Evidence for God #1

[DaveD49]

Two of the constant things I have heard from atheists on other sites is that first "There is no proof of God" and "There is no evidence for God". The first can be dismissed because to the total impossibility of there being "proof". The ONLY things that can be scientifically proven are within the universe. Anything outside of the universe or non-physical can only be theorized about, but NO "theory" is proof of anything. So, just as there can be no "proof" for God, nor can there be proof of alternate universes, membranes producing endless universes, etc. etc. In as far as the second assertion, that there is no evidence for God, that one is blatantly false as evidence for Him exists in many, many different categories. It is my intention to list some of them one at a time so as to get everyone's reaction as to the viability or lack thereof of the evidence presented. I realize that some, if not all, of these you have heard before and may have actually responded to. I already listed a few of the in a response to a earlier question, but I think that they will only get the attention they deserve if listed individually.

Topic for Debate: Do you agree or disagree with the following being evidence for the existence of God?
In answering please state clearly whether you agree or disagree
Your reasoning for doing so
Please rate from 1 to 10 with 10 being the strongest what you feel the strength of the evidence is.
If you have something further to add please let me know.

#1 The Existence of Scientific Laws

Everything about mathematics involves intelligence. One cannot add 1+1 without the intelligence to do so. Randomness cannot produce intelligence. No matter how many monkeys you have banging away on typewriters for whatever length of time, it is highly unlikely that any of them will ever produce the complete works of Shakespeare. They won’t produce even one of his sonnets. But even if they did that would be a semblance of intelligence, not the real thing. Intelligence would only be shown if the task could be repeated many times.

Therefore, the very existence of scientific LAWS, such as the Law of Gravity or the Law of Thermodynamics, is firm evidence of an intelligent being who is in some way responsible for the existence of everything. In our society are human laws just random words on a piece of paper? No. They show purpose and meaning which positively proves an intelligence behind them. In reality man-made "laws" are not laws at all, but rather rules which can be broken. However scientific laws can not be broken thus making them unlike civil laws. But they BOTH show a purpose. But in the case of scientific laws without them the universe could never exist. There is no reason why a universe created by randomness should be compelled to obey ANY laws, let alone display complex mathematics. Intelligence is absolutely necessary.

[DaveD49]

To address this point:

First off I chose to use the green because of situations such has this where trying to reply to one section of the dialogue at a time,

If the aim is readability, my suggestion is to elide all non-relevant portions of quoted text, rather than to simply use a different coloured text. There’s a limit of ten nested quotes in any post, and I’ve noticed that many posts on the forum quickly become tiresomely long well before that limit’s reached.

Note how the remainder of my post is constructed, as an example. Yes, it’s more work (and benefits from using the ‘Preview’ function to catch coding errors), but the result is that more people will read your posts, rather than be put off by post length).

(Further: if you wish to respond to several points from a single post, you could always cut and paste them into a series of posts. That keeps the readability and also allows debaters to move on from resolved arguments and concentrate on just the more contentious parts.)

The fact that the universe runs by these laws and that these laws have existed from the beginning of the universe's time-line is evidence that a mega-intelligence was responsible in some way for the beginning of the universe.

<snip>

Man did not create these formulas as they were present almost at the very beginning of the universe.

<bolding mine>

Which is it? Adding ‘almost’ in your claim is allowing for those laws to have changed at some point. Whereas if you are claiming that the laws existed at the very start of the universe in exactly the same form as we describe them today, then you need to offer some evidence of that claim; scientific evidence is very much to the contrary.

I was speaking about how science says that the closer you get to the Big Bang singularity the laws of physics break down. That is why I said that the these laws have existed "almost" from the beginning of time.

[TRANSPONDER]

To address this point:

First off I chose to use the green because of situations such has this where trying to reply to one section of the dialogue at a time,

If the aim is readability, my suggestion is to elide all non-relevant portions of quoted text, rather than to simply use a different coloured text. There’s a limit of ten nested quotes in any post, and I’ve noticed that many posts on the forum quickly become tiresomely long well before that limit’s reached.

