Welcome to the Council of Trend Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Council of Trend Podcast.

I'm your host, Catholic Answers Apologist and Speaker, Trent Horn.

And today I want to share with you a dialogue that I had with my colleague, Jimmy Aiken,

on the Kalam Cosmological argument and the larger issue about whether reason can prove

that the universe had a beginning and these kinds of arguments for the existence of God.

So in September, Catholic Answers put on their annual conference.

We have it every year. I think it's the last weekend of September in San Diego.

Though we're hoping in future years to be able to branch out, go to Dallas, go to other parts of the country.

The theme for this year's conference was, I believe in God.

So there were talks on how to answer atheism, how to make arguments for the existence of God.

It was a really good event.

I had spoken with the President of Catholic Answers, Chris Check.

Several months ago and said, could we do a debate on atheism as part of the conference?

Logistics-wise, that didn't work out this year.

But we did have time to do a kind of intramural debate or dialogue.

So Jimmy and I sat down and we have different views on issues related to the Kalam Cosmological argument.

That's the argument that says whatever begins to exist has a cause.

The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause.

And the idea is that you can show from reason that the universe began to exist.

This is something an argument I've studied for many, many years.

Though my views on the best way to present the argument and how to present the evidence for a finite pass

...