Dan Barker’s Free Will Argument for the Nonexistence of God (FANG)

Dan Barker is a former evangelical, Christian preacher turned zealous atheist. He and his wife, Annie Gaylor, co-preside over the activist atheist group, Freedom From Religion. He also spends a lot of time debating Christians. By the way, in his own words, his apostasy began with a rejection of a historical Adam & Eve and his embracing of evolution – but that will have to be the subject of another post.

Barker has put forward an argument against the existence of God that he calls the Free Will Argument for the Nonexistence of God (which he identifies with the acronym FANG).  I’ve heard other people use this argument but they always give credit to Barker.  I’ve also seen Christian apologists respond to the argument who claim to be responding to “Barker’s” argument.  I've heard similar types of arguments but I’m going to say this particular argument is originally his.

Instead of just saying what his argument is, I’ll cite his own words (source):

The Christian God is defined as a personal being who knows everything. According to Christians, personal beings have free will.

In order to have free will, you must have more than one option, each of which is avoidable. This means that before you make a choice, there must be a state of uncertainty during a period of potential: you cannot know the future. Even if you think you can predict your decision, if you claim to have free will, you must admit the potential (if not the desire) to change your mind before the decision is final.

A being who knows everything can have no “state of uncertainty.” It knows its choices in advance. This means that it has no potential to avoid its choices, and therefore lacks free will. Since a being that lacks free will is not a personal being, a personal being who knows everything cannot exist.

Therefore, the Christian God does not exist.

Barker’s argument reminds me a little of the Omnipotence Paradox people sometimes use to argue that God cannot exist. In that case, critics ask, “Can God make a rock so big that He can't lift it?”  The answer is either yes or no but, either way, it would mean there is something God cannot do so, therefore, an omnipotent God cannot exist. Barker's argument is very much along the same lines and could be described as an Omniscience Paradox. At the end of the day, it's simply another gimmick of logic.

His argument is a tangle of logical fallacies that I’m going to have to sort out.  There’s a straw man, mixed with equivocation, tied up with a non sequitur.  I’ll break them all down here.

Let’s start with the straw man.  Barker said, “The Christian God is defined as a personal being who knows everything. According to Christians, personal beings have free will.”  First, if we had to define God, I doubt any Christian would start with, “a personal being who knows everything.”  Certainly, God is omniscient but that is an attribute of God - not necessarily a defining characteristic.  Also, the term “personal being” is somewhat vague.  I mean humans are personal beings, too, but obviously God is not like a human being.  Furthermore, there is much debate about whether or not humans have free will but I’ll talk about that more in a minute.  

You can already see how Barker is setting up his straw man.  He’s telling us how Christians define God and what we think about free will.  Tsk, tsk.  Since when does an atheist get to say what Christians think of God?  This is also where Barker also starts to equivocate, by changing the definition of God.

Barker continues equivocating by changing the definition of “free will.”  The Cambridge Dictionary defines free will as: the ability to decide what to do independently of any outside influence.  That certainly applies to God.  He is free to act any way He decides and no one or no thing can affect what He purposes.  But according to Barker, “In order to have free will, you must have more than one option, each of which is avoidable. This means that before you make a choice, there must be a state of uncertainty during a period of potential: you cannot know the future.”  Since when does free will hinge upon not knowing the outcome?  If I jump off a bridge, I’m pretty sure what the outcome would be.  I would still have the choice to jump or not.

Free will is a notoriously thorny subject. One might even ask if humans have free will; Indeed, many have asked that question for centuries. We may have choices but we have little say in the consequences. I could choose not to eat, for example, but then I couldn't choose not to be hungry. I could choose not to breathe, but then I couldn't choose to keep living. 

Sometimes life seems like a game of chess that we’re playing against a better opponent. We might think we are deciding which pieces to move but our decisions are only unavoidable responses to the better moves the other player is making. The game we think we're playing is really the game he is playing and we continuously have fewer and fewer choices until, finally, we have no choices. Checkmate!

