So, down here on Earth in real life, what's the difference?

That's not a useful comparison because it compares two scenarios, one of which is known to be encountered frequently in our world with one known to never happen in our world. However when it comes to details of our origins there is no way to determine if a proposed scenario is known to be the case, or known not to be the case. Such a determination may well be possible, but I can't see how we are in a position to determine it, philosophically, at this time.

I can't answer for claims made by theists. Personally I don't make claims, or hold beliefs, so your line of argument doesn't appear to address someone in my position.

It is its own causality and yes it's crazy to think it's a person with a higher nature

And it's not crazy to say "it is its own causality"?

I agree with your reference to the will in a person. There is a serious discussion to be had around this, but not here as, like I said before, any arguments will be dismissed, as belief systems designed to legitimise God belief systems, in favour of biologically evolved human traits in a materialist belief system.

What is better is to point out the extent to which philosophers are complacent in simply accepting that the way life and experience, as had by people, is the normal, obvious result of certain chemical processes in physical bodies evolved in a material universe. Or as you say, that consciousness emerged from a piece of wood. This is complacent because it ignores the philosophical questions about our origins and consciousness, a conscious mind, which are unanswered. The lack of answers is dismissed as baseless, or wild speculation in areas which will be explained by science in the future.

And please don't bother mentioning situations where the murdering was done communists / socialists / fascists - these are all belief systems. E.g., Stalin did not murder millions in the name of atheism - he murdered them because he was a psychopathic killer.

What I'm looking for are situations where a group of atheists / agnostics / ignostics murdered large numbers of religious people in the name of atheism / agnosticism / ignosticism.

There aren't many people left following your exclusions, that sort of answers your question by default. On closer analysis I think you will find that most of the mass murderers were insane, so if they adopted religious views while carrying out their insanity that is not the fault of the religion.

On a more serious note what you have highlighted is the clash between the project of religion in human societies and the inevitable tribal, or nation conflict between different races, or civilisations. Religion in the distant past was always established (initially at least) to give some moral and social direction to populations, which could otherwise go down a path of feudalism, debauchery or going to war continually with its neighbour's. In more recent times when populations became larger and the spaces between them became smaller there was inevitably conflict and fundamentalist belief systems were employed as ways of turning populations against their enemies. Also religion became a means of controlling populations. By this point religion had got itself into allsorts of deep water through the application of human nature. Which was never the intention initially.

I don't want to get into a discussion of scripture, but the annunciation isn't mentioned in Mark and the resurrection comes across as someone who has gone to heaven. It is common for religious organisations to embellish their message, more human frailty.

What do y'all think?

I agree, here in the UK it is the populist press which fuels the ideas that it is not a serious disease and that greater harm is being done to the economy. There are commentators saying that a mask is like a muzzle and is an affront to civil liberties etc. In reality it is the billionaire barons who own such media outlets and who fund the government who are scared, because they milk the system and it's their assets will are now devaluing big time. That is why there is a campaign to make people go back to the office rather than work from home, even though productivity might be up and bosses are happy with their workforce working remotely. The landlords who own the high rises office blocks who are loosing out and who hobnob with the Conservative government, the bribery is in plain sight now. The plan is to turn worker against worker and shame people to go back to the office.

Our government makes me sick, they are holding on by their fingernails and have been spiralling down since the financial crisis of 2008. Turning to more desperate means to keep in office and likely to take us all down with them, Brexit being a symptom of this trend.

Perhaps the best example is the Book of Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve. Was there a guy, a gal, and a talking snake? Probably not. That part is probably just a fable which tries to explain something profound to uneducated peasants of 3,000 years ago, much as we might try to explain sex to a five year old.

You raise a good point, the allegory was a means of conveying wisdom amongst uneducated (relatively) populations. Something which has been practiced for millennia and long before modern religions like Christianity came along.

But is our relationship with knowledge a central fact of our personal human experience? Is that relationship causing us to race towards ejection from the garden of eden of the biosphere in our own time? Does the Adam and Eve story reference something which could be profoundly true? Maybe it does.

Quite.

My guess is that there were some quite wise people in ancient times, and they tried to share what they saw in the cultural medium of their time. That cultural medium is now very out of date, but that doesn't automatically equal their insights being useless.

Indeed, the book of Revelation might be appropriate. Wisdom is something which isn't recognised in the modern world, but was of great importance in the past when peoples didn't have the extensive teachings available to us now. Even now wisdom is invaluable in steering our civilisation forward. Although we currently have a problem with our leaders who seem to have buried their heads up their own backsides rather than seek out wide council ( revelation indeed).

