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The universe is no more obviously created than God is obviously created.

Well, there is certainly something that was not created. Because there is, well, "stuff". Logic gives us two choices as to the nature of that thing (or those things):

A) That thing which was not created is a natural part of nature.

B) That thing which was not created transcends nature itself.

The obvious reason to reject A is why even my daughter (who was 4 at the time) rejected naturalism. We all do. As Paul points out there is no excuse. We know the nature of God from what was created.

When I asked where milk came from, she said the refrigerator. I followed up and asked how it got in the refrigerator, and she said it came from the store. When I asked how it got in the store, she said that God put it there.

She was correct, albeit she left out some steps. Her logic was otherwise dead on. Now matter how we study nature, and learn additional milk data points...we can not escape this conclusion.

"Well, there is certainly something that was not created. Because there is, well, "stuff". Logic gives us two choices as to the nature of that thing (or those things):

A) That thing which was not created is a natural part of nature.

B) That thing which was not created transcends nature itself."

Of course that is certainly something that was not created. We both agreed almost a week ago that ex nihilo, nihil fit.

But I have no idea what you even mean by "transcend[ing] nature itself." Isn't that an oxymoron like "outside the universe" or "more than everything?"

"The obvious reason to reject A is why even my daughter (who was 4 at the time) rejected naturalism. We all do. As Paul points out there is no excuse. We know the nature of God from what was created."

I'm sorry... that makes no sense to me whatsoever. "We all do" is an obvious reason for rejecting naturalism? How can that be when in point of fact, we don't all. If we all did, there would be nobody to argue with.

"When I asked where milk came from, she said the refrigerator. I followed up and asked how it got in the refrigerator, and she said it came from the store. When I asked how it got in the store, she said that God put it there.

She was correct, albeit she left out some steps. Her logic was otherwise dead on. Now matter how we study nature, and learn additional milk data points...we can not escape this conclusion.

In point of fact, your example there actually demonstrates the complete abandonment of reason that is necessary to draw the conclusion "because God."

Your daughter started by beginning to assemble a chain of causality. And this is the perfectly correct place to start, because we all understand that nothing comes from nothing. The law of cause and effect is the most rigorously confirmed induction we have ever been able to make as a species. The confidence is so great that we even have invented a label for those instances when it appears the law might have been violated. We call them "miracles."

But as your daughter commenced her journey along that chain of causality, she eventually just threw up her hands, stopped following it, and "called it God." She did it at a very early part in the causal chain. You do it at some much more distant point, perhaps at the Big bang, or perhaps even before.

But you have both done the same thing. You have both given up, thrown up your hands and called it "God." Worse, you actually believe that that "logic is dead on" when in point of fact, it is the explicit abandonment of logic. Logic cannot lead you to the conclusion of God. Logic can only lead you to the conclusion of an eternal and uncreated chain of causality.

An eternal universe.

This is exactly where so many "proofs of God" break down. The argument of the "uncaused cause" or the Kalam Cosmological argument all depend on eventually abandoning their premises and asserting a God that was not actually reasoned to. If we hold the premise that all effects have causes, it cannot lead you to an effect that has no cause. It can only lead you to an eternal chain of causes and effects.

Please don't come back and baldly assert, "But that's absurd." After all you have already conceded that something must be eternal. An eternal universe is no more or less absurd than an eternal God. The only difference is that we actually have evidence for a universe. What comparable evidence do we have for your version of God?