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

The Kalam cosmological argument, promoted by W.L.Craig, has gained support among apologists, and attracted a lot of attention in the philosophical community. For an argument to be sound, each of the premises must be convincingly true, and the conclusion necessarily follows. The premises must be convincing due to the fact that, if the premises aren't convincing, then we can simply dismiss them and therefore the argument. To paraphrases Graham Oppy, dialectical efficiacy is not enough: to be rationally sound and convincing, it must be able to convince one who starts from a position of rejecting all premises and the conclusion, to accepting all the premises and the conclusion. In short, if I can rationally reject any of the premises, then the argument cannot be considered sound. Another requirement is that the arugment logically follows. That is, the argument must be valid. In the words of Oxford's philosophy division, "An argument is valid just if it would be impossible for its premises all to be true and its conclusion false simultaneously."[1] In other words, if the premises are true, then the conclusion is necessarily true.First premiseThe first premise itself seems quite simple in itself. "Everything that begins to exist has a cause". Many seem to think intuitively that this is true, and it has been capitalised due to this ad populum by many: W.L.Craig himself justifies in his original book on the Kalam that the premise is "philosophically unobjectionable"[2]. However, I do not see this as so philosophically unobjectionable, nor do I see the premise as being intuitively true. And many agree with me: "Grünbaum observes on several occasions [that] many of us find it hard to make any sense of this suggestion". And there's good reason for this: material creation does not happen. Craig, Aristotle, and material causesCraig in his work is a fond appealer to Aristotle (not a criticism: the best do it repeatedly). He speaks, when justifying his work, as the first premise being justified as all things need an efficient cause. The argument that justifies this is all things observed has an efficient cause, therefore it must follow the universe does as well. It is stated by many that things exist without efficient causes: for example, atomic decay occurs without efficient (and final) causes, similar to quantum dynamics, and the most prominent theories (from Copenhagen Interpretation to Many Worlds) accepts this. Indeed, we are getting more and more used to the fact that things exist which are without these efficient and final causes, and empiricism is rejected in favour of rationalism, which I shall expound on later. The material problemThings are uncaused if "they have the...four causes [of Aristotle]"[2], says Craig. However, the reasoning of material causes - what things are made from - of the universe is lacking. We say that, using Aristotle's example of a statue, it is made of marble. But the marble is simply restructured to another form: making this a formal cause. Aristotle actually makes sure he is discussing this in the material realm, and states there is no ethereal world. Why? Because, when we accept an ethereal realm, that means matter must have been created. But being made ex nihilo , not ex materia , means that the material cause must be entirely abandoned. To return to my opponent's argument, he states that there is no reason to abandon the idea that ex nihilo is differnt to ex materia: well, seeing as the Kalam argument rests on an ex materia understanding of the world, yet abandons it to create the argument, it holds an internal inconsistency. Anything made by nothing has no material cause, but this means that our understanding of causes has disintegrated before us. Thus, our understanding of the laws of causality are intrinsically undermined, when attempting an ex nihilo view. Thus, the first premise, resting on the laws of causality, can be rejected. Rationalism, Causality and PlatoThe opposite of empiricism, rationalism, is promoted by Aristotle's arch-rival, Plato, who stated how our sight is repeatedly and easily tricked, and only reason is what counts. We used to think that what we saw was the truth, and our senses were the pathway to being fooled: only reason gets us there. "thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her--neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure"[4]. Reality itself actually causes more problems than solutions: empirical thought, or inductive thought, we know is intrinsically flawed. In fact, one can go as far to state that the flaws of empirical reasoning goes so far that we can reject the binding level of knowledge that this argument gives us. Hume and empiricismHume is one of the most well-known empiricists, but famously said "Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors." I wish to say this is a case where empiricism leads us to errors, mostly by referring to his own argument against the cosmological argument. An example is apt here to introduce his criticism: imagine you only just came to earth (or came from 500 years past) and saw a bus. Ignoring how that's impossible seeing as they're always either too late or too early (and yes, I am annoyed at getting home 2 hours late because the bus driver forgot that London has cars in it)...where was I?Imagine you just saw the bus, and you see someone else put their hand out the side of the road. The bus then comes to a stop, they get on the bus, and go off. Now, from the position of someone who has never seen a bus before, why would it be wrong to conclude that the hand coming out to stop the bus is the efficient cause to why it stopped, and not the bus driver? Or imagine it is 500 years in the future, where buses are fully automated with no need for a driver (they'll still manage to be late though). When you put your hand out to stop, would you be wrong to conclude, first time around, that a bus driver stopped the bus? The example is to illustrate that we may make assumptions about cause and effect, and this can easily be mistaken. Hume argued that we assume that there is a relationship between cause and effect, because our minds have developed a habit, societally or otherwise, of seeing effects and automatically associateing causes. Hume states that, as a matter of logic, one cannot assume that all effects have a cause. After all: the cosmological argument sets out to make the exception! We can tell quickly: the premise Whatever has a beginning of existence must have a cause is uncertain at best.I also wish to give one final criticism by Hume: the famous fallacy of composition. Hume questioned the necessity for the whole universe to have a cause, simply because things inside the universe has causes. Indeed, the primary premise (ignoring the myth of its philosophic inobjectivity) is justified by, and my opponent states this, that "every aspect of life we see cause and effect". However, to expand this to the universe proper, we have came to the fallacy of composition. One often quoted example by Bertrand Russell is that "the human race hasn't a mother: that's a different logical sphere". Of course, it may hold that the human race contains mothers, just as the universe contains contingent events. However, this does not mean the human race was born from a single person. To use a more modern example, a football team (usually) has team spirit, but team spirit does not exist in a single player.1 - http://logic.philosophy.ox.ac.uk...;, tutorial, 3rd section (Validity)2 - Kalam Cosmological Argument, 1979 ed.3 - Professor William Craig's Criticisms of Critiques of Kalam Cosmological Arguments By Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking, And Adolf Grünbaum 1995 ed.4 - Phaedo, accessible here: http://classics.mit.edu...