This is The Cosmological Argument. From the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument
The cosmological argument is an argument for the existence of a First Cause (or instead, an Uncaused cause) to the universe, and by extension is often used as an argument for the existence of God. It is traditionally known as an argument from universal causation, an argument from first cause, the causal argument or the argument from existence.
The cosmological argument could be stated as follows:
1. Every finite and contingent being has a cause.
2. Nothing finite and contingent can cause itself.
3. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
4. Therefore, a First Cause (or something that is not an effect) must exist.
Objections:
One objection to the argument is that it leaves open the question of why the First Cause is unique in that it does not require a cause. Proponents argue that the First Cause is exempt from having a cause, while opponents argue that this is special pleading or otherwise untrue.[12] The problem with arguing for the First Cause’s exemption is that it raises the question of why the First Cause is indeed exempt.
Secondly, the premise of causality has been arrived at via a posteriori (inductive) reasoning, which is dependent on experience. David Hume highlighted this problem of induction and showed that causal relations were not true a priori (deductively). Even though causality applies to the known world, it does not necessarily apply to the Universe at large. In other words, it is unwise to draw conclusions from an extrapolation of causality beyond experience.
Now, the scientific positions:
The argument for a Prime Mover is based on the scientific foundation of Aristotelian physics. Some physicists feel that the development of the laws of thermodynamics in the 19th century and quantum physics in the 20th century have weakened a purely scientific expression of the cosmological argument. Modern physics has many examples of bodies being moved without any known moving body, apparently undermining the first premise of the Prime Mover argument: every object in motion must be moved by another object in motion.
It is argued that a challenge to the cosmological argument is the nature of time. The Big Bang theory states that it is the point in which all dimensions came into existence, the start of both space and time. Then, the question “What was there before the Universe?” makes no sense; the concept of “before” becomes meaningless when considering a situation without time, and thus the concepts of cause and effect so necessary to the cosmological argument no longer apply.
As Rovelli and others suggest, time is all a matter of perspective - not a feature of reality, but a result of missing information about reality. Although their work is still merely hypothesis, the mere notion that the concept of time, and thus the motion of objects with respective causes and effects, could be an illusion caused by perspective, pokes another hole in the First Cause argument. Without time, there need not be a true beginning to apparently causal events in a seemingly infinite regress.
Now, the regress argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument
The regress argument (also known as the diallelus) is a problem in epistemology and, in general, a problem in any situation where a statement has to be justified.
According to this argument, any proposition requires a justification. However, any justification itself requires support, since nothing is true “just because”. This means that any proposition whatsoever can be endlessly (infinitely) questioned, like a child who asks “why?” over and over again.
Infinitism argues that the chain can go on forever. Critics argue that this means there is never adequate justification for any statement in the chain.
Which leads us to infinitism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitism
Infinitism is the view that knowledge may be justified by an infinite chain of reasons. It belongs to epistemology, the branch of philosophy that considers the possibility, nature, and means of knowledge.
Knowledge is widely accepted as meaning justified true belief. Traditional theories of justification (foundationalism and coherentism) and indeed most philosophers consider an infinite regress not to be a valid justification. In their view, if A is justified by B, B by C, and so forth, then either (a) the chain must end with a link that requires no independent justification (a foundation), or (b) the chain must come around in a circle in some finite number of steps (the belief may be justified by its coherence) or (c) our beliefs must not be justified after all (as skeptics believe).
