The Kalam Cosmological Argument is unsound

Logical Validity Con is correct in claiming that "the logical validity of a syllogism is not contingent on the content of its premises. " However, at this point, I am no longer objecting to the logical validity of the syllogism-- I am objecting to the cognitive dissonance Con has created in addressing my original objection. In order to defend the KCA's logical validity, he claims that objects have never individually began to exist, but that only the universe as a whole began to exist; this does succeed in showing that there is no fallacy of composition occurring. However, in his defense of the first premise, he goes on to claim that we *have* seen individual objects begin to exist. He cannot have it both ways-- either individual objects do come into existence or they do not. And due to the argument's syllogistic structure, conceding either of them causes his entire argument to fail. Premise 1 Con basically dodges the point, here. Just because we see a nail and distinguish it (via meaningless verbal tags) from the metals that were used to make it does *not* mean that they must be different entities, as Con would have us believe; they are still the same exact matter-- the same molecules, only different in their arrangement. Con attempts to use rhetoric to make this sound strange and confusing. Yes, it is weird to think of humans (i. e. self-sufficient reproductive units) and conceptions (I. e. electrical/chemical signals in the brain) as aggregations of ancient matter, but simply saying "I don't like it" doesn't actually refute the facts. It is all ultimately just a red herring which should be appropriately discarded by the voters. Regardless of how Al-Gazali might have defined "begins to exist", we know that the universe must have began to exist ex-nihilo (i. e. before any other matter existed), and since we have never seen any thing begin to exist ex-nihilo (which Con seems to concede towards the end of his P1 section), we cannot make rules about what is necessary for something to come into existence; we can only make such rules about what is necessary for physical change to occur. This premise is refuted. Premise 2 Con draws a false analogy from my defense of cyclical models by claiming that I am implying that we should also trash the complex theory of evolution in favor of simpler intelligent design explanations. This is a faulty comparison because creationism has several outstanding flaws in it which clearly make it less plausible than evolution, such as blatantly ignoring the existence of transitional fossils. This does not apply cyclical models of cosmology. Occam's Razor only applies to hypotheses which are *equally* plausible, and that is the case with traditional BBT vs. cyclical universe models. The rest of Con's case for the KCA's second premise is, unfortunately, a big appeal to authority fallacy. It is nice to know that Con was able to learn a thing or two on physics by reading his sources, but simply linking them is not enough. He cannot just say "Expert X and Expert Y said so", link us to where they did say so, and expect us to buy his point based on that alone. At the very least, he needs to quote the pertinent parts of his sources so that we may actually see the evidence behind those experts' opinions. It has not successfully been demonstrated that we should prefer the traditional BBT, and going off Occam's Razor alone, we would actually prefer cyclical models. Premise 3 Unfortunately, I have run out of time. I promised Mr. Travieso that I would wait until as late as possible to post this argument due to time constraints on his part, but evidently, I have waited too long. .. . I will note, however, that the "laws of causation" which Mr. Travieso refers to are based in our temporal intuitions, which as I've demonstrated, hold no weight when discussing what is possible without the existence of time. "Before" and "after" are meaningless terms if events do not occur in a chronological sequence, which is why simultaneous causation is just as feasible a cause of the universe's existence as God is. The resolution is affirmed. Thanks to Mr. Travieso for providing a worthy opposition for my first KCA debate!