Attn: Theists - What would it take to prove you wrong?

[discipulus]

How so?

Premise 1 - all things that begin to exist have a cause.

This is not known to be true. As an examples, virtual particles come into existence without known cause.

Premise 2 - the universe began to exist.

This is also not known to be true. We know, and likely can know, nothing about the state of the universe prior to 1 unit of Planck time after the big bang. Therefore, we do not know that the universe began to exist, or whether it existed eternally, and began to expand.

The validity of an argument depends on the truth of it's propositions. The truth value of the KCA's premises are currently unknown, ergo, the argument is not valid.

QED

An argument in the philosophical sense is a set of statements which serve as premises leading to a conclusion. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is one of thee arguments that fall under the category of Cosmological arguments for the existence of God.

The cosmological argument is a family of arguments that seek to demonstrate the existence of a Sufficient Reason or First Cause of the existence of the cosmos. The roll of the defenders of this argument reads like a Who’s Who of western philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, Maimonides, Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Locke, to name but some. (Moreland, James Porter; William Lane Craig (2009-11-08). Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (p. 468). Intervarsity Press - A. Kindle Edition.)

The Kalam Cosmological argument may be formulated as follows:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

I get the impression from you that you do not believe this is a good argument. So I will accept the challenge, if that is what you are extending to me, to defend the argument.

I will start with the basics to see where you are at regarding your knowledge of what constitutes a good argument.

Tell me, what are the two main types of arguments in philosophy?

And please do not misunderstand my intent here. I simply want to see if you are going to be capable of sufficiently defending your view. The reason this is so is because you have already made several errors in reasoning evidenced in your post.

For example:

You stated that the validity of an argument depends on the truth of it's propositions.

This is incorrect. The validity of an argument is dependent upon it being both formally and informally valid in its formulation irrespective of whether or not its premises (which is the correct term) are in fact true.

An argument can be valid and be false at the same time if it is formally and informally valid but has a false premise.

What I think you intended to say was that the "soundness" not "validity" of an argument depends on the truth of its *premises.

But even on this revision, this is still incorrect. For an argument can have true premises but still be unsound because it may be either formally invalid or informally valid or both.

"An argument that is both logically valid and has true premises is called a sound argument." (Moreland, James Porter; William Lane Craig (2009-11-08). Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (p. 29). Intervarsity Press - A. Kindle Edition.)

You also stated something that is incorrect.

You stated:

" The truth value of the KCA's premises are currently unknown, ergo, the argument is not valid."

Not only is your conclusion a non-sequitur, but it presupposes that premises one and two are not known!

It is a non-sequitur for the aforementioned reason that an arguments validity obtains by virtue of it being formally and informally valid irrespective of the truthfulness of its premises.

You also state for example that premise one is currently unknown because virtual particles come into existence without a known cause. This objection is fallacious because you are using epistemology to attack a metaphysical principle.

Premise 1 reads:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Not.

1*Everything that begins to exist has a "known" cause.

Even on a charitable view of your objection that assumes we do not know what causes virtual particles to come into and go out of existence in the quantum vacuum, it simply does not follow that therefore said particles come into existence without a cause. At most, we can gather that said causation is "indeterminate". But this is not the same as "uncaused".

It simply is a non-sequitur informal fallacy to claim that our lack of knowledge regarding the cause of virtual particles necessarily means that they have no cause.

If scientists thought like this, and I am glad they do not, then it would completely undermine science! For whenever we discovered that we lacked an explanation for the way something came to be due to our limited knowledge, then we would have to say: "There is no cause! There is no explanation, it just exists, without a cause!" And throw our hands up in frustration and despair.

No no no....when we realize we lack knowledge regarding how something works or happens or came to be, this spurs us on to look harder, deeper into the matter. We don't take it as a sign to stop and say, there is no explanation!