> rather than attempting a full defence of God=existence in a combox.

Your argument depends a lot on this claim, but it's fine.

> "God wills it" is one such reason: in fact, it's the only reason we have had so far in this discussion.

> Your alternative, of asserting that something can happen without a reason,

> do you agree that my position -- that God willed base_ruleset but not hypothetical_ruleset -- is at least internally consistent and does not fall to the same objections that I think your position falls to?

This is the key claim of theism that I don't understand. On one hand, you're claiming base_ruleset needs a reason to exist, and on the other hand, you're willing to accept God just existing "as His own cause". No matter words you want to use, you cannot evade the fact that you're positing a very complex being (despite the book describing Him as simple) as an axiom: one who can process and understand multiple possibilities across eons of timesteps and then somehow can actively choose to actualize some possibilities based on some internal criteria.

So you claim, God is existence and thus logically necessary. My question is: what happens if God did not exist? Yes, there would be no existence. "I" wouldn't exist. The universe wouldn't exist. Nothing would exist. There would just be logical possibilities "floating around". Is this not logically valid? My claim is that existence itself not necessary. The fact that something does exists does not invalidate the claim that it could have been otherwise and nothing could have existed. And if that is established, then God also has the same status as base_ruleset, didn't have to exist, but does exist, but we cannot ask why because it's an axiom, a brute fact.

Moreover, note that even God is not free from the "it could have otherwise" argument. For instance, God can either be omnipotent or just have enough power to create our universe. When we walk around New York looking around at the high rise building, we don't think, wow, someone with infinite power must have created these building. No, we only need conscious creatures with intelligence and raw materials much smaller than infinity. Similarly, maybe God only has the power to actualize this particular universe. So then the question is why omnipotent and not limited, or vice versa? Is there any answer better than, that's a brute fact?

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> Do you agree base_ruleset might have been otherwise? Do you agree that you have given no reason for base_ruleset actually existing, and hypothetical_ruleset not actually existing?

Okay let's address this other keystone of your argument. I've been accepting this for simplicity but I don't actually agree this is established. Here's why:

Let's take the example of a universe with unicorns and without. Yes these are 2 possibilities, but I hope you agree that they cannot be true at the same time. A universe can either have unicorns or not. The same object can either be here or there. And so on. We as conscious creatures will necessarily experience only one of these infinite possibilities from our individual vantage points. So let's say the 2 universes exist, the humans in one universe will see unicorns and think, it could have been the case that unicorns didn't exist, and the humans in the other universe think the opposite. But they won't know if the other universe also actually exists or not.

By which I mean to point out that we can only experience our own universe. But can we really claim the other universes don't exist? We don't have access to all of reality. There could exist another universe with unicorns. There could exist another universe where I'm typing this from a cafe instead of at my desk. And the same for every possibility.

Yes, base_ruleset might have been otherwise. But we don't know the ontological status of these other possibilities. If it is a key argument for a personal God, then I'm happy to posit that all possibilities exist. Just not at the same time and not at the same place, as that is illogical. We live in one universe and that is what we experience. That doesn't rule out these other possibilities.

So if it could have been otherwise, maybe it did, just not in our local vicinity. We don't need to reason why just this one possibility. Instead, all possibilities exist. To me this is more reasonable that positing a willing thinking being who just exists as His own cause.

Note that is not a multiverse from physics' perspective. I'm saying whatever "otherwise" you can think of, it just exists. In the same way what we experience exists. The "God" I'm positing doesn't have to choose. He actualized all potentials.

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> probability also assumes that things will continue to behave as they have in the past.

Aside: this is not exactly correct in Bayesian reasoning. It has priors that get stronger and stronger as more data comes in, but that never turns into certainty. If the next new data falsifies everything before, then Bayesian reasoning demands from us that we throw away everything and start again.

And that's pretty much the only way for us humans to reason about our sensory reality. Just as an example, you must have a high degree of belief in Christianity, but if tomorrow the Hindu god Shiva reveals Himself, then you'd have no option other than to discard your earlier beliefs (and vice versa).