That is imprecise. Reason is not an ontological (metaphysical) object, it is an epistemological method. There are two possible starting points: “one is that God is the ontological foundation of everything” and “two, that the universe is an existential primary”. You chose the first one, I choose the second one. There is no doubt that universe exists, and there is very reasonable doubt that God exists. The problem with the god-hypothesis is manyfold, one is that it has no explanatory value. After all the phrase: “an unknowable being, using unimaginable means created the world out of nothing” is not an “explanation”.
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The operating word here is “IF”.
You do realize that the analogy you use in your subsequent post undermines everything you have said in the one above.
We can agree that the computers we use are fully deterministic. The electrons, the on-off logical gates all perform according to the laws of physics. There is nothing random about the running of the program - except for some possible bugs, but those can be eliminated. Yet, the actual working of the program is not subject to the laws of physics, and there is no need to assume some supernatural agency.
I hope you are familiar with the MMORG-s (massively multiplayer, on-line roleplaying games). These are virtual reality environments, where the laws of nature simply do not apply. There is magic, resurrection, lay-on-hands, dragons, elves, fairies, you name it. The underlying hardware is fully deterministic, but the virtual world is not subject to the laws of reality.
I submit that the same error that led you to believe that “the universe is an existential primary” in the former post has led you to believe the “underlying hardware is fully deterministic” in the latter.
True, the underlying hardware is “fully deterministic” in the sense that it “determines” certain aspects of the virtual reality in the MMORG-s you have such an affinity for, but it is NOT fully “deterministic” in the sense that it can explain itself or determine its own existence or the constraints within its own nature. Electrical engineers and programmers created (aka determined) the circuitry and the software system and programming code that allows the virtual reality to exist.
Now, just as you ignored the (name removed by moderator)ut of programmers (the creators) and players (free agents) when you claimed (or seemed to) that the “virtual world” in MMORG-s games was “fully determined,” ostensibly by the “underlying hardware,” you have been led, by that oversight, to claim the physical world is “an existential primary.” That is, you seem to be ambiguously using “deterministic” to conclude that human reality is reducible to the underlying physical world (hardware) that “runs it.”
Imagine a virtual scientist caught inside the virtual reality world of a MMORG-s game who is trying to figure out that world, based solely upon the experienced reality that is afforded to him in the game. He may conclude that everything he experiences is attributable to the hardware that runs it and can remain quite preoccupied (and deluded) by working out the intricacies of how such a virtual world could emerge from the underlying hardware. He might even insist, owing to being so enamored by his ability to consistently make the connections between the electronic switches that cast up the virtual phenomena and those experienced events. However, his preoccupation and insistence that the virtual world he has found himself within is an “existential primary” one does not falsify the fact that agents from outside that world orchestrate much of what happens in it and prior to the world existing it was intentionally designed, assembled and constructed by intimate and prior knowledge that the underlying physical components had the potential to create such a world to begin with.
Now, that we find ourselves in an analogically similar world to the virtual one in your example should lead us to think that realities of such incomprehensible order and completeness do not merely “create themselves” or “simply exist” with no explanation other than they are “existentially primary.”
In particular, when realities don’t explain their own existence, we ought to be asking what does, not merely presuming they can. The difference, it seems, is between your brand of denial skepticism and a more wholesome one that continually explores possibilities until the full story comes to light.
Again, from my perspective, a conclusion that the universe is “existentially primary” just seems to ignore a great deal about how things come about - they just don’t “bootstrap” into existence fully realized without cause or reason.
You may think the existence of virtual worlds supports such a conclusion, but, clearly, realities, either virtual or physical, are neither existentially prime nor are they fully determined in the sense you believe them to be.
If God has “no explanatory value” then neither do the programmers and players in the MMORG-s explain anything at all about the virtual realities that exist there. We can safely dismiss the existence of programmers and players as having “no explanatory value” and safely conclude, as you do, that the virtual worlds in those games are completely explainable by the “underlying hardware.”
Colour me skeptical.
