An argument for God

[Rhyfelwyr]

This is merely an attempt to address the notion that infinite regress is impossible. Is it?
The First Cause is a contradiction to the argument of "everything has a cause". You designed the argument with "everything that begins". But everything that is, whether material or immaterial begs a beginning? If you allow for something to be uncaused, why choose God? Why can't the universe be the uncaused non-contingent being?
At least we know that it exists.

In addition to the Aquinas argument, you must also show:

1. The First cause is either personal or mechanical.
2. The First cause is not mechanical.
3. Therefore, the first cause must be personal

(Universe vs. God)

Well, if the first cause was mechanical (lets call it a "creator universe"), then presumably it could only create our universe by an accidental mechanical process rather than intelligent design. And if this creation is a mechanical process, then wouldn't this mean that this "creator universe" acts according to [at least some of] the laws of our own universe, since it would be creating our universe through a sort of 'cause and effect' of mechanical action/reaction. To be self-existent, the first cause would have to be totally transcendent of all our natural laws including cause and effect. The very idea of mechanicity entails a sort of inner working of cause and effect.

The problem I see with your argument Rhy is that premise 2 is not proven. It is possible that the universe has always been and always will. Maybe our universe is a part of a pair of universes that popped into existence, ours being matter, another being composed of the anti-matter we don't observe and both of these universes are within a much larger multi-universe.

The current scientific consensus is that our universe began to exist. From what I can see, even all the atheists who debate the cosmological argument accept this point. I would have thought that it would be the least contentious point of the argument.

...All those points also applies to anyone making a computer simulation.

As I said it is of course possible to have total control over an artificially created sort of sub/simulated universe. But this is not omnipotence or omniscience according to the pure, philosophical meanings of the terms; not least because of the basic fact that the simulated universe would strictly speaking not be a distinct universe, but in fact a part of the universe of its creator.

And as you said in a later post, the objection you raise here doesn't address the fundamental question of how the first universe was created.

Rhyf, two questions:

These questions are concerned with the particular God of the Bible, which as I have already said, requires going beyond the scope of my argument here.

Once again, the aim of this argument is not to prove that the God of the Bible is true. The aim is only to show that a broadly Abrahamic concept of God, in the sense of a omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and immaterial God is true.