That's right, any creative force(s) driving the universe are a complete mystery in my opinion. We do not know if it/they/us have any plans, we have no direction from these forces save our own genetic predispositions, and hence for practical purposes we don't really need to know about them to go on with our lives.

That doesn't mean there may not be a plan or purpose, or a higher order to the universe, or something we might discover down the track.

Unfortunately, in the absence of any facts or evidence, and witnessing the seeming order in the universe, the best mankind has been able to do so far is come up with the farce known as religion to try to explain it, and we know that using The Bible or The Koran for example, these religions can be proven as false.

"So, if somebody claims to be an atheist precisely because he denies that all gods are possible although it is impossible to absolutely establish that conclusion, then this quite specific denial is not predicated on the reasoned lack of belief that defines what an atheist is. "

Denying that all gods are possible is easy.

If you say that there is a God who created everything and that he did so on this Tuesday between Breakfast and Lunch, and that Sasha Grey is his virgin prophet, I think you'll agree that one is easy to disprove.

Having said that one God is impossible, you have refuted the claim that "all gods are possible".

Though I suspect that you miswrote and meant "someone who claims to be an atheist because he asserts all Gods to be impossible."

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For gods to exist, they would have to operate on an entirely different set of physical laws (basically, no physical laws at all!) from those which govern us and the rest of the Universe. They would, therefore, in the process of creating the Universe, have INVENTED all the physical laws which rule the Universe -- physical laws entirely different from the ones under which they, themselves operate.

Now, this IS gods we're talking about, and gods can do anything they want, so if they choose to create a Universe bounded by physical laws, while they themselves are bounded by none, there would be literally nothing to stop them doing so. However, the Universe then created would be so utterly alien that these gods would not be able to "interface" with it at any level, without radical changes to either themselves or the Universe.

Again -- they ARE gods, so they COULD do this. . . but it all begins to become incredibly complicated, doesn't it? If we assume (despite all evidence to the contrary in various holy texts) that these gods are perfect and omniscient, we must ask what they would be hoping to accomplish in the creation of a Universe that was so very much at odds with their own nature.

If we distill this down to a SINGLE god, or God, the question becomes even more pointed. The Bible informs us that God made Man in His own image, and yet this is itself by definition impossible, if God is truly a GOD. If He is something LESS, then the likelihood of Him creating the Universe becomes vanishingly small.

Thus, we are left with a God who, in order to meet that job description, would have to be SO alien to our every possible imagining that He could not interact with this Universe He has supposedly created unless He radically changed either Himself or the Universe, moment to moment, yet we are asked to believe that the Universe was created precisely so that this kind of interaction could occur.

Is it truly "impossible" to dismiss this scenario completely? Perhaps not, yet the likelihood of this being an accurate description of the Universe and its beginnings can be admitted into the discussion ONLY if we admit any and ALL scenarios. We must also accept Santa and the Easter Bunny, as well as every other god and/or goddess ever conceived. ALL origin myths must be given equal play -- and here I find myself turning once again to Bertrand Russell, who observed of the religions of the World, that since they cannot all be right, they must all be wrong.

The evidence that there may be a creative force is the fact that there appears to be an order and purpose within nature, right down to the atomic level. This doesn't prove that a creator exists, but it is precisely what launched mankind into the concept of a God: by observing that around him and seeing clear patterns.

Now whether these patterns are simply the result of random interactions, or have been put in place according to some larger design, or were initiated by an initial sentient driving force, we cannot prove definitively one way or another.

Mr Hawking, a brilliant man, has said that it is entirely possible for everything to have come into existence without any need for a creator, and I believe this is plausible. This does not however prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was/is no creative force at work in the universe.

This is the same sort of egoism that theologians fall prey
to with their conceptions of gods and their relationships
with humans.

Find a disorderly universe for comparison and then this might be a factor. If
not, how do we know it is orderly?

This is the same sort of egoism that theologians fall prey to with their conceptions of gods and their relationships with humans.

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There is no "assumption" that God is perfect and all powerful. That's what the Bible tells us.