Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[R00tKiT]

That's not what I mean by natural, so your objection is moot.  By natural I mean that the thing is obeying whatever nomological principles apply to its local reality.  A being in a predecessor universe may lack any of the necessary characteristics required of a god in being a mere subject of its own reality and also be the cause of this universe.  The prior universe need not obey the assumptions of the cosmological argument, so the case for a god as a cause stops there.

As you already know, the cosmological argument has very few assumptions, actually, one assumption: causality. Causality is a critical assumption. Honestly, I don't have a lot of respect for any position allowing for a violation of causality. It's not very good philosophy to reject the simplest principles of thought just to escape an argument.

You objected before to the "something can't give/cause what it doesn't have", this rule seems to be, however, competely valid inside our universe (conservation of mass), and can be justified outside of it. A cause of the universe can't be some inept entity, after all, it was at least capable of causing the entire universe with all what we know about it, including the marvelous arrangement of matter and natural laws. Since, from experience, we know we can't obtain an orderly machine or construction without hard work and a lot of willpower and determination, it seems plausible (more probable than not= its probability being true is >1/2) that a cause of the universe intended for these laws to happen. Attributing these laws to coincidence is not a solution, since coincidence already presupposes the existence of various objects that coincide with each other. A non-personal cause, if we were to apply the same rule in bold, can't yield personal agents.

The common defeater along the lines of "natural laws permit complexity to arise from simplicity" is not an issue at all, because natural laws are part of the fabric of the universe, they are descriptive, not prescriptive, they describe its inner workings. Simply put, complexity arising from simplicity is an instrument of the designer/the cause of the universe, it's evidently part of its effects. So, one can't explain away the designer/cause by referring to other parts of the same design/effect.

You're faced with a Catch-22 -- either God is not master and commander, or else his aseity prevents him from being demonstrated.  As a Muslim, you can't give up Allah's role as master and commander, nor can you demonstrate his existence if that is not required -- because then he isn't above nature in his own reality.

Even if we assume no deductive argument is conclusive, we can still infer God's existence based on what we see in the world. I see appearances of order, I marvel at God's omnipotence. I see instances of caregiving, I admire God's benevolence, etc.  Islam endorses the idea of the sensus divinitatis (Fitra'), that is, I am simply tilted toward teleology and assigning agency to things. I should simply listen to this innate sense.

You can't consider all universes together because other universes may not obey the same principles that this universe does.  They can only be considered collectively if they do.

We already considerd many very different things together when we labeled them a universe. If at least one universe of a collection of universes violates causality, then I completely agree, no further arguments can be made (and welcome to sophistry), if not, then they have the principle of causality as a common governing principle, and we can still consider regress arguments.