If so, then there is no dispute between the believer and the atheist, because if God is defined according to the cosmological argument as merely the thing that created the first matter, there is no contradiction at all with the atheist's claim either (at least most of them), since he too admits that there was some thing that caused the primordial matter to come into being. So the argument is just verbal: whether to call it by the name “God” or by the name “something that does not operate according to the laws currently known to us.”

There definitely is. The proof demonstrates the existence of a non-material object, outside the world, that created it. Its name really does not matter. Whoever accepts the existence of such an object, which has no cause outside itself and created the world, is a believer in terms of this proof. I explained this in the booklets and in the book.

Every question you ask about the “primordial matter,” you can ask about God. And every answer you give about God, you can give about the “primordial matter.”

For example, if you argue that there must be something that created the primordial matter, you could just as well argue that there must be something that created God.

So the disagreement is whether we are dealing with something material or spiritual?
Why is it preferable not to argue that this is some kind of material energy, whose mode of existence and operation follows laws unknown to us, rather than to argue that it is spirit, which is likewise something unknown and not understood by us today?
And on the contrary, the claim that it is spirit, a reality entirely different from matter, has an even more novel element to it.

I do not know what “material energy” is. It is supposed to be something whose existence should not have a prior cause. That is what is called God in this context.

Okay. So it is matter that had no prior cause, and it operates differently from the laws of nature known to us, which do require a cause in order to exist. Most atheists would sign onto that sentence too. So I do not understand where the disagreement is.

It is not true that most atheists would sign onto it. Matter that had no prior cause and operates differently from what we know is not matter. They assume that there is only what is of the sort familiar to us, and they deny anything else. Whether you call it matter or spirit really makes no difference. In other words: if you accept that there is something else, why should it bother you to accept that there is spirit too?

As far as I know, atheists do not claim that this fits with the laws as they are currently known to us; rather, they admit that at present we do not manage to understand how the creation of the first matter worked. But who am I to argue with you…
The reason I do not say that there is also spirit is that I do not derive from the proof more than what it actually proves. So there is no basis for positing a completely new reality of something that is not matter.