Note how the remainder of my post is constructed, as an example. Yes, it’s more work (and benefits from using the ‘Preview’ function to catch coding errors), but the result is that more people will read your posts, rather than be put off by post length).

(Further: if you wish to respond to several points from a single post, you could always cut and paste them into a series of posts. That keeps the readability and also allows debaters to move on from resolved arguments and concentrate on just the more contentious parts.)

The fact that the universe runs by these laws and that these laws have existed from the beginning of the universe's time-line is evidence that a mega-intelligence was responsible in some way for the beginning of the universe.

<snip>

Man did not create these formulas as they were present almost at the very beginning of the universe.

<bolding mine>

Which is it? Adding ‘almost’ in your claim is allowing for those laws to have changed at some point. Whereas if you are claiming that the laws existed at the very start of the universe in exactly the same form as we describe them today, then you need to offer some evidence of that claim; scientific evidence is very much to the contrary.

I was speaking about how science says that the closer you get to the Big Bang singularity the laws of physics break down. That is why I said that the these laws have existed "almost" from the beginning of time.

When you think of it, aside that argument from Cosmic origins does nothing to help any particular religion, or that it raises the eyebrows to have a reference to the cutting edge of science when Christian apologetics is so prone to dismiss science as mere 'opinion'. This point suggests that No physical laws was the state in the beginning and Dem laws evolved as matter came to sort itself out, pretty much as life did with evolution.

The question is, is there any good reason to suppose that it was intelligently planned and worked out? With evolution...Nah. With First cause...arguable. But it doesn't amount, really, to evidence For a god, never mind Which One.

[DaveD49]

To address this point:

First off I chose to use the green because of situations such has this where trying to reply to one section of the dialogue at a time,

If the aim is readability, my suggestion is to elide all non-relevant portions of quoted text, rather than to simply use a different coloured text. There’s a limit of ten nested quotes in any post, and I’ve noticed that many posts on the forum quickly become tiresomely long well before that limit’s reached.

Note how the remainder of my post is constructed, as an example. Yes, it’s more work (and benefits from using the ‘Preview’ function to catch coding errors), but the result is that more people will read your posts, rather than be put off by post length).

(Further: if you wish to respond to several points from a single post, you could always cut and paste them into a series of posts. That keeps the readability and also allows debaters to move on from resolved arguments and concentrate on just the more contentious parts.)

The fact that the universe runs by these laws and that these laws have existed from the beginning of the universe's time-line is evidence that a mega-intelligence was responsible in some way for the beginning of the universe.

<snip>

Man did not create these formulas as they were present almost at the very beginning of the universe.

<bolding mine>

Which is it? Adding ‘almost’ in your claim is allowing for those laws to have changed at some point. Whereas if you are claiming that the laws existed at the very start of the universe in exactly the same form as we describe them today, then you need to offer some evidence of that claim; scientific evidence is very much to the contrary.

I was speaking about how science says that the closer you get to the Big Bang singularity the laws of physics break down. That is why I said that the these laws have existed "almost" from the beginning of time.

When you think of it, aside that argument from Cosmic origins does nothing to help any particular religion, or that it raises the eyebrows to have a reference to the cutting edge of science when Christian apologetics is so prone to dismiss science as mere 'opinion'. This point suggests that No physical laws was the state in the beginning and Dem laws evolved as matter came to sort itself out, pretty much as life did with evolution.

The question is, is there any good reason to suppose that it was intelligently planned and worked out? With evolution...Nah. With First cause...arguable. But it doesn't amount, really, to evidence For a god, never mind Which One.

I certainly do not think that the scientific laws "evolved" nor changed. They are far too complex for that. It could be that they just "kicked in" at a particular point after the singularity, I do not know, nor does anyone truly know. The reports I read said that the laws seemed to break down the closer you got to the singularity. It could be that this observation was incorrect. I do not know. But whatever actually happened during the birth of the universe the laws certainly were fully in force by the time the very first sun appeared. So, although the comment "almost" at the beginning may (or may not) be more technically correct we can still refer to as the beginning of the universe.

