A former agnostic, with doubts?

[Madness20]

Hello guys, i'm new around here besides having been an agnostic/atheist for almost as far as i remember, but the fact is, lately i'm feeling like i'm "falling" towards believing in a "creator" to the universe, and i actually registered in the forum looking for good counter-arguments for my sources of believing, as somehow, i've been led to think that theism might actually have more to it than at first sight.

As of lately, i've been building my own aprioristic of "beliefs" and it's logical conclusions, that have kind of confront deeply with the roots of my own previous believes, and somehow i've been thinking that i'm actually start to believe in the existence of a creator?
I'll try to make a systematic approach of some arguments i've been seduced into believing they're correct.
And sorry for any incorrection in my english, since it's not my main language.

Cosmological arguments:
- The universe requires a cause.
I don't think we might have many doubts remaining about it, we know through science, that "this" universe was created some 14 billion years ago, and we have decent real aproximations of the exact "size" and number of particles in this universe, as well as a quite complete explanation and many proofs for the big bang, we obviously just actually lack explanation for the cause.
The apparent deterministic nature of the universe, makes it require a cause by itself, and that cause, according to the recent superstring theorys they are vacuum fluctuations in dimensional membranes in a "multiverse".
As of yet, nothing disproves string theory and there's actually some good basis for their explanations. The explanation to the universe could be different, that's for sure, but nevertheless, the universe requires a "cause" by all logical purposes.
We apparently live in a 0 total energy universe, in which the universe was divided into positive energy (the one we're made matter, light, spacetime) and the dark one (anti-matter and anti-energy/negative energy, anti-forces). and keeps doing it all the time. According to modern physics, this process actually happens all the time, everywhere, and we can see pairs of electrons/positrons being created and popping out for example from simple colliding photons.
Some effect/cause must have influeced the 0 total energy universe into fluctuations to create the expansion and the creation of matter, anti-matter and spacetime itself.
It's also, logically impossible for the cause-effect system we observe in the universe to not require a primary cause for everything, since that's the foundation and cause for everything that follows.
Even accouting with the multiverse, we can assume multiverse obeys certain deterministic rules and orders and laws, possibly more than we have restricted ourselves in our universe.
So what build this order exactly? This is a question that actually does make alot of sense for me, this order does require explanation.

- Whatever primary cause the universe has, it must be eternal.
By eternal i obviously mean something that was not created and is timeless. Even if it's a mutating existence, i think it's logically a necessity to think eternity does exist in some form. Our time vector was generated with the universe itself, but according to relativity, time itself is relative and you literally can have "eternities" contained within a blackhole, so it's really pretty acceptable to believe there is other time vectors "outside" the universe, possibly different than ours.
It's pretty illogical and i would say impossible to think "somehow" out of nothing the universe was created.
Actually, "nothing" doesn't really exist, and physics kind of confirm it.

- The primary cause, created everything.
This is obviously not based on science, but rather intuition, i mean, if there is a primary cause to the universe, that primary cause must not be a unique event. Certainly the same way our "finite" universe was made, other "finite" universes might exist just out of the limits of ours, we just don't have a way to observe through the limits of background radiation, but it's entirely possible of we being on a system "universes", there's even investigations because it's suspected the reason for an unexplainable gravitional "pull" of all the observable universe, that some suspect might end up being another, much more massive universe and it's gravitational mass acting on ours.
Of course this is speculation, but i think it's easily debatable that or universe isn't "alone" or the only thing existing, something definetly exists to where it "expands" itself, something definetly existed that caused it.

I think to justify this argument serves an infinite regression argument in which eventually we have to have some kind of infinite eternal structure in our universe, that obviously "continuosly" creates, and not just spontaneously.
If something "continuosly" creates, forever, well, obviously it created everything that exists and ever existed.

So yeah, in purely cosmological beliefs, i would say, i would qualify the necessity of existing something eternal, infinte and ever creating in the universe.

Then there's other arguments:
- Intelligence/Determination
I don't like how the word intelligence is used and even less when it's associated with intelligent design.
I find that determination is a better use for the argument i made to myself, that everything in this world, every particle, every wave and everything "influenceable" has it's "destination" and determination already "written" by all those influences, so in sum, determinism.
I find determinism, and "determination" of the particles a really strange phenomena despite believing entirely in it. I mean, how can something claimed to be generated by "trial", can have this magnitude, resourcefoulness, complexity and work as an exact system from quantum fluctuations to galaxy clusters? There's just one way i would adjectivate the complex organization of our universe: brilliantly suspiciously organized.
The fact that with string theory, the universe is in itself a vast dense set of unidimensional strings that vibrate and each type of vibration creates a particle, spacetime, waves, energy, and black holes, it's incredibly organized for such a "chaotic" foundation.

- Life
Again, i have to call on determinism for my argument. Well, i don't agree with any anthropocentric principle, but i might argue for a life generating principle.
I mean, it's obvious, if we consider determinism, that the chain of events that led to life, possibly not just here, but we have every reason to believe that the universe might be full of life, as the simillar conditions to earth can actually exist extensivelly, and that's without accounting with the possibility of existing non-organic life forms, or even more extreme forms of life.
If life probably exists extensivelly through our universe, isn't it acceptable to assume life is actually a natural purpose/consequence of the universe?
Again, i don't really have any doubts about evolution and natural selection, but isn't it actually fantastic that there exists a few chemical compounds that generate the complexity of all life, and somehow transpose the barrier of simple "molecules" and turn into self-replicating ever evolving and adapting "robots" with all this complexity, and some even get a notion of self-consciousness, and at least one species has the science to try to understand the universe?
Once again, i can't help but find curious how at least 3 of the most common atoms in the universe generate life, and obviously how determinism might imply that generation of life is an "effect" of the primary cause to the universe like everything else. Can't we call life a "determination" of the universe somehow?

