No offense again, but the attributes you use don't even make sense. In order:
- "Changeless": Doesn't make sense to use that term outside of spacetime.
- "Powerful": Why? Total extrapolation of lack of knowledge on our side, something theists have done for millennia. The Big Bang started infinitesimally small, and we know matter (and thus energy) can spontaneously appear. In all likelihood, the creation of a universe has nothing to do with power, and in fact might require none at all.
- "Personal": WTF? Human arrogance at its best. You're not the center of the universe.
rumborak
I'll answer that, but that is not the issue of our present discussion. You said God is defined in such a way that he is unprovable. I listed the Kalam Cosmological Argument's definition of God, and I don't think it's unreasonable, ungraspable, or too abstract.
Space and time began with the universe. Therefore, the cause of the universe must be 1) non-temporal and 2) non-spatial.
Change depends on time, so if something is not dependent on a time, it is changeless. Therefore, the cause of the universe is 3) changeless.
Immateriality depends on space, so if something is not dependent on space, it is immaterial. Therefore, the cause of the universe is 4) immaterial.
The cause of the universe must have been powerful enough to cause the universe. We know that the universe came from literally nothing - not even an energy gradient (an energy gradient a requirement for spontaneously appearing matter). I think there is a difference to be recognized here between the nothingness of
space, which is affected by energy gradients, and true nothingness. It might take very little to create matter in the nothingness of space, but I think it's intuitive that it would be quite different for a situation where something emerges out of true nothingness. So I don't think it's a far cry to say the cause of the universe is 5) unimaginably powerful. Note that here I really do mean unimaginable, in where we can't even grasp what it really takes to form something out of true nothingness, or what the cause of the universe is really capable of elsewhere.
And when I say the cause of the universe must have been 'personal', I think you're taking that to mean that I am saying the universe was meant to be human-oriented, or that the cause of the universe desires to interact with the universe. That is not what I'm saying.
a) The only things that can be timeless and immaterial are minds and abstract objects. Abstract objects don't stand in causal relationships. So the cause of the universe must be a mind.
b) This is a little wordy, so instead of butchering it, I'll post a quote by WLC:
. . . only a free agent can account for the origin of a temporal effect from a timeless cause. If the cause of the universe were an impersonal, mechanically operating cause, then the cause could never exist without its effect. For if the sufficient condition of the effect is given, then the effect must be given as well. To illustrate: Let's say the cause of water's freezing is sub-zero temperatures. If the temperature were eternally below zero degrees Centigrade, then any water around would be eternally frozen. It would be impossible for the water to begin to freeze a finite time ago. But this implies that if the cause of the universe existed eternally, the universe would also have existed eternally.
The only way for the cause to be timeless but for its effect to begin in time is for the cause to be a personal agent who freely chooses to bring about an effect without any antecedent determining conditions. Philosophers call this type of causation "agent causation," and because the agent is free, he can initiate new effects by freely bringing about conditions which were not previously present. For example, a man sitting changelessly from eternity could freely will to stand up; thus, a temporal effect arises from an eternally existing agent. Similarly, a finite time ago a Creator endowed with free will could have freely brought the world into being at that moment. In this way, the Creator could exist changelessly and eternally but choose to create the world in time. So the cause is eternal, but the effect is not. Thus, we are brought, not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its Personal Creator.