How much do you like philosophy?

[Rampant.A.I.]

[quote='FreeTony' pid='599262' dateline='1391701827']
The universe is in the set of "everything". We do not know whether the universe, if it began to exist, had a cause. Therefore we cannot say everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Again, the set Craig is referencing is not "everything". The set is "everthing that begins/began to exist", which he says must have a cause for its existence if its existence had a beginning.

Just because everything we have observed so far has been seen to have a cause, it doesn't mean everything does. If his everything doesn't include the universe, then it doesn't work.

He obviously isn't saying EVERYTHING began to exist. Do you think Craig believes God began to exist? Of course not. Craig's fundamental claim is to say that the regress of causes and effects must logically terminate at a beginning and that only God can be that termination point.

Craig's definition of "begins to exist" is something like "X 'begins to exist', if and only X exists at time T, prior to which X did not exist". There are definitely problems there, and even Craig has realized that and amended it some (poorly).

"Everything that exists must have a cause" is wording from Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. It was changed by later thinkers to avoid Hume's reasonable objection.

No one has ever witnessed an *entirely* new thing come into being (I.e. The Universe) to justify "everything must have a cause". The "Necessarily, God must exist" conclusion is semantic sleight-of-hand. You could substitute anything after "Necessarily", as Bertrand Russell did with the Teakettle Argument.

Logical regress is a non-issue to anyone willing to accept the non-existence of capital-T Truth. We have a matrix of reasonably justified true beliefs to rest other true beliefs on, and it holds together just fine above the void.