You are correct that my argument does not favor one religion over another. I am not trying to promote one religion over another. But the fact that these laws have existed from the "beginning" I 100% believe that this shows that a mega-intelligence is in some way responsible for the existence of the universe. I am disappointed that you still bring up the "which" god point with me. We have been through that. As I have said a number of times there can be only one. No matter what name people have given Him through time, no matter what people thought His nature was (even thinking there were numerous gods), and no matter what people thought their god wanted them to do, they were all blindly searching for the exact same Supreme Being. As I said man's concept of God varies quite a lot, but that does not change His true nature.

[TRANSPONDER]

To address this point:

First off I chose to use the green because of situations such has this where trying to reply to one section of the dialogue at a time,

If the aim is readability, my suggestion is to elide all non-relevant portions of quoted text, rather than to simply use a different coloured text. There’s a limit of ten nested quotes in any post, and I’ve noticed that many posts on the forum quickly become tiresomely long well before that limit’s reached.

Note how the remainder of my post is constructed, as an example. Yes, it’s more work (and benefits from using the ‘Preview’ function to catch coding errors), but the result is that more people will read your posts, rather than be put off by post length).

(Further: if you wish to respond to several points from a single post, you could always cut and paste them into a series of posts. That keeps the readability and also allows debaters to move on from resolved arguments and concentrate on just the more contentious parts.)

The fact that the universe runs by these laws and that these laws have existed from the beginning of the universe's time-line is evidence that a mega-intelligence was responsible in some way for the beginning of the universe.

<snip>

Man did not create these formulas as they were present almost at the very beginning of the universe.

<bolding mine>

Which is it? Adding ‘almost’ in your claim is allowing for those laws to have changed at some point. Whereas if you are claiming that the laws existed at the very start of the universe in exactly the same form as we describe them today, then you need to offer some evidence of that claim; scientific evidence is very much to the contrary.

I was speaking about how science says that the closer you get to the Big Bang singularity the laws of physics break down. That is why I said that the these laws have existed "almost" from the beginning of time.

When you think of it, aside that argument from Cosmic origins does nothing to help any particular religion, or that it raises the eyebrows to have a reference to the cutting edge of science when Christian apologetics is so prone to dismiss science as mere 'opinion'. This point suggests that No physical laws was the state in the beginning and Dem laws evolved as matter came to sort itself out, pretty much as life did with evolution.

The question is, is there any good reason to suppose that it was intelligently planned and worked out? With evolution...Nah. With First cause...arguable. But it doesn't amount, really, to evidence For a god, never mind Which One.

I certainly do not think that the scientific laws "evolved" nor changed. They are far too complex for that. It could be that they just "kicked in" at a particular point after the singularity, I do not know, nor does anyone truly know. The reports I read said that the laws seemed to break down the closer you got to the singularity. It could be that this observation was incorrect. I do not know. But whatever actually happened during the birth of the universe the laws certainly were fully in force by the time the very first sun appeared. So, although the comment "almost" at the beginning may (or may not) be more technically correct we can still refer to as the beginning of the universe.

You are correct that my argument does not favor one religion over another. I am not trying to promote one religion over another. But the fact that these laws have existed from the "beginning" I 100% believe that this shows that a mega-intelligence is in some way responsible for the existence of the universe. I am disappointed that you still bring up the "which" god point with me. We have been through that. As I have said a number of times there can be only one. No matter what name people have given Him through time, no matter what people thought His nature was (even thinking there were numerous gods), and no matter what people thought their god wanted them to do, they were all blindly searching for the exact same Supreme Being. As I said man's concept of God varies quite a lot, but that does not change His true nature.

You misunderstand 'scientific laws'. They are what happens in nature and can be as complex as you like. Science merely discovers what it can about those natural laws. Though I suspect that you are trying on argument from complexity 'It is too complex to be down to unthinking biology'.

Aside from any religious god, we have natural complexity. I argue that a pebble is (in terms of atomic particles) incredibly complex, but nobody says a pebble was designed. We know how it was naturally made. Same with snowflakes, lightning and evolved instinct, at one time considered to 'designed', complex or inexplicable to be other than designed, hammered out and operated by a big invisible human. Sorry; to me, the working of nature from chemical evolution (a scientific fact, I gather) to biological, (also a validated fact) makes skepticism about 'evolution' and insistence on ID an unfounded faithclaim.

