Tentatively Christian; looking for a reasonable discussion

[Esquilax]

How do you guys refute the "Kalaam" argument? (some kind of supernatural, transcendent force or "god" must exist because of the necessity for a First Cause which is beyond matter, space, and time)

The problem with Kalam, the really big, fatal structural flaw with it, is that it doesn't conclude with the answer that the claimant is trying to defend. It literally doesn't answer the question it is posed as an answer to.

"Everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause"? Since when was "cause" a synonym for "god"? And where to you get supernatural and transcendent from that argument? Those are tacked on extras, cards that the person using the argument is trying to palm and hope you don't notice. My suggestion is that you not let yourself be fooled.

So there's that, but there's also the fact that, well, the argument is just plain wrong. You won't find many scientists willing to state that the universe began to exist; what you will hear is that there was a beginning to the expansion of our universe into its current state, where we can't even predict what happened before that because it's totally unlike anything we've ever known. Essentially, it's the point at which our ability to describe reality breaks down, where we'd need an entirely new language to deal with it, and so we don't even have the first clue what goes on beyond that point. Theists like to conflate this idea with the idea of a beginning of the universe, pretending that the subtleties of the science don't exist, but that's simply not a tenable position, and therefore the second premise of Kalam is dead wrong, and the argument dies with it.

Finally, Kalam is particularly galling if you know the history of the argument. It's actually the second iteration of a more general cosmological argument that used to run: "Everything has a cause, the universe is a thing, therefore the universe has a cause." Perhaps you can see the obvious flaw in that rendition of the argument? "What caused god, then?"

When it became clear that the original cosmological argument was a non-starter, Kalam was invented. The "begins to exist" language was added to the first premise, and this is particularly infuriating because it was done so purely to keep the cosmological argument valid. No evidence had been found, no research conducted, no philosophical thought offered; the argument was wrong, and so based on absolutely nothing, it was changed so that it was not-wrong. It's so clear, just looking at the history, that the priorities of the people formulating this argument weren't to come to a correct conclusion, but to come to the god conclusion by any means necessary. That's not exactly a way to come to truth, that's a presupposition.

In doing so, of course, the argument now makes even more unsupported assertions, like the proposed existence of a category of things that didn't begin to exist... but there are plenty of problems there without needing to get into that one. That's just the terrible cherry on this awful, awful cake.

Feel free to PM me if you want to learn more. My topics of note are evolution and the deconstruction of theistic arguments; apparently I'm good at that, I've been voted best debater here two years running.