(May 3, 2013 at 4:58 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: The premise of the OP is this. Atheism entails the belief that physical interactions explain everything that needs to be explained. What you are doing is saying that the inherent order of the physical universe is a brute fact, it just is. I say this leaves something to be explained. The unanswered question is why there should be regular causal relationships as opposed to random outcomes.
Why should there be random outcomes as opposed to regular causal relationships? You're assuming that metaphysical randomness is some kind of default, so that a deity is required to step in and impose order, causality, etc. from the outside. Why should we accept metaphysical randomness as the axiomatic brute fact instead of the causal regularity we actually observe? Ours is the more parsimonious approach. We observe causal regularity instead of bowling balls spontaneously hatching flying purple elephants that sing opera in Japanese. So "causal regularity is a brute fact" is simple, even obvious, in comparison to "metaphysical randomness is a brute fact, except that the Goddess Ma'at imposes causal regularity on it by Her miraculous power. She keeps the bowling balls from hatching elephants."
Proposing theism doesn't actually answer the question, it just kicks the can down the road and off a cliff into an inaccessible realm. Where does the Divine (however you wish to define Her/Him/It/Them) get causal regularity from? A deity, in order to exist as that deity (rather than, say, turning into a bowling ball and hatching a purple flying elephant...), must be subject to causal regularity, exist rather than not exist, etc.. The regularity you're questioning must obtain for the deity and its plane of existence. So, why doesn't the deity dissolve into a Shoggoth or a bubbly puddle of spirit-goo while its Astral Plane crashes?
The stock answer is "Um...because, God, dude!" "God" has an Exemption Card to all rules. If a human being is "irreducibly complex" thus requiring "a Designer" (and we all know who He is, snap snap wink wink grin grin, knowhatImean?), Yahweh, with all his omni-superduperness would be infinitely more irreducibly complex. But, out comes the Exemption Card: "He just is, so He doesn't need a Designer!" "He just has/is the source of causal regularity!" "The Kingdom of Heaven is just fine-tuned and supplied with constants amenable to His existence, so stop asking!" Rinse, lather, repeat for every "insoluble mystery" the Potemkin Explanation of theism is trotted out for.
And so it turns out that causal regularity, existence-rather-than-nothingness, and all the rest are brute facts after all. The theist just wants to be able to stamp "GOD" in big red letters all over them before acknowledging them as such. The atheist, seeing that we're all accepting orderly Existence as a brute fact anyway, just saves a step by not bothering with the "GOD" stamp. It doesn't provide us with any actual information, and leaves us in the exact same situation we're in without it.