I agree that with religion and all the appalling stuff that comes with it left aside, an ID creator isn't something for us to quarrel over, yet the ID case is nothing like compelling and the evolutionary case is actually backed up by facts, and irreligious theism, based on ID claims is Not the best - supported or more logical hypothesis. Evolved natural processes are.

[DaveD49]

To address this point:

First off I chose to use the green because of situations such has this where trying to reply to one section of the dialogue at a time,

If the aim is readability, my suggestion is to elide all non-relevant portions of quoted text, rather than to simply use a different coloured text. There’s a limit of ten nested quotes in any post, and I’ve noticed that many posts on the forum quickly become tiresomely long well before that limit’s reached.

Note how the remainder of my post is constructed, as an example. Yes, it’s more work (and benefits from using the ‘Preview’ function to catch coding errors), but the result is that more people will read your posts, rather than be put off by post length).

(Further: if you wish to respond to several points from a single post, you could always cut and paste them into a series of posts. That keeps the readability and also allows debaters to move on from resolved arguments and concentrate on just the more contentious parts.)

The fact that the universe runs by these laws and that these laws have existed from the beginning of the universe's time-line is evidence that a mega-intelligence was responsible in some way for the beginning of the universe.

<snip>

Man did not create these formulas as they were present almost at the very beginning of the universe.

<bolding mine>

Which is it? Adding ‘almost’ in your claim is allowing for those laws to have changed at some point. Whereas if you are claiming that the laws existed at the very start of the universe in exactly the same form as we describe them today, then you need to offer some evidence of that claim; scientific evidence is very much to the contrary.

I was speaking about how science says that the closer you get to the Big Bang singularity the laws of physics break down. That is why I said that the these laws have existed "almost" from the beginning of time.

When you think of it, aside that argument from Cosmic origins does nothing to help any particular religion, or that it raises the eyebrows to have a reference to the cutting edge of science when Christian apologetics is so prone to dismiss science as mere 'opinion'. This point suggests that No physical laws was the state in the beginning and Dem laws evolved as matter came to sort itself out, pretty much as life did with evolution.

The question is, is there any good reason to suppose that it was intelligently planned and worked out? With evolution...Nah. With First cause...arguable. But it doesn't amount, really, to evidence For a god, never mind Which One.

I certainly do not think that the scientific laws "evolved" nor changed. They are far too complex for that. It could be that they just "kicked in" at a particular point after the singularity, I do not know, nor does anyone truly know. The reports I read said that the laws seemed to break down the closer you got to the singularity. It could be that this observation was incorrect. I do not know. But whatever actually happened during the birth of the universe the laws certainly were fully in force by the time the very first sun appeared. So, although the comment "almost" at the beginning may (or may not) be more technically correct we can still refer to as the beginning of the universe.

You are correct that my argument does not favor one religion over another. I am not trying to promote one religion over another. But the fact that these laws have existed from the "beginning" I 100% believe that this shows that a mega-intelligence is in some way responsible for the existence of the universe. I am disappointed that you still bring up the "which" god point with me. We have been through that. As I have said a number of times there can be only one. No matter what name people have given Him through time, no matter what people thought His nature was (even thinking there were numerous gods), and no matter what people thought their god wanted them to do, they were all blindly searching for the exact same Supreme Being. As I said man's concept of God varies quite a lot, but that does not change His true nature.

You misunderstand 'scientific laws'. They are what happens in nature and can be as complex as you like. Science merely discovers what it can about those natural laws. Though I suspect that you are trying on argument from complexity 'It is too complex to be down to unthinking biology'.

Aside from any religious god, we have natural complexity. I argue that a pebble is (in terms of atomic particles) incredibly complex, but nobody says a pebble was designed. We know how it was naturally made. Same with snowflakes, lightning and evolved instinct, at one time considered to 'designed', complex or inexplicable to be other than designed, hammered out and operated by a big invisible human. Sorry; to me, the working of nature from chemical evolution (a scientific fact, I gather) to biological, (also a validated fact) makes skepticism about 'evolution' and insistence on ID an unfounded faithclaim.

