God's existence - it is reasonable to infer a supernatural cause of existence

God's existence - it is reasonable to infer a supernatural cause of existence bottom line: if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. if you see a magician who waves his wand and makes cats turn into dogs, you could argue a natural explanation is possible, and perhaps even argue that it is preferable, given most times magic tricks have explanations. but, the most direct observation is that violations of natural laws have occurred, and / or things outside of nature. at what point can we say given there's no explanation that there is magic that occurred, by definition supernatural? likewise, according to our observation in the early universe, things are not acting according to laws as we know them. more than just that, our observation indicates *violations* of laws as we know them. that is, something from nothing, and the thermodynamics issue. -the law of thermodynamics. "Natural systems left to themselves move towards states of lower potential energy." http://environ.andrew.cmu.edu......... this says energy is always breaking down from higher states. this theory basically negates the idea that there is something in our physical universe that goes on and on back infinitely. there can be no infinite beginning, because there is no infinite end. we see an end point coming. that means there must be a finite beginning. that means, if you take things back further and further in time, something must have caused the highest energy level of the big bang. we could call that unknown, God. a reason why we might call it that, is because the phenomenon violates natural laws as we know it- a high energy level came from something other than a higher energy level. -uncaused cause. we see a finite beginning with thermodynamics, and the big bang. based on our observation, the universe has a beginning. things are known to have causes. that means the cause must be outside our universe, trancendent. therefore, by definition a supernatural cause exists, given the cause is outside our natural existence. it looks like the universe came from nothing. something coming from something else makes more sense. should this cause be said to be natural or supernatural? it looks like what happened is "beyond nature as far as we know". if it's merely "as far as we know", that would lead some to conclude a natural cause is possible. sure, it's possible, but the indicators are there to conclude it's supernatural. usually, like with a bike rolling down a hill, or in advances of science like what causes tides, we can find indicators to lead us to a scientific explanation. but here, with existence as we know it, it LOOKS like there was the universe, but before the universe was nothing.... so if something caused us, it would have to be outside of natural existence. in fact, the direct observation is more than just not what we know - it's violation of reality, or at least outside of reality, apparently more than is possible. ////// to put it in terms of traditional philosophy, there then apparently exists an uncaused cause. that is, every effect must have a cause, except apparently the first one. (we could speculate about God and his causes or lack thereof, but for our purposes in this reality, we have to content ourselves with what we see-and the cause of our universe apparently had no other cause before it) one might argue the universe could be its own uncaused cause. but that would assume something from nothing. something from something else makes more sense as mentioned earlier. (quantum mechanics shows something from nothing. but that is at the quantum level, where matter already exists to begin with. we have never observed matter to come from quantum happenings, let alone quantum happenings that didnt have matter already there to begin with- if fact, if we did see matter coming from nothing else, we might view that as with the magician, it might be something supernatural) multiverse, something in quantum mechanics, etc. it should be noted too, that there are theories that posit where we came from. those theories are just that, theories. they are not based on empirical evidence. empirical evidence alone, it looks like we came from nothing. and we know that that isn't something we should be working with. why go with supernatural instead of alternative theories? because that's what it looks like. with the analogy of the magician and with God, this acknowledges that there *could* be other natural explanation possibilities. but nothing has to be definitively proven for it to be a called a proof, or even proven. theists merely are arguing the most straightforward explanation - the magician apparently caused violations of nature, so we say it apparently is supernatural. it might feel wrong making that conclusion, but if that's what it looks like, that's what it's called. bottom line: if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. ----------------------- Atheists often talk about how the spaghetti monster disproves God, cause we could have been formed by it. This is not analogous completely, but it makes an important point. That an intelligence made is is reasonable, that something specific like spaghetti did is random. what about everyday analogies of causes being natural? Now, It does make sense say something caused us. If you see a bike rolling, that something pushed it makes sense. we'd expect something specific to have a specific cause, but in something that's unique unto itself like existence as we know it, that isn't necessarily expected- we know bikes roling have causes cause we see it all the time it's the only thing to conclude at that level of specificity, and they're (creation v. bike) different things that could reasonably be treated different per anaysis.