I am trying create a logical approach to the question of whether there's a creator or not, but I have a few questions. Before that though, I'll outline what I have currently:
Something started everything. That something is the prime mover, or unmoved mover, as Aristotle called it. That something may be external or it may be the universe itself; in which case, the universe is its own starter. The universe being its own cause may seem impossible, but when dealing with subjects like these, at the edge of and beyond our existence (and therefore comprehension), ineffable possibilities must be considered. If time is circular, then the last moment of the universe starts the first moment of the universe, and in such an event, the universe creates itself.
So, that's the first dichotomous question. Was the universe started by something outside of the universe, or did the universe start itself? Is an external force the prime mover, or is the universe itself the prime mover? Then comes the second dichotomous question: is the prime mover conscious or not? Now, exactly what consciousness is, is a scientific, semantic and philosophical mess. So, for the purposes of simplicity and universality, I've defined conscious as any level of experience (and thus awareness). If the prime mover experiences existence, it is to some degree aware of existence, and is therefore by my definition of consciousness, conscious.
So, the prime mover may be conscious, or it may not. If the former, there is a creator, if the latter, there is not. Again, for simplicity, I'm defining the creator as the conscious prime mover. The prime mover may not have consciously created the universe, but if they are conscious, and they created it, then they are the creator. Here's a diagram.
My original thought was then that this means there's a 50% chance of there being a creator and a 50% that there isn't one. This is based on the fact that the creator is not necessarily bound by our universe. They are not necessarily materialistic. As such, for both of those reasons, we may not have access to any information regarding the probability of whether there's a creator or not. There may not exist any possible proof (if going by our current understanding and knowledge, there are no proofs that could prove a creator, though the possibility of a currently ineffable proof provided by the creator themselves must be considered). Science deals strictly with the falsifiable and material, so there's no help there either. Essentially, we have no objective information supporting one side or the other. Because of that, the probability of what the correct answer is is dictated by the number of options. There are two options, as such, the probability of either being correct is 50%.
Alright, so here are the questions:
What if there exists another possibility; a superposition between the existence and non-existence of a creator. This, to our human logic, seems impossible. However, quantum mechanics showed us that our human logic is not the supreme truth, by showing us completely absurd truths. If a particle can exist in a superposition between to states, why can't the creator exist in a superposition between existence and non-existence? As stated before, ineffable possibilities must be considered due to the subject matter.
To expand on this further, what if neither is true? This seems utterly impossible to me. If the prime mover isn't conscious, non-conscious nor in a superposition of the two, then what is it? Either something is conscious or non-conscious, or both, right? Well again, surely the principle of the possibility of ineffability applies here too?
Lastly, I have a question that is kind of mathematical, but I believe philosophical as well. If no information is available on a question, except the number of possible answers (n-amount), isn't then the probability of any given answer being correct 1/n? Probability is dictated by our knowledge reference, and when we have no other knowledge than the number of possible answers, won't the probability be based solely on that? Furthermore, what if we know about a certain number of possible answers, but we also know there might be more possible answers, but we don't know what those other possible answers are, nor how many there are? Is the probability of any of the known answers then changed? Since we don't know about the contents or the number of the unknown possible answers, surely they make up the "outside region" of our knowledge reference, and thus do not factor in on the probability? As such, the ineffable answers of "both" and "neither" may exist outside of our knowledge reference, and therefore not play in on the probabilities. If they don't, the probability of either answer remains 50%. If they do, then it is changed to 33.33% or 25%, depending on if one or both of them are factored in.
EDIT:
@armand had a comment with a very important criticism. There may not be a prime mover at all. Now, this is something I had considered before, in combination with the assumption of a definite start point for the universe. How there cannot be a prime mover if the universe has a start point perplexes me, as then the universe would be its own starter? However, there is the possibility of a universe with no definite start point, but rather with an infinite causal chain. As such, I must change my model to fit this.
Here's the new diagram.
With this new possibility, there's only a 50% chance that there is a prime mover in the first place, which means there's a 25% chance that there is a creator. And that's without taking into account the other potential possibilities, such as the superposition and the neither option.
