Causal principles(foundational concept in the statement): Basic rules about cause and effect—the idea that things don't just happen randomly, but happen because something made them happen.
Foundational(as the opposite of what cross-individual coordination is claimed to be): Serving as a basic starting point or fundamental building block from which other things are derived or built upon.
cause(Philosophical definition of causation requiring both sufficiency and necessity of the cause relative to its effect): An event or state of things such that (a) if it happens or exists, the effect must happen or exist even if no further conditions are fulfilled, and (b) the effect cannot happen or exist unless the cause happens or exists.
effect(Correlate of 'cause' in the defined causal relation): An event or state of things that is caused — it must occur if the cause occurs, and cannot occur unless the cause occurs.
nothing can come from nothing(Acknowledged by atheists such as Lucretius; used by Clarke as a foundational premise): The general principle that no entity or property can arise without a prior cause or ground; the broader principle underlying the specific causal maxims
perfections(metaphysics and philosophy of God): In philosophical theology, the supreme qualities or attributes (like knowledge, power, or goodness) that are thought to exist in God and can serve as models for understanding other things.

A principle that admits of conceivable exceptions cannot serve as a foundational...Everything must have a cause or ground for its existence Hume demonstrated in the Treatise that the causal maxim 'everything has a cause'...Lucretius invoked 'nothing from nothing' to deny divine creation entirely, meani...

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Modern quantum mechanics provides empirically grounded cases of uncaused events ...No effect can have any perfection that is not also in its cause

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SEP: hume-religion

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It is evident that the foundations of this argument rest with the related causal principles that everything must have a cause or ground for its existence and that no effect can have any perfection that is not also in its cause. To deny either of these causal principles is, on Clarke’s account, to reject the more general principle that “nothing can come from nothing” (a principle that the atheists such as Lucretius have themselves acknowledged). In the Treatise Hume develops an account of causati

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Type: claim
Perspectives: 3 (1 for, 2 against)
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The causal principles that everything must have a cause and that no effect can have perfections not in its cause are foundational and cannot be denied without rejecting that nothing can come from nothing

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