I agree that with religion and all the appalling stuff that comes with it left aside, an ID creator isn't something for us to quarrel over, yet the ID case is nothing like compelling and the evolutionary case is actually backed up by facts, and irreligious theism, based on ID claims is Not the best - supported or more logical hypothesis. Evolved natural processes are.

I do not think that I misunderstand the laws at all. Of course you are arguing from the point of view that "nature did it". In my mind that is an appeal to randomness, not complexity. And yes, I do see complexity as an indication of an intelligence behind it. We are not talking about ONE scientific law but rather all of them, as well as the complexity found in nature itself. Even the very FIRST forms of life, most likely bacteria, are incredibly complex. Darwin was unaware of its complexity and saw them just as gobs of protoplasm. We have strayed into some of my following arguments. The present argument was simply about the existence of scientific laws which I clearly see as intelligence. My next argument is going to be the exact fine-tuning of all these laws or "universal constants". Even the pebble you speak about could not exist unless these constants were precisely aligned. And don't get me wrong; it am NOT arguing that what we call "natural processes", including evolution, do not exist. But I do see something very unnatural in natural processes that expose an intelligent mind behind it.

I think we have been having a good discussion, but I was disappointed that you brought up your concept of God as a "big invisible human." That is a lingering childhood concept and has no place in a discussion over facts.

[TRANSPONDER]

To address this point:

First off I chose to use the green because of situations such has this where trying to reply to one section of the dialogue at a time,

If the aim is readability, my suggestion is to elide all non-relevant portions of quoted text, rather than to simply use a different coloured text. There’s a limit of ten nested quotes in any post, and I’ve noticed that many posts on the forum quickly become tiresomely long well before that limit’s reached.

Note how the remainder of my post is constructed, as an example. Yes, it’s more work (and benefits from using the ‘Preview’ function to catch coding errors), but the result is that more people will read your posts, rather than be put off by post length).

(Further: if you wish to respond to several points from a single post, you could always cut and paste them into a series of posts. That keeps the readability and also allows debaters to move on from resolved arguments and concentrate on just the more contentious parts.)

The fact that the universe runs by these laws and that these laws have existed from the beginning of the universe's time-line is evidence that a mega-intelligence was responsible in some way for the beginning of the universe.

<snip>

Man did not create these formulas as they were present almost at the very beginning of the universe.

<bolding mine>

Which is it? Adding ‘almost’ in your claim is allowing for those laws to have changed at some point. Whereas if you are claiming that the laws existed at the very start of the universe in exactly the same form as we describe them today, then you need to offer some evidence of that claim; scientific evidence is very much to the contrary.

I was speaking about how science says that the closer you get to the Big Bang singularity the laws of physics break down. That is why I said that the these laws have existed "almost" from the beginning of time.

When you think of it, aside that argument from Cosmic origins does nothing to help any particular religion, or that it raises the eyebrows to have a reference to the cutting edge of science when Christian apologetics is so prone to dismiss science as mere 'opinion'. This point suggests that No physical laws was the state in the beginning and Dem laws evolved as matter came to sort itself out, pretty much as life did with evolution.

The question is, is there any good reason to suppose that it was intelligently planned and worked out? With evolution...Nah. With First cause...arguable. But it doesn't amount, really, to evidence For a god, never mind Which One.

I certainly do not think that the scientific laws "evolved" nor changed. They are far too complex for that. It could be that they just "kicked in" at a particular point after the singularity, I do not know, nor does anyone truly know. The reports I read said that the laws seemed to break down the closer you got to the singularity. It could be that this observation was incorrect. I do not know. But whatever actually happened during the birth of the universe the laws certainly were fully in force by the time the very first sun appeared. So, although the comment "almost" at the beginning may (or may not) be more technically correct we can still refer to as the beginning of the universe.

