The Kalam Cosmological argument.

[Pat Mustard]

I don't believe the universe began to exist.

Ok, then. Question to you: What existed 100 BN years ago?

a) Nothing. And if so, then everything came from nothing.
b) Nothing material, i.e. an Immaterial Spiritual Being.

Atheism is forced to hold on to a. Defenders of Kalam say b.

We know the Universe began to exist because we know its finite age.

Whereas the God of Christian Revelation has always declared Himself Eternal.

It is not obvious that premises 1 and 2 true are correct, therefore conclusions 3 and 4 are invalid.

Insufficient. It's insufficient for Atheists to claim "it's not obvious". They must show that the negation of 1 or 2 are more probably true, and then construct a logical argument of their own, if they want us to believe the Universe either did not begin to exist, or that what begins to exist pops into being uncaused.

Dr. Craig, the Athanasius of this age against the Arianism that is Atheism, has a put a lot of thought into this argument he popularized, and it stands imho.

OK, so what caused the "Eternal Creator of the Universe" to exist? and if he/it "always existed why can't the universe have always existed?

Premise 1 of Kalam is, What begins to exist has a Cause. The Converse of it is, whatever was uncaused exists eternally. Therefore, it is only creatures, that began to exist, that have a Cause. The Eternal Creator does not need to, and there is no circularity in Kalam, but the mere converse of it applies to God.

We don't know (yet) what created the universe

Well, maybe in 20 or 25 years you will know that God created it, but speed it up already; we know, God is waiting, and life is passing you by. Everyone who wants to go to Heaven must get this Question right and live accordingly so that he or she may indeed go to that Father's House with many Mansions and live eternally there happily forever and ever. Amen. In Jesus' Name.

We have no valid frame of reference for "100BN years ago". As far as the evidence we have tells us time "began" c. 14BN years ago. There is no before then that we can interrogate, because if it existed it existed outside our frame of reference, or any frame of reference we could interrogate. Your question is meaningless.

Atheism does not have to hold onto your posited a, because atheism has nothing to say about the beginning of our universe, it is simply a lack of belief in god(s).

Actually no we don't. What we do know is that the universe as it's currently constituted began to exist. The Big Bang theory posits that what makes up the vast majority of the universe (there are a few spontaneously created particles) existed as an infinitely hot and dense singularity prior to the beginning of its current nature.

PS it is very rude to quote somebody without a) using their full handle and b) stripping out the part of the quotation code which allows others to link back to the quoted post. It is also often a sign of somebody altering others' posts to lie that they said something other than they actually said.