"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." - David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
A counter-argument to the cosmological argument, that who created God, is not a valid response because God is eternal and needs no creator. Asking who designed the designer for arguments to design, likewise, is not valid for the same reason. God isn't affected at all by the Euthyphro dilemma, as morality cannot be conceived in the absence of God.
Sometimes I get the impression that philosophy of religion is practised in order to buttress faith; in order to give a validation to something they already believe in. It's the only way I can comprehend how such definitional arguments are made and maintained.
What good does it do to say that God is an undesigned designer, or an uncreated creator? Do we know those are even coherent propositions? Let alone making God a possible answer to questions of creation or design. After all, all the creators/designers we know are designed so it only seems fair to question whether that is possible.
I was once asked why I thought aliens in another universe were a better answer than God to explain fine-tuning. The reason is that aliens are a proposition by which we can account for designers. We know that intelligent beings can evolve, that they have physical bodies by which they can manipulate their environments, that they fit into a framework of space-time, and that designers are accounted for in terms of something other than design - abstract processes. By contrast, what is the supernatural? What does it mean to be a supernatural intelligence? If the supernatural is outside of time, then how can it act? While aliens might not be the only answer to why the universe is fine-tuned, at least it's an answer that's explicable.
There might be a reason for all this, found within a deep understanding of the philosophy of religion. For that reason, however reluctantly, I push on trying to learn more. Though it is so tempting to subject the arguments to Hume's Fork and be done with it, because such arguments as far as I can tell have no substantial content to them whatsoever.
