Refutation of Ex-nihilo

In Indian philosophy, we have always seen that whether it is Nyaya or Samkhya, almost every philosophical system has accepted some form of a fundamental material cause (mūla upādāna kāraṇa). This fundamental material cause is such a basic principle in Indian philosophy that hardly anyone even questions it. It is considered so self-evident that even Buddhists generally do not argue against it. However, there are certain thinkers in Arabic philosophy and in the West who attempted to construct metaphysics while rejecting this principle. I explain this because, in my view, this position exists mainly because it is written in their scriptures; there is not much room for serious analysis within it.
Today we will discuss this doctrine known as ex nihilo ("creation out of nothing"). Through two arguments, I will try to explain why it becomes necessary to accept that positing the emergence of presence from absolute absence, without a material cause, leads to serious problems.

In almost every theology or philosophy related to religion, there is a universally accepted principle that every cause must, at some point, exist prior to its effect.
If the cause is not prior to the effect, then many problems arise.
In the Islamic context, the problem appears like this: if being prior is not necessary for a cause, then we can ask them, why not accept that the universe too is eternal alongside God? If simultaneous causality is allowed, then one could just as well say that cause and effect coexist eternally together.
This objection is directed toward those who define causation while denying that the cause must be prior.
Now, the majority of Christians and Muslims do accept that the cause must be prior. Leaving aside a few exceptional doctrines, let us come to the main point.
Point 1: The cause must be prior.
Point 2: God directly produced the effect without any material cause.
Now understand this through an example.
Suppose God directly created a pot. Even then, you would not stop accepting that the pot which God just created is still fundamentally made out of clay. The only difference is that the usual process was bypassed, and the pot appeared together with the conjunction of clay instantaneously. Yet even here, clay still remains the material cause.

Why? Because was the pot created without clay?
No.
What answer could be given here, that there is no clay in the pot?
Then another problem arises: in what sense are you even calling that object a "pot"? Without clay, what would a pot be, and what kind of thing would it even be?
Now we come to the central question.
The pot exists, and the clay also exists, but the conjunction with clay did not begin temporally beforehand, it appeared simultaneously with the pot itself.
And this itself is the defect.
Proposition 1: The cause exists prior to the effect.
From your own statement, your doctrine of ex nihilo contradicts itself. Because if the cause truly exists prior, and God directly produced the effect without a material cause, even then one cannot stop accepting that the effect-substance is fundamentally grounded in that very material cause. The ordinary process may have been bypassed, but then the existence of both cause and effect becomes simultaneous.
In this case, the clay, being the cause, should have existed prior to the pot, the effect. But instead, both the clay-cause and the pot-effect arose together simultaneously. Thus, by your own proposition, your own proposition is contradicted.

Second Argument

The second argument also provides a very powerful refutation of ex nihilo.
Point 1: The Abrahamic traditions claim that God directly created objects while their material cause was absent.
Now understand this carefully.
If one reflects even slightly, one would understand that the nature of the cause and the nature of the effect are always connected. An effect never possesses properties that are contrary to the properties of its cause. This is because the effect is either a transformation of the cause or a combination arising from the cause. Fundamentally, the cause itself becomes the effect. Therefore, both share the same nature.
For example, a pot possesses inertness (jaḍatva) because, through identity of substance, it is an effect of clay. From this we understand that the effect has no independent property of its own; rather, it borrows its properties from the cause.
Now, if clay possesses the property of inertness, then the effect, the pot, derives that very property from the clay itself. But according to ex nihilo, there is no material cause at all; the pot simply appears directly. Then how would the pot possess inertness, when inertness required clay as its material basis?
To explain further through the example: if a property belongs to the cause, then in the absence of the cause, the property belonging to the effect would also be absent.
Therefore, whatever object God creates, it would be impossible for that object to possess properties in the first place unless there existed some material basis from which those properties could be derived.