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.