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

[Pyrrho]

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.

I think it is useful to understand why such arguments are presented in the first place. They are not the source of belief, they are a prop to belief. They are intended to make a preexisting belief seem reasonable. As such, they are often readily believed by those who already accept the conclusion. (It should be noted, however, that not all Christians just have shit for brains, as some of them, like Immanuel Kant, rejected many such arguments, and is sometimes quoted in some of his refutations of some so-called "proofs" of God's existence.)

Many people get very confused regarding arguments, such that they conflate the truth or falsehood of the conclusion with the validity of the argument. Those are very different things, so it is very worthwhile to keep them separate in one's mind. If a Christian does that, then he or she need not be upset over a particular argument being refuted. Showing that the cosmological argument for the existence of god (in any of its forms) is a huge pile of crap does not prove that there is no god. So they should, like Kant, sensibly reject the pile of crap themselves and accept the fact that the cosmological argument is not a good reason to believe in a god. It is virtually certain that they already had a belief in a god before they ever encountered that argument (or, if you prefer, group of arguments, all of which are basically different wordings for the same sorts of mistakes). So they should just let it go.

The problem with that, of course, is that the same is true for all of the other traditional arguments for the existence of god, and many people want there to be some reason to believe in god, rather than just taking it on faith (i.e., belief without evidence), though, ironically, they typically also say one should have faith, which is an implicit admission that there really isn't any good reason to believe. After all, if you have a good reason to believe something, you don't need faith.