No. I can't speak for other Christians of course but for myself it is not an assumption. I have enough personal evidence for God to know that God exists. It is the same as knowing that I exist, that people I can see and feel exist. I don't assume I exist, nor do I assume that my family exists...I know they exist.
Personal evidence is the cry of every believer in every god and every religion. As such, it seems as unreliable as the evidence shows it to be. Personal evidence was the plea of those who wrote the Bible as it was with the author of Oahspe, the Book of Mormon and the Qur'an. But we need not look simply to cries of spirituality to try to assess the validity of such personal experiences because personal experiences apply to more than just religious beliefs.
So let us look to some examples of personal experience which were subject to specific analysis.
Members of the University of Wisconsin La Crosse team were recently subjects of a study to determine the validity of their personal experiences. They were first shown a video touting the performance benefits to be gained by utilizing superoxygenated water. They were then divided into two groups. Group A received superoxygenated water while Group B received only standard bottled water. Then both groups ran a 5K. Then the water provided was switched so that Group B received the superoxygenated water and Group A drank only standard bottled water. Overall, the subjects drinking the superoxygenated water shaved an average of 83 to 142 seconds off their time as compared to when they drank bottled water. The telling factor here is that while convincing, the video the subjects watched was a phony and the "superoxygenated" water they drank was simply tap water with no performance enhancing ability. Their "personal experiences" told them that they could run faster if they drank superoxygenated water and because they believed this, their performance increased, even though they were drinking only normal water.
Several decades ago the medical industry was being pressed to develop a surgery to reduce the suffering of angina pectoris, (pain in the chest due to insufficient circulation to the heart muscle). A procedure was developed wherein the mammary artery was tied off. It was hoped that this would increase blood pressure to the coronary arteries and initial patients reported substantial pain relief after receiving the surgery. Then a double-blind study was performed. Half of the patients scheduled for surgery received the full procedure. The other half received only an incision to give the appearance of surgery. It was found that all of the subjects reported the same degree of relief from pain, even though half had not received any medical procedure which could account for a reduction in pain. Their subjective experience told them that the procedure worked, even though half of them only believed they had received the surgery while indeed, they had not.
So a new procedure was developed. In the new procedure the mammary artery was severed and the end sewn into a depression cut into the heart muscle. It was hoped that the artery would grow and branch into the surrounding myocardium, thereby providing additional circulation to the muscle. Patients provided feedback indicating marvelous success. But years later when some of the patients receiving this procedure died, the autopsies revealed that the artery did not grow, did not branch, and therefore, did not provide the increased circulation hoped for. The indications of success were based on the personal experiences of the patients and those experiences turned out to be wrong.
Another recent study invoved 266 sufferers of chronic arm pain. They were divided into two groups. The first group was to receive a new acupuncture technique while the second group would be provided with a new drug therapy. Prior to the test, each subject was asked to rate their pain on a scale of 1 to 10. Then they were advised of potential side-effects from the treatments they would be receiving. After the treatments started 25% of the acupuncture group reported experiencing the pain, swelling and redness they had been advised might be a side effect of the acupuncture. Thirty-one percent of the group receiving drug therapy reported suffering the side-effects they had been warned of and three of those suffered so acutely that when a reduced dosage failed to relieve the side-effects, they withdrew from the study. At the conclusion of the 8-week study all of the remaining test subjects were again asked to rate their pain on a scale from 1 to 10. Overall, those receiving acupuncture reported a reduction of 2.64 while those receiving medication reported a reduction of 1.5.
Of course the interesting part of the study is that it wasn't a study of pain relieving procedures. It was actually a study of placebo effect -- personal experience, following suggestion. The acupuncture needles were special retracting needles. While it looked like they penetrated the skin, the skin was never punctured. The drug therapy consisted of small blue pills which looked similar to amitriptyline, but containing nothing but colored corn starch.
These are but a few of the experiments which outline the reliability of personal experiences.
Creationists are not the ones that need to prove anything. In the Christian worldview, evidence is provided by the intelligibility of the universe and our ability to understand that in the first place.
Which again is subjective and therefore, not subject to demonstration to those outside of the Christian world view. What's more, many within the Christian world view do not subscribe to the same events of creation. As such, it is nothing more than a belief and one for which the evidence speaks clearly to the contrary.
The Creationist is working in their worldview and you as an unbeliever are working in yours. Your worldview holds that there is no Creator. No evidence I can give nor any other Creationist can give would change that worldview due to your presuppositional view that there is no Creator.
The world view of the Creationist isn't supported by any matter of credible evidence. That of the non-believer is soundly backed by testable, repeatable and demonstrable evidence. It doesn't rely upon personal subjective opinion and proclamations of "personal experiences".
The entire argument hinges upon assumption on the part of the unbeliever that there is no Creator.
