The Kalam Cosmological Argument
Two short premises that turn "why is there a universe?" into an argument for a cause beyond it.
Grounded in the research on the Kalam cosmological argument
c. 1095: al-Ghazali
The argument is medieval Islamic. The Persian theologian al-Ghazali laid it out around 1095 in his Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifa), swinging at Avicenna and Aristotle's Greek-borrowed claim that the universe is eternal. His version: every being that begins has a cause; the world began; therefore the world has a cause. "Kalam" just means the Islamic scholastic theology it came out of. Same skeleton it still has.
The two premises
Strip it down. Premise one: whatever begins to exist has a cause. Premise two: the universe began to exist. Conclusion follows by pure logic: the universe has a cause. That's it. The whole fight is over premise two, because almost nobody seriously thinks things pop into being uncaused from nothing. If you grant both premises, the conclusion is locked. You can't dodge it.