Good exists - a Catholic comments

[FrustratedFool]

Whether God, or the physical reality, or the infinite chain of cause and effect, or the laws that can bring universes into being etc, something has always had to have been.  And I can't see what would make one more or less likely or absurd than another.  All seem to be absurd brute facts.

A lonely particular universe with a particular set of initial constants, as a brute fact, seems quite absurd. A multiverse of universes, as a brute fact, may still sound absurd but would be less so. I think it's because there is less of the particularity/arbitrariness to answer for.

When it comes to God vs. one particular universe, it does seem like God as a brute fact makes more sense because God is seen as non-particular/non-arbitrary in nature, or at least less so compared to one lonely universe.

But then you still run into the problem of why this particular universe anyway, even with God existing and God causing this universe to exist. So it's not really a win for the theist.

When you say that God's nature is non-arbitrary I assume you are appealing to the idea that God's nature is necessary. But I'm not convinced that necessary existence is a coherent idea. And if it is, I don't see why it would apply to an agent more than to a physical state of being. Nor do I think it makes sense to talk about degrees of absurdity (but I'm not sure on this).

So I don't see a brute universe/multiverse or a brute God as different in terms of absurdity.