Re: How do atheist\\scientists account for Thomas Aquinas?
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Thus it is necessary to posit some first efficient cause, which everyone calls "God."
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Some people call it the big bang. EDIT: Let me also comment that first cause arguments seem extremely weak. Why is God exempt from the requirement of being caused, and if you're going to assume that you can have something exempt of that requirement, then the argument is pointless in the first place as you could just as well choose something else.
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If it is possible for every particular thing not to exist, there must have been a time when nothing at all existed.
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I don't think this makes a lick of sense. Let me make an analogy. Let's say I have a set of integers {1, 2, 3}. Now let's say that at each time step, I remove the smallest number in the set and add the smallest natural number not in the set to the set, i.e {1,2,3} -> {2,3,4} -> {3,4,5}. Consider membership in the set existence. Every natural number will be nonexistent at some point, but this does not demonstrate that there is a time where nothing exists - the set is never empty.
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