Prager's God of the Gaps

I think you went farther than you intended, if taken literally when you said "the atheist should propose that the universe came into being by natural processes"

When you say "came into being", you don't mean literally, "came out of nothing". The universe "just is" - isn't this your view?

Mark,
Thank you for your comment. In one sense, yes the universe "just is", that is my view. Now, I am not a theoretical physicist nor astronomer, nor are these topics on the top of my interest list. Through casual reading I have heard that people like Stephen Hawking have proposed that there may be multiple universes, and that universes may give birth to other universes.

IF this were true, then one might rightly ask, what caused the first universe? Ultimately we just don't know. The point of my "Prager's God of the Gaps" post is that just because science cannot explain everything, does not mean that by default the concept of God adequately fills in the gap.
Sheldon