As we live day to day, it may seem at any moment like we are free to choose from a near infinite number possibilities, but the consequences of each decision continuously restricts the number of our future options. I could decide to walk to work instead of driving. However, walking takes longer so the decision to walk affects what time I decide to get up in the morning or whether I decide to get to work on time. Do you see what I mean? My future choices are the victims of the consequences of my present choices.

This applies to the theological realm as well.  If God is sovereign, then perhaps I cannot choose to believe or deny Him. Perhaps everything I do is as He has commanded and I can do nothing by my own will.  This debate has raged between Calvinists and Arminians and is outside the scope of this post. Regardless, Barker fails to see how this is a problem for his argument. He is hoisted upon his own petard, if you will, because if humans do not have free will, how is that an argument for their non-existence?  This is where Barker’s argument becomes totally non sequitur.  

If you think about it, it's rather ridiculous to argue that free will must mean making a decision without knowing anything about the outcome.  Barker is essentially saying that since God knows the future, He cannot exist.  What?  Let's reduce this to the absurd: do rocks have free will?  Do rocks exist?  It's rather obvious that free will is not a condition of existence yet that is what Barker argues!

Consider this passage from Isaiah:

Isaiah 46:9-11, Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.

The Bible attests that God knows the future. Let me rephrase that: God brings to pass those things He has already purposed. It's not a prediction as though God's some kind of psychic.  He has and has always had the ability to make things any way He wanted and He made them this way. According to Barker, that's proof He doesn't exist. //RKBentley shakes his head//  

Here's a Bible quiz. See if you can identify who is being discussed in this verse:

But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. (Micah 5:2)

Hmm... a Ruler born in Bethlehem whose going forth has been from eternity. Who could that be? Pretty easy, huh? Let's look at another passage:

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

Still too easy? Here's one more:

For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.. (Psalm 22:16-18)

Did you have any trouble identifying the subject of any of those verses? Probably not. It's not hard to identify that it's Jesus who is being discussed in each passage. However, there's something very interesting about these verses that critics of the Bible seldom stop to consider. All of these passages are taken from the Old Testament! These passages that so clearly discuss accurate details of His birth, His passion, and His death, were written hundreds of years before the events actually occurred. Furthermore, these are but a handful of the dozens of Old Testament passages that I could have cited.

Once a thing that God has proclaimed comes to pass, it reveals the sovereignty and authority of God. When Jesus came and fulfilled the prophecies spoken about Him centuries earlier, it established His status as the Messiah. It proved that God is the sovereign Lord of the universe. It proved the things spoken by the prophets were true. It proved the Bible is the word of God.  Knowing the future isn’t an argument that God cannot exist!  Good grief!!  If anything, it proves He exists!

To all the critics who read my blog, let me ask you something: do you deny that the Bible is the word of God? You probably do – otherwise you'd likely be a believer. Even still, you have to admit that what the Lord spoke about Jesus centuries in advance, came to pass in exactly the same way He spoke it. It's proof that He is God and that the Bible is His word. If you're still not convinced, then let me ask you this: when you read the above passages, didn't you think they were talking about Jesus? You can deny it if you'd like but I know you did!

The imprecise theory of evolution

I came across an article on Live Science titled, Reptiles evolved earlier than we thought, newly discovered claw-mark fossils suggest.  Here’s a quote from the article:

Based on the fossil record, amniotes were thought to have evolved around 320 million years ago. However, this new discovery of clawed amniote footprints in Australia from 350 million years ago throws these estimations hugely off…  “I'm stunned,” study co-author Per Ahlberg, a professor of paleontology at Uppsala University, said in a statement.  “A single track-bearing slab, which one person can lift, calls into question everything we thought we knew about when modern tetrapods evolved.”

You can read the whole article for itself but here's the gist of it. Evolutionists believe they know when reptiles evolved. However, two amateur palaeontologists found a fossilized track left by a lizard supposedly walking around 30 million years earlier than they had believed.

I read articles like this all the time.  Some new fossil is found that changes everything evolutionists thought they already knew about their theory.  It’s rather hilarious because it points out the flimsy foundation on which they’ve built their models.  How can anything in science be so imprecise and still be considered a "well tested" theory? There are so many things I could say about this article that I’m not sure where to start.  Here are just a few thoughts.

