The Kalam Argument is a sound argument for the existence of God

Any argument, to be true, must follow a strict set of rules. To paraphrase Graham Oppy, dialectical efficacy is not enough: each premise involved must be true, and the argument must mean the conclusion necessarily follows. This means the premises must be, beyond reasonable doubt, true. So if I can rationally reject any premise, or its validity, then the argument cannot be sound. “Everything that begins to exist has a cause”. This is the first premise of the Kalām: Craig’s defence of it being that it is “philosophically unobjectionable”. This is simply a hasty assumption by Craig: many disagree, myself included. As Oppy said, “Grünbaum [and I] observes on several occasions [that] many of us find it hard to make any sense of this suggestion”. The reason is simple: Craig conflates transformation with creation. For others, the first premise appeals to the principle of causality: all effects have a cause. My aim is to show the disconnect of this with the topic at hand. Causality is an idea stemming from Aristotle, one of the most prominent philosophers of time. Indeed, the principle of causality comes from Aristotle’s work. Causality itself, though, is part of four things: the four causes, or aitas, of Aristotelian causality. If we dismiss Aristotelian causality, we dismiss the principle of causality. So, we must learn more of this idea, in order to continue discussion of the subject. To make this clear, if I can show the universe doesn’t follow Aristotelian causality, then I have shown that the universe, by virtue of beginning, doesn’t need a cause. Aristotle’s causality consists of four things: the material, formal, efficient and final cause. To explain, I shall use the analogy of a marble statue. When the statue was caused into being, to describe the cause, we need to know the four things that caused it. The first is the material cause: what was used to make the statue. In this case, a block of marble. Then, we need to know the formal cause – how it is organised to look as if it is a statue. So the statue’s organisation is the face, arms, etcetera. The efficient cause is what caused it into being – the chiseller of the statue. Finally, the final cause, is why it has been caused into being. The first problem revolves around the material cause: the universe has none. If we believe my opponent, then the material cause of the universe is nothing: there is no material cause. God created the universe out of nothing. This shows explicitly that this is a case when we can’t employ the principle of causality: this is the difference between ex nihilo and ex materia creation. The universe doesn’t fit the necessary characteristics for having an Aristotlean cause. So how can it follow Aristotlean causality? The answer is it can’t: it does not follow the principle of causality. Further, the evidence of the first premise rests solely on ex materia causes. This extrapolation is, quite simply, absurd, and can be rationally dismissed. There is another problem: things exist without efficient causes. Remember, the efficient cause is things without a causer. Atomic decay, for example, lacks cause. "It's not merely that we can't find any [cause]. It's that … there aren't any. The theory has been subjected to all sorts of experimental tests, and has passed with flying colours." Science, it seems, is on my side: the causality principle just doesn’t come up to scratch. Thirdly, I wish to bring up points about the impossibility of an actual infinity. This is an interesting topic in itself: the idea stems from the Hilbert’s Hotel, which essentially states that there cannot be an actual infinity. But the problem here is quite simple: for every period of time, there’s a period of time before and after it. This is simple: time is that which is infinitely reducible. Meaning, I can keep getting smaller units of time, and these still exist. I may have 1x10-23 seconds, and reduce it further to 1x10-24 seconds. Further, I may have this time in the future. If this is true, then this infinity exists in actuality. Thus, the impossibility of the infinite regress is completely dismissed, and with it the need of an uncaused cause. Moreover, we can state that the Hilbert’s Hotel analogy presupposes a beginning of a series, and infinity at the same time. As the Uncertainty Principle implies, we can know where we are relative to other events, and we can know the infinite size of the set of time we inhabit, but we cannot know both. How can we say we’re in the 3rd quartile of an infinite set? Mathematicians and logicians worth their salt would dismiss this as ludicrous: we know that the set is infinite, or we know whether we are before or after another place in the set, but we cannot rationally claim to know whether we are objectively at the middle of time in an infinite set, as the Hilbert’s Hotel analogy attempts to do. While we are on the topic of time, I wish to bring up a further point: time itself. The Big Bang is defined as when time begins to exist. Yet, for the Big Bang to be an event, there must have been an external cause, according to P1 of the argument. This cause must have been “Prior to creation, there was no time at all, for time cannot exist unless there is change”[1]. But a cause prior to time is impossible: “The cause and effect must be contiguous (meaning next in sequence) in space and time”[2]. The Kalām promotes the idea that time began, yet this statement is inherently inconsistent. If time began, then there was a point of no time transitioning into time, which requires time to already exist! A horrible mess of inconsistent irrationalities.I also wish to use a slightly more sophisticated argument of "who designed the designer": all I do is point to a simple dichotomy about the general argument. God, simply, is either something, or is nothing. If God is something, then we have every right to ask why something exists: the ultimate question of why there is something rather than nothing which Cosmological and Kalām arguments attempt to solve, goes unanswered. An explanation for God still is needed. Simply stating that God is necessary, or God never began, does not solve any problem: not only can we apply either of these to the universe, but we can still ask why God has these properties. Somewhere, we have to draw the line at where something is "just there". My opponent must justify why we must add a step and add the highly complex idea of God to it. To conclude, I have made a series of objections on the Kalam. I object to it for misrepresenting causality to justify premises. I object to the misapplication of Aristotelean causality where it cannot suffice: namely that the universe requires a material cause and how aristotelean causality only applies for ex materia events. The argument also rests on events that begin have efficient causes, yet things without efficient causes begin to exist. An infinite past remains logically valid, and finally the Kalām argument contradicts our understanding of how time works. I await my opponent's opening argument and rebuttal to my case. Thank you for reading. [1] Existence of God, W.L.Craig, page 87 [2] A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume, Section XV