To begin with, we need to acknowledge that no matter view of reality we take, we are going to end up lacking a causal explanation at the bottom level. So, if we’re theists and we propose God as a cause of the universe, then we still have an uncaused God. So, I think worrying about it being arbitrary to call the universe a brute fact isn’t that well founded. Whatever the level of reality we bottom out at (God, or the universe) is going to lack a causal explanation.
So, let’s look at our two possibilities for an uncaused bottom level.
God: An uncaused, necessary being which is his own explanation for existing.
A brute fact universe: A universe with some initial state of affairs that has no cause or reason to have been. It simply is.
Now we will try to decide which one we think is more plausibly the case. I can think of three ways to examine them.
1.) Is either one self-contradictory? It doesn’t seem to me like either is. So we move along.
2.) Does one option seem intuitively more attractive than the other? In my view, not really. Both a brute fact and a necessary being are quite different than things I’m familiar with or have experience with. So, I don’t really feel excited about jumping head first into accepting either one. Both are fairly unintuitive to me, so I want something else to help render one more or less appealing.
3.) Does one view match up more accurately with what I see in the world? If we have a universe that is caused by a necessary being (so, let’s think omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) I have some expectations of what the world would look like. Does the world I see match those expectations? Not particularly. Throw in some evidentiary problem of evil here. I find what I see in the world renders the idea of a necessary being more implausible to me.
Does a brute fact universe do any better though? I think so. I would expect a brute universe to (in most ways) appear to be average. So, not minimally great not maximally bad. Not maximally elegant nor maximally ugly. This seems to more accurately represent what I do see. The universe has some good, some bad. Some beauty, some harshness. Some elegant physical laws, some mind numbingly complex and ugly physical laws.
So, with that said, I would say the existence of brute facts seems more plausible to me than the alternative. I’m not troubled by lacking some causal grounding, because I was never going to get that anyways. All I’ve given up that theism would offer me is an explanation for each thing. I do intuitively want an explanation for things. However, that missing explanation that theism offers me (a necessary being that is the explanation of its own existence) isn’t intuitively satisfying to me anyways. So, no matter what I choose I’m left with no causal bottom, and I’m left with something not intuitively satisfying, but at least the brute fact view seems to match on to what I’d expect to see in the world, while the necessary being does not. So, for that reason, the brute fact is more attractive to me.