You’re treating your theory of explanation as a fact about reality, but you haven’t shown that it is, and without that, the argument doesn’t prove anything exists beyond the universe. I have no intention to be dragged into a debate about something that you have no evidence for.

I think this is where we’re talking past each other. You keep saying your assumptions are “built into explanation itself,” but that’s exactly the claim you haven’t shown. That’s not how explanation works in general — it’s how explanation works within your philosophical framework.

None of this gets you closer to showing that a god exists. At most, you’ve argued that if someone accepts your view of explanation, they might prefer a non-dependent stopping point. That’s not proof — it’s conditional reasoning based on a disputed assumption.

You’re right that this argument doesn’t get to God, and that’s kind of the point. If the conclusion depends on adopting a controversial theory of explanation just to get started, then it doesn’t establish anything beyond that theory. It certainly doesn’t show that reality actually contains a necessary being, let alone a god.

So I’m not rejecting explanation. I’m rejecting the claim that your version of explanation is mandatory. Until that’s shown, the burden of proof hasn’t been met.

I get that your view hangs together within your way of thinking. But that’s not the same as showing it’s actually true. A story can be consistent without being proven.

The original claim was that God exists. What you’ve given is a philosophical way of framing reality that ends in something you call “self-sufficient.” But that only works if I first agree to your rules about how explanation has to work. You haven’t shown that reality has to follow those rules, only that if it does, your conclusion follows.

So this doesn’t prove God exists. It shows what your philosophy prefers as a stopping point. That’s fine as a view, but it’s not evidence, and it doesn’t shift the burden onto me.

Unless you can show why your starting assumptions are mandatory rather than optional, we’re not talking about proof, just competing interpretations.

You keep framing this as a dispute over “non-arbitrary stopping points,” but you’re still just asserting that only your kind counts. Calling laws, structures, or facts “stipulations” doesn’t show they fail — it just favors your conclusion. From the outside, your terminus looks just as stipulated: you declare something “self-sufficient” and stop asking questions. You haven’t shown why that’s any less arbitrary than saying reality itself is fundamental.

And saying laws or structures can’t explain existence doesn’t fix the problem. Declaring a necessary being doesn’t explain why existence exists either — it just moves the stopping point to something you define as exempt from explanation. Until you show why explanation must end in a self-sufficient being rather than any other kind of fundamental reality, this isn’t a demonstration that your terminus is required — it’s a statement of preference.

What you’ve done here is raise a challenge to certain stopping points — not show that your own stopping point is required. Pointing out that brute facts or self-explaining systems feel unsatisfying to you doesn’t establish that they fail, let alone that only your preferred terminus works. Discomfort isn’t an argument.

You keep saying the alternatives “don’t explain,” but you never show that explanation has to take the form you’re demanding — namely, ending in a self-sufficient being. That requirement is doing all the work, and it’s exactly what you haven’t justified. Why must explanation terminate in an entity rather than a law, structure, or fact? Why is “explains why the chain stops” a meaningful requirement rather than just a restatement of your conclusion?

Saying “my endpoint explains while yours just stops” assumes what’s in dispute. From the outside, both views stop — you just give your stopping point a metaphysical label and call that an explanation. If declaring “this being exists necessarily” counts as non-arbitrary, then declaring “this reality is fundamental” isn’t obviously worse. You need to show a real difference, not just assert one.

And nothing in this argument gets you anywhere near God. Even if I granted that explanation must bottom out in something necessary, you still haven’t shown why that thing must be personal, intelligent, or anything like what people mean by “God.” That’s a massive gap you’re asking me to ignore.

So at this point, the burden is on you. If you think explanation must go all the way down, you need to show why. If you think it must end in a necessary being rather than any other kind of terminus, you need to argue for that. Until then, you’re not proving your conclusion — you’re just insisting that alternatives don’t satisfy standards you haven’t defended.