God created the universe

I will start with some remarks concerning your wish for the "why" questions. There is no reason to believe that a why question even makes any sense. Because the everyday life of humans works with a why and purpose there is no reason to believe that it applies to the universe too (this is a fallacy of composition to assume something for the whole just because it fits one part). If we ask the more useful question of "how" the universe exist we can at the moment and most likely for all times just come up with theories fitting the data in our universe. The infinite multiverse to which I will come back is such a model based on our data of the universe and posits an infinity making a beginning unimportant. Why there is something rather than nothing is in this context again a question that doesn"t necessarily make sense. It can be due to necessity, chance or even that "nothing" is just not an option. Another possibility which is even based on evidence we observe is that maybe the universe is just one configuration of nothing. If we count all the positive and negative energy and all the mass also taking dark matter into account we seem to come out at a total of zero, which could be explained by seeing us as a configuration of nothing. In all these questions it is dangerous and not helpful to just assume that the common sense notions of why and so on can also be applied to the universe itself. Now I will first finish with all of your points and address the 5. or 7. point concerning morality. Firstly I see no evidence that an objective morality even exists. You say that certain believes about morality are ingrained into us which I agree with, but have to answer to that this seems to be way better explained by the cultural and social surroundings in which people grow up. This environment ingrains certain moral thoughts. You can even see that they are not absolute as they vary from culture to culture for example in the treatment of women which is in contrast between Saudi Arabia and the west where the first would be deemed immoral in western eyes. You see that there is morality that is adapted to the local surroundings. Also we see morality evolve over time if we look at for example slavery, which is deemed by almost all religions to be a normal moral practice, being regarded as immoral today. Therefore I can"t see that there is any evidence for morality being absolute. I have to agree with you that an objective morality is only possible with a foundation, but I think it is obvious that our morality is subjective. We can still say that certain things are wrong as all morality has certain things in common, which are mainly the notion of well being and the thought of a social contract. If you look down to the foundations of everyones morals whether the person comes from the Middle East or from South America, it will be ultimately the concern for human well being. The question why it is well being we value is the one making morality subjective as there is no absolute reason. The reason why still all morality is based on it, is the construct of a social contract, where you have to make rules for society not knowing where you will end up in this society. You could be everything from the most wealthy person to a begger in the streets. Now if one considers this, you will want to make basic rules that make every position good enough or equal as you have no idea where you will end up. Therefore the moral sentence of not killing is based on exactly the thought that you wish not to be killed yourself. It is well established in the golden rule. Therefore even a subjective morality allows from a common foundation judgments about right and wrong. Now to your remarks: 1.No, I don"t say that causation is an illusion. It is a way of talking about our universe which works very well. It even applies seemingly to most things in the universe. The thing is that the notion of causing something to begin to exist means actually always the reassembly of already existent stuff. It is still causation with everything from the efficient to the material cause. The problem comes about if you apply this concept to the universe itself. You will see as I have explained, that the real beginning of something is not ever observed by us (think about it and you will see it). Now if you say god caused the universe to begin to exist, it has to be as with all causes something that is caused to become another thing, as it else isn"t causation any more. Now this is impossible as you can"t have anything if you want to actually begin something, which is why the common sense notion of causation can"t apply. As we also have no evidence of the universes beginning and have no reason to believe that it needs anything like a cause, you can"t say god has to exist because he has to cause the universe. 2.The problem with the question where the laws come from can be for example answered by the notion of a multiverse and therefore I will go on to point 6. The multiverse is not directly based on data we collect from the multiverse itself, but rather a spin-off from the data we can observe in our universe. If we apply the laws of physics rigorously it brings about a multiverse. Now I know that you would say that it is just guessing, but it isn"t as we observe evidence that leads us to this theory and the main point of the theory is to explain the, to us observable evidence. Now the one theory that is granted the highest credibility is the one that predicts data we have in our universe the best. The god hypothesis is just as well such a theory, but just a very bad one as it is so openly defined that any kind of data can just be attributed to gods mystery. It also has no good predictions (e.g.: you would expect one religion, you would expect to be able to observe god, and you would expect an interesting holy scripture" (and I now you can explain that away but this isn"t, as said before, positive, but rather a sign of a bad theory)). Therefore we can see that the multiverse is absolutely a working theory and is therefore as it explains the "fine tuning" as well as the laws of nature (they are build from basic laws through change of parameters) a way better theory than theism. The question where the fundamental laws come from is a very good question we most likely won"t ever be able to answer. Not because it is god but because we don"t have sufficient data to allow any basic predictions. It could be due to chance as they are not too complex, or necessity" 3.I see no reason to think so. We know why the universe has its size and it is because of the laws of physics. I would even say that a big dead space doesn"t point to a very capable god as his objective is to build life. Also life as it shouldn"t be purely natural just should be able to exist everywhere (why bother to think about the laws if you are god). Again you can explain it away by his mystery but again it doesn"t explain a thing and just shows how bad the theistic hypothesis is. 4.I see no reason to believe that the universe shows signs of creation as I have explained throughout. The things in the universe obey the laws of physics just as the glass does and it shows for example in life just being possible at a region where it is physically possible. On the theistic hypothesis you would expect life to be more than just the physical and be able to life wherever it wishes. 5.First life began from something that self assembled. It isn"t actually that complex, as it just has a membrane and a self replicating easy working nucleic acid (RNA is a likely candidate as it also catalyses). Now this self assembly is the thing people search for and we come closer and closer, with the membrane and also a good part of the nucleic acid already working. The point about mutations is that there are some good ones and if you take some positive ones in some generations you can wait several billion years and will have huge changes.