Dan Barker on The cosmological argument
Barker argues that the cosmological argument commits a special pleading fallacy by exempting God from the very causal principle it invokes.
Barker engages the cosmological argument in his debates with numerous theistic philosophers and in his written work. His primary objection is the special pleading at the argument's core: if everything requires a cause or an explanation, then God requires one too. If God can exist without a cause, so can the universe. The argument does not solve the problem of origins — it merely adds an extra step and then declares the problem solved.
In his debates with apologists, Barker presses the point that even granting a first cause, nothing about the argument establishes that the cause is personal, conscious, or morally good. The cosmological argument, at most, establishes a deistic prime mover — and the distance between that and the God of Christianity is enormous.
Barker also argues that the notion of 'nothing' from which the universe supposedly arose may be incoherent. If there was ever truly nothing — no space, no time, no laws of physics — then there were no conditions to prevent something from coming into existence. The demand for a cause presupposes a causal framework that may not apply at the origin of the universe.
“If God doesn't need a maker, then neither does the universe. You've just added an unnecessary step.”