Sam Harris on The cosmological argument
Harris argues the cosmological argument is a non-sequitur — even if the universe has a cause, nothing about that cause implies a personal God.
Harris treats the cosmological argument as a gap argument: it identifies a genuine mystery — why does anything exist? — and fills the gap with God, as though naming the mystery explains it. But 'God' is not an explanation; it is a label attached to our ignorance.
He presses the logical gap between the conclusion ('the universe has a cause') and the theistic inference ('that cause is a personal God who answers prayers'). Even granting that the universe has a cause, Harris argues, nothing in the argument tells us that the cause is conscious, personal, moral, or interested in human affairs. The cosmological argument, at best, gets you to deism — and from deism to Christianity is a journey it cannot make.
Harris also questions whether the concept of causation even applies to the universe as a whole. Our experience of cause and effect is local and temporal — it may not apply to the origin of time itself.
“Even if we accepted that the universe had a cause, this would not suggest that this cause is the God of Abraham, or any other personal deity.”