Well, i'll end it for now, since it's late and i'm tired for now, tomorrow maybe i'll post more arguments.

What do you guys think? xD. I think i've fallen to theism disease

[ignoramus]

I agree with much of what you say.
I just find it absurd to fill any gaps with any sort of deity.
As humans, we try to find order in chaos.
IMHO, all natural chaos will settle to an equilibrium state eventually.
There is no design in this...

The sun is one big nuclear reactor, inside the earth there is violent reactions going on, etc.

Things have just found a steady state (for a brief time) where life has evolved as a byproduct. That's it for me! I won't entertain one variable for an even more unlikely one. Each to his own. (Although, I do understand that we are insignificant in the grand scheme of things and that the truth may be something different altogether, maybe something we can never know ... I'm comfortable with that. Very comfortable.)

Welcome by the way.

[ShaMan]

Whatever this place/thing is... I'm grateful for the experience.

[Mystic]

I am not really for the first cause, because whatever God created the universe with in the start would have nothing before it, and there is no time before it, so there doesn't really need to be a cause to that cause, so it doesn't need to be eternal, as there is no time before time started just as there is no more north to the north pole.

I personally believe in God out of faith. Not out of a philosophical or scientific argument.

[Whateverist]

What do you guys think? xD. I think i've fallen to theism disease

If we amputate above your neck we might yet save your body. What choice do you really have?

[professor]

For a guy who's other language is not English, you do fantastic.
Welcome to AF.

[Michael]

Hey there Madness. There are a few of us ex-atheists about. I'd say don't let peer-pressure sway you from your own pursuit of truth, whether that takes you back into atheism or further into a more 'grown up' exploration of theism (I think we explore theism from a new fresh angle when we have spent some time exploring things from an atheistic perspective; perhaps more aware of uncertainties and subtleties).

Enjoy the pilgrimage, wherever it takes you. Don't be afraid of the unknown.

[Esquilax]

First of all, welcome.

Second of all, I like debunking stuff, so I'mma just dash through your arguments here for funsies, okay?

Cosmological arguments:
- The universe requires a cause.

Despite being a mainstay of religious apologetics, this isn't actually an argument for theism at all, which should demonstrate the weakness of that position. The universe requires a cause? Lots of things are causes without being god, or even intelligent or alive. A tornado has a cause, doesn't mean an intelligent being sculpted it. "The universe requires a cause," gets you to exactly one thing, and that thing isn't "god," it's "cause."

You go on later to say that something must have caused our universe to expand from zero energy into everything, including spacetime. Perhaps you can see the problem there: without time, how does anything happen? Causation requires temporality, and you've just accepted there was no time prior to universal expansion. Why would we need a cause in a reality that doesn't have time for there to be a before or after that cause? What does that even mean?

Our current temporal vocabulary of causes and effects simply isn't equipped to deal with what we're actually discussing here, which is why this particular cosmological argument fails.

- Whatever primary cause the universe has, it must be eternal.

And what does eternity mean, in what we've already established to be a position that lacks time? Also, who decided it must be eternal? Couldn't it be something from another universe, or some form of thing that can exist beyond the boundaries of the universe, but not eternally? I mean, since we're already discussing things for which we have no evidence, why are you limiting yourself like this? Why are you playing into the framework the religious conmen want you to, when you have absolutely no reason to do so? Don't let them play their game just because they're trying to lead you down this path.

- The primary cause, created everything.

Same deal: what makes you say this? What's stopping the cause from creating some things and having the rest develop later? Why couldn't there be a series of causative events, stemming from the one unique one that only created something small and unimpressive? Lots of assumptions here.

Also, we're still at "cause," not "god," so you aren't even at deism, let alone theism yet.

Oh. And we're at the end of the cosmological arguments, here. Still not even an attempt to point to a god... little troubling, no?

Then there's other arguments:
- Intelligence/Determination

This is an argument from ignorance: "I can't understand how this could come about without design, and therefore it was designed." It's a fallacy: just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just means that you don't know how it happened yet.

- Life

Meh. Life evolves, we know that it does, and there's no need to evoke magic in that. If common elements didn't sustain life, there's no reason to think that anything would even care. This isn't much of an argument.

[jesus_wept]

What do you guys think? xD. I think i've fallen to theism disease

I must admit I only skimmed your post but I don't think anything you wrote implies the theism disease, at the worst you've caught deism.

Don't insult yourself by calling yourself a theist.

[Lucanus]

@OP:
Hello and welcome!

If I were you, I would not be so hasty in concluding that there is a need for a creator. We don't know enough about the world to even make educated guesses about that, except that there was an event that resulted in our present universe. And while the world may be beautiful and full of wonders, keep in mind that it's us who give meaning to its beauty and its awesomeness. The thought that all of this was just "created" by a "god" (whatever that is) is just filling a gap in your knowledge with... well, a bigger gap, since you don't really have any ways of knowing what this "god" thing is.