Is it reasonable to deduce God from order in Nature?

[marco]

Is it reasonable to look at a lamb and deduce that God set the production of sheep in motion through his wonderful love. Blake wondered why the God who made the lamb also made the tiger to kill it.

When we see the operation of flowers, the human eye, the spider's web... some of us conclude there is a God who fashioned them. How else did they come about?

Thus God is the product of our ignorance. We do not know - ergo God.

Is this a reasonable position to hold?

Should we expect more definite signs of our maker?

And if we accept that some Intelligence made everything, how do we reconcile this Intelligence with the Titan of the Old Testament, hung up on sex, sin and sacrifice?

[marco]

Is the question whether this is an accurate account of the origins of religion? No. Religion's origin was not a inference from the empirical world.

We could discuss this alternative view of an alternative OP interestingly elsewhere, Liam.

Hung up on sex? Is what is meant by this merely that God imposes boundaries within which sex is not only permissible but necessary?

God, for me, imposes no boundaries but the Biblical authors do since the hang-ups are their own. In any event it is not a criticism of boundaries, which of course are morally necessary. Having bits of male genitalia as part of a divine contract; having brothers ashamed of seeing their father naked and a father cursing a son because he did so; having a man take his errant daughter to the "good men" of the village to be stoned; having the idiot Lot offer his own daughter as a sexual plaything ....
this is the sort of thing I had in mind.

And when we study the N.t. theology, it seems that the death of Christ was not a matter of appeasing an angry deity with blood, but with the mystical union with Christ whereby our sinful nature, both the wayward will and the corruptible body, die and are, with Christ, reborn.

You digress into a personal view with which I have no sympathy. We can make of Christ's death whatever we want but it is a great chariot journey away from the God of Reason.

Though animal sacrifice was perhaps a poor expression on the part of man to express this, nevertheless God may very well have used it because it led to a deeper a truth.

When we attempt to guess what God was up to we are bound to fail, I think. The next step is to set him in a play with a couple of human actors and a bowl of fruit. Then we can get back to the OP.

[marco]

So while we have the presumption of a deterministic universe as an alternative metaphysical theory, it lacks that element of personal experience and verification which the view of a fundamentally conscious nature to reality has. The former is merely a negation of what we know and experience, while the latter extrapolates from it.

You make much of choice and the donator of choice. In our little arena we can walk in certain ways and work with what we have. We were set in motion before we had any say and our motion generally stops without our consent. We have the semblance of freedom like animals in a zoological park. Our thoughts are restricted to what bits and pieces we have been given.

Additionally, you use the pronoun "we" as if there were uniformity of possession. There isn't. Many are broken toys. Should we deduce an incompetent craftsman?

[Mithrae]

So while we have the presumption of a deterministic universe as an alternative metaphysical theory, it lacks that element of personal experience and verification which the view of a fundamentally conscious nature to reality has. The former is merely a negation of what we know and experience, while the latter extrapolates from it.

You make much of choice and the donator of choice. In our little arena we can walk in certain ways and work with what we have. We were set in motion before we had any say and our motion generally stops without our consent. We have the semblance of freedom like animals in a zoological park. Our thoughts are restricted to what bits and pieces we have been given.

Additionally, you use the pronoun "we" as if there were uniformity of possession. There isn't. Many are broken toys. Should we deduce an incompetent craftsman?

There are fairly large parts of the universe for which my choices are not the causal mechanism. And there are also other humans who apparently have no capacity to even make their own choices, yes. But neither of these provides us with any evidence or understanding of some hypothetical causal mechanism other than choice. We know only that there are things not caused by human choice. So what is more reasonable: To propose without evidence some entirely novel mechanism, or to suppose that if something isn't caused by human will, it's probably some other kind of will instead?

[marco]

So what is more reasonable: To propose without evidence some entirely novel mechanism, or to suppose that if something isn't caused by human will, it's probably some other kind of will instead?

You imply that the second is more reasonable but I don't agree. You want God to be on the same continuum as humanity, just more advanced. He is not remotely in physical evidence; he is called into existence to fit on to a scale of which we are part. If he is an uncaused creator beyond our temporal existence, then deductions about him based on what we know of our finite world are unjustified.

It is philosophically optimistic to suppose that what we know now covers all bases and deductions can be made confidently from the bank of knowledge available. Maybe this is true in mathematics; it surely does not apply to crossing boundaries from our finite system into a stranger one. We already know that common sense assumptions made about the infinite are flawed.

[Mithrae]

So what is more reasonable: To propose without evidence some entirely novel mechanism, or to suppose that if something isn't caused by human will, it's probably some other kind of will instead?

You imply that the second is more reasonable but I don't agree. You want God to be on the same continuum as humanity, just more advanced. He is not remotely in physical evidence; he is called into existence to fit on to a scale of which we are part. If he is an uncaused creator beyond our temporal existence, then deductions about him based on what we know of our finite world are unjustified.

