The Kalam Cosmological Argument

Kohai makes several false claims in his opening argument. In this round, I will elaborate on his errors and further defend the KCA.PREMISE ONEKohai argues that the spontaneous decay of Carbon atoms/quantum fluctuations pose a counterexample to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause. This is simply false. First, he confuses epistemic indeterminancy with ontological indeterminancy. That science isn't able to furnish a clear causal scenario does not mean that the event in question is uncaused. Indeed, it is likely that this unability is merely epistemic. If the causal principle really is false, then why does causal indeterminancy (Understood in an ontological sense) only happen at the quantum level? There should be no reason not to suppose that it can also be true on a macroscopic level. It is thus more likely that there is indeed a cause, but our inability to detect it is only an epistemic limitation that does not have any ontological implications.Second, the force of this objection depends on what prior interpretation of quantum mechanics one adheres to. There are more than a dozen such interpretations, all of which are empirically equivalent. Many of them (Such as the Bohmian interpretation) are thoroughly deterministic. It is far from unclear why we should prefer a non-deterministic interpretation over a deterministic one, especially considering that the latter types of interpretations are less ad hoc. Third, Kohai confuses causal necessitation with causal conditioning. "Let us suppose", as Doug Geivett points out, "that quantum events are indeterminate so that they are not causally necessitated by antecedent states of affairs. It does not follow that they are not causally conditioned. In fact, they are. If they were not at all causally conditioned, they wouldn't be repeatable under controlled circumstances in the physicists's laboratory." [Emphasis mine] [1] Indeed, atomic decay exhibits certain law-like behavior. If it were truly random, then we couldn't trust Carbon-14 dating.Fourth, even granting that a strong version of P1 is false, it does not phaze the KCA at all. We can simply recast the argument in inductive form, arguing that the conclusion has a higher probability than its negation. [2]PREMISE TWOKohai writes, "The fact that the universe had a beginning does not mean that physical existence as a whole had a beginning." This is mistaken. First, if the philosophical arguments I put forth are sound, then the fact that the universe began to exist does mean that our physical existence as a whole had a beginning. To assume otherwise is to simply beg the question. Second, this is false given the standard big bang model. On such a model, the universe literally begins to exist ex nihilo at the initial singularity. As Quentin Smith has said, the singularity constitutes a boundary condition, such that nothing can exist prior to it.Actual InfinitesKohai argues against Hilbert's Hotel-esque paradoxes by stating that "finite numbers cannot be expected to behave as infinite numbers." But this is a gross misunderstanding of the argument! Such paradoxes do not begin with a finite number and then proceed to reason that there is something problematic. Indeed, they stipulate that actual infinites are possible in reality and then proceeed to show that inverse operations of mathematics cannot apply, as they will lead to contradictions. As such, actual infinite cannot exist in reality. This type of argument is known as a reductio ad absurdum. So far from critiquing the argument, Kohai doesn't even understand it.He then attempts to draw a parallel between actual infinites and the infinity of God. This is false, as it equivocates between qualitative and quantitative conceptions of infinity. The arguments against the existence of actually infinite sets only show that there cannot exist an actually infinite number of things. That is, the term "infinite" here is understood quantitatively. When theists speak of God's infinity, they do not mean that God has an infinite number of parts. Rather, "infinity" here is just an umbrella term used to refer to God's superlative properties of omniscience, omnipotence, etc...Kohai's final argument is that the very idea of a singularity must be an actual infinite. This is false. Again, when cosmologists speak of a singularity as having infinite density, they do not mean that it has parts. Rather, they mean that at such a state, the universe has a zero scale factor. That is, it is dimensionless. [3]FINAL ARGUMENTSKohai pastes several objections to the KCA posed by new atheist Dan Barker. I have already responded to Barker's caricature of the argument in my opening argument and in this round, hence I will refer Kohai to that. ConclusionThe Kalam cosmological argument remains unbloddied and unbowed. The same cannot be said for Kohai's (and Barker's) objections. We can conclude that his attempts to refute the argument are an abject failure.________Sources1. Douglas Geivett, "The Kalam Cosmological Argument" in Beckwith, Craig, and Moreland (eds) To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview (IVP: 2004) 72 2. Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (IVP: 2011) 2163. W. L. Craig and J. D. Sinclair, "The Kalam Cosmological Argument" in Craig and Moreland (eds) The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Blackwell: 2009) 125-127