My rebuttal to Kalam, posted to NAMB Apologetics

Here's what I posted over at NAMB's Apologetics Blog:
--------------

Dr. Craig states the Kalam's first premise as follows:
"Everything that begins to exist has a cause." 

There is no evidence that anything has ever "began to exist", except in the sense of rearranging pre-existing atoms.
Rearranging pre-existing atoms is seen every day, cars, babies, books, etc.  These all 'come into existence' only in the sense that they make use of pre-existing matter.   

But that is not the sense Craig and most apologists intend in Kalam's first premise.  Otherwise they'd merely be saying rearrangements of pre-existing atoms requires a cause, which is hardly controversial and proves nothing. 

The sense they intend is "the beginning of the existence of new matter must have a cause".
THAT sense is not confirmed by any scientific evidence.  We have no evidence that matter itself was ever created, or ever once didn't exist; we only have evidence that matter, already existing, rearranges itself into new configurations.  

Therefore, the first premise of Kalam appears certainly false, and as such, the whole of the argument topples, and as such, Kalam does not require a beginning to the universe.  Our intuitions about things needing a beginning never arise from observed instances of creation of new matter, but only arise from observed instances of pre-existing matter being continuously reconfigured.  Hence, our intuitions do NOT tell us that matter *itself* ever had to "come from" anywhere.