“Atheists believe that if God existed, then we should be able to see him directly intervening in the world in a visible, testable way.”
Not really. More to the point, though, if we do NOT see Him or any other gods intervening in a visible, testable way, why in the name of the son of fuck would we believe they exist?
“They think that if we hear a weird sound in the attic, we should be able to climb up there and find God directly causing the sound.”
No. No we do not believe this. There are a LOT of possibilities for an unidentified sound before we think ’Must be God.’
“But this is a bizarre line of logic, because that's not how God is understood in theism.”
That’s not true. You guys pray all the time for God’s intervention AND THEN tell us that God saved you, or fixed something, or found something… How do you justify adding a god to the results?
You don’t treat it like a mystery.
I’ve seen the Faithful report getting woken up by the smell of a diaper, and while awake at 0200, detect a small fire in time to put it out. Then thank God for smelly diapers.
“God isn’t one more cause among the many other causes in the universe. He’s not just another thing pushing particles around. Instead, God is the one who makes the whole universe possible in the first place.”
Feel free to produce the slightest logical reason to think this.
“Sure, perhaps natural things are explained by other natural things. But what explains those?”
You just keep asking ‘why’ until you reach ‘cuz god,’ huh?
Why?
“And what explains the natural things that explain those natural things?”
Nature, idjit. It’s nature, all the way down.
“It's a circular argument that results in infinite regress, which produces contradictions and ultimately explains nothing.”
No it isn’t, no it doesn’t, but the system produces a LOT more results than Goddidit.
“There has to be something at the end of the chain, something that explains everything else but is not explained by anything else. Something that exists by the necessity of its own nature.”
Why? Explain WHY this must be? Show the logic.
I suspect that you assume that conclusion, first, then keep poking at evidence until the critics give up.