My view is based on three assumptions. They're assumptions because I can't demonstrate they're correct without first assuming they are correcf. (I got that idea from Descartes, who noted that if you want to argue that reason is a valid tool, then you can't use reason to justify your argument.)
I assume that ─
A world exists external to the self,
My senses are capable of informing me of that world, and
Reason is a valid tool.
I find justification for making these assumptions in various ways, one of which is that I haven't met anyone who doesn't share them (sometimes while asserting they don't share them). Anyone who posts on RF, for example, demonstrates that they also share the first two assumptions, and anyone who wants to present an orderly and relevant argument demonstrates at a basic level their accord with the third,
On the basis of my education and experience, I take reality to be the world external to the self, which we know about through our senses. It shows no sign of being a living entity. And it remains the case that no objective test can distinguish the supernatural from the imaginary.
There is no reason to think that a purposeful and intelligent being brought the universe into being. No religion offers a useful 'how' in their stories of the creation of the universe ─ indeed they're not even looking, Only science is looking.
But there are other ways of knowing things other than by science and reasoning. Admiration of Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Heaney, doesn't have to be organized into an essay to be something you have, and know you have ─ though of course you can, and likely will, apply reasoned arguments in support of what you already know without them. Falling in love has many parallels, and the fact that when one falls in love, one's responding to the body's hormones, and that those responses have evolved under the imperatives of evolution, surviving long enough to breed, may feel entirely irrelevant. As all living things act out, you don't have to know why, you just have to do.