DAWKINS’ “WRONG DATE ORDER” TEST

Richard Dawkins, a rabid atheist and evolutionary apologist, once spoke a terrible lie saying, “Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.”  Dawkins tells this lie to make it sound like evolution is a very robust theory that is tested every time a new fossil is found.  Evolutionists make this claim all the time.  Biologist, J. B. S. Haldane famously quipped that if we ever found “fossil rabbits in the Precambrian,” that would disprove evolution.  

Yet in spite of all their hubris, these quotes and every quote like them are all bluff.  Radically out of order dates assigned to fossils will never disprove their theory.  Rather, they merely “correct” their theory.  Just google the term “evolved earlier than thought” or “fossil rewrites evolution” and see how many hits you find.  Go ahead, I dare you!  They say a fossil in the “wrong date order” will disprove evolution but we find examples by the dozen and nothing changes.  Well, Mr. Dawkins, here’s a fossil in the wrong date order.  Are you going to denounce your theory?  I didn’t think so.  

They’re all liars!

NYE ON EDUCATION

There’s an oft repeated claim that, if kids are taught creation, they won’t be able to understand science.  Bill Nye has made this very point. In his own words, he claimed the following (source):

[T]here are more people in the world — another billion people all trying to use the world’s resources. And the threat and consequences of climate change are more serious than ever, so we need as many people engaged in how we’re going to deal with that as possible. And we have an increasingly technologically sophisticated society. We are able to feed these 7.2 billion people because of our extraordinary agricultural technology. If we have a society that’s increasingly dependent on these technologies, with a smaller and smaller fraction of that society who actually understands how any of it works, that is a formula for disaster.... My biggest concern about creationist kids is that they’re compelled to suppress their common sense, to suppress their critical thinking skills at a time in human history when we need them more than ever.... There are just things about evolution that we should all be aware of, the way we’re aware of where electricity comes from.

Life improving technologies - made by real scientists - are made every day without a single thought being given to evolution.  Nye thinks we need to understand evolution just like we understand electricity.  Really, Nye? You want us to think we can understand evolution the way we understand electricity? Finds like this highlight exactly how unsure “scientists” really are about evolution.  Remember the quote from the Live Science article, “[This] single track-bearing slab, which one person can lift, calls into question everything we thought we knew about when modern tetrapods evolved.”  If we had this same lack of precision in how we understand electricity, we'd still be reading by candlelight.  Yet they still insist that kids are taught evolution as though it somehow will help them understand “science.”  

I’ve seen videos where kids can't answer basic questions about science or politics or geography or history. If evolutionists were truly worried about preparing kids for the future, they would be alarmed that young people don’t know how many dimes make a dollar!  But no, they think we need to devote more energy and resources to teaching them evolution! I truly believe they are more interested in indoctrinating kids rather than educating them.

EVOLUTION IS NOT IMPORTANT ANYWAY

In 1977, construction on the Citigroup Center in New York was completed.  Because of a building restriction, the 59-story building was built on 4 stilts, positioned in the middle of each side of the building, rather than at the 4 corners.  In the following year, a young, architectural student was asking the building’s structural engineer, William LeMessurier, a question about wind shear for the building when LeMessurier realized a terrible error had been made in the planning.  The stresses put on the building due to wind were much higher than the design had anticipated and the building would almost certainly collapse eventually.

In real sciences, like engineering, being wrong could have terrible consequences.  Fortunately, evolutionary biology isn’t really a science.  So what happened when these tracks were discovered?  I’ll tell you: a bunch of biologists probably started running around, redrawing their cherished, nested hierarchy. In the meantime, the rest of science continued its work improving people's lives. The average person didn’t even notice. Evolution is just that unimportant.

Jerry Bergman, Ph.D., tackled the myth that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. He noted that a survey of college textbooks showed that most rarely discuss evolution. The anatomy and physiology text books examined didn't mention evolution at all. Of the colleges surveyed in Ohio and Michigan, biology majors were required to only take one class in evolution.

