Why not deism?

[Inqwizitor]

I was never into that whole thing about teleology anyway.

And you might call this way more ambitious than classical deism, but if one wants to be very stringent with the PSR, then this should be the natural conclusion. Even if you were to argue that the universe exists the way it is because God willed the universe to be such way, one could still ask why did God will it one way but not another?

And I wouldn't agree that this isn't a form of naturalism since I'm not positing a super-being out there that is somehow aware of this reality. I think the only beings that are conscious in this whole reality are entities like you and me, and it probably helps for us to have consciousness. I see no need for the whole cosmos to be conscious, however.

According to my view, there is an orderly hierarchy of levels of reality that logically arises, sure. But it's still all "blind" at the end. No sentient purpose behind it.

So, there is no sufficient reason for all possible worlds? I must be missing something. How does that pass the PSR? If we expand all possible worlds to some "megaverse" — what is the reason it exists? I feel like we need some starting point in any case.

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I'm not sure how it provides meaning or reason. Maybe you can help me to understand how it would do that. The only thing I can think of is the notion that there was at least an original creative purpose and intent to existence, even if it's all running on automatic since. But that doesn't change what it is like to be human, just because some being decided to set it in motion doesn't change what it is to experience it, or provide externally bestowed meaning or purpose to experiencing it.

Far as I can tell, life means whatever we want it to mean. A lot of elusive concepts we chase aren't really things-in-themselves. Meaning and purpose are just a subjective emotional state, a response to having enough value. If you consistently seek and embrace things that you find valuable and let go of things you don't find valuable, eventually you have enough value that it feel subjectively like "meaning" and "purpose" -- simply because you look forward to enjoy said value each day. I don't see how an ineffable, unrelatable, indifferent deity as a starting-point for all that makes any difference. How is that different, practically speaking, from existence being eternal or cyclic or a simulation or whatever else you want to speculate that it is?

Right. For a deist, they still have to come up with some subjective meaning that motivates them, because there is no revelation. The same need for subjective meaning goes for religious people, but we just think that some objective meaning has also been made known to us, although we'll never grasp the entirety of it.

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They assume, or believe there is some sort of god or creator, without evidence. That is called faith. Claiming you used reason to come to the conclusion that there's a god doesn't make it any more true. It doesn't even compare to having objective, verifiable evidence.

I'm not sure about this. If you're limiting the possible uses of evidence only to demonstrate natural things, then you're begging the question. The arguments for a prime mover et al. start with objective, verifiable phenomena as premises, but the conclusion is not.

How does this relate to what I said?

Maybe I misunderstood you.

That's not necessarily true. Plenty of deists believe in some kind of afterlife. They may not have the same idea of god as most theists, but they may still believe that consciousness exists in some way after the death of the brain. Which is another assumption based on no evidence.

There are logical arguments that the mind is not the brain, and that intentionality is indissoluble. These are not objective, verifiable phenomena though, so you might dismiss the arguments categorically. Hume's fork?

Sure there is. Life and nature are fascinating. Even people in the most terrible of circumstances can, and often do, find happiness and wonder in life. That's not to say there isn't suffering in life as well. No one's claiming it's all rainbows, grapes being fed to you and endless orgasms. Life has it's ups and downs. But it's beautiful to me. And that's enough for me.

That's a good note to end on.