Then there's a criticism to be had about the variety of ways to define consciousness. I am aware that consciousness is so ill-defined that it pretty much means nothing, and my definition of it in this post is arbitrarily subjective. However, it doesn't really matter. One can define the creator as whatever one wants, and the argument remains the same; since we don't have any evidence supporting the existence or non-existence of a creator (however one defines creator within the plethora possible interpretations of consciousness and creation), the likelihood that this creator exists will be equal to 1 divided by the number of options, which according to this post is known to be between 2 to 4. However, I am open to the possibility that even more possibilities exist, though I don't know how this possibility plays in on the probabilities of the options.
However, there's a problem with this Bayesian approach to probability as far as I'm aware. Since, in the absence of information, the number of possibilities creates the likelihood for any of them being true (given our knowledge reference), then any dichotomy, however absurd, would create a 50% of either absurd and arbitrary option being true.
For example, let's ask this question: "Is the creator a cat?" If we take it as a yes or no question (let's ignore the superposition and neither options, as the question still holds), then there's a 50% chance of either being true. But here's the thing, what if the creator has no body? That's another dichotomy; "does the creator have a body or not?" For it to be a cat, it must have a body, so then the probability falls to 25%. But the original dichotomy still holds, and 50% != 25%. Well, I think I actually answered this question as I wrote it.
It depends on how you define a cat. Is a cat necessarily material? Some would look at a "cat soul" as a cat, whereas some wouldn't. If a cat soul is a cat, then the creator may be a cat whether they have a body or not. As such, the probability remains 50%. If one defines a cat as necessarily material, then the aforementioned dichotomy is only a linguistic dichotomy, but not a logical dichotomy. Given a materialistic definition of a cat, two criteria must be met for the statement of "the creator is a cat" to be true. Those two criteria are; "the creator is material and the creator is a cat". So then the question is, where do those criteria point to? Well, they point to collections of possibilities. The first criterium points to collection of two possibilities; "material or not material". The second criterium points to yet another collection of two possibilities; "cat or not a cat". Given that the latter is dependent on the former, the probability then becomes 25%. So, the probability is not equal to the number of options in the sentence, but rather equal to the product of the respective probabilities of the respective criteria being correct, those probabilities being dictated by the amount of parallel possibilities there exists to the respective criteria.
So then comes the question of intersectionality. What if one poses the same question, but with a different object? "What if the creator is a dog?". That too has either a 50% or 25% of being correct, depending on if one necessitates a dog to be material. "What if the creator is a chimpanzee?" Suddenly there's three options, all (if given the former definition) 50% likely. One can continue like this infinitely, going through the infinitely long list possible conscious objects, which then creates 0% that the creator is just a cat. If all the other options are 50% likely, and infinity divided by 0.5 is still infinity, then there's 100% that the creator is one of those infinitely many options. However, if the creator is both a cat and a dog at the same time, for example, is it still a cat or a dog? Some would say no. Again, we return to the question of definition. If one defines a cat as being solely a cat, then there is a 0% chance that the creator is a cat. This is because the criterium of them being a cat exists alongside infinitely many parallel possibilities, and if the definition of a cat is that it is solely a cat, then the creator cannot be cat, because that means that infinitely many possible options happened to not be the case, which is impossible (in math at least). Therefore, if the probabilities of 50% or 25% is to hold for the creator being a cat, or a dog, or whatever, the definitions of these must allow for intersectionality, due to their infinite competition.
Now, this actually means that given our knowledge reference, there's a 0% that the creator is any one thing, and a 100% that they are everything, because infinity minus anything finite is still infinity. So, no matter how many things the creator may be, there's still infinitely many other things they may be, leaving a 100% chance that they're something else as well. Adding that "something else" still leaves an infinite amount of possibilities left, which means the probability is still 100%.
I hope that came out clearly.
EDIT 2:
I made an assumption when assuming that the creator can be infinitely many different objects. Since the creator is by definition conscious, this consciousness may put restrictions upon the things it can be. Certain arrangements of matter, energy or whatever else the creator may be made of, may not allow consciousness. As such, this is another dichotomy; is there a finite or infinite number of objects of which the creator can be? If the former, than it is only extremely unlikely for the creator to be solely a cat. If the latter, then it is impossible for the creator to be one thing only, and necessary for the creator to be everything at the same time. So, if one assumes the creator exists, then there's a 50% that the creator is everything and 50% chance the creator is not everything.