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]

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 .

Why did God's "judgement" against wickedness stop thousands of years ago? Sodom and Noah's Ark suggest a bad builder. Why kick the toys for the toymaker's mistakes?
Incidentally, many animals kill and even eat their own kind.

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.

Some think that there exists Satan in whose heart evil dwells. Before and after Jesus there were good men. I believe there existed and there exist people every bit as nice as Christ seems to have been. They don't all get themselves into trouble as he did.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

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?

Think of the war between order and disorder as a battle between two armies. War is disorder. And yet it is clear that one of two things will occur. One army will prevail, and peace, or order, will be the outcome. The other possibility is that the two armies will totally annihilate each other. The result will be the same. Order will be the out come.

Physicists predict that the early universe should have produced roughly equal amount of matter and anti-matter. Two armies that will totally annihilate each other on contact. From the perspective of living things this represents total chaos. Total disorder. Eventually however matter seems to have prevailed over anti-matter. The universe is by no means a peaceful place even today. And yet enough order now prevails for our sort of life to have formed. Because order (peace) will eventually come from chaos.

This SEEMS to contradict the second law of thermodynamics, which states that just the opposite effect occurs. But in terms of the 2nd law, the universe was at it's maximum moment of order at the moment of the big bang, when everything was one thing. Life could not have existed in such a condition. Everything that has occurred since then was as a result of a loss of that perfect order. From the point of view of life however, no life was possible until the universe reach the necessary level of lack of conflict; in other words became peaceful enough for life to exist.

So is order an indication of the existence of God? If order (peace) did not occur naturally then we would not be here to ask such questions.

[Mithrae]

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.

We meaning you and I, sure. There are others who do claim to have caught some glimpse of a higher reality through spiritual insights (and even some folk arrogant enough to imagine that they really understand it ). While many such claims may be fraudulent or delusional, short of presupposing that such insights are impossible or assuming that they must be competing monolithic paradigms rather than complementary glimpses, I don't see any basis for rejecting all such claims.

But even so far as the empirical argument goes it's a bit more than a useless guess. Looking back through some of my earlier posts on the forum, it seems I've so far mentioned only one of three (at least) sides to this issue:

1 > Ontological extrapolation/Ockham's razor, as we've discussed: When we know and experience our own nature as thinking/choosing beings, it is less reasonable to postulate novel types of being unless and until it could actually be shown that thought and choice are not part of their nature, which so far hasn't been done.

2 > The problem of consciousness created by proposing a non-conscious reality: How could non-conscious matter produce conscious experience? Vague appeals to 'emergence' from the complexity of neural networks aside, that's a thorny question which we really don't have an answer to yet, and may never have.

3 > The explanatory scope of memetic variation, in contrast to the numerous 'laws' which must be invoked by materialist theories: Setting aside the complex notion of Christianity's omni- omni- omni- God, the only simple-to-complex mechanisms we can imagine are those which involve selection from reproducible variation, and the only examples known to us are the genetic variation of living matter and the memetic variation of thoughts. Thus the latter provides a more satisfying theoretical basis for explaining our complex reality than invoking numerous 'laws' governing stuff's behaviour.


Again, I wouldn't consider these to be anything along the lines of proof, but from a 50/50 baseline of conscious vs. non-conscious realities, the view of consciousness being intrinsic to reality would easily rise to a 60 or 70% 'probability' in light of these observations, and hence a very reasonable conclusion to reach.

[dio9]

[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.

In every case it is people who do the dirty work not lions and tigers and bears.
Some things we see omnipresent are maleness and femaleness each with an invisible mind directing force instinct or principle and a a physical responding body called a soul. Maleness / femaleness ,minds / bodies continuous unbroken ceaseless ongoing through time and nature.
This driving force is realized from the beginning of the universe . Can we deduce this driving force to be of God goodness or what have you? This relationship is embodied in the soul of all things its what makes the world go round.

[Kenisaw]

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.

Someone already asked Liam how he would know. He never answered, but the question is worth discussing.

Seeing how gods are always used as an explanation for things, and are always the reason behind things, it is only logical to conclude that the questions "why?" and "how come?" were asked beforehand. Given the curious nature of humans, it is entirely plausible that humans have asked these questions for as long as they could deem to ask them. Gods are the result that the human mind came up with because it needed an answer, could not find the answer, and removed the scary topics of life from the "don't know" box to the "now I can feel better" box...

[Monta]

[Replying to post 21 by marco]


"Some think that there exists Satan in whose heart evil dwells. Before and after Jesus there were good men. I believe there existed and there exist people every bit as nice as Christ seems to have been. They don't all get themselves into trouble as he did."

Really? Look at unjust laws today.
You can go to prison for questioning some historical claims.
As a human race we are going backwards.

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 21 by marco]


"Some think that there exists Satan in whose heart evil dwells. Before and after Jesus there were good men. I believe there existed and there exist people every bit as nice as Christ seems to have been. They don't all get themselves into trouble as he did."

Really? Look at unjust laws today.
You can go to prison for questioning some historical claims.
As a human race we are going backwards.

Really, we are going backwards? The most personal freedom humans have ever enjoyed, the most knowledge we've ever had, advances that improved the standards of living for the whole species. I have to take exception to that statement. I realize you probably mean morally or some other subjective standard, but still...

[Mithrae]

Gods are the result that the human mind came up with because it needed an answer, could not find the answer, and removed the scary topics of life from the "don't know" box to the "now I can feel better" box...

Of course, a religious person might respond that

Naturalistic theories for the origin of religion are the result that the human mind came up with because it needed an answer, could not find the answer, and removed the scary topics of life from the "don't know" box to the "now I can feel better" box...

[marco]

So is order an indication of the existence of God? If order (peace) did not occur naturally then we would not be here to ask such questions.

If we are toys in motion, dancing a seemingly pointless dance, we demand a toy-maker to give us meaning and hope. Much depends on how we see ourselves and the importance we place on specks of dust. It is sad perhaps to think we are simply an extension of a cabbage leaf, to wither in time. Hope may create God but it cannot give him reality or truth.

[marco]

[Replying to post 23 by Mithrae]



It is NOT less reasonable to postulate novel types of being because that is precisely what God seems to be. He is not part of any physical continuum, so why suppose that what works for us, works for God? Does he have arms and legs, and is he visible?

Worrying about consciousness is a smaller problem than imagining God. Consciousness comes with being alive; where it comes from is an unknown or a question for philosophy.

Memetic variation is the stuff of further speculation. Nice idea but irrelevant.

There is no rise to 60% or 70% probability since such numbers are meaningless. I repeat that when we are making guesses about another world, we cannot assume that what applies here applies there. If this were so we would expect to see God wandering around scratching his head.