God exists as per the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA)

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1...Anything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence

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2... The universe began to exist.

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3... Therefore the universe had a cause to exist

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I am going to start with premise 2. An important part of Craig's argument for it is an argument that past time is finite. If something exists for all of past time, does it have a beginning in the sense required for the first premise ? Can it even have a cause ?

No, the questions aren't answered simply by replacing "the universe" by "time". Unless, that is, you mean that the revised argument is so obviously absurd that the answer must be "no" in each case.

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Ok, I'll rephrase it differently, since your rebutal of what I proposed was very poor on arguments

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Of course, I don't need arguments to point out that your post did not offer any clear answer to the questions (and certainly not a clear "yes").

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The purpose of the KCA is that at some point something started to exist. Either be it time or space, or the 'universe', etc. It came into existence. This point no2 is usually never really up for debate, since it is farely obvious.

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Then you completely missed my point. While 2) seems intuitively obvious it becomes less so if the universe has always existed !

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Thus why I consider subbie's argument much more relevant then yours. Unless you are proposing that the universe (or time) never cam into existence, which I would be glad to see your reason for this ...

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To say that something "came into existence" implies a prior state when it did not exist. If there is no such prior state then that thing did not "come into existence" - to say otherwise requires that something that has always existed "came into existence".There is a further problem with a "yes" answer - the same argument may be applied to the cause, thus forcing an infinite regress. Thus the argument requires some escape - and any escape other than the one I suggest tends to lead to further problems.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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The cause that caused the universe to begin to exist has to be eternal/temporal because it follows that the cause/God existed before time was created in the BB.

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This is self-contradictory and therefore false. There can be nothing before time, because "before" is a temporal relationship.If the cause of the universe must exist before time, it follows that the universe cannot have a cause.(Hence my questions in Message 6)Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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First that the universe began to exist means that time as defined by physics began to exist as well. Now I am claiming this because its big bang cosmology. There are some theories that say time existed ”before’ the big bang and others that say quantum loop gravity etc allows an out for a universe that begins to exist. However both I and Craig rely on Big Bang cosmology that tells us time began to exist about 14B years ago shortly after T-0 (time zero or the when the big bang ”banged’ so to speak).

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Time could not "begin to exist" "shortly after T-0" - it must exist AT T-0. Also, since we have no information about anything prior to the Big Bang any version of the KCA which assumes that will also fail.

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The cause/God would be more accurately said to exist outside time. It is atemporal/eternal. So it follows that the Cause/God had no cause for its beginning because it has existed eternally ie it did not ”begin to exist’ as per the first premise. I hope this helped if I did not understand your question etc I would be happy to attempt to clarify etc.

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No, it does not help. All it does is present the way Craig attempts to escape the infinite regress. However, even this does not work. Since time itself must always exist (by definition), seen from "outside" it, too is "eternal" (there are arguments involving other time dimensions but the same argument may be applied to them, necessitating an infinite regress).I will attempt to explain again. When we are talking about a beginning we usually mean a transition from a state where the object in question does not exist to one where it does - and it is that transition that requires a cause (ignoring the question of causation at the Quantum level).However, if the object exists at the very first instant of time there is no such transition. And if there is no such transition we need nothing to cause the transition. So, given that we are speaking of something different from our usual ideas of "beginnings" should we still call it a "beginning" ? And if we do, surely we must call into question the idea that such a "beginning" requires a cause - since we are missing the very element that a cause is invoked to explain.

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Well, not so fast Paul. First the reason I said shortly after T-0 is that our physics only allow us a glimpse close (albeit very close) to time zero.

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Which is not what you said.

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Secondly I feel you are incorrect that we can not at least make logical and reasonable assumptions to what happed before/or outside time the big bang

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Your feeling is incorrect. The singularity masks all evidence of what - if anything came before. And those speculations that are made do not reveal any need for supernatural intervention.

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Why ? Just because an object exists at the “very first instant of time “ does not give it a special privilege. The universe did not exist then it did.

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If it exists at the very first instant of time it cannot be the case that "first it did not exist, then it did". As I have already pointed out more than once - there is no point before it exists (because that requires an earlier moment in time - before the first, which is impossible). The fact that you need to deny that it existed at the first instant of time only illustrates the strength of my point.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.