" If anything, if a universe had no reason to exist, we would expect it to necessarily have such rules."
Quite the contrary. If a universe had no reason to exist the rules would be far more chaotic and random. I'm not saying that there would be no rules but not rules that would be capable of producing anything of value. For example, an endless void of nothing that never ends or an infinite line of self-replicating atoms of an element that doesn't even exist in our universe. It's beyond lucky that ours has people in it to begin with. A universe will always have physics if it exists but those physics are arbitrary in nature.
No. That makes no sense.
1-By definition, the supernatural is that which can't be explained by natural laws. A universe with nothing supernatural is, by definition, more predictable, and therefore less arbitrary, that one which contains anything supernatural.
2-As stated before, this is because physics are just a model of how the universe work. So long as the universe follows any kind of predictable pattern, it will have laws of nature. It is that simple.
3-If our universe was a universe which contain an element that doesn't exist in this universe, we wouldn't know, because from our point of view, that element would exist in our universe. This is just observer bias, or as some call it, the lottery fallacy, you're coming to the conclussion that because many possibilities could exist theoretically but only one does (in our universe) practically that means our universe is very unlikely, but that is not how it work.
Just because you live in a universe where X, Y and Z have won the lotto on years A, B and C that doesn't mean the chances of this universe existing are "beyond lucky", had they not gotten it someone else would, and from your perspective it would be just as lucky, it has nothing to do with luck, chance or even statistics, it's more simple than that, someone will get there because that's how the rules of the model work. If the laws of physics were different, we would be different, and we would be just as unlikely as we are now, because the chances are the same, but in the end at least one outcome necessarily happens, and that outcome will be left wondering what were the odds. Truth is, that's just not how odds work. It's just your brain's pattern recognition hability playing tricks on you, same as the people that see faces in burnt toast, but with longer ramblings.
4-As for the universe being a long string of atoms, that can only happen if no forces tie them together, that would actually be far less likely than our universe. So long as at least 1 force exists atoms wil form molecules. In an alternate universe where electromagnetism didn't create bonds it would be some other force with different equations, but unless no force exists at all, bonds will be made, attraction and repulsion will happen. And yes, we wouldn't be capable of existing, sure. But something would, someone would.
Because if, say, you change gravity so it doesn't attract as much, that just means the planets will have wider orbits and change solar system more easily, but they would exist. If you change electromagnetism so it is stronger then the elements that make us wouldn't be able to create life, but those further in the periodic table would. In the end, so long as there is a value, ANY VALUE, it'll get a result. And it doesn't matter if it's mass or nuclear physics or they're being held together by a force dependant on fucking heat and repelled by fucking volume. Sure it wouldn't be us, but why would that ever matter? There'd still be 2 autistic fucks debating the nature of existance on some god forsaken website with a stupid moon on the corner in the end. Well ok maybe not that specific, but there'd still be something, and if you give self replicating organisms enough time, they'll find a way to predict events, that's just survival, so it might take centuries, it might take millenia, it might take millions upon millions of years (most likely the last one) but soon enough there'd be at least 1 species of cunts trying to talk to each other, and they'd be left wondering why the fuck they happened.
Treating physics like random rules is easier to explain but also shows them as arbitrary. For example, when you drop two objects in a a vacuum they fall at the same speed regardless of their weight. Well, what about a universe where weight does affect it's falling speed?
So? That's what happens with electromagnetism, the vaccuum doesn't make things fall at the same time if the force pulling them comes from a magnet. In that universe mass would work the same way, and you'd be here asking me what if we lived in a universe where it didn't. In the end, there is a result, and that would not really make life any more or less likely to exist, hell if anything it'd probably make it more likely to exist by creating a wider range of different planets upon which it could exist.
That's just a very vanilla example but all the "forces" in the universe could be very, very, different. There is no scientific reason why the universe has THESE forces nor could science find one. It's simply out of science's scope. In science, purpose doesn't truly exist. Gravity doesn't exist for a ball to fall. It just does. We just use "purpose" to explain a random set of rules and entities. With a living thing it's slightly different because a human can have a goal (if you believe in free will). The purpose behind science is simply not in science's realm. It's just philsophy/metaphysics.
