Kalam Cosmological Argument for God is Invalid

First of all, I'd like to note that Con has made no effort to defend his premises against the attack I laid out in my rebuttal. So even if you don't buy my semantic argument that "Pro is a retard who doesn't know what 'valid' means," I still win the debate. Some may object that I stated the off case section doesn't relate to the voting issues. This is true, and I stand by my assertion. But the only reason I asserted this is because the resolution requires of me merely to prove that the KCA is valid, not sound. So if you buy my reasoning for considering this issue "off case," you also agree with my interpretation of the resolution. Informative purposes aside, the reason I included the off case part is because I know some people are going to engage in judicial activism and vote me down unless I try to refute the premises of Cliffton's argument. The usage of the term "valid" in both its proper technical sense and the colloquial sense throughout the debate has caused significant confusion. Therefore, in my final round I will use "valid" only to refer to the technical meaning of the term while I will refer to a successful argument as "sound." Rebuttal 1: Pro's protestations basically amount to "J.Kenyon is being a meanie." Mean or not, I don't care. This isn't Fox News, this is a serious debate. If two academic philosophers were debating the KCA and one tried to argue that the KCA is invalid, he would be laughed off the stage after being gleefully chewed out by his exultant opponent. Do you know why in scholarly philosophical literature philosophers differentiate between "valid" and "sound?" Because they mean two completely different things. If Pro doesn't like it, too bad. To place this issue in context, consider TheSkeptic's opening round in this debate: http://tinyurl.com... Con included a lengthy explanation of what was meant by "valid" to avoid the predicament Pro has placed himself in. By contrast, in this debate: http://tinyurl.com... the instigator made the same mistake as my opponent and he paid the price. He acknowledged his mistake and conceded the debate. Pro tries to turn my NFL source against me. But the NFL guide is specifically referring to the second team. Seriously, read it. It's up to the first team to lay out the important terms in their first round, as TheSkeptic did in his debate. Rebuttal 2: We've come to the agreement that "to show that an argument is invalid, we must give an example of a possibility in which the premises could be true and the conclusion false at the same time." Good. Next, Pro claims that he has "provided an example where the premises [could be] true, but the conclusion is false, my opponent has conceded that point." So far so good. Then he goes full retard. Pro summarizes his argument thus: 1. My example uses all of the premises from the KCA. 2. The example is logically valid (as my opponent agrees). 3. Both, my example and KCA, assume that the premises could be true (see Rebuttal 4 for more details). 4. The conclusion is false (see Clifton's conclusion). 5. Therefore, based on the reference on how to demonstrate an argument is invalid, I have indeed demonstrated that KCA is invalid. Cliffton's argument does not incorporate all the premises of the KCA. P1 of the KCA is "what begins to exist has a cause." Nowhere in Cliffton's argument can this premise be found. In Rebuttal 4, Pro takes us through some mental gymnastics trying to show that the KCA's causal premise is incorporated into P1 of Cliffton's argument, but this is clearly ridiculous. Cliffton's P1 states "nothing which exists can cause something which does not exist to begin existing." The contrapositive of this statement implies that if something begins to exist, it was caused to do so by nothing. But non-existent things aren't causally efficacious, so this directly contradicts P1 of the KCA. Rebuttal 3: Pro spends a lot of time ranting about my character, but never seems to actually get around to defending his argument. I realize now that I misrepresented Pro's point and I apologize. I'll quote him directly: "Given that an argument can be demonstrated to be invalid by offering an example of a possibility in which the premises could be true and the conclusion false, then I have done so in the first round." I assumed he meant that because Cliffton's argument is sound, the conclusion of the KCA must be false. What he actually meant is that that because Cliffton's argument incorporates the premises of the KCA into an argument with a false conclusion, the KCA must be invalid. I was a bit thrown off because Cliffton's argument doesn't actually incorporate all the premises of the KCA. Additionally, Cliffton's conclusion that "Given (4) and (5), God does not exist" is actually true assuming his premises are sound. Finally, even if he could incorporate all the premises of the KCA into an invalid argument, this would not prove that the KCA is itself invalid. Consider the following: P1: What begins to exist has a cause. P2: The universe began to exist. C: Therefore, J.Kenyon will likely win this debate. Clearly, this inference is not sound (though Pro is welcome to disagree). However, this does not prove that the KCA, which shares the same premises, is wrong as well. So yes, I misunderstood Pro's argument. But the only reason I made this mistake is because I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. My interpretation of Pro's argument is marginally less retarded than Pro's actual argument. Rebuttal 4: Pro claims to have shown the KCA is invalid (in the technical sense of the term). This is literally the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. For the umpteenth time, the KCA is a simple modus ponens statement. I'll walk us through this one more time because Pro apparently still doesn't get it. P1: What begins to exist has a cause. We'll summarize this point as "P → Q." P2: The universe began to exist. We'll summarize this point as "P." Therefore, we can jointly assert the following: 1. P → Q 2. P 3. Q If Pro is right and the KCA is logically invalid, then he has dispoven propositional logic. This is clearly ludicrous. Just because you add 2 + 2 and end up with 5 doesn't mean you've disproven math; it just means you don't know how to count. Chyrsippus' ghost is literally crying right now. Pro objects that the KCA includes a third premise and a second conclusion, citing Bill Craig's website. I invite the reader to consider the following quote from the exact same link: "The argument is really very simple and consists primarily of three steps. (1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence. (2) The universe began to exist. (3) Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence. And then in premise (4) we conceptually unpack what some of the principal attributes would be of a cause of the universe's existence."[1] But this isn't particularly relevant, so I'll just agree with Pro for the sake of argument. P3: If the universe has a cause of its existence, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent. All Pro has proven is that Cliffton's argument incorporates two contradictory premises since this goes directly against Cliffton's P1, making it completely worthless. Conclusion: Pro has offered no defense of his premises. Admittedly, this should not be held against him since he has focused the majority of his case trying and failing to prove that the KCA is logically invalid. However, this decision entails an implicit agreement to argue the debate on semantic terms. He had the opportunity to re-focus the debate on the causal premises on which the two arguments are predicated and he opted not to do so. Vote Con! 1. http://tinyurl.com...