This is not simple assumption. It is what the evidence suggests. And while you may not subscribe to evidence; evidence is still the fundamental element without which science finds no suggestion of anything. Take away the evidence of unicorns and we find no reason to believe that unicorns exist. Take away the evidence of gremlins, and despite what pilots sometimes presented as their "personal experiences", we find no reason to believe that gremlins exist. But the story for creationists is substantially worse than for believers in unicorns and gremlins. Not only do they have to contend with a complete lack of credible evidence for their beliefs, but there is also a growing mountain of evidence showing mechanisms which eliminate the supposed need for a creator. So the evidence is not only non-existent in support of their beliefs, but evidence also exists to demonstrate those beliefs to be wrong. So the claim that it is only an assumption that there is no creator is simply a misapplied assertion.
The Christian worldview hinges upon the knowledge of God, which can not be an assumption if they know. Now if there is a Christian that believes rather than knows of God it could be an assumption based on a belief but that again comes down to the persons worldview.
As long as believers continue to utilize the word "know" or derivatives of the word, we can be assured that their argument is lacking. One's personal subjective experiences can never properly be referred to as "knowledge", no matter how strongly the individual believes in them. Were anyone to suggest that knowledge can be attained through personal subjective opinion in the absence of corroborating evidence, we would be forced to admit that the believers of each and every god and each and every religion are correct, despite the fact that many of these beliefs contradict one another. The fact is, these are no examples of "knowledge", concerning creationism, but only of belief. Using the word "knowledge" is an attempt to strengthen an argument which is otherwise devoid of strength.
As far as the Creationists worldveiw, it is not resting on an unproven premise. The uniformity and knowability of the world is what it rests upon.
It is most certainly resting, not only on an unproven premise, but an unprovable one. And again we see a claim of "knowledge" where nothing but "belief" can be properly applied. If we are to accept the Creationists claims of knowledge then we must also accept the same claims from Muslims, Buddhists and even those such as David Koresh who presented personal experience as their proof of the "knowledge" they proclaimed to hold.
Creation is not self-refuting in any way. How do you assume it is?
This was explained and sits perfectly within the logic provided. Creationists claim that existence of the universe is evidence of creation. It is their claim that without a creator, the products of creation cannot exist. Thusly, anything which exists is evidence of a creator. But this creates a contradiction for them because they then insist that the creator himself, was not created and has no need for a creator. The argument becomes; "All things must be created and are therefore, evidence of a creator... except the creator." Making an arbitrary exception for the creator is known as "special pleading". And special pleading is a logical fallacy. It demonstrates the lack of validity to the whole assertion.
If everything requires a creator then that assertion also applies to the creator. If the creator does not himself require a creator, then the supposed objects of his creation do not require a creator. In short, if a creator can exist without a creator, then so can the universe itself.
It is not anymore contradictive to come to the conclusion that God was uncreated than to come to the conclusion that life comes from non-living matter.
This is incorrect because we can peer into the components of living matter and we find that it is composed, at its base level, of the same elements as are contained in non-living matter. What's more, we can watch as elements of non-living matter are converted into components of living matter. Research has succeeded in assembling a number of non-living, (non-biological), components, and facilitating the spontaneous assembly into cell-like structures which can replicate utilizing outside forces and which engage in Darwinian competition for resources.
It is clear that everything became in the first place so it holds that is not a stretch to believe it was created.
This is not clear. To assume that everything became, is to assume a period of nothingness, (aside from the Creationists special exception for their supposed creator). Yet nothingness has never been witnessed and, of course, cannot be witnessed. The mere existence of a witness defeats the concept of nothingness. But to perceive that there must have been a period of nothingness suggests that somehow, nothingness results in a lack of nothingness, and as the mechanism for this, creationists insert a creator. But it is far more logical to note that there is no reason that nothingness is a more likely default state than somethingness. We never see anything created, we only see transformations. And we know the universe is undergoing constant transformation and have evidence of a substantial transformation known as the Big Bang. That doesn't mean the universe didn't exist before that transformation, it simply means it existed in a different form. And while we have substantial evidence to conclude that the universe has always existed in one form or another, we have absolutely no evidence to suggest that there was ever a period or "time", if you will, when it did not exist. And if the universe has always existed, then it requires no creator.
There was a time when even time did not exist. So the created came from the uncreated in your worldview. That defies logic.
Your first failed assumption is that there was a period when the universe did not exist. You can't demonstrate any truth to this or any evidence which suggests this to be true. "Time" is a component of the universe in its current configuration so utilizing the word "time" becomes confusing. You suggest a creator which was not created, then insist that the universe must have had a creator. If your creator does not require a creator, then neither does the universe. Your special pleading exposes the fallacy of your assertions.
Simply saying that the world "came about" is circumventing the argument; it is in evidence that the world as it exists has not always existed. So logically, it was created or to be put another way, came into being.
The key here is the phrase, "as it exists". Certainly the Earth has not always existed as we know it today. But there is zero evidence that the components from which the Earth is formed have not always existed. So logically, what you are referring to as "creation" is in fact, only transformation. And gravity accounts for the mechanism of that transformation which means there is no need for any unseen, outside force, such as the creator you're attempting to invent.