The Kalam Cosmological Argument

[Sheldon]

Quoting from Wikipedia: 'The most prominent form of the Kalam cosmological argument, as defended by William Lane Craig, is expressed as the following syllogism:

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.'

I find this argument laughable because it's supposed to be an argument for God but the conclusion is just that the universe has a cause.

I don't accept the first premise, as we don't know everything needs a cause, also all the causes they are citing to make this rule are natural every single time, and they occur within the physical universe we now observe. 

I am not sure the second premise makes sense, since beginning is defined as the point in time or space at which something begins. Since time and space are characteristics of the physical universe, you can't just assume it existed prior to the BB. 

I don't think the conclusion follows from the premises either, again because you can't assume cause and effect prior to the big bang, or that evidence of only natural causes gives us any reason to posit a supernatural cause. Finally the claim god did it, has no explanatory powers whatsoever.  

Also as has been pointed out, even were we to accept a cause, there is no objective reason to believe a deity was the cause, and of course you can't create a rule that everything needs a cause, then break that rule for a deity, without begging the question and using a special pleading fallacy. Perhaps Lane Craig is another professional religious philosopher who was off sick when they studied fallacies in informal logic? 

He also in a debate with the late Christopher Hitchens, didn't know what atheism means. Something else his theological and philosophical training skipped?