The Kalam Cosmological Argument is Sound

Premise 1 Remember that I defined “begin to exist” as X coming into being at a point in the finite past such that it had a first moment of its existence. My opponent argues that things do not “begin” to exist because the stuff from which they are made is pre-existing. He then asserts that nothing begins to exist since there is “material existing already. I said I was defending a conditional to support premise one: If X comes into being at a point in the finite past, such that it had a first moment of its existence, X necessarily has a cause. With this in mind, three responses: (1) Even if things that “begin” are really composed of parts that existed prior to the “beginning,” this does not disprove the causal premise. In fact, it supports it. I began to exist such that I had a first moment of my creation. While I am composed of parts that existed prior to my beginning, the arrangement of those parts cannot happen without a cause. (2) He misunderstands my argument. In premise 1, I have not argued that things do or have begun to exist. Rather, I am arguing if they do begin, in the way I defined, then they must necessarily have a cause. A conditional can be true and its antecedent false. The antecedent of the conditional “X comes into being at a point in the finite past.” Disputing that X comes into being at a point in the finite past does not disprove the conditional, so that if things did begin in this way, they would need a cause (3) He argues that my definition is not “well-defined.” He props up straw man examples. My definition is clear. Things begin to exist if they come into being at a point in the finite past prior to which they did not exist in their current state or such that they had a first moment of their existence Quantum Mechanics: He gains no ground here. He even agrees that quantum fluctuations have causes. The indeterministic nature of their origination is in dispute, not whether they have a cause. It is not true creatio ex nihilo because the particles pop into and out of being as a result of causes. Nature of beginning: He asserts that we know beginning to mean things that are caused by pre-existing material. We know of no beginnings of things without “physical ingredients.” (1) That we do not know or experience X does not mean X is not true. (2) This is irrelevant to premise 1 since I am proving a conditional and not its antecedent, which I do in premise 2. Warrant for P1: In any case, my opponent has dropped the warrant I gave. It is contradictory to deny the first premise since it requires the assumption that non-being, which lacks all properties, including causal ones, can cause things to come into being. Premise 1 is therefore extended. Premise 2 First Law: He asserts that beginning in the way I mean contradicts the First Law. This is to confuse the application of the First Law, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The First Law only applies to the universe after the universe begins to exist. It only applies in the universe and because of the universe. If this were true, almost every cosmologist would be wrong. [1] Warrant: Actual Infinites He challenges this by saying that I confuse infinity as a finite number and not a concept. This just is to concede my point! Infinity is inherently a concept existing only in the mind and not something that exists in reality. I don’t treat it as a finite concept in terms of putting “ends” or “caps” in my absurdities because if the infinite did exist in reality with physical things then we can add and subtract from them. Think about it, if infinite number of coins existed, nothing would stop us from taking away a certain number X from them. Our doing so, however, brings about absurdities, which is a point to which he did not respond. Thus, he fails to grasp the fact that infinity, if it existed in reality, is no longer a concept, but is a thing from which we can add and subtract, which brings about contradictions like the ones to which I appealed. Thus, the universe began to exist as per the syllogism, which stands unrefuted. Warrant: Empirics Second Law: He asserts that this is just evidence against the “steady state theory (SST)”. This is false. The law refers to the fact that, in closed systems, there will always be a point at which maximum entropy/disorder is reached, which leads to heat death. The universe, SST or not, is a closed system. Therefore, it will reach a point at which energy is run down and life is impossible. That the universe is not in a state of heat death is evidence for the fact that the universe began to exist since if it did not, we would not be here because of heat death. BVG: He then applies, without warrant, the no-boundary proposal. First, there is absolutely no evidence to support this hypothesis. Second, there are good reasons to reject it, including but not limited to the idea that “imaginary time” is inherently “unintelligible” because it would allow for us to reach to point at which the universe began, or to go back to a place that already happened. [2] He then quotes Vilenkin about how things might exist prior to the existence of our universe. First, the beginning is not in dispute and therefore the universe must still have a cause. Here, my analysis of the cause, which my opponent dropped, would give reasons that work against Vilenkin’s speculation. Second, Vilenkin is speculating as to what can be before the beginning of our universe, not what was actually there. Third, this does not contradict the conclusions reached in his 2003 paper, which proves that not only our universe began, but it would also apply to the things outside of the universe. Moreover, time is finite, which means if there was always just pre-existing material out of which the universe originated, he concedes tacitly the warrant I gave from actual infinites since we would have a case in which existing events were actually past-infinite, which would allow for the addition and subtraction of physical events. Conclusion: Note that he dropped the analysis of causation. This means that even if the universe began to exist while there was pre-existing material, you should prefer the warrant I gave to think that the cause is personal. [1] http://www.reasonablefaith.org... [2] http://www.reasonablefaith.org...