Is that any less valid that saying some uncreated super intelligence caused it? Maybe the universe is uncreated and eternal. Maybe it has always existed and undergoes many cycles of expansion and contraction. Maybe we just don't know and should accept that until there's a reason to say otherwise.
From the start, the initial assumption of the cosmological argument is flawed and then it just goes downhill from there. The assumption that the universe
began is unfounded. We don't know what was going on before the big bang and we can never know. The big bang is an event horizon (not related to black holes). In fact the phrase "before the big bang" makes as much sense as saying "north of the north pole" because time itself came into existence at the big bang. Now, is this just one of an infinite regress of cycles? Probably not since the expansion of the universe is speeding up rather than slowing down, but maybe this is the final cycle for some reason? Who knows. It's all unfounded speculation. There are lots of ideas about what caused the big bang or whether it makes sense to say it was "caused" at all. We just don't know; we CAN'T know. But some ideas make more sense than others and WAY down on the list is the idea that a giant omniscient, omnipotent, omni-benevolent sky father poofed us into existence. I mean, why your god? Why not Marduk or Odin or whichever Hindu god is supposed to have created everything? Or rather, why not just accept that you don't know, we don't know, and we
can't know?
EDIT: ok I know how to word it. Saying "It's a mystery, therefore a god did it" is exactly as irrational as saying "No one knows where the lost boats and planes of the Bermuda triangle went. It's a mystery, therefore aliens."
YouTube - ‪Neil Tyson talks about UFOs and the argument from ignorance.‬‏
the cosmological argument according to it's founder...Aquinas...
The basic idea is that everything has a prior cause, but the chain of causes can't go back infinitely far, so there must be a first cause. The "first way" argument might be summarized like this:
1. Some things change. (empirical premise, verified by observation)
2. Everything that changes is made to change by something else. (Aquinas has a separate argument for this)
3. The chain of causes can't go back to infinity.
4. Therefore, there must be a cause of change that does not itself change.
Premise 2, that everything that changes is made to change by something else, can be seen as having two parts: that every change is caused, and that the cause of a change in an object must be a different object from the one that changes. Aquinas seems to presuppose the first of these two claims without argument. The argument for the second appears to be this:
1. An object can change from not having property G to having G only if the object is potentially G but not actually G.
2. The cause of an object's becoming G must itself actually be G.
3. Therefore, a thing cannot cause itself to acquire a property.
There are several points at which these arguments might be questioned. Consider premise 2 of the first argument. The second argument is supposed to show that 2 is true. However, the second argument shows at best only that if a change has a cause, the cause must be a different object from the one that changes. It doesn't show that there must be a cause of change at all. And in fact the best evidence we have from contemporary science suggests that in fact changes do not necessarily have causes. Consider the decay of an atom of a radioactive substance. It appears that there simply is no explanation for why this happens at one time rather than another: when such an atom will decay is a purely random matter.
Another weak point is premise 2 of the second argument. Aquinas's example is heat: one object can become hot, he suggests, only if a second object which is already hot causes it to become hot. But this isn't the only way something can become hot! Think of chemical reactions that produce heat, or of producing heat by means of friction.
It may also be worth noticing that if the argument were successful, it would show the existence of at least one unchanged changer -- but nothing in the argument shows that there aren't more than one.
Aquinas's "second way" is closely related to the first; it's a more general version of the cosmological argument. The argument is something like this:
1. Every event has a distinct cause.
2. Either the chain of causes goes on forever, or there is a first cause.
3. The chain of causes can't go back forever.
4. Therefore, there is a first cause.
This has some of the same problems as the previous version -- in particular, it is not at all clear that every event has a cause (the example of radioactive decay applies here also).
Apart from questions about whether the arguments are sound (i.e. whether their premises are true and their conclusions follow from their premises), there is also the question of whether the conclusion really proves what the theist wants. The conclusion is that there is a first (uncaused) cause. But why should we identify this with God? As Russell points out, if the argument works then there must be something that is uncaused, so the first premise is false. But once we've accepted the possibility that something is uncaused, it seems that we've opened the door to the idea that something other than God is uncaused (for example, the Big Bang).
The consequences depended usually on our level of understanding of what we did, was it deliberate, were we truly sorry for our bad behaviour etc. This is for the chlidren's own good, parents want to raise well adjusted adults who contribute 'positively' to society.