The Nicene Creed was written declaring 'Jesus is "in part God"' only in order to appease the demands of a pagan emperor who, believing himself divine (i.e. avatar of Jupiter, Mithras or whatever) according to Roman tradition, could not make Christianity the official religion of the empire - and thereby be baptized into "the faith" - if the Christians' so-called "messiah" was only a "blessed", but not divine, human being, as most of the early churches had taught & congregations had believed for centuries.

So did they add the story of the annunciation and the ascension etc?

But when people talk like God is a real being who actually does stuff that makes a difference in the world, rather than as an ideal to aspire to or a comforting thing to imagine or a metaphor or something, then they’ve lost track of the difference between fact and fiction.

One should make the distinction between people who claim that this God does exist and those who are merely considering the possibility. Someone can speculate that God is a real being, who does things in the world, because we are not in a position to claim that it is not a possibility.

Maybe someone should just check if there is 2,700 tonnes of high explosive stored near the White House. Better safe than sorry.

Explain how you know this - inexplicable occulting - to be the case, that it's our human cognitive predicament.

I don't know that with any degree of certainty. It just seems obvious to me, in the light of how much about our origins we don't know.

Also regarding our predicament, if you take the full breadth of human knowledge, it is entirely derived from aspects of our lived experience. An experience dictated by the nature of the bodies and biosphere we find ourselves in, are born into. Even our intellectual knowledge is born of a mind developed to pick berries and hunt with speares. A world in which things like space, time, physical material, gravity, solid, liquid, gas, fire, are all taken for granted as aspects of reality. To the extent perhaps, that their origins are not even considered, or how it all came to be the way it is. But rather, it is regarded as normality, even reality is self.

But actually what we take for reality in this way, is only a description of what we find, not an explanation. Although science has successfully explained how many of these aspects of our world relate to each other and interact, including the origins of things within the sphere of the materials we find in front of us out of others. However any explanation of the broader origins of this reality are entirely absent. This is understandable, because it is beyond our capabilities. But this realisation is not justification to deny any explanation there might be out there, however odd it might seem to be to us. In reality, we are in the dark when it comes to a knowledge of our origins.

As it relates to a "different kind [of knowledge] to that provided by the intellect", it almost begs another question relative to Kant's metaphysics. How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?

Quite, there is an assumption by humanity that the normal, or default state of living human experience is a stable emergent property of the interaction of physical material. That there need not be any more to it than that. I see this as a psychological comfort zone. It being advantageous for us (at this stage of our development) to dwell in a feeling of static peace, in which only that which we perceive and interact with in our environment is real and anything else entailed, which we don't perceive is absent, a myth.

This being the case, any novel, unexpected aspects of this reality tend to be dismissed as some sort of figment of an overactive imagination, or peculiarity of thought processes. In this way materialism dismisses speculation of such condierations out of hand, while ignoring any attempts to reconcile the big existential questions with our experience of living and handing them over to science which will eventually explain everything for us. Indeed some materialists insist that pretty much all fundamental questions have now been answered and that humanity is the pinnacle of evolution.

While to folk who stare the big questions in the face daily are dismayed at the complacency. For example, what on earth is it that enables such a complex entity as a human to persist in such a diverse environment as the world we find ourselves in, with time and extension, presence and being? We are all familiar with the account provided by the sciences. But that account is merely a description of what is found by the set of faculties we find we have in these bodies we find ourselves in at birth. It is merely the tip of the iceberg, not any kind of explanation, with the 90% of the reality of our existence hidden beneath the surface, like the iceberg. Simply because we are not equipped to perceive it.

And the materialist just says, nothing to see here, move along now, nothing to see here.

Naïve, uncritical, gullible, malleable, credulous, "seeing faces in the clouds", ..., philosophically or otherwise?

Yes, both sides can engage in this. When I first came to philosophy forums I was surprised to see philosophers discussing theology. Then I realised the history of religion in our societies resulted in that. Perhaps now philosophers are distancing themselves from it.

Not sure I understood your comment right, entirely possible I misread, in which case discard: Per earlier, in what way does an adult's non-naïveté (or epistemic attitude) demand that they take into account, incorporate thoughts of, intangible hobs that can control the weather in their lives? (Should their spouse family friends be concerned?) If absent in any way that matters, then in/consistency between epistemic attitude and real life comes-to-the-fore.

