Kalam Cosmological Argument is a firm argument for the existence of God

Equivocation Kalam also equivocates on the first premise when it refers to everything that "begins to exist". Presumably this premise is referring to everything around us on this planet--everything in your house, everything on the streets, everything we see in the cosmos. However all of these things did not "begin to exist" in the same sense theists are claiming the universe "began to exist" (creation ex nihilo). According to the laws of thermodynamics, matter can neither be created nor destroyed, and everything we are familiar with is a actually reconfiguration of preexisting matter than has been around for billions of years. The atoms that comprise people, places, and planets do not "come into existence" in the same sense Kalam is claiming the universe came into existence (matter appearing from a previous state of non-being/non-existence). Rather they have always existed in some form, and the objects we see around us are merely the latest rearrangements of those atoms. So in speaking of the universe requiring a "cause" for it's existence, Kalam is not referring to it as you would an automobile, which is being "caused" by a group of laborers rearranging physical matter into the form of a car, or mountains being "caused" by the shifting of tectonic plates (also made of atoms which have been around since the big bang), but of something being caused by creation ex nihilo, which is not at all the type of creation we are familiar with in every other circumstance. Kalam therefore is using a word game and the fallacy of equivocation on the phrase "begins to exist" to try and draw a parallel between wildly different things. In summary: Kalam proponents believe God made the universe exist ex nihilo. But everything around us only "begins to exist" in a trivial sense, as rearrangements of preexisting, uncreated stuff. Since the universe is literally the only example of something truly "beginning to exist" from a previous state of nothingness, this means there is a sample set of one in this category, leaving no inductive support for the premise that "whatever begins to exist (ex nihilo) has a cause". Once the argument is reformulated to take into account the hidden premises, it looks like this: 1. Every rearrangement of pre-existing matter has a cause. (supported by every observation, ever.) 2. The universe began to exist from absolute nonexistence, NOT from a rearrangement of pre-existing matter. 3. Therefore the universe has a cause. In other words: 1. Every X has a cause. 2. The universe Y. 3. Therefore the universe has a cause. As you can see, once the equivocation is made plain, the argument is invalid. Additionally, while the term "universe" is commonly understood to mean "the sum of everything that exists," Kalam represents an attempt to establish the existence of something outside the universe. This is conceivable only in the case of a non-standard definition (which presumably involves some kind of distinction between a physical universe and some other realm external to it). In this case, the first premise becomes even more tenuous; how can one assert that everything that begins to exist has a cause when one believes in the existence of a realm outside of our universe with properties unlike anything we can discover through mere observation? A commonsense version of causality is not applicable here...meaning we now have a problem defining "cause" in this context! update* There is a further type of equivocation on the phrase "begins to exist". Premise 1 refers to things that begin to exist within time. In other words, there was a time when a thing did not exist, followed by a time when it existed. This is not the case with the universe, since time is part of the universe. The universe is a finite age (13.8 billion years), and because time did not come into existence until after the inflation began, there is literally NO TIME at which the universe did not exist. It has existed at every point in time. Rephrasing the argument to accurately include this information, we get something like this: Let X = "a thing which began to exist a finite time ago after a point when it did not exist" Let Y = "a thing which has existed for a finite time, but which exists at every point in time" 1. Everything that is X has a cause for it's existence. 2. The Universe is Y. 3. Therefore the universe has a cause for it's existence. Once again, equivocation is at play. Premise 1 and 2 are comparing apples and oranges. The universe has existed at every moment in time and did not begin to exist in the same way that every object in P1 began to exist, so the argument is invalid. Special pleading The kalam argument seems to have been worded specifically to address the refutation of the cosmological argument, as it made the qualification that only things that begin have causes. The kalam arguer will simply state that God didn't begin, and so no regress occurs and no Creator of God is necessary. However, this is a form of special pleading on the part of the theist. As Richard Dawkins put it, the cosmological argument makes "the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress." Whether we qualify the first premise to exclude non-beginning things (as the kalam argument does) or not (as the cosmological does), the essential question is why it is more logically defensible to claim that for the rule that everything must have a cause, an exception is made for God but not for the natural universe as a whole? Why does god not begin? It appears to be a wholly arbitrary choice. If God not having a beginning is not a problem for Craig and other defenders of this argument, why is it a problem for the natural universe? To answer this, we must look at a further problem. This problem concerns the definition of god used in both arguments. A theologian might reply this counter argument and insist that the decision is not arbitrary, and that god must be allowed to have these attributes that the kalam argument seems to imply. He may say that the argument is an attempt to show the need for there to be a God that has the attributes that we cannot find in the universe. He might say that because we know that everything in the universe needs a cause and that the idea of infinite time is nonsense, there must be this being with these unique attributes. That is, there must be this being that does not begin, has no creator, and is thus able to create the universe. But this is just a bald assertion. The lack of human imagination when it comes to solving mysteries at the boundaries of current knowledge is not a good reason to invoke a hypothetical entity with mysterious powers that enable it to be immune from paradoxes. The God hypothesis is not only unnecessary, it is not parsimonious. In order to explain something apparently designed and which cannot create itself, a being is conjured into existence which would require even more unlikely explanation. The kalam argument attempts to circumvent the problem of infinite regress but steps right into the problem of special pleading so is no better off.