Matt Dillahunty on The cosmological argument
Dillahunty argues the cosmological argument is a deepity — it sounds profound but either says something trivially true or something untestable.
Dillahunty has addressed the cosmological argument hundreds of times on The Atheist Experience. His objections are practical and epistemological rather than deeply technical. He focuses on the unjustified leap from 'the universe has a cause' to 'that cause is God' — noting that even if the argument works, it establishes at most an abstract first cause, not a personal deity.
He is particularly effective at challenging the first premise — that everything that begins to exist has a cause. Dillahunty points out that we have never observed anything 'begin to exist' in the relevant sense. Objects in our experience are rearrangements of pre-existing matter. The creation of matter itself is a categorically different phenomenon about which we have no data.
Dillahunty also challenges the special pleading involved in exempting God from the causal principle. If 'everything that begins to exist has a cause' is a universal truth, then saying God did not begin to exist is either an ad hoc exception or an admission that not everything needs a cause — either of which undermines the argument.
“You don't get to say 'everything needs a cause' and then say 'except God.' That's special pleading, and it's the very first move theists make.”