Ok assuming there has to be a cause (see above) and assuming there is something like eternalality,and assuming the the effect of an eternal cause must be eternal...why does a mechanical cause have to be eternal?

As the cause of space and time, this cause must an uncaused, timeless, spaceless, and immaterial.

I don't see any need to make all these speculations. I don't see what it is useful for, except maybe to write Q for Star Trek.

A hard hit on a unlucky spot of our heads and we are different "yous". That alone should tell anyone that the whole soul,afterlife and whatnot stuff is BS.

1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence. <------ with this being the Christian God since that is always his assumption. That the Christian God created the universe. Why is that the conclusion? Does no other Gods or religions exist? His only "evidence" is the bible. If 1,2 & 3 are correct how do you jump to Christian God without an agenda? Can the cause of the universe not be something else?

First of all, this cause must itself be uncaused. It must be an uncaused First Cause. Why? Because we have seen that an infinite regress of causes is impossible. Remember that the philosophical arguments in support of the beginning of the universe were that you cannot have an infinite regress of causes, and, therefore, the series of causes must terminate in an absolutely first, uncaused cause.

Secondly, this being must transcend space and time because it created space and time. As the creator of space and time, it must exist beyond space and time because it brought space and time into existence. What does that have for further implications? That means that this being, therefore, must be a non-physical, or immaterial, being. This must be a spiritual reality; an immaterial, nonphysical being. Why? Because physical things exist in space – they have dimensions. Moreover, physical things exist in time. Physical things are always changing, at least at the atomic level, where there is just constant motion and change going on. So if you get back to an absolutely first, spaceless, timeless being, it must be an immaterial, non-physical, changeless reality.

Obviously, we can also infer that this being would have to be unimaginably powerful, if not omnipotent. Why? Because it created all of physical reality from nothing. It created the space-time material universe without any sort of material cause. So it is the efficient cause of the universe – it brings matter and energy, space and time into being, but it does so without any sort of stuff, or material, because it creates the universe out of nothing. So it would have to be unfathomably powerful, if not omnipotent.

Finally, this is plausibly a personal being. In our discussion of the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument that was mentioned a moment ago, we already saw one reason why a cause of the universe must plausibly be a personal being.

You remember that I said that there are only two kinds of things that we are aware of that can fit the bill of being an immaterial, timeless, changeless reality. One is an abstract object, like a mathematical entity such as a number or a set. Numbers are not material, physical things; if they exist, they are immaterial realities. They don’t exist in space – the number 7 isn’t hiding under a table here in the room or any place else in the universe.3 They are timeless as well – it is not as if the number 7 endures through time. So abstract objects, mathematical entities, can be immaterial, changeless, spaceless, timeless objects. The other candidate would be a mind. That is to say, an unembodied consciousness or self. The mind is not a material entity, and it need not be constantly changing as long as its thoughts are changeless and focused on a single intuition of reality. And a mind isn’t something that exists necessarily in space.

So we can either have an abstract object or an unembodied consciousness as a cause of the universe. And I argued that it cannot be an abstract object because abstract objects do not stand in causal relationships. This is part of the very definition of what it means to be an abstract object. The number 7 doesn’t have any effects, it has no causal impact upon the universe, nor do any other mathematical entities. So the defining property of abstract objects is their being causally impotent. They do not stand in causal relations. Therefore, it follows that the cause of the origin of the universe must be an unembodied mind – a personal self.

That was the reason I gave when we talked about the Leibnizian argument. Let me now share a different reason for the personhood of the first cause that was given by our friend al-Ghazali, who was the Muslim philosopher that propounded the KalamCosmological Argument during the Middle Ages. Al-Ghazali argued that the first cause must be a personal being because otherwise it is impossible to explain how you can get a temporal effect with a beginning from a changeless, eternal cause.

Here is the problem. If a cause is sufficient to produce its effect, then if the cause is there, the effect should be there. Otherwise, the cause isn’t really sufficient for the effect – you would need something else, and then that would be the cause. So if the cause is sufficient to produce its effect – if the cause is there in all its glory – , then the effect must be there as well. The cause cannot exist without its effect once the sufficient conditions for the effect are given.

Let me give you an illustration. Suppose that the cause of water’s freezing is the temperature’s being below 0°C. If the temperature were below 0°C from eternity past, then any water that was around would be frozen from eternity. It would be impossible for the water to just begin to freeze a finite time ago. Once the cause is given, the effect must be given as well. The problem is, if we have a transcendent and timeless cause that is there, why isn’t the effect also permanent as well? Why did the effect only begin a finite time ago if the cause is eternal? How can you have an eternal cause but an effect that only has a beginning a finite time ago?

Al-Ghazali’s ingenious answer to this dilemma was to say that this is possible only if the cause is a personal agent who is endowed with freedom of the will and who can therefore freely will to create spontaneous, new effects that aren’t determined by any prior antecedent conditions. The cause of the universe can be a personal agent who freely wills to create a universe with a beginning. This act of creating is a freely willed act that doesn’t have any prior determining conditions, so it can be something that is spontaneous and new. For example, to return to an illustration, let’s imagine a man who has been sitting from eternity, and he suddenly wills to stand up. You would have an effect with a beginning, namely, his standing, arise from a cause which is eternal and has always been there.4 Philosophers cause this kind of causation “agent causation.” The cause is a free agent who, through an exercise of his free will, can bring about a new effect. So we are brought not simply to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its personal Creator.

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/transcript/s4-13#ixzz2setzXPUk

And why does philosophy need to contain logical leaps? Well, because without logical leaps, it becomes peer-reviewed scientific method.