Recently I have noticed quite a few atheists objecting to the principle of causality in order to stop "first cause" arguments for God's existence. Although it is insane to believe that something can actually come from nothing, I will nevertheless come to the aid of the self-evident. Here is at least one way to defend the principle. It uses, of course, the distinction between necessary and contingent beings. Yes, I am somewhat obsessed with this distinction, but I am constantly being amazed by how much argumentative mileage one can get from it!
Things that exist are either necessary beings or contingent beings. A necessary being is that which contains within itself all that is necessary for its existence, it is not dependent on something other than it to exist. A contingent being is that which does not contain within itself all that is necessary for its existence, it does depend on something other than it to exist.
The contingent being does not have the wherewithal in itself to make it different from nothing (since left to itself it does not exist and thus is no different from nothing), something besides it and nothing must be introduced in order to make it truly distinct from nothing. This “something” cannot be nothing, for nothing does not make something distinct from nothing. It therefore must be something that is different from nothing. Thus a contingent being cannot pop into existence without the aid of something other than nothing.
A necessary being could not come into existence for the following reason (although a necessary being could exist for all of eternity): Let some necessary being (X) come to be. Now clearly the moment before X came to be it was possible for it to come to be, otherwise one would say that what came to be was impossible. But before X came to be, it did not exist. Similarly before X came to be, that which is impossible (a square–circle for example) did not exist either. But there must be something that makes the existence of X possible but does not make a square-circle possible, otherwise there would be no legitimate reason to say that X is possible but a square-circle is not. What makes that which is possible different from that which is impossible? It cannot be nothing, because nothing makes nothing distinct. Therefore what makes the possible distinct from the impossible is something that is not nothing. Therefore there is something other than nothing that makes X possible but does not make a square-circle possible But that which allows the possibility of the existence of X is something X depends on for its existence. But it was said earlier that a necessary being does not depend on anything else for its own existence. Therefore X is not a necessary being which is contrary to what we said earlier. Therefore no necessary being can come into existence.
Thus if anything comes into existence it must be a contingent being. And if it is a contingent being, it depends on something other than itself and nothing for its existence. Hence something cannot come from nothing.
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