The First Cause Argument

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As I understand the first cause argument, it states that everything has a cause, so the universe must have had a cause, and that cause is God. But how do we know that it’s God, and not something that science, as it progresses, won’t end up explaining by natural means? Is there a better reason, in the context of the First Cause argument, to believe that the First Cause is God rather than simply, it’s unexplained, so it must be God?

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That’s not exactly the First Cause argument. You’re leaving out a few details. Per Aquinas:
The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
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Besides, science cannot explain away God. It is not within the realm of natural science to even talk about God. That would be like a hockey referee officiating at a soccer game from a tennis match during basketball season. He’s well outside his jurisdiction. Natural science studies and explains the natural–God is a supernatural reality that lies outside the epistemological boundaries of natural science. If natural science cannot explain something, this does not mean that it doesn’t exist or is impossible. Simply that it cannot be explained through scientific experimentation. The First Cause argument doesn’t work like “Oh, the universe came from somewhere, but we don’t know where, so it must be God.” None of Aquinas’ formulations of the arguments for the Existence of God are a “God of the gaps” argument, but rather look to the ordering of nature and draw conclusions based on it. You seem to be implying that if science can’t explain something, the Church (or philosophy, as it were) just throws in “God” as the answer. This is not true in the least. Rather, as I’ve said, we say that certain means of knowing function in different spheres, and the natural sciences know the natural, while the sacred science–theology–and rational philosophical inquiry explore things which natural science cannot know.

If you read some of the debate in the scientific community when the Big Bang theory was first put forth, you’ll see that many scientists actually rejected it because it was too theistic–that is, it pointed to a first cause. Many accused the man who proposed the Big Bang, Msgr. Georges Lemaitre (a Catholic priest, of course), of mixing his religion with his science. But the theory is now widely held.

-ACEGC
 
“Science” has already explained the cause of the universe by natural means but as you ask, it is not a better argument than the theological one. Science uses the two causalities, related to Aquinas and Aristotle, of material and efficient. Following on its heels is modern philosophy that denies the two other causalities: formal and final. Denying these meta-physical causalities puts science and modern philosophy in a union together as a system of knowledge based on the material, provable, and the perceptible.

The first cause is not merely a first in a line of separate causes but a union of causes and cannot be separated from each other. Today’s philosophy sees a brick as the cause of a broken window separate from the action of the thrower of that brick. It is known from the effect of the broken window and brick that a “necessary being” exists that gave propulsion to an inanimate brick. First cause in linked to a necessary, self existent cause that is transcendent from the creation giving existence to that creation.

Science as a philosophy uses hidden formal and final, teleological causes to make itself a philosophical system to those who are ignorant of philosophy as true wisdom. This is the basis for the “New Atheism” and the elevation of science as the sole cause of knowledge, erroneously.
 
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