My comment was simply that the reasons given by atheists to support any conclusions that there isn't a g/God are naive in philosophical terms. Because a cursory examination would conclude that humans are ill-equipped to answer the question, either way, so theists are similarly naive to attempt to conclude the opposite using philosophy.

Anyway going back to your thoughts on hobs, it's more evidence of human frailty, I'm afraid. However the "non-naive" are not impelled to take hobs seriously. Because there is a legitimate philosophical issue concerning our origin, of whether it was by design, by a mind perhaps, or not. This is because of the primacy of our known experience being via the mind. Therefore our mental existence is philosophically primary to what is perceived, or experienced by us during our existence (but I expect you know this). So the enquirer can seriously consider this designer in the absence of, by implication, any hobs.

Some of the claimants (including @3017amen if memory serves) have difficulties with biological evolution. :confused:

Each to his own. I don't see any inconsistency between divinity and the discoveries of science, such divisions are historical baggage.

about universal, or remote origins
— Punshhh

Are we talking grandeurs by which the universe pales?

No, it's a reality that we originated and that the nature of that origin is approached philosophically, hence metaphysics.

The claimants will typically also have it that their super-beings can hide entirely from us, but we cannot hide from them, which seems mostly like post-rationalization.

This is inevitable, I'm afraid, it's rather like a Laurel and Hardy sketch.

A kind of rationalization going on here converges on a particular category of propositions, p, so that both p and ¬p are compatible with attainable evidence. Sometimes by design (intent-to-rescue), sometimes not.

Apologies if I am not following the standard form of these debates, I approach from left field. But logic is no use either, without any genuine indication, or evidence of our origins we are blind to the reality, so anything we conclude intellectually is again mute on the issue.

Sometimes by design, immunized from counter/evidence. What's left? Epic experiences, personal revelations, ...?

Well these do figure in the lives of theists and they may entail other means of knowledge than the intellect. But as I said earlier it is impossible to prove even to oneself, if God is standing before you that g/Gods exist. Again due to human frailty. In reality there is a real process by which we originated and we are blind to it. That's as far as the intellect goes. To go further you have to use other means.

"And where's Jesus?" :)

Jesus is professed to be a prophet, so has had his blinkers lifted apparently, amongst other things. Prophets do appear to attain some wisdom, even esoteric knowledge about reality, but it is not easily amenable to intellectual, or philosophical consideration. This I consider is due to the knowledge attained being of a different kind to that provided by the intellect.

I answered these concerns previously. Unfortunately it can only amount to evidence of human frailty. They can't answer the question at hand and any opinion that such concerns add weight to an answer of no to the question are naive, philosophically. For example it is unlikely that there is a teapot orbiting the sun, but any arguments made about the impossibility of it are merely arguments of improbability, or unlikelyness. It can't be proved that it isn't orbiting the sun without actually looking at every square inch of space around the Sun. It's worse than this in reference to g/God because improbability, or unlikelyness is everywhere in the eyes of humans, who are evolved to perceive and act practically/pragmatically in the physical environment they are born into. Whereas the question at hand is about universal, or remote origins. An alien environment for the human mind. As such normal rational concerns are mute in answering it.

"mys·ti·cism
belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender."

I think you will find that trying to tie down Mystics is harder than herding cats (just like philosophers).

Is this about right?

That is a reasonable distillation into a sentence.

If it's about knowledge, that's reason, yes? No? The mind posits something beyond itself, called here god, that by definition cannot be known - and then some fools proceed to claim to know about it.

Knowledge via rational thought is secondary to other forms of knowledge.

There are fools all around us, like those who profess to know that there are no prior temporal events to the Big Bang event.

Is not this better? That the mind supposes something beyond itself and then applies its powers to understanding what that idea might mean, imply, reveal, learning what thinking and reason might offer.

In day to day life, yes. But Mystics tend to be interested in reality rather than practicality.

For me, what we don't know is of interest, it helps to orientate ourselves, to find a secure anchorage.

I don't see it problematic at all. It's relative to the Metaphysical features of consciousness, which are different from that of Darwinian instinct. The analogies would be mathematical ability and/or musical genius. Neither of which confer any biological advantages in providing for survival of the fittest.

I agree, but for different reasons. My point was though, that it gives to much wriggle room for the atheist.

Similarly, if the atheist cosmological argument centers around materialism, it fails. As it relates to conscious existence, atheist Dennett acquiesced to the phenomenon of qualia, which is simply a euphemism for Metaphysical phenomenon from consciousness.

