Here’s a basic argument for a somewhat vague Creator God: the universe exists. Things that exist tend to have causes. Powerful things like superintelligences or transcendent uploads are good at causing things. This universe might have been caused by one of those really powerful things.
Here’s a basic knockdown: “the universe” is not a thing in the way that requires a cause. It’s a category of things, so if you must assign it a cause, it is caused by the existence of things (and maybe a desire to refer to everything). By way of demonstration, if you listed every physical thing that makes up the universe, and I found some physical things that existed but were not on your list, would you say “there are things outside the universe” or would you add those things to the list?
(That is, your argument needs to point to things that are likely to be caused by superintelligences / transcendences. I would point to all the things we know of so far as being very unlikely to have been caused by superintelligences / transcendences, and claim that the rest of the universe probably shares that same property.)
Here’s a basic knockdown: “the universe” is not a thing in the way that requires a cause. It’s a category of things, so if you must assign it a cause, it is caused by the existence of things (and maybe a desire to refer to everything). By way of demonstration, if you listed every physical thing that makes up the universe, and I found some physical things that existed but were not on your list, would you say “there are things outside the universe” or would you add those things to the list?
(That is, your argument needs to point to things that are likely to be caused by superintelligences / transcendences. I would point to all the things we know of so far as being very unlikely to have been caused by superintelligences / transcendences, and claim that the rest of the universe probably shares that same property.)