From a Bergman article, we read this:

National Academy of Science Member and renown carbene chemist, Professor emeritus Dr. Philip Skell of Pennsylvania State University (see Lewis, 1992), did a survey of his colleagues that were “engaged in non-historical biology research, related to their ongoing research projects.” He found that the “Darwinist researchers” he interviewed, in answer to the question, “Would you have done the work any differently if you believed Darwin's theory was wrong?” that “for the large number” of persons he questioned, “differing only in the amount of hemming and hawing” was “in my work it would have made no difference.”

Evolution is the trivial pursuit branch of science.  If you were to google, “how evolution helps research,” you'll find plenty of articles by people trying to convince you that understanding evolution is critical to scientific research. Here's another exercise to try: see if you can find any invention, scientific advancement, or life improving technology whose discovery hinged upon evolution being true.  Maybe you can find one, but it is dwarfed by the explosion of improvements in medicine, computers, and technology that had nothing to do with understanding evolution.  If you ask me, I think it's a shame that we waste resources studying the theory.

Why theistic evolution is “sleeping with the enemy.”

Ray Comfort posted a video on his YouTube channel, Living Waters, about 12 years ago titled, Evolution vs. God: Watch Darwin Get Destroyed.  As I write this, the video has garnered more than 4 million views.  It’s about 38 minutes long which is longer than a lot of people like to watch but I recommend it to anyone who wants to invest the time.  For the sake of this post, though, I will just sum up what the video is about and everyone can watch it later at his leisure.

Comfort is on a college campus interviewing older and younger people (presumably professors and students) about their views on atheism, theism, and evolution.  Comfort challenges them on what they believe, what evidence have they considered, and asks them to consider arguments for God.  

After listening to Ray, several of the younger people softened their views about atheism and considered his points about God.  The older people, though, were thoroughly entrenched in their godless dogma and closed-minded to any of his arguments.  All things considered, I applaud Comfort’s efforts in the video and pray that the students later went on to accept Christ.

Progressive “Christian,” Tyler Franke, hosted a website called, God of Evolution where he attempted to use Scripture to support typical leftist causes like homosexuality.  Many of his posts discussed evolution.  In a since deleted article titled, “THE TOP 10 SIGNS THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND EVOLUTION AT ALL”, (the original title was in all caps, sorry), he tried to explain why creationists were wrong about evolution and how they were misreading the Bible.  Here is what he had to say about Ray Comfort’s video:

Another one that you may have heard from our friend, Banana Ray. In his film “EvG” (which is subtitled, “Shaking the Foundations of Faith”), he underscores this supposed parallel by asking his victims — oh, I mean, “interview subjects” — ridiculous questions like “Are you a strong believer in evolution?” and “When did you first start believing in evolution?” His point, as he goes on to explain, is that anyone who accepts the truth of evolution based on the testimony of expert scientists is relying on “blind faith” in the same way atheists accuse religious people of doing.

Franke seems to be making a straw man of Comfort in the video.  To me, it sounds like Franke is accusing Comfort of saying something to the students like, “See, you have blind faith in evolution - so just have blind faith in God instead.”  That’s not what Comfort is doing but you’ll have to watch the video for yourself because that’s not really the point I mean to discuss.  It’s what Franke said next that really had me alarmed.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m a big supporter of critical thought — and of an engaged populace that rationally considers the information it receives before accepting it. But there are far worse people one could open one’s mind to than those who are sharing their expertise within the fields they have risen to the top of — especially when their conclusions are based on mountains of hard evidence that are available to anyone who doesn’t willfully choose to ignore it.

Do I need to remind Franke that everyone in the video who professed to believe in evolution also claimed to be an atheist?  Isn’t it weird that Franke seems to defend the evolutionists, claiming they are the experts whose conclusions are based on mountains of evidence?  At the same time, he holds contempt for Ray Comfort, calling him, “Banana Ray.”  Franke goes so far as to portray Comfort as a predator and even describes the people to whom he witnesses as “victims.”  

The first person who appears in the video is P.Z. Myers; Is he the kind of person Franke believes these students should open their minds to?  Myers is an outspoken, militant atheist. And when I say outspoke, I mean he goes out of his way to attack Christianity.  Consider this quote:

FAITH. No one word personifies the absolute worst and most wicked properties of religion better than that. Faith is mind-rot. It’s the poison that destroys critical thinking, undermines evidence, and leads people into lives dedicated to absurdity. It’s a parasite regarded as a virtue. I speak as a representative of the scientific faction of atheism: it’s one thing we simply cannot compromise on. Faith is wrong.

