In Defense of the Kalam

[Esquilax]

Anyway, on to the counterarguments:
I) The universe began to exist.
1) How do you know?
Because the things in the universe are constantly moving and changing. And if the universe is changing, it has to have a beginning state to change from. That means if the universe is changing, it must have had a beginning.

This... doesn't really follow at all. Why couldn't an eternal thing change too? To be honest, this is just a non sequitur.

2) Time doesn't progress in such a simple way.
It doesn't matter if time progresses at different speeds or even backwards; everything in the universe still moves through time, and it can't have been moving through time infinitely: Again, if things are changing, they must have had a beginning state to change from.

Okay, fallacy of composition again: everything in the universe moves through time, but what happened before the big bang was not in the universe. It was, literally, outside of spacetime as we understand it. What's true of the contents doesn't need to be true of the whole, or the exterior of the whole.

3) This may be true for things in the universe, but not for the universe itself.
True, things in the universe can cause other things in it, but this is a form of change, and if this sequence of causes has gone on infinitely (i.e. the universe is infinite), then we are left with the same problem of infinite changes without a beginning state. That means the universe must not have gone on infinitely.

Why is the concept of infinite regress a problem? What extra information are you bringing to this that shows it's impossible?

II) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
1) According to particle physics, this does not seem to be the case.
This is not just a law of physics; it is a law of pure mathematics and logic. Nothing cannot become something, just like 0 cannot equal 1; there needs to be a cause.

Bare assertions don't mean much, especially when others are bringing to bear real science, and all you're doing is saying no, without providing anything.

2) Ex nihilo or ex materia? You need to pick one.
Ex materia in both premises. The entire point of the argument is that there can be no creation ex nihilo. When we say God created the universe from nothing, we mean from nothing but Himself and His own power. We're not idiots... you know, usually... :S

So what you're saying is that you already believe in something that breaks the rules that Kalam sets forth, and yet you're still trying to seriously use them?

3) NBE is just a synonym for God.
No, NBE is a hypothetical category, just like BE is. This argument is not trying to prove that there is only one NBE (i.e. God); there could be 2, 10, 100, or more NBEs in it. This argument only proves that the category is not empty and that every BE was caused by an NBE.

Kalam is not the way to prove that.

III) The universe has a cause.
1) Then who created God?
Remember that only things that begin to exist have to have a cause, and only things that change begin to exist. Also only things which move through time can change. Whatever the universe's cause is, it need not do any of these things.

Did you know that the original version of the cosmological argument didn't have this "begin to exist" nonsense in it? That was added later, as an attempted loophole around this exact counterargument. Isn't it interesting, how the argument changed without any new information being discovered?

More importantly, your rebuttal here still doesn't stand: you can't just assert that god didn't begin to exist by definitional fiat, that's just making stuff up. And how do you know that the universe moves through time? All you actually know is that things within the universe move through time, because time is contained within the universe. Space and time are linked, after all; you don't know what's beyond, so stop making assertions about it.

2) This doesn't prove which god exists.
I never said it does. It is just an argument against atheism, not for any specific religion.

It's not even an argument against atheism, if you actually know what atheism is: atheism never stated that the universe doesn't have a cause, so there's no sense in which any of your premises conflict with atheism in the slightest. The only reason we're arguing here is because the premises themselves are bare assertions made without evidence or justification, just recourse to a series of observed rules that we have no reason to think apply beyond the borders of the universe.

P.S. I'm a guy, Esquilax.

Understood. I think it was the "aiah" sound at the end of your username that made me think otherwise. Bit feminine.