"Time does not exist outside of the universe, so nothing can predate the universe."

[Pizza]

The Kalam argument is one big calamity - heaps of misguided appeals to "common sense" where it doesn't apply.

And yet I hear it uttered so often. It's so saddening. And people seem to like to throw a tantrum when it's refuted.

Speaking of which I recommend reading this series of blog posts criticizing the KCA. They are really interesting. http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogsp...ument.html

For example:

Reformulating the Principle of Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit
One way of reformulating the ex nihilo principle in order to strip it of temporal connotations would be the following:
(i) If nothing existed, then nothing could exist.
This is a statement of pure logical or metaphysical necessity. The “could” is a necessity operator: it tells you what must be the case. There are subsequently two ways of interpreting the necessity expressed in (i).
The “wide” interpretation is the following:
(ii) Necessarily, if nothing existed, nothing could exist.
This is actually just a trivial analytic truth. It says “when nothing exists, nothing exists.” This provides no support for the first premise of the Kalam.
The “narrow” interpretation is the following:
(iii) If nothing existed, then necessarily nothing could exist.
This is more interesting because it is ascribing a conditional power to “nothing.” It is saying that nothing prevents the existence of something. The problem is that it is difficult to say why nothing would have such a conditional power. Surely it makes more sense to say that nothing has no powers at all, including the power to prevent something?

What at first looked like a straightforward commonsensical claim stops making sense once you start probing it.