You are correct that my argument does not favor one religion over another. I am not trying to promote one religion over another. But the fact that these laws have existed from the "beginning" I 100% believe that this shows that a mega-intelligence is in some way responsible for the existence of the universe. I am disappointed that you still bring up the "which" god point with me. We have been through that. As I have said a number of times there can be only one. No matter what name people have given Him through time, no matter what people thought His nature was (even thinking there were numerous gods), and no matter what people thought their god wanted them to do, they were all blindly searching for the exact same Supreme Being. As I said man's concept of God varies quite a lot, but that does not change His true nature.

You misunderstand 'scientific laws'. They are what happens in nature and can be as complex as you like. Science merely discovers what it can about those natural laws. Though I suspect that you are trying on argument from complexity 'It is too complex to be down to unthinking biology'.

Aside from any religious god, we have natural complexity. I argue that a pebble is (in terms of atomic particles) incredibly complex, but nobody says a pebble was designed. We know how it was naturally made. Same with snowflakes, lightning and evolved instinct, at one time considered to 'designed', complex or inexplicable to be other than designed, hammered out and operated by a big invisible human. Sorry; to me, the working of nature from chemical evolution (a scientific fact, I gather) to biological, (also a validated fact) makes skepticism about 'evolution' and insistence on ID an unfounded faithclaim.

I agree that with religion and all the appalling stuff that comes with it left aside, an ID creator isn't something for us to quarrel over, yet the ID case is nothing like compelling and the evolutionary case is actually backed up by facts, and irreligious theism, based on ID claims is Not the best - supported or more logical hypothesis. Evolved natural processes are.

I do not think that I misunderstand the laws at all. Of course you are arguing from the point of view that "nature did it". In my mind that is an appeal to randomness, not complexity. And yes, I do see complexity as an indication of an intelligence behind it. We are not talking about ONE scientific law but rather all of them, as well as the complexity found in nature itself. Even the very FIRST forms of life, most likely bacteria, are incredibly complex. Darwin was unaware of its complexity and saw them just as gobs of protoplasm. We have strayed into some of my following arguments. The present argument was simply about the existence of scientific laws which I clearly see as intelligence. My next argument is going to be the exact fine-tuning of all these laws or "universal constants". Even the pebble you speak about could not exist unless these constants were precisely aligned. And don't get me wrong; it am NOT arguing that what we call "natural processes", including evolution, do not exist. But I do see something very unnatural in natural processes that expose an intelligent mind behind it.

I think we have been having a good discussion, but I was disappointed that you brought up your concept of God as a "big invisible human." That is a lingering childhood concept and has no place in a discussion over facts.

That's the point I was making. Even things so simple that nobody would think they were made by anybody, like a pebble, por complex things we may have thought once had to have been made by some being but wee know better now, like a snowflake, shows that what is complex does not have to be therefore created. Complexity - and this is a classic error of creationism - does not refute the natural. A landscape is very complex, but it is made by geological and biological processes, we know them No God needed.

The evolutionary and geological and Physics processes are known. They are sufficient explanation. God is a faithclaim and is not needed. Nor in fact, is your rejection of 'change' .Even creationists accept 'change' within denialist limits. The arguments from complexity, order and design are all fallacious. Design (such as the calyx of a dhaliah or the shell of a whelk, are down to the same biological process repeating but getting larger. It's pleasing and regular to the eye, but the process is known, it does not imply a designer.

Randomness is an argument from a lack of understanding on the part of the ID -punter, not a flaw in the naturalist argument.

Oh yes, the thing about 'a big invisible human' is to point up anthropomorphism, which is what you are doing in supposing that everything that exists has to have been made by a divine equivalent of a human. Really a big invisible human is what you are doing, not me. So I cannot be swayed by your 'disappointment, which is no worse than mine at your use of tatty and fallacious arguments from complexity, order and rejection of the idea of 'change' as though we didn't see it all around us.

[Athetotheist]

"Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things."
---Albert Einstein

[TRANSPONDER]

"Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things."
---Albert Einstein

Yeah. The thing is there that even Spinoza (as I understand it) was a Deist, because there was no other explanation. nature without the need for a god accounts for so much that it is now the go -to hypothesis for anything and everything, known and unknown. Really, logically, it is.

