Disproving Odin - An Experiment in arguing with a theist with Theist logic

[SteveII]

I understand your point. You are pointing out the difference between inside the universe and outside the universe and then insisting that it matters. You don't give reasons why it matters. Later on, you just say it is a category error. It's not, because I don't need a specific kind of cause to be true or to create "sets" with them. All that is needed to span any difference is that a causal principle is an objective feature of reality. This would apply both in and out of the universe. There are good reasons to believe this exists and no good reasons to think that it does not.

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I'm not sure you do see my point.  We say a man painted a hose and therefore he is the cause it's new color.  Fertilization is why an embryo is formed, trees grow from nuts, erosion levels mountains, rivers cut valleys.  It is these examples of an orderly universe from which we deduce cause and effect.  None of these examples involve the creation of new matter.  No new matter is introduced into the world by the birth of a baby, the eruption of a volcano, or by building a house.  All of these things are just rearranging the molecular furniture.  And at least at the macro level, every such transformation appears to have a cause or really many causes. And as long as we are just talking about rearanging the furniture, that everything has a cause or causes is a reasonable premise.

But the beginning of the universe is a a real beginning to exist.  It is the beginning of time, matter, and energy.  In effect it is the beginning of objective reality.  Calling both (1) the creation of matter, and (2) the rearranging of matter "beginning to exist" is not inappropriate.  They are fundamentally different things.  So yes it every much matters (no pun intended).

Extrapolating the rules for matter coming into being from the rules about how to rearrange matter is not possible.  It is a category error.

This is the point at which you are not understanding me. I am not extrapolating rules.  That would actually be a composition fallacy and not a category error--but that is beside the point. Premise 1 does not say: Everything that begins to exist in the universe has a cause. It it making a general statement that is meant to apply to all possible worlds, all possible universes, all possible states of reality that may have come prior to a particular universe. It is a metaphysical statement that applies to any existence -- not a scientific one which would only apply within our universe. 

WLC, the foremost authority on this argument, said it this way in an article:

Objection #4: The first premise is based upon the fallacy of composition. It fallaciously infers that because everything in the universe has a cause, therefore the whole universe has a cause.

Response to #4: In order to understand this objection we need to understand the fallacy of composition. This is the fallacy of reasoning that because every part of a thing has a certain property, therefore the whole thing has that same property. While wholes do sometimes possess the properties of their parts (for example, a fence, every picket of which is green, is also green), this is not always the case. For example, every little part of an elephant may be light in weight, but that does not imply that the whole elephant is light in weight.

Now I have never argued that because every part of the universe has a cause, therefore the whole universe has a cause. That would be manifestly fallacious. Rather the reasons I have offered for thinking that everything that begins to exist has a cause are these:

1. Something cannot come from nothing. To claim that something can come into being out of nothing is worse than magic. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, at least you've got the magician, not to mention the hat! But if you deny premise (1) you've got to think that the whole universe just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatsoever. But nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.
2. If something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn't come into being from nothing. Think about it: why don't bicycles and Beethoven and root beer just pop into being from nothing? Why is it only universes that can pop into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can't be anything about nothingness that favors universes, for nothingness doesn't have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness, since there isn't anything to be constrained!
3. Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise (1). Premise (1) is constantly verified and never falsified. It is hard to understand how any atheist committed to modern science could deny that premise (1) is more plausibly true than false in light of the evidence. [7]

Note well that the third reason is an appeal to inductive reasoning, not reasoning by composition. It's drawing an inductive inference about all the members of a class of things based on a sample of the class. Inductive reasoning undergirds all of science and is not to be confused with reasoning by composition, which is a fallacy.

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/l...e-them-up/

Remember, the premise does not have to be 100% proven. It just has to be more likely than not. On this point, I would say it exceeds that threshold and is near the "almost definitely true" end of the spectrum. 

(You could of course argue that the universe is made up of pre-existing matter.  But if you go that way, then you will have to add all existing matter to the set of things that did not begin to exist in which case under your formulation, matter being eternal  would not need a cause.)

I wouldn't go that way.