Materialism is blind, in the sense that it ignores any consideration of origin other than what is provided by the speculation of scientists. And takes for granted, indeed crystallises around the simplistic concepts* of the constitution of material as described by science.

In short, Love is not needed for survival yet is a universally intrinsic and/or an innate feature of conscious existence. As it relates to musical and mathematical ability respectively, how could this (Love) universally subjective, yet seemingly objective truth, be so critical to the human condition?

But you allude to a blind spot in materialism, which reduces all such aspects of consciousness to the material products of the evolution of material.

That is just one of many things that relate to our self-awareness which is in itself, distinct from emergent properties of instinct.

Really we require a universe known to originate from dust alone to compare with our own, otherwise we will go around in circles philosophically.

*Symplistic compared to what is likely going on in existence.

It's always either reason or unreason. What's your pleasure? Or have you already told us it's unreason.

This is a discussion of positions on Gods amongst philosophers, so all avenues are relevant to the discussion. When it comes to the wider world, it doesn't figure and the jury is out when it comes to whether religion is a benefit, or a problem in the development and survival of the species.

Personally, I practice mysticism, so unusual perspectives on such things is the norm. I don't impose any of it on others, or aim to indoctrinate others. As regards "unreason", well acknowledging our limitations casts a shadow on what we do, or can know, helping us to see what we think we can know, but really can't. Like for example if there are/were prior temporal events in the origin of the Big Bang event. Some folk around here profess to know such things.

Indeed. I think it was in cognitive science's William James who said, in his book about The Varieties of Religious Experiences: "Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.".

Quite, also we might be intimately involved in a myriad of process beyond our comprehension, or preview.

So another question for the Atheist is, if Love can't do what instinct does (or if it's an ancillary/redundant feature of consciousness) to effect survival needs, why should Love exist, what is its purpose? Surely it's not needed to procreate, when instinct is all that's needed... ? Is Love a Universal truth? How does Atheism square the metaphysical circle?

This argument is problematic because the other side of the debate will just dismiss it as sentimentality, or a natural bonding emotion. It eludes to a greater problem for the atheist position. Which is the problem of distinguishing a universe which is purely a happenstance of dust, from a universe which is entirely created by a God. How would they differ? This question is impossible to answer in the absence of a control, a universe confirmed one way, or the other to compare with.

Explain how an ultimate "issue" makes an existential difference one way or another to proximate beings like us.

It might not at first seem to figure. But each of us does reach this fork in the road. Although many might just follow the herd, those who are inquisitive will give it some thought. Also on a larger scale it might figure. Religion, has for millennia, been adopted as a means to steer the population. Likewise the population has been steered absent religion towards rabid capitalism, the verge of nuclear annihilation, or moral collapse.

I agree that the question is not presentable in a way that it can be answered philosophically. But it is a philosophical question by dint of being an existential issue for all humanity. If it is swept away by way of being invalid, or something like that then philosophy will be incomplete, while staring at an estranged elephant in the room.

It's a pseudo-question (lacks specificity, parameters, etc for determining what would count as correct answers) for starters.

But the question remains, whatever a philosopher says. What you say, is evidence that philosophy can't answer, or address the question, not that the question is invalid.

You see, what God means to people amounts to more than the domain of the intellect. There is lived experience, events and agency involved. As such a theist is engaged in real/lived events, things inaccessible to the intellect, or intellectual analysis, because this analysis is limited, as the intellect is limited.

The intellect is primitive in comparison to the nature in to which it was recently born.

Does he even know that his term ends 20th Jan even if there's no election?

I'm sure he doesn't.
Next he'll be saying that he can enact emergency powers to extend his rule, because if his term ends, who's going to run the country?

Shit, yeah, the population might commit mass voter fraud and elect someone inappropriate for president. Thank God for a stable genius pointing that out.

Belief in what, exactly, may I ask. I suspect belief in the material existence of. But there is also belief as belief - the Christian Creed at least. "We believe...". Going around saying God exists is ignorance in action, in terms of being a Christian - also a heresy.

Belief in God as presented in the human body of teaching. If one were to take all the gods believed in by people and distill it down to the essence in common between them. Any precise definition is an irrelevance for me. You see I see humanity very much in the sense of as one person subdivided into millions of individuals, we are the same, like clones. So what we think and believe is the same, with different accents. When one starts to analyse what we think and believe as in philosophy, or psychology, we are attempting to hold ourselves outside this being/person and look in from outside. I suggest that this analysis can distort our understanding of these beliefs and ideas and that philosophers and psychologists ought to seek a rounded perspective rather than a radical one, or they might retreat into their own little world.

