> things most have come from a creator because nothing can ever just exist.

This isn't the "watchmaker" argument, this is the "principle of sufficient reason" argument applied to existence. The principle of sufficient reason is "an effect must have a cause sufficient to explain it". Things exist _right now_, but (so goes the argument) they didn't always exist (that is they are not things-which-must-by-their-very-nature-exist). Therefore, the fact that they exist _right now_ needs a cause that operates right now. The causal chain of why-does-this-contingent-thing-exist-right-now cannot be infinite. Therefore, the causal chain must terminate in some being that must by its very nature exist.

This argument was not made by Christian theists, but by Aristotle over 300 years before Christianity came into existence. It was rediscovered by Christian theists a millenium and a half later (in the 1200s) and accepted because it matched what God said of Himself to Moses 1200 years before Aristotle (Exodus 3:14)

https://biblehub.com/exodus/3-14.htm

This line of reasoning is totally unconvincing to pure naturalists like me.

I simply believe that the universe exists, and that we'll likely never know anything beyond that, as the big bang appears to be the limit of what evidence is possible to measure.

What I don't see is anything that necessitates turning the fact that the universe exists into a principle that the ultimate "cause" must be a being that frankly behaves like a abusive patriarch while threatening humanity with eternal torture.

I'd recommend Max Tegmark's Our Mathematical Universe which goes into some of the more modern theories beyond The Big Bang (Inflation Theory, MWI of QM) - I thought it was pretty interesting and didn't know about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)

My interpretation of the comment you replied to wasn't that they were trying to justify the argument, but just clarify what the argument specifically was (and where it came from).

What you may not see is that everything is incredibly intelligible.

Of course it is: it's a work of human writing, by people who were quite serious thinkers of their era.

But you can't use the content of the bible to prove the existence of the supernatural any more than you could use Beowufl to do the same.

Agreed, I don’t think one should try to prove the supernatural starting from the Bible.

One first has to define supernatural :)

My general thought is that at the deepest possible metaphysical level, everyone has a foundational framework that realize on untestable axioms. (Eg. we have free will)

Identifying those is an interesting exercise, but then at some point I realize that at all levels of natural depth, the universe has extreme order and intelligibility. Eg. The simulation argument is a reframing of the creation arguments.

From that point, one can surmise that some creator would be intelligible, and would likely communicate with beings that have free will. Eg. humans are a cloud of hydrocarbon atoms that contemplate their own existence.

The rest then follows, and so on

"That the universe exists" isn't a sufficient explanation since we know that it doesn't exist of necessity (since it is composed of parts). The argument doesn't say anything about what this "First mover" is like, only that it must be sufficient to explain the effects it produces (which includes being-a-person since that's qualitatively different than not-being-one). It's only when you come to the realization that to-be is the same as to-be-beautiful is the same as to-be-true that things start to look vaguely like the God of the burning bush and the problem of pain starts to raise its head (and then you have to meet the cross and either break on it or be saved by it).

Thanks - I think this does a better job clarifying that bit better than I did (which notably doesn't address the infinite regress issue).

The watchmaker argument is more narrowly the creationist 'eye can't have just formed itself' argument (basically the eye must have been made by some sophisticated watchmaker: god).

When you say "which notably doesn't address the infinite regress issue" are you talking about what you said or what I did? (Just trying to understand if I wasn't clear enough in my explanations).

I think you clarified where the 'something can't come from nothing' argument originates from (and that it's separate from the watchmaker one).

My point was just that as an argument the answer being 'god' isn't very compelling when it then just moves the question to 'where did god come from', nothing is actually explained by this.

In my experience with religious people you get unsatisfactory answers to that, so adding massive complexity (god) as an answer doesn't really help when it can't answer the underlying question (it just introduces a new and more complex one). This is ignoring all the other problems with the god hypothesis which don't hold up either.

Irreducible complexity is a somewhat compelling argument to me (a life-long atheist).

I understand natural selection. I've taken graduate course in genomics with top grades. Still, the concept that random point changes to a several billion base pair sequence could produce advantageous new genes goes against everything I know about complexity and combinatorics.

But I admit natural selection is still a far better explanation than anything else we have, so I continue to accept it grudgingly.

I understand why scientists don't want to give religious leaders a foothold to sow doubt and push their nonsense, but I wish the scientific community was more open to criticisms of evolution that are presented rigorously. For example, a model of evolution where proteins first evolve in microorganisms before being integrated into larger organisms (for example through viral vectors) makes a lot more sense to me than SNP-driven natural selection.

As a religious person, I don't see how the issues you describe are any lesser in non-religious populations. You're misplacing your blame; society would still have these problems without religion, and it'd arguably be worse, too.

Indeed, I've known a lot of religious people like the ones you speak of. And I've known and read from many other "religious"/deist people who think those types of people are silly.

>If there was real compelling evidence of supernatural behavior I'd change my mind, but whenever it's been claimed and tested - it's bullshit.

How is it possible to test for "supernatural behavior"?

> ""How is it possible to test for "supernatural behavior"?

- "I'm a psychic and can tell what's in these containers without looking"

- "I can detect water with magic rods"

- "I can heal you with the power of god"

It's worth watching An Honest Liar about the life of the Amazing Randi.

What's interesting is even when Randi shows people how they're being tricked they refuse to believe it.

The above examples are pretty easy to test (and people do), but believers just ignore the results or make up reasons why results don't matter or can't be tested.

Those are of course easy strawman examples of charlatans trying to make money.

This Carl Sagan quote is relevant:

>An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.

Sure - technically every atheist should be agnostic in the sense that you can never know anything with 100% confidence, but pragmatically you live as if you're an atheist. In the strict sense I'm "almost certain there is no god", but no one can be truly certain given the nature of the things Sagan points out.

Just because something is hard to prove with certainty doesn't mean the probability is equally likely. You can't really be a strict atheist about magic sea fairies either, but you probably are (in the sense you that you think they don't exist). Priors matter for things.

While many of those people were charlatans, many of them are also earnest. The water rods people really believe they can detect water with the sticks and have stories about how they helped a friend with a leak and such.

Many astrology people really believe they can make personality predictions (they can't unless they're vague enough to be predictive of nothing). It's not all conartists.

Maybe I'm just being snarky or missing the real meaning of the term, but I think of "supernatural" as something that is beyond any capacity to test or prove. Anything that can be proven would fall under my definition of "natural", even if it's beyond my capacity to explain or understand.

By definition, I'd consider any sort of gods, demons, ghosts, or whatever to be either nonexistent or something that exists (which would imply that it's something natural and operates in some currently unknown way).

>I think of "supernatural" as something that is beyond any capacity to test or prove.

I agree. It's worth noting that the fundamental nature of our consciousness could fall into that realm, judging by how it is scientifically impossible to isolate and control for, and is thus seemingly indefineable.

Free will is supernatural. That is why leading atheists posit that it doesn’t exist.