There is evidence of religious convictions going back to 30,000 BC: burial traditions reflecting belief in an after-life, places of worship, early stone-age theocracies, etc. References to gods or the sacred are as old as writing, with the oldest known full religious text go back to ~2600 BC. Religion is universal in human societies throughout history. What is the oldest recorded atheist text?
So, it’s settled: you accept that the universe has a beginning and you accept that anything with a beginning needs a cause outside itself to come into existence; what is your conclusion from intelligent thinking grounded on logic and facts?
My conclusion is that there is likely something (or was something) separate from the collection of space, time and matter that we call the universe that was able to bring the universe into existence. Exactly what that thing is (or was), I can’t say.
Calling the uncaused cause of the universe “God” doesn’t allow one to simply assume that it has all of the attributes of the theistic God. I hope that is obvious.
Yes, I did notice this. But I’m not convinced that the cause of the universe is in and of itself worthy of being called “God” simply for that reason. And I’m definitely not convinced it can be referred to as “Him.”
Would you say the ultimate cause of “everything” - including the universe - is caused or no?
Naturally the “first cause” need not necessarily be like YHWH or Allah.
It is not only the origin of the universe that requires explanation but also the origin of rational beings - which is far more significant.
Something needs to be causeless, which means that something either always existed or popped into existence from nothing. Both of them are kind of hard to wrap my head around, but the first seems slightly less so.
No. Why would an impersonal force be an “authority?”
I think that rational beings can arise through evolution. If the intelligence of humans is the feature of the universe that you think demands an explanation more than anything else, why would the idea that an intelligence greater than ours existed without a cause make any sense? If something like intelligence can exist without a cause, it doesn’t need an explanation for its existence.
I think we are of the same mind regarding this particular point - especially as the old saying “from nothing comes nothing” seems to hold true in science. The universe coming from literally nothing would seem to contradict not only our scientific discoveries, but the entire philosophy of science, i.e, all things are ultimately explicable.
Gravity is an impersonal force. There are ways to defy it; there are ways you must obey it, or risk injury, death, and other evils. Goodness is also something of an authority, for no man, even if he does evil, ever desires to do evil. Even at the most basic level he thinks he is doing good, if only for himself.
In conjunction with my above question, I will say I think we can know the traits of an uncaused cause. If the first cause is nothing, we cannot assign any attributes to it. But if the first cause is something, it has attributes, the first known one being that it is uncaused.
Welcome, Tim! Your adventure is successful.
As Pascal pointed out, the heart has its reasons which reason does not know. Yet that doesn’t mean reason is a useless mistress - or in Luther’s words “a whore”. 
Hello friend,
The only thing I am saying is that for some, reason and intellect and logic and facts have little bearing on whether they encounter God in their lives each day. May want to know instead why their life stinks and where all the peace and joy Christians always talk about is. If you can answer those questions, then you will have a convert.Welcome, Tim! Your adventure is successful.
Hello friend. I disagree with you here. The idea that the universe is uncaused does not hold up well to scrutiny because we see that everything in the universe comes into being and passes away, and nothing has the power to create itself or sustain its own being. Everything that we observe is dependent on something else. Another way of putting this is that everything we see does not exist necessarily (it does not have to exist), it exists only potentially (can or cannot exist). Thus, nothing physical sustains its own being.
Except for the fact that, if intelligence and personality exist (and intelligent and personal beings which we observe are obviously not uncaused), those features of the universe had to come from somewhere. Their source is in the uncaused cause. So, the uncaused cause is, in a sense, not just intelligent or personal, but the very essence of intelligence and personality. Since those things do exist, and they do not create themselves, then it logically follows that the uncaused cause was the source and is itself intelligent and personal.
Well, let me ask you what other attributes from you must the creator of the universe possess and exercise in order to deserve the name of God?
This seems like an equivocation.
Those things you refer to (logic, math, truth, etc.) are all descriptions of relations of things. The things exist, the relationships exist, our understandings of the relationships exist, so this is all compatible with merely a physical reality.
I’m going to reject this. I think it’s another equivocation. If an artist makes a sculpture, we call that “creating.” There is will involved. But when we are talking about “Being itself” creating something, we are not talking about the same kind of process, so I don’t take it as a given that there is will involved.
Does this work for all attributes? How about fizziness? There is no such thing as pure fizziness, only things that are fizzy, so fizziness must find its source somewhere. All things that exist find their source in God, so God must be fizzy.
Please refer back to my “fizziness” question in the previous response.
“since the universe does not have to exist”…I do not accept that premise.
Being omniscient is a claim about possessing knowledge, which is only possible for intelligent beings. I’m still not on board with the idea of the uncaused cause being such a thing.