The KCA is sound

That being said, the conclusion of the soundness of the KCA still remains controversial and the Pro has yet to have dealt with my objections adequately. From the largely irrelevant objections to claims I’ve never made (regarding things coming out of nothing which interestingly enough he has no evidence to support except intuition) to pointing out a conditional that has nothing to do with the crux of my objection to the first premise, it was mostly a case of missing the mark. I never made the case that there was ever a nothing, and that in fact “nothing” (never mind assuming the immaterial to exist, which unless it is proven to exist, it can’t BE assumed to exist), or absolute non-being was in itself an incoherent notion which he agreed to. In fact the case could be made that his “proving” of the conditional largely relies on argument from ignorance since BECAUSE we don’t have evidence of anything beginning to exist it is simply an assertion, much like the rest of the KCA itself. It’s also worth With that the argument hits further snags, and possibly faces the most challenge in both the defense and in the criticism is the 2nd premise. My opponent makes the mistake in thinking the First Law is irrelevant to the objection of the premise, when it speaks of creation and destruction of energy being impossible. The fact that the “beginning of the universe” that he proposes directly violates this apparently does not seem to have crossed his mind. He further runs into problems in assuming the Big Bang in any way points to a beginning of the universe. This view has been, as I’ve pointed out in previous rounds, is in no way supported by any evidence (including the BVG) and has largely been discarded in modern cosmology. To further compound the problem he hasn’t been able to deal with the issues regarding actual infinities, putting forth erroneous examples of “contradictions” which simply point his inability to comprehend the nature of infinity, rather than the failings. His argument deals with infinity not just in “reality” (which he fails to address, instead treating it as if it were finite, that is NOT infinite, finding this brings about absurd results, then claiming it is infinity itself and not his treatment of it that is flawed) but in concept as well, if wrongly. In short he is asking me to “get to infinity” as if it were some end point, finding this is a nonsensical demand, claims it is not his demand that is absurd but infinity that is. What he fails to note is that all numbers and all mathematics are conceptual, and they do not exist in and of themselves in reality. It is their relations to concrete objects that make them “real”. Finally, if I were to hypothetically grant his objection to infinity, his argument will still collapse as I will point out in premise 3. But first: He mangles the Second Law of Thermodynamics (as well as assert again that the big bang was a creation event without an iota of evidence to support this) in bringing up a Heat Death example which current science shows as a meaningless “objection”. Not only is it a statistical law compared to the fundamental First Law which means that though unlikely, the violation of it is in fact possible, the “heat death” that would arise from this (which erroneously purports the universe was always expanding which is contradicted by the fact that the big bang, the expansion occurred a finite time ago) would in fact lead to a very unstable quantum vacuum (or a physicist’s “nothing”) from which inflationary theory posits the expansion of new universes from it. My opponent unfortunately dishonestly claims that I’ve conceded that the BVG was evidence of the beginning of the universe despite the fact that I’ve previously quoted Vilenkin denying this very thing. He further admits that the results of the BVG is avoidable with mechanisms that Vilenkin as well as several other cosmologists such as Stenger, Aguirre, and Gratton to name some examples posit as at the very least possible such as contraction as well as other competing theories in existence. With his failure to deal with actual infinity except to point out his ignorance in the calculation therein, his irrelevant argument against the First Law as well as the causal principle, one might wonder how else the defense could go wrong. But there is. Just as his argument against actual infinities, if I were to hypothetically grant it, would point to the beginning of the universe as inevitable, it would also point to the impossibility of the universe beginning at all, especially as a product of causation. Cause, beginning, and mind are all temporal concepts. Without time they have no meaning. To say the universe began would necessarily mean that it had a previous instance in which it did not begin. To say the universe was caused would necessarily mean there was a previous time in which it was not caused to exist and the effect had not taken place. But most damning of all is the concept of a mind. Not only has he never once provided evidence of a mind existing outside of a brain, he simply asserts that it is timeless- a bold-faced absurd claim considering a mind is based in time, since it is a dynamic entity- one based ON change. Thoughts are produced which is the function of the mind. In fact, the creation of a universe is a textbook case OF change, which once again requires time as a prerequisite. A truly timeless mind is one of complete stasis, unable to produce thoughts, let alone cause a universe. If his argument concludes the logically impossible as the only possible solution, it necessarily means that his argument is quite simply wrong.