cyberman wrote: Now, take the first cause argument.
Sure - piece of cake.
The first axiom of your First Cause Argument, predicate to the entire argument, is that all that happens has a cause. The second axiom, requisite to the argument's development, is that something (the universe) came from nothing. Taken together, these 2 axioms lead to the declaration that something caused the universe to come into existence. Proceeding from there, the First Cause argument concludes by assigning causality to a deistic entity.
First, quantum physics demonstrates your first axiom to be invalid; any number of quantum process are observed to occur randomly, without cause, therefor, it is absurd to stipulate everything has a cause. That aside, as Hume demonstrated, "cause" and "effect" are but human notions derived through human experience; we observe that "B" follows "A", and, seeing only that "B" happened after "A", presume "A" to be the cause of "B". That presumption itself is an absurdity; we observe only that "A" precedes "B", anything beyond that is mere conjecture. Your first axiom fails.
Turning to your second axiom, that something (the Universe) came from nothing is but presumption. We, a subset of the universe, do observe the universe - we're here, and we're having this discussion. Space and time are indivorceable, they are the same thing; spacetime. Spacetime as we observe it, the yardstick by which we observe and measure our observable universe, came into being with the emergence of our universe some 14 Billion years ago. That we observe the universe as we do is a consequence of the universe we observe, that, only that, and nothing more, less, or otherwise else; there is no reason to assume this be the only extant universe and there is substantial reason to conclude otherwise, substantial, multiply evidenced and cross-corroborative reason borne of mathematics, physics, and logic. Your second axiom fails.
Bereft of valid foundational axioms, your declaration that something (the universe) came from nothing is meaningless, a circumstance which perforce renders your conclusion - that God caused the universe - no less meaningless and, consequently, equally absurd.
With all that, we've not even examined the ramifications of determining whether there be or not be any such thing as a god or gods. The proposition that a god or gods created the universe is dependent upon the proposition there be a god or gods. One cannot demonstrate the former, that a god or gods created the universe, without first establishing its requisite antecedent, that there be a god or gods.