Anyway you won't become embroiled in a struggle over the definition of God, or the existence of the supernatural with me, because I have reduced the issue to two clear positions for the/any answer given by one of these individuals is of little importance. The positions are;

Is our origin in a happenstance of dust, or a Shakespeare puts it, a "quintessence of dust".

Or is our origin by design, presuming some creator of some kind, which does not need to be defined.

So which is it?

It is self evident to me that philosophy cannot answer this question and that it is both the greatest puzzle in the predicament of mankind, while also beings his/her Achilles heal.

Perhaps this is a game of exposing weaknesses in the positions of others, while acknowledging the validity of the differing positions, where they have been adopted, to the adoptee.

Mine is more like an astrolabe in which I fine tune the orientation for the purposes of a particular path of enquiry, while entertaining the presence of g/God, from a stance in which the existence, or not of said God is irrelevant. I threw belief out a long time ago.

Are you concluding that universal, or absolute time is a product of the Big Bang event? Because that is the only logical conclusion from your position.

Or in other words you are saying there is, there cannot be, any other existence than the products of the Big Bang event. How do you know this?

Apparently, "it can't be answered" By You; many many, however, have answered the g/G-question intelligently either way, some even have conclusively (i.e. soundly - though no theist or deist has yet).

I meant philosophically, many have answered it by other means.

Besides, the nature of nature itself, I think the very nature of human reason and human agency (re: integrity, dignity) depends on answering this singular question, and then living with that answer if it's "yes" or living with the question if the answer is "no".

It can't be answered (it is a bit more complicated than that*), also all those things that you say depend on it, only matter if one is a materialist, or a scientismist.


* you end up with a discussion of, if g/God appeared before you, could you still answer the question, or can g/God answer it for you (to which I would suggest no). Because you will already have concluded that if g/God doesn't appear before you there is no way to answer the question in the negative, an answer of no.

But this is contradictory, and that's the point- causes precede their effects (i.e. temporally), so if you're trying to talk about the cause or origin of the Big Bang- so, divine creation for instance- then you're talking about "events back in time from the singularity"

I'm not doing that, what I am talking about is any processes involved in the origin of the Big Bang. This does not necessitate a prior event, it is an enquiry into how it originated. The means by which it originated might not be temporal, or spatial, or might involve separate temporal, or spatial events. Separate from the contents of the Big Bang event.

. But that's nonsense, as far as our best current picture of the early universe goes, the singularity at t=0 is like someone took a cosmic hole-puncher and just cut out a hole in the timeline of the universe.

Its only nonsense if you make the assumption that universal, or absolute time originated in the Big Bang we see before us. Are you making that assumption?

We can't extend causality, temporal relations, geodesics, or anything through that point- you can't pass go, you can't collect $200,

Science can't (this is not a scientific discussion).

until we know how gravity operates on the quantum scale we're just spitting goobledeegook.

Yes close the discussion down, nothing to see here.

Even scientists speculate about this stuff, are they spouting gobbledegook?

Well, once you figure out precisely how we can meaningfully extend talk of temporal or causal relations backwards in time to/past the Big Bang singularity, you let us know. Until then your optimism that we can do so, somehow, some way, doesn't amount to much.

But I'm not talking about events back in time from the singularity, I'm talking about its origin, or the existence of other singularities, or other things which are not products of the singularity we find ourselves in.

So the origin might be in a substance, nothing, or some existing state, which results in Big Bang events. Which is your preference?

Regarding other singularities, or other things which are not products of the singularity. There might be a spectrum of Big Bang events. There may be other entirely different places, forms of existence. You are now going to have to tell me why we as philosophers can't discuss these possibilities in the light of empirical evidence found in our world?

and the longest government shutdown in American history.

The new normal (well until November at least).

Well, actually, yes you can.

No you can't because we have an example of something that exists and can be discussed, the universe which originated in the Big Bang. If we can talk about that one, then we can talk about other ones, or other types of them, or something else. Certainly something which is evidenced in this universe and might be present in another.

Whether time genuinely originated at the Big Bang (a legitimate possibility) or our ability to meaningful posit or understand cause/effect relationships merely breaks down at that point as an artifact of theory

What breaks down is the maths and physics, not philosophical questions about origins, or other things.

The word of interest here is "meaningful", philosophically we can consider things which science can't, because science is only concerned with hard evidence. Philosophy can recognise the role of meaning in understanding ideas and speculate on realities which may only be indicated by evidence.