Nor does it NEED one unless there is any evidence that a reason beyond "yeah we had to land somewhere on the chart" is needed to explain why we're in this specific point of the bleeping chart! That's not "beyond science's scope", it's just unfalsifiable nonesense! Science can discern very easily the purpose of a knife, there is no reason it couldn't explain the purpose of gravity, except that there is no explainable purpose behind it, no pattern that would indicate there being a need for such a thing has been found.
Also the purpose of science is to perfect our models' capacity to explain reality. This is not beyond science's realm. In fact evolutionary psychology explains quite perfectly why humans developped it given natural instincts and enough time for trial and error.
You simply cannot get undeniable evidence of purpose or order in science or religion.
Why not?
Science cannot create an objective measure of something like "order" and "unordered" universes
That's literally what Entropy is and it is very widely employed in scientific papers over multiple fields of physics and chemistry.
nor can any empirical evidence of god actually exist. If it's empirical evidence, it is inherently flawed. I can't tell you the universe NEEDS a purpose for sure but if you look at the likelihood of such a universe as ours existing randomly it becomes obvious that is is very unlikely. Think about all the possible universes that do not produce life, matter, or even energy.
There is literally no universe which doesn't produce energy, if a universe doesn't have energy, it doesn't exist. It wouldn't even be a vaccuum, it just wouldn't be a universe at all, that's just a purely theoretical construct of our models. Similarly, if a universe does not produce matter, that is just a perfectly energetic, completely static universe, which is the most physically ordered universe that could possibly exist, and therefore the least likely. Most possible universes contain matter. And I mean the odds of that are so high that it's basically a certainty. Similarly so long as matter has any kind of force which affects it will cause reactions, and so long as one of those reactions can be self-perpetuating it will result in life given enough time. You say life is extremely unlikely, but it really, really isn't. Sure it's unlikely for it to happen on a specific PLANET within the unvierse, but when looking at a universal scale, it's all but certain that it'll happen somewhere in it. And as said before, given enough time, at least one species of assholes will figure out how "communication" works, and wind up with this debate.
It might be assholes living in environments that look downright alien to us, it might be assholes living in universes which don't even make sense by any kind of frame we employ. But they'll be there, and they'll be asking this same fucking question because pattern recognition makes them question it. Game was rigged from the start. There was never any need for luck.
You dissatisfaction likely comes from your desire to see a bullet-proof argument that the universe NEEDS a purpose when it fact, it doesn't need one and the amount of arguments that focus on HOW something works in our universe rather than why.
Well if you agree that the universe doesn't need a purpose then why are you telling me that it does and that said purpose must be god.
You simply won't get one but you can consider the likelihood of this universe and make your own conclusion. It seems preposterous for me that we happened to randomly get forces in our universe that somehow resulted in energy, matter, and later life when it could have just been literally anything else.
Yes, it could've been anything else, in the sense that the properties of matter an energy could be completely distinct from ours. But energy would still exist, and matter would still be formed, just different energy and matter. As for life, again, so long as a reacting can replicate itself, that is life in a very primitive level, that is how protocells started, even if there weren't any planets and it were just a massive expanse of media, somewhere floating in that mess reactions would start at some point, and win up creating some kinda being. So it's just a matter of time that it perfects itself, because by definition only that which can replicate itself better for that environment will endure it. That's why survival changes organisms with time. And given enough of said time, well, someone'd be there. Because pattern recognition is a great boon to survival, and it leads to at least some degree of intelligence. It might be clouds of ponafuea held by auipgnaw in a universe made by bucbiuipwu, using asfdcas to talk over the wefcat but they'd be there. And they'd have the same "astronomic" odds of existing as us. But it wouldn't matter either, because SOMETHING HAD TO HAPPEN, just not necessarily them.
