Good morning Eliezer,
Someone on another website posted a link to this interesting blog of yours. Of course you've always had an interesting perspective on things, esp. AI. But I will confine my comments to this thread.
As far as I can tell this entire thread assumes 'facts not in evidence'.
It assumes that existence requires a beginning
People who assume an entity like God created everything try to solve the problem of First cause by claiming God had no beginning.
Of course people searching for First Cause ignore the fact the the universe itself may have had no beginning.
First cause is an assumption like God. We have no evidence of either.
I'm impressed that someone actually responded this quickly to an 11 year old thread.
Anyway gjm, in response to your question. No. Eliezer specifically avoided that issue.
As I stated in my first sentence, my post was about the comments in the thread.
People searching for First cause are like the people who believe in a God. They're both searching for something that has no beginning.
If you don't care about the issue why respond?