"before the Big Bang" is not something that we can meaningfully speak to. And as Banno and others have pointed out, its comparable to talking about "north of the North Pole" in that trying to extend talk of temporal or causal relations past the Big Bang singularity is undefined- nonsense,

As I said, it's only nonsense when one is referring to some event of the contents, or products of the Big Bang as prior to the event itself. Something which is self evident and I agree with (well except for a notional undefined substance, or state, which did the exploding).

Now there might be another Big Bang with a different signature or universe and nature. Tell me I'm wrong to say that?

word salad- given everything we currently know and lacking an adequate theory for situations where gravitation dominates on the quantum scale (as in the Big Bang and the interior of black holes).

Talk about word salad.
Anyway, just because we don't have a scientifically rigorous understanding of the processes involved in the Big Bang, doesn't mean that we can't refer to one, or its contents.

For example I suggest that just like there are large numbers of atoms in our world, there may be large numbers of Big Bang events, in formations, as there are formations of atoms in our world. What's wrong with that?

I agree it's immaterial if the science and the maths break down at the singularity. But you can't just stop at the singularity and say things like there is no before, or prior state for example. Or claim that such considerations are illogical, or incoherent.

Let's break this down a little.

The problem with the insistence that there is no before the Big Bang is that it is in reference to any before's in relation to the spacetime resulting from the Big Bang. In which case it is a valid argument. But it ignores any other states not of a result of the Big Bang. For example some other Big Bang, or some other unknown state/s in which the Big Bang originated.

The problem with both the claim that it is incoherent, or illogical is the same issue, it is only in reference to spacetime resulting to the Big Bang. It is perfectly rational to consider other states not as a result of the Big Bang. Because logic does not exclude the existence of other states, only that these other states are entailed in the Big Bang. For example it is problematic to make any claims about a God being involved in the Big Bang, because the Big Bang and the resultant universe appears to be an independent self autonomous entity encapsulating its own space and time and material. Such that for the God to have any involvement in its processes would violate the laws of nature within.


As an aside, there is a bigger problem for your side of the argument than the issue of the origin of physical material described by science. It is to do with the ground of physical material and the way in which events are orchestrated in time as we experience it and the nature of sentient beings. While we have no idea of the nature of the ground of the physical reality, or of being, we really are in ignorance.
For example is the ground some unknown cosmic dance between big bangs and black holes and nothing else, or is the ground some kind of artificial stage for the expression of being generated by highly advanced beings? Or is it some kind of dream of a God, or an unknown cosmic creature.
We really are ignorant regarding the grounds of existence.

There's something other than everything...? Odd. :)

I don't think we can discuss everything, because we can only know things in our vicinity ( the known universe) and of that only what we can detect.

supernatural magic —,

literally a non-explanation.

It might be a problem if I try to explain something, but I'm not, I'm accepting the truth of our predicament.

Every posited god that has things of utmost importance to tell all mankind (perhaps like worship, perhaps the importance of whichever religious scriptures) has failed (not almighty) or is deceptive (not omnibenevolent).

I put that down to human frailty. Also we can't determine what events might have been influenced by Gods, should they exist.

Do we always strand on "the unknowable", "the ineffable" or some such (by way of Sagan's procedure)?

I am sure we stand on solid ground ( metaphorically), but that we are unaware of that ground, or its nature, we are ignorant of the truth of our origins. Sagan's procedure is only applicable when a theist makes claims about divinity.

What do you believe "explains our origins" requires or entails?

I try to distance my thinking from belief. I sense that I know something, but not really due to thinking as such, but through living. I can't answer your question though.

Well, that's just wrong.

Not at all, it's just facing facts. Which is that the material we see before us is constituted in that way (as documented by science), not as to its, or our origins.

what remains unexplained?

Whether our origins are a happenstance of dust (which itself fails to explain it), or our origins lie in some other means like idealism for example.

SO on one side we have general relativity an the observation that the universe is expanding, leading directly to the mathematics of the big bang, together with the various interpretations...

None of that explains our origins, all it does is describe the world we find ourselves in.
So yes " "it's all smoke and mirrors" ".

I'm not seeing a point to this discussion.

Cool, I'm just pointing out that what science (including math), or scientism has determined cannot be used as a justification for atheism, or as an argument against theism (unless the theist is relying on it for their argument).

Sure

So everything came into existence when everything exploded.

So it's everything all the way down?

Everything.

All at once?

More smoke and mirrors.