Design flaws in organisms indicate evolution, not intelligent design

[Compassionist]

The existence of design flaws in living organisms is often cited as evidence for evolution by natural selection rather than intelligent design by an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful deity. If such a being existed and created life intentionally, we might expect optimal design yet what we see instead are structures and processes that are inefficient, prone to failure, or even harmful.
Here are some significant biological design flaws that point to evolution rather than perfect design:
________________________________________
1. Human Birth Canal vs. Big Brain
Flaw: Human babies have large heads due to our large brains, but the human pelvis is narrow for bipedal walking.
Result: Childbirth is extremely painful and dangerous a leading cause of death historically.
Evolutionary Explanation: Our ancestors evolved larger brains and upright walking separately, leading to a dangerous compromise.
________________________________________
2. Wisdom Teeth
Flaw: Most people don't have room for third molars, causing impaction, infections, and pain.
Result: Many need surgery to remove them.
Evolutionary Explanation: Our ancestors had larger jaws due to diet, but modern humans' jaws shrank faster than tooth evolution could keep up.
________________________________________
3. Human Retina Is Backward
Flaw: The photoreceptor cells in the human eye are behind layers of neurons and blood vessels.
Result: Creates a blind spot and reduces image quality.
Evolutionary Explanation: The eye evolved incrementally, not from a clean-slate design.
________________________________________
4. Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve (Giraffe Example)
Flaw: This nerve travels from the brain to the larynx, but loops around the aorta.
Result: In giraffes, it travels over 15 feet instead of a direct