This is not to rule out that it could be a god, we simply don't know. But not knowing means that what we do know (natural physics) is the primary explanation until something else io made credible. That hasn't happened, despite all the efforts with Kalam, ID and ontological argument

Sure, absolutely, there is a lot we don't know and the cosmos is huge. That does not do a single thing to validate a god. Big or small, material physics is the primary and logical hypothesis. And neither appeal to unknowns, appeal to complexity or ID can make it anything else.

Bottom line ( I gotta million of 'em) is that I am sure that the eagerness to make a case for a god of any sort is wanting to make a god believable. I really don't mind some sorta god, but 'agnostics' (irreligious theists) seem very much indeed to mind the idea there may not be some sorta god. And I wonder why, because it actually makes no difference to their lives.

Or to be honest, I reckon I know why.

[DaveD49]

To address this point:

First off I chose to use the green because of situations such has this where trying to reply to one section of the dialogue at a time,

If the aim is readability, my suggestion is to elide all non-relevant portions of quoted text, rather than to simply use a different coloured text. There’s a limit of ten nested quotes in any post, and I’ve noticed that many posts on the forum quickly become tiresomely long well before that limit’s reached.

Note how the remainder of my post is constructed, as an example. Yes, it’s more work (and benefits from using the ‘Preview’ function to catch coding errors), but the result is that more people will read your posts, rather than be put off by post length).

(Further: if you wish to respond to several points from a single post, you could always cut and paste them into a series of posts. That keeps the readability and also allows debaters to move on from resolved arguments and concentrate on just the more contentious parts.)

The fact that the universe runs by these laws and that these laws have existed from the beginning of the universe's time-line is evidence that a mega-intelligence was responsible in some way for the beginning of the universe.

<snip>

Man did not create these formulas as they were present almost at the very beginning of the universe.

<bolding mine>

Which is it? Adding ‘almost’ in your claim is allowing for those laws to have changed at some point. Whereas if you are claiming that the laws existed at the very start of the universe in exactly the same form as we describe them today, then you need to offer some evidence of that claim; scientific evidence is very much to the contrary.

I was speaking about how science says that the closer you get to the Big Bang singularity the laws of physics break down. That is why I said that the these laws have existed "almost" from the beginning of time.

When you think of it, aside that argument from Cosmic origins does nothing to help any particular religion, or that it raises the eyebrows to have a reference to the cutting edge of science when Christian apologetics is so prone to dismiss science as mere 'opinion'. This point suggests that No physical laws was the state in the beginning and Dem laws evolved as matter came to sort itself out, pretty much as life did with evolution.

The question is, is there any good reason to suppose that it was intelligently planned and worked out? With evolution...Nah. With First cause...arguable. But it doesn't amount, really, to evidence For a god, never mind Which One.

I certainly do not think that the scientific laws "evolved" nor changed. They are far too complex for that. It could be that they just "kicked in" at a particular point after the singularity, I do not know, nor does anyone truly know. The reports I read said that the laws seemed to break down the closer you got to the singularity. It could be that this observation was incorrect. I do not know. But whatever actually happened during the birth of the universe the laws certainly were fully in force by the time the very first sun appeared. So, although the comment "almost" at the beginning may (or may not) be more technically correct we can still refer to as the beginning of the universe.

You are correct that my argument does not favor one religion over another. I am not trying to promote one religion over another. But the fact that these laws have existed from the "beginning" I 100% believe that this shows that a mega-intelligence is in some way responsible for the existence of the universe. I am disappointed that you still bring up the "which" god point with me. We have been through that. As I have said a number of times there can be only one. No matter what name people have given Him through time, no matter what people thought His nature was (even thinking there were numerous gods), and no matter what people thought their god wanted them to do, they were all blindly searching for the exact same Supreme Being. As I said man's concept of God varies quite a lot, but that does not change His true nature.

You misunderstand 'scientific laws'. They are what happens in nature and can be as complex as you like. Science merely discovers what it can about those natural laws. Though I suspect that you are trying on argument from complexity 'It is too complex to be down to unthinking biology'.

