How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard

[JuliaL]

I see "all this" as a giant weather pattern in which we are riding in, like a hurricane collects from smaller parts based on climate conditions, eventually to break down again.

A fit, chaotic, metaphor.
I like a different one: bubbles in beer.

In a still glass of beer there will generate CO2 bubbles in a string from a nucleus, generally on the side of the glass.
For an individual stuck in the bubble, there is a beginning to its bubbleness.
Even though there were prior materials necessary to its formation, the inhabitants of the bubble have no knowledge of them.
Nor are they personal.  It's all according to the totally impersonal characteristics of the material and its environs.  We call them physical laws.
We also cannot see what will happen when the bubble we're in reaches the surface.  From outside we can see it will pop.  From inside, we are blind and can only guess blindly.

From what I read, for example, Stephen Hawkins would argue "there is no more north to the north pole" and hence we don't need to concern ourselves with what is before the first point of time even though we know the universe began both through philosophical and scientific argument (he argues science confirms philosophy in this respect).  However, I feel that is the real special pleading. Just because it's the first state of the universe, it doesn't mean we don't know that it began to exist. And just because there is no going back before beginning of time, doesn't mean we can't know it requires a cause as it to began to exist. Therefore this is the real special pleading.

I think Stephen Hawkins changed his view over the years maybe, I don't know, but I have "brief history of time" in my room.

I'd say that the point North of the North pole is in the direction 'UP.'
Using the globe metaphor (dangerously) time maps to paths on the surface.  Outside of time is somewhere not on the surface.
You need another dimension to posit the appearance of time.  Aquinus did this by assuming God was outside time.  Fine, it fits the metaphor, but still doesn't offer evidence of His existence.