Quote:
Originally Posted by Vizio
Yet one that I've never seen an atheist counter.
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Cosmological argument - Iron Chariots Wiki
Argument from first cause - RationalWiki
commonly-raised
[SIZE=2][2][/SIZE][SIZE=2][3][/SIZE] objection to this argument is that it suffers from
special pleading. While everything in the universe is assumed to have a cause, God is free from this requirement. However, while some phrasings of the argument may state that "everything has a cause" as one of the premises (thus contradicting the conclusion of the existence of an uncaused cause), there are also many versions that explicitly or implicitly allow for non-beginning or necessary entities not to have a cause. In the end, the point of the premises is to suggest that reality is a causally-connected whole and that all causal chains originate from a single point, posited to be God. That many people using this argument would consider God exempt from various requirements is a foregone conclusion, but citing "special pleading" because finite causal chains are said to have an uncaused beginning is hardly a convincing objection.
A more pertinent objection is that, even assuming that there is a first cause, the argument utterly fails to address how we can know its identity. The assertion that it must be the particular God that the arguer has in mind is a complete
non sequitur. Why not the
deist God? Why not some kind of impersonal, eternal cosmic force? Why not
shape-shifting aliens from another dimension? Or maybe the most simplest of all, why not the
Big Bang as the first cause? There is nothing in the argument that would allow one to determine any attributes of the first cause.
Finally, there is nothing in the argument to rule out the existence of
multiple first causes. This can be seen by realizing that for any
directed acyclic graph[SIZE=2][[/SIZE]
[SIZE=2]wp[/SIZE][SIZE=2]][/SIZE] which represents causation in a set of events or entities, the first cause is any vertex that has zero incoming edges. This means that the argument can just as well be used to argue for
polytheism.
Through modern science, specifically physics, natural phenomena have been discovered that do not have discernible causes. The best known example is
radioactive decay. Although decay follows statistical laws and it's possible to predict the amount of a radioactive substance that will decay over a period of time, it is absolutely impossible to predict when a specific atom will disintegrate. The spontaneous disintegration of radioactive nuclei is truly random and uncaused, providing a counterexample to the assumption that everything must have a cause.
Another example is the spontaneous generation of virtual particles, which randomly appear even in complete vacuum. These particles are responsible for the
Casimir effect[SIZE=2][[/SIZE]
[SIZE=2]wp[/SIZE][SIZE=2]][/SIZE] and
Hawking radiation.[SIZE=2][[/SIZE]
[SIZE=2]wp[/SIZE][SIZE=2]][/SIZE] The release of such radiation comes in the form of gamma rays, which we now know from experiment are simply a very energetic form of light at the extreme end of the electromagnetic spectrum. Consequently, as long as there has been vacuum, there has been light, even if it's not the light that our eyes are equipped to see. What this means is that long before God is ever purported to have said "Let there be light!", the universe was already filled with light, and God is rendered quite the Johnny-come-lately.
The Cosmological Argument - Arguments for the Existence of God - Arguments for Atheism
Critics of the Modal Cosmological Argument or Argument from Contingency would question whether the universe is in fact contingent. We have no idea whether this universe “had” to exist or not, nor whether it is in fact the only one and not just one of a potentially infinite number of different universes in a “multiverse” for example.
Critics also ask why God should be considered a “necessary being” and inexlicably exempted from the argument that everything has a cause. If a God exists to cause the universe then, by the same argument, this God must itself have a cause, leading to an infinite regress unacceptable to most theists. Simply asking "does God have a cause of his existence?” therefore raises as many problems as the cosmological argument solves.
[SIZE=3]
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (Entities should 
not be multiplied unnecessarily).
- William of Ockham (c. 1323)
[/SIZE]
If God is thought not to have, or not to need, a cause of his existence, then his existence would be a counter-example to the initial premise that everything that exists has a cause of its existence! If God or the Prime Mover “just is”, then why can the universe not “just be”? Why is there a need to go a step further back? The widely accepted concept of “Occam’s Razor” suggests that the simplest solution to a problem is always the best, and that additional unnecessary complexity should be avoided.
Even if one accepts that that the universe does in fact have a beginning in time (as the generally accepted Big Bang theory suggests), the Temporal Cosmological Argument does not explain why there could not be more than one first cause/mover, or why the chain could not lead back to several ultimate causes, each somehow outside the universe (potentially leading to several different Gods).
Neither does it explain why the something which is “outside the universe” should be “God” and not some other unknown phenomenon. There is no compelling reason to equate a First Cause with God, and certainly Aristotle did not conceive of his Prime Mover as something that should be worshipped, much less as the omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God of later Christian, Jewish and Muslim tradition.
The whole concept of causality and time as we understand it is based entirely on the context of our universe, and so cannot be used to explain the origin of the universe. Causal explanations are functions of natural laws which are themselves products of the universe we exist in, and time itself is just an aspect of the universe. If there is no “time before” the universe, then the whole notion of “cause” ceases to apply and the universe cannot sensibly have a “cause” (as we use and understand the concept). Indeed, perhaps there IS no “cause” of the universe.
Interestingly, at the sub-atomic quantum level, modern science has found that physical events are observed to have no evident cause, and particles appear to pop in and out of existence at random. In the first infinitesimal fraction of a second after the Big Bang singularity, classical physics is known to break down and just such unpredictable and counter-intuitive quantum effects are thought to apply.
There is another variation of the Cosmological Argument (sometimes called the Argument from Nature) which claims that if there are “laws of nature”, then this implies the existence of a lawgiver, or God. However, the analogy of social order based on man-made laws does not extend to scientific or natural laws, because nature's laws are descriptive, not prescriptive.
It did not take long searching Google.
Does not matter if you believe these sites or accept them as valid your point was you never saw an atheists counter it.
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