Argument from Efficient Causality - Refuted

These are some standard objections to argument #2 on the list provided here...

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm

The key points of the argument are:

- All things, including all those things which are causing things to be, need a cause. They can give being only so long as they are given being. Nothing can cause itself to exist.

- There could not exist an endless series of causes stretching backward into the past. 

- Things have got to exist in order to be mutually dependent; they cannot depend upon each other for their entire being, for then they would have to be, simultaneously, cause and effect of each other.

- If this thing can exist only because something else is giving it existence, then there must exist something whose being is not a gift. Otherwise everything would need at the same time to be given being, but nothing (in addition to "everything") could exist to give it. And that means nothing would actually be.

- So there must be something uncaused, something on which all things that need an efficient cause of being are dependent, which is a first cause, and this is God.

Perhaps the most well known summary objection is...

"If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause."

From "Why I am not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell - 1927

Some of the standard objections:

- There is a contradiction between the conclusion (God) and the first premise. If God is "something", then the argument logically allows the question "what caused God?". If God is not something, then there is no God. But if the argument is exempting God to avoid these questions, then we have a circular argument.

- There is an assumption that a sequence of causes is temporal. Quantum physics provides evidence that there are many different mechanisms for the relation of events, and this includes events with no cause, simultaneous causation, backward causation and so on.

- The argument assumes with no justification that an infinite regress of causes is a less reasonable explanation than an infinite, all powerful God who created the imperfect world that we see. If God is a perfect cause, the effects of that cause must be perfect. 

- Even if there were a first cause, it does not follow that this first cause is God. There could be many gods as first causes. Or we could assume the first cause was a singularity or a quantum vacuum fluctuation or an unknown thing yet to be discovered. Perhaps the universe of causes circles back on itself so that there is no first cause, but every effect still has a cause.

- The argument assumes causality occurs everywhere within the universe but this assumption is based on empirical evidence from the limited experience of the author of the argument (Thomas Aquinas) who lived 800 years ago.

Further reading...
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/
Dictionary of the History of Ideas - "Causation in the 17th Century"