Myers zealously preaches atheism and attacks Christianity – young earth creationists in particular. You see, the young people in the video have been sold a bill of goods. They have been taught that atheism is the default position of intellectuals. The students were quick to admit their atheism. Some seemed very smug, even proud of it. So I'm going to have to disagree with Franke’s comment above and say, no, there is nothing worse than rejecting the truth of Jesus. Romans 1 talks about people who reject the truth of God and willingly believe a lie. Romans 1:22 says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”

I remember myself at their age. I thought I knew everything. These students were so smug and boldly touted their atheism as though they were enlightened. When challenged by Ray Comfort on what they believed, they began to soften their position and rethink what they had been taught. If any of them came to Christ as a result, Francke should be glad! Instead, he ridicules Comfort and defends rabid theophobes. This is why I cannot tolerate the false gospel of theistic evolution. I see far too many evolutionists who claim to be Christians, condemning brothers in Christ while praising unbelievers like Myers. Incredible!

Matthew 7:15-16, Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.

Evolutionists are lying about nothing

Genesis 1:1, In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Genesis 1:1 is perhaps the most terse statement ever made on the issue of origins.  Here we see that “in the beginning” (time), God created heaven (space) and the earth (matter).  Time, matter, and space all came into existence suddenly and simultaneously at the command of God.  The full extent of this act is reiterated in other passages.  Psalm 146:6 proclaims that God, “made heaven, and earth, the sea and all that therein is.”  In other words, everything that exists was created by God.  John 1:3 explicitly says, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”  Are you picking up what I’m putting down?  God made literally everything.  We might rearrange things into new ways, like building a castle out of sand, but God made the things.  

But what was there before anything?  What existed before God made all the things?  Creationists sometimes use the fancy, Latin term, Creatio ex nihilo.  When translated, this simply means, “Creation out of nothing.”  God has always existed, of course, but before He made anything, there was nothing.  

The term “nothing” is self explanatory - “no thing.”  Not only was there no matter, there was no space and no time.  There was nothing!  It’s a concept that is hard to grasp, I admit.  How can there be no space?  It sort of makes my head hurt just thinking about it.  Aristotle is alleged to have said, “nothing is what rocks dream about.”  That’s about as succinct a definition as I’ve ever heard.  However, even this very clever definition doesn’t quite work because it starts by saying, “nothing is….”  Philosophers have struggled defining nothing because when you attempt to describe nothing, you start making it sound like it’s something.  

Now, I would never claim to be in the same league as Aristotle, Plato, or even Vizzini, so I’m not going to claim to have THE definition of what nothing is (er,... isn’t?).  I’m just going to say that we all sort of have an idea of what nothing means.  Right?  Maybe not.

In the debate on origins, evolutionists consistently lie about what they mean when they say the universe came from nothing.  Let me give you an example used by the late Stephen Hawking:

Because gravity shapes space and time, it allows space time to be locally stable but globally unstable. On the scale of the entire universe, the positive energy of the matter can be balanced by the negative gravitational energy, and so there is no restriction on the creation of whole universes. Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.  

Do you see what I mean?  He said, “Because there is a law like gravity…”  Am I wrong but isn’t gravity something?  How can the universe create itself from nothing if there is already something like gravity?!  

But Hawking isn’t alone when he redefines nothing to include something.  It is the normal practice of virtually every evolutionist.  When they say “nothing,” they always mean “something.”  Always!  It’s yet another example of evolutionists redefining words in the same way they redefine “evolution,” “science,” “theory,” or even “faith.” (I’ve written about this before, here).  It’s equivocation at its worst.

