The Cosmological Kalam Argument

As to the original post, I think it is entirely false that God has failed to reveal himself. Putting aside the rampant disease of Christ-mythism running amuck in this thread, I would like to discuss the bare existence of a personal God, as revealed by the Cosmological Argument. Here are the premises:1. Everything which begins to exist requires a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe requires a cause for it's existence.From [3] it will be argued that the only rational cause that could be employed to create this universe is a timeless, powerful, personal being (AKA, God).With regards to premise [1], it is obvious that something cannot come from nothing for no reason. All experience, intuition, and logic confirm the causal principle. So [1] is true.Premise [2] may seem hard to prove, but this is not so. In actual fact, there are numerous scientific evidences that the universe has not existed for an infinite number of years. For example, thermodynamic principles entail that the universe would experience "heat death" after trillions of years. Yet, if the universe has existed for ever, then this "trillions of years" would have passed by already, and our universe would be void of life. In addition, all models of the universe which purport to allow it to be eternally existing are filled with problems. The oscillating universe (the only one seriously defended today) has failed to produce a mechanism, has failed to provide evidence, and has clashed with scientfic finds (such as thermodynamics, the rate of the expansion of the universe, and the amount of mass in the universe).On top of all this, many philosophers have made good arguments that it is impossible for an actual infinity to exist in the real world, even in theory. The concept of infinity is contradictory when applied to the real world, which suggests that infinity is only a concept useful in mathematics. Consider the Tristam Paradox: A man named Tristam Shandy writes his own autobiography so slowly that it takes him a full year to describe one day of his life. If Tristam lives for an infinite amount of years, then according to mathematics he would have completed his journal. But how is that possible if he gets further and futher behind every day? The answer- it's not possible, and the problem is that we are trying to take a purely mathematical concept (infinity) and apply it to the real world.So, we have good scientific and philosophical reasons to regard [2] as true, thus [2] is justified.Now, we inescapably arrive at [3]- the universe requires a cause for it's existence. But what is that cause? Well, there are several things that must be true of the cause:1. The cause must be eternal and timeless. If it were not eternal and timeless, it would require a cause for it's own existence. But the FIRST cause must not require a cause. Therefore, the FIRST cause was necessarily eternal and timeless.2. The cause must be above and beyond the laws of the universe. Why? Because the universe CONTAINS its own laws. Therefore the cause that created the universe must not be subject to those same laws (unless you wish to postulate that the universe created itself- which is an absurdity!)3. The cause must be a personal being capable of making decisions. This is the most important point, because once we have a personal being outside the physical universe, we basically have God. So, how do I know it is personal? Because naturalistic, eternally existing causes without the ability to make decisions have no ability whatsoever to create something unique. This is because the naturalistic cause would have created the universe an infinity ago. In the absence of anything, there is nothing that can "prompt" this theoretical natural cause into creating something. Rather the free choice of a free, personal being is required. And this is what we mean when we say "God".So, quite wonderfully, the magnificent Creator has left evidence of Himself in the most basic fact of life- existence itself! For the mere fact of existence is absurd without God!Sincerely,Kyle

Everything which begins to exist requires a cause.

Why? Because the universe CONTAINS its own laws. Therefore the cause that created the universe must not be subject to those same laws

It is untrue that the quantum vacuum is "nothing". The so-called "vacuum" is a "sea of continually forming and dissolving particles, which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence." 12 This has been confirmed by many scientists, including proponents of the quantum fluctuation paradigm. Davies, a proponent of this theory, admits: "The processes described here do not represent the creation of matter out of nothing, but the conversion of pre-existing energy into material form." 13 As Kanitscheider points out, "From the philosophical point of view it is essential to note that the foregoing is far from being a spontaneous generation of everything from naught, but the origin of that embryonic bubble is really a causal process leading from a primordial substratum with a rich physical structure to a materialized substratum of the vacuum." 14 Therefore, the term "vacuum" in this case is misleading, because in actuality the vacuum is more than nothing. This throws a wrench into the whole quantum fluctuation scheme. If anything at all can be said to have existed prior to the creation of the universe, then that which existed would have existed forever and it would have caused the creation of our universe an infinity ago. Redefining "nothing" to mean "something" is no more than semantic gymnastics and obfuscation.15 Therefore, the quantum "vacuum" which atheists use as a parallel for the their atheistic cosmology is in fact not a successful example of something coming from nothing.