous state of affairs (i.e. God) to explain that the cosmos must have had a cause: God!Central Claim: Plausibly, a first cause exists as a Personhood.As defined in Apeiron's opening round, the "Personhood" in which he is trying to prove the existence of is "a non-naturalist identification of agency, a substance endowed with free will and self-awareness".It's the property of having free will which I'd like attack. Can it be adequately supported that this Personhood must have free will? Let's take a look at what Apeiron has to say on the matter: well, really, he has very little to say on the matter.He says (as mentioned by WLC), "out of state-state, event-event, and agent causation, the first cause of space-time cannot be the former two, thus the cause must be a free agent since the effect isn't coeternal with the cause". So much jargon, so little time. This is the one and only short instance in which Apeiron tries to defend that his posited Personhood has free will!Yet he makes so little effort in providing context or explanations for anything he says here (he doesn't even define "agent causation," the crux of his argument), that I feel it's not even worth refuting. A building must first be built for it to stand or to be knocked down and, while Apeiron has provided us with a pile of bricks, he's done nothing to cement them together.Unwilling to showcase Apeiron's argument better than he did and then argue with myself, I simply urge for elucidation; without any, the idea that this Personhood must be endowed with free will remains disappointingly unsupported.