King Crocoduck is a militant evolutionist that I’ve written about before.  Some years back, he made a video series on YouTube explaining how he believed creationists were arrogant.  Nevermind the irony in his premise, in his first video, he attempted to address the problem of the universe coming from nothing.  Here’s how he described it:

It is useful to define what “nothing” is.  While the philosophical definition might be easy to come up with, we’re dealing with the physical world.  So our definition of nothing has to be concordant with physical reality.  If you have a system to remove all the matter and all the energy, you’ve essentially removed everything that physically exists….  What you’re left with is a vacuum, which is as close to the philosophical definition of nothing as you can get.

King Crocoduck is cheating.  He isn’t starting with nothing; he’s starting with a vacuum.  Time still exists in a vacuum.  Space, physical laws, and even energy still exist in a vacuum.  The only thing really missing from a vacuum is matter so there’s a whole lot of things in KC’s definition of nothing!  But he doesn’t stop there.  He rattles on for about 3 minutes describing the supposed events surrounding the alleged Big Bang, and how energy became hydrogen atoms, which became stars, blah, blah, blah.  Then he concludes his fanciful story with this very telling admission:

“So, in summary, all matter comes from energy and energy – in accordance with the first law of thermodynamics – is eternal.”

Think about what KC has said.  According to him, “nothing” includes space, time, physical laws, and all the energy in the universe!!  It isn’t at all what you, I, or any sane person would consider nothing.  It reminds me of the comedian, Steve Martin's, investment strategy: “OK, you start with $1,000,000....”

In one sense, it’s encouraging that they do this.  It tells me that - deep down - they really know that you can’t start with nothing and get everything.  As a matter of fact, you can’t start with nothing and get anything - not even a single electron.  So, instead, the “scientific” atheists invent exotic theories to explain to the lay public how everything can come from nothing, knowing all along that they don’t really mean “nothing.”  

But I expect unbelievers to lie.  To me, what is more sad, is that people who claim to be Christians, will still believe in evolution.  These compromisers willingly believe the lies spoken by people who proudly admit they exclude God from their theories.  It doesn’t make any sense.

In a previous series on my blog, I addressed 10 points made in a video by a Christian YouTuber called, Inspiring Philosophy.  It was attempting to use Scriptures to claim there were biblical problems for young earth creationists.  One criticism was over the use of the Hebrew word, bara (בָּרָא, Strong's word 1254).  Read this transcript excerpted from the video:

Number 2 is not so much a passage but the use of a Hebrew word, bara. Many young earth creationists believe this word refers to God creating out of nothing and it is used frequently throughout Genesis 1. But looking at how the word is used outside of Genesis 1, implies bara doesn't necessarily mean creation out of nothing. It might not even refer to material creation at all. John Walton has done a full semantic analysis on the word and he points out the word never necessarily means creation out of nothing and there are several times it cannot mean that at all.

Inspiring Philosophy wants to give the impression that God didn't speak everything into existence but, rather, that He shaped and formed an already existing earth. This begs the question: where did the formless, shapeless earth come from? Unless IP is invoking an infinite regress, then at some point in the past, there had to be a creation out of nothing.  The video seems to leave open the possibility that Elohim is not the Creator of the universe. IP only portrays God as continuously shaping already existing matter but never seems to definitively attribute the creation of matter to God.  This is one of the reasons I think theistic evolution borders on heresy!

For whatever reason, evolutionists think it’s more “scientific” to believe nothing created everything than to believe God created everything.  I say it’s foolishness.  To make me believe their theory, they would first have to show me how nothing could create anything.  Next they would have to convince me that nothing creating everything is more reasonable than believing God made everything.  Good luck with that.

Natural laws are properties of the universe. We use them to describe how the universe behaves.  But, if natural laws are properties of the universe, we can't really use them to explain the origin of the universe. Logically speaking, it’s impossible for something to create itself; rather, everything that begins to exist is caused by something outside of itself. To invoke natural laws as some natural explanation for the universe, is like saying nature created nature, which is absurd. So the cause of the universe must be something outside of the universe, something “supernatural” by definition.

Unbelievers are in denial about the religious nature of their beliefs about origins. They are trying to posit a creator with similar attributes that we normally associate with God - like King Crocoduck saying energy is eternal. In other words, they want us to believe there is a supernatural, eternal, uncaused cause for the universe – but it's still not God!  They call this cause, “nothing” but they really mean something.  Evolutionists are lying about nothing!!