Russell’s dismissal is a little glib. For the point of the argument, from the theological perspective, is that although everything material or physical has a distinct previous cause, this very fact drives us to postulate something else, that has none. In the theological jargon, this would be a thing that is ‘necessary’ or ‘causa sui’: a thing that is its own cause. And since this is not true of the ordinary things that surround us, we need to postulate something extraordinary, a Deity, as the bearer of this extraordinary self-sufficiency.
