There is much that we do not know. That is the basis of inquiry. But what I see claimed here is just what others believe fills the gaps of the unknown. And without any benefit of evidence that their imaginary views are reality. It distills down to a god of the gaps argument by bias, deluge and failed claims.
As we attempt to understand reality, we may think that our explanation of causality has solids and voids and the question is merely how to fill the voids, this is not the case, not at all. The entire thing is a void, without a root cause we don’t have any explanation of any kind.
You want to exclude what you consider as non-naturalistic. But the real question is “what is naturalistic?” What are the criteria that identify the “non-naturalistic”? Is it being unknown, unseen, or being of a nature that cannot be understood? Isn’t this exactly the case with all natural forces? How is it different from the so-called “supernatural”? Is there such thing as “supernatural”? Or is it simply another “unknown”?
Inquiry is essential to naturalism, but the essence of naturalism is the principle that naturalism is intended/promoted as a “posteriori” view. It's not/should not be a commitment in advance to certain ontology.
Naturalism a not an absolute commitment but rather a provisional commitment that should be open to revision even for what may be perceived as a radical kind of entities, forces or relations.
Actual application of naturalism failed to honor this “posteriori” principle. The real application became a prior commitment to the so-called materialism (As if a materialism concept is an absolute rather than a provisional relative). A commitment that mandates a priori adherence to material causes that must produce the so-called material explanations no matter how counter-intuitive or mystifying to the uninitiated.
In principle, there is no such thing as materialistic or not, there is only data pointing to conclusions, that’s all there is. The classification of something as natural or not is a conception or rather a misconception but not by any means an intrinsic nature.
Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such conclusion is typically excluded because it is considered non-naturalistic. But what is “naturalistic”? Why “intelligent design” is not “naturalistic”?
In principle, Naturalism as a posteriori view should accommodate any conclusion driven by data no matter how radical it appears to be. No assumption of any kind should be established as a priori tell the data is first examined. That is exactly the logical error that can be seen in actual application of naturalism, which is the strict adherence to unjustified false priori without any data to support it.
The problem is not naturalism per se as an approach but rather the miss application of naturalism. Assessment of data should be driven from a neutral view not an unevidenced priori of any kind. What supports the naturalistic priori that rejects any possibility that a causal influence (God) may purposefully and consciously influence matter if every observation points to it?
Order, rules, purpose, control are all exhibited in every observation in the cosmos, life, even at the atomic and subatomic level. But we either fail to see it or simply attribute it to unseen forces that we don’t know what it is, but logic necessitates its existence, which we call “the natural laws”.
“The unknown/unseen force (natural law) did it” is not an explanation; it’s not even a mechanism. It’s only an observed influence that is exerted through unknown means. How/why the natural forces exert such influence? What is the mechanism through which it exerts its controlling influence over matter? It’s nothing but a mystery, yet we fool ourselves that we have got a satisfactory explanation.
Here is an example to explain the illogical “naturalistic” approach to explain reality. assume you put an empty box overnight outside your front door to find it full of apples every morning, same is true for everyone else who does the same. A scientist conducts some extermination and confirms the observation, then concludes that the phenomenon is a natural law and calls it “the law of overnight apples”. It’s a confirmed fact, whenever someone asks why this happens? The ready answer is always; it’s because of “the law of overnight apples”.
Is that really an explanation? It’s definitely not. Yet this is our exact approach with respect to the so-called “natural laws”. What it is? How it does what it does? Why it exists? We don’t care. It’s just the way it is. A mere norm. Just leave the box overnight and you’ll get apples. End of story, it happens every day, why worry for an explanation?
It's never about an entity following a rule, it’s about why the rule itself exist and how it does what it does. The question about the behavior of the processes cannot be simply dismissed on the basis that “it's just the norm”.
When it comes to the universe in its entirety or life, it’s always about the processes that control the input not the input itself. The input can never create an output on its own. Without the processes controlling subatomic particles, there is no matter, without the processes controlling the genes, there is no life.
The fact is neither the processes nor the outcome is random. But our familiarity with the norm eliminates the wonder. Regardless of how peculiar the norm may be, simply if its usual, it's not peculiar, we still perceive it as a mere norm, we imagine that being a norm is itself a sufficient explanation but it’s not.
Antony Flew, one of the world's preeminent atheists who wrote, "Theology and Falsification", which is considered as one of the most popular atheistic papers. In 2006, he co-wrote a book titled, " There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind".
He stated that his rule of life had always been to follow the evidence where it leads. And he said he followed that evidence, and it led him to the conclusion that God exists.
He said, "
when I finally came to recognize the existence of a God, it was not a paradigm shift, because my paradigm remains..'We must follow the argument wherever it leads'.” (There is No A God. p 89)
If we logically follow the evidence (wherever it leads), it only leads to God.
God is not a relative explanation to an individual system; God is the absolute explanation to the relative existence in its entirety. The absolute is the only explanation that must exist to give rise to every probable. See #1851