Thank you for responding. This is very crisp and well written -- it makes it very clear to see where we disagree. Which is of course totally fine and an age-old

Thank you for responding. This is very crisp and well written -- it makes it very clear to see where we disagree. Which is of course totally fine and an age-old debate. But it gives me a chance to state my view in a crisp way as well as a reaction: // There is nothing in the natural world that has a creator in the sense that you mean... I believe you're expressing a faith here. As you and I both agreed "reality has no need to conform to our intuition or ability to understand" - the implications of this is that on questions like "where did the laws of physics come from" we have no hope of observation / understanding that can lead to an answer. Perhaps the only honest answer would be "as a human being, I am too limited to engage with this topic at all." But both religious people and atheists make a stronger assertion than that. An atheist says "I can never understand this, but I believe it came about randomly." A religious person says "I can never understand this, but I believe it came about purposefully." They are both equally (un)justified in their belief, but one or the other resonates with them deeply enough to operate as a matter of faith.