Aside from any religious god, we have natural complexity. I argue that a pebble is (in terms of atomic particles) incredibly complex, but nobody says a pebble was designed. We know how it was naturally made. Same with snowflakes, lightning and evolved instinct, at one time considered to 'designed', complex or inexplicable to be other than designed, hammered out and operated by a big invisible human. Sorry; to me, the working of nature from chemical evolution (a scientific fact, I gather) to biological, (also a validated fact) makes skepticism about 'evolution' and insistence on ID an unfounded faithclaim.

I agree that with religion and all the appalling stuff that comes with it left aside, an ID creator isn't something for us to quarrel over, yet the ID case is nothing like compelling and the evolutionary case is actually backed up by facts, and irreligious theism, based on ID claims is Not the best - supported or more logical hypothesis. Evolved natural processes are.

I do not think that I misunderstand the laws at all. Of course you are arguing from the point of view that "nature did it". In my mind that is an appeal to randomness, not complexity. And yes, I do see complexity as an indication of an intelligence behind it. We are not talking about ONE scientific law but rather all of them, as well as the complexity found in nature itself. Even the very FIRST forms of life, most likely bacteria, are incredibly complex. Darwin was unaware of its complexity and saw them just as gobs of protoplasm. We have strayed into some of my following arguments. The present argument was simply about the existence of scientific laws which I clearly see as intelligence. My next argument is going to be the exact fine-tuning of all these laws or "universal constants". Even the pebble you speak about could not exist unless these constants were precisely aligned. And don't get me wrong; it am NOT arguing that what we call "natural processes", including evolution, do not exist. But I do see something very unnatural in natural processes that expose an intelligent mind behind it.

I think we have been having a good discussion, but I was disappointed that you brought up your concept of God as a "big invisible human." That is a lingering childhood concept and has no place in a discussion over facts.

That's the point I was making. Even things so simple that nobody would think they were made by anybody, like a pebble, por complex things we may have thought once had to have been made by some being but wee know better now, like a snowflake, shows that what is complex does not have to be therefore created. Complexity - and this is a classic error of creationism - does not refute the natural. A landscape is very complex, but it is made by geological and biological processes, we know them No God needed.

The evolutionary and geological and Physics processes are known. They are sufficient explanation. God is a faithclaim and is not needed. Nor in fact, is your rejection of 'change' .Even creationists accept 'change' within denialist limits. The arguments from complexity, order and design are all fallacious. Design (such as the calyx of a dhaliah or the shell of a whelk, are down to the same biological process repeating but getting larger. It's pleasing and regular to the eye, but the process is known, it does not imply a designer.

Randomness is an argument from a lack of understanding on the part of the ID -punter, not a flaw in the naturalist argument.

Oh yes, the thing about 'a big invisible human' is to point up anthropomorphism, which is what you are doing in supposing that everything that exists has to have been made by a divine equivalent of a human. Really a big invisible human is what you are doing, not me. So I cannot be swayed by your 'disappointment, which is no worse than mine at your use of tatty and fallacious arguments from complexity, order and rejection of the idea of 'change' as though we didn't see it all around us.

First off, I am not making a claim that God is actually controlling nature (although I do not see it beyond His capability to do so). I am saying that He is responsible for the processes by which nature runs. Is that a "faithclaim"? Of course it is. But so is your trust that science is the answer for everything. If universal laws did not exist then most certainly events of the universe would be totally random. These existed from the very beginnings of the universe. They are complex mathematical formulas that required an intelligence to formulate them.

And sorry, but the concept of a "big invisible giant human" as a stereotype of God I think I dismissed when I was about 12.

[DaveD49]

"Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things."
---Albert Einstein

I just saw this post for the first time. I don't know how I missed it. Einstein also wrote that "Reality is an illusion, albeit a convincing one." which is another mind-bender when you think about it. You still arrive at the same place... if it is an illusion, there must be an illusionist. This why I am not arguing for the concept of God taught by a particular faith, because I firmly believe that there is only One and He is the God of all faiths.