Hello, Mcfly! You're saying I'm strawmanning theism by targeting only fundamentalists--in a comment under a lengthy article that targets rather a sophisticated defense of classical, philosophical theism.

And just because you disagree with something, doesn't make what you disagree with a "misrepresentation." You're arguing by mere assertion.

When you say that something must exist to cause something, you're assuming the necessity of causation. But that's an appeal to the positive form of the PSR, to the principle that everything has a reason/cause for why it is as it is. Thus, in explaining the alleged alternative formulation of the PSR, you once again appeal to the formulation I provide in the article (from SEP).

The cosmological argument doesn't succeed. It's a word game, a toy deduction that rests on all-too intuitive stipulations that are irrelevant to the universe's manifest alienness.