It is philosophically optimistic to suppose that what we know now covers all bases and deductions can be made confidently from the bank of knowledge available. Maybe this is true in mathematics; it surely does not apply to crossing boundaries from our finite system into a stranger one. We already know that common sense assumptions made about the infinite are flawed.

There might be some miscommunication here - I don't view "reasonable" as meaning the same thing as "known with deductive certainty." I'm simply applying Ockham's razor to the question: When we see apparent order or design in reality - whether at atomic or biological or cosmic levels - invoking some kind of deterministic causal mechanism to explain it seems to be unnecessary if an alternative, the causal mechanism which we live and experience every day, might provide an equally satisfactory explanation. It's nothing approaching proof or knowledge, just the more reasonable view.

[Willum]

If I read your title, and not your OP, we can propose this:

Imagine an extremely large expanse of homogeneous matter. Random fluctuations cause local areas of high density which radiate, cooling it locally. Matter tends to follow up by grouping there.

These areas become larger and larger forming a locus. Those that spin without falling apart tend to stabilize and grow. Thus mass coalescences in equilibrium.

Angular momentum causes densities to separate. Gravity causes them to coalesce so we wind up with a large center of mass in the center, which eventually forms a star, and rocky inner planets sweep tracks nearby. Less intense densities form further out - the gas giants...

And thus order is born from chaos, without a lick of intelligence.

[dio9]

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?

And where were you when babies were gassed in the Holocaust?


If we were created to be reviled by the creator, to be mocked for our ignorance and to be addressed in boast, then what was the purpose? Job is an illustration of all that is mean in the God of the OT. Fortunately he is a pantomime character, not the author of the Milky Way. He is the nightmare that emerged from nomadic minds. We may be ignorant of our origins; but surely we are not fictions.

when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings[a] shouted for joy?

The atheist Shelley, whose half-eaten corpse was thrown on an Italian coast when he drowned, wrote better lyrics than the dumb morning stars. Given the brutal destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, these lines that speak of joy sound insane.

The Christian answer is ; something is wrong with people. The humans were driven out of the garden where dwelled the rest of creation. Only humans would commit genocide . And again it was the people of Sodom not nature brought the judgement of God on themselves .
In the wisdom of Pogo it is written ' we have found the enemy and it is us."

Biblically speaking , in the garden story people are outcast from nature . Good nature being the garden . Nature is as good as God. Indeed humans were created to be even more so , "very good" in the very image of God but betrayed the promise of God and themselves. In other words even though we are of nature according to scripture people are bastard sons worse than nature So People have to learn about God through nature , Indeed Paul; Romans 1:20 wrote we can behold the glory of God in the things that he has made. He doesn't say we can learn about God through people. He says people are sinners. Evil only dwells in the mind and heart of outcast Man and good nature suffers waiting for the appearance of "very good " man. Jesus wept.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 17 by dio9]

Only humans would commit genocide .

Only humans would commit genocide, with direction from God.

Read the Bible and finish your sentences, please.
If the Canaan had genocide committed upon them by the Hebrew, which didn't actually happen, then God directed them to do it.

I guess since it was made up, neither God nor those people who would become Jewish committed genocide, but it does invalidate any substance to the OT.

Pick your poison - all roads, as they usually do, lead to the truth. Both declare the OT a fallacy.

[marco]

I'm simply applying Ockham's razor to the question: When we see apparent order or design in reality - whether at atomic or biological or cosmic levels - invoking some kind of deterministic causal mechanism to explain it seems to be unnecessary if an alternative, the causal mechanism which we live and experience every day, might provide an equally satisfactory explanation. It's nothing approaching proof or knowledge, just the more reasonable view.

Ockham's razor cuts wonderfully well when applied to questions of an earthly nature. Extrapolation from what we do here to what might be in another dimension isn't covered by his razor. Basically you are saying: we observe this is how things work here; therefore it is reasonable to believe they work in the same way elsewhere. That's fine, except that we haven't a clue what exists, how it exists, why it exists in some non-physical dimension. So imposing rules doesn't seem reasonable at all. I am not denying that there is possibility of similarity, only that it is merely a useless guess.


Worse still is to allow a sentient, merciful, loving being to occupy the empty space and act accordingly.

[marco]

And thus order is born from chaos, without a lick of intelligence.

Order is a function of chaos, observable as a freak formation. But order begets order and all we need is a very long period for lucky variations to occur. We may well be that lucky variation.

Man's need to explain can just as well invent a god. It may be that neither explanation - God or luck - is near the truth and - amazing though it is - we are not sophisticated enough to come up with the truth or the proof. It would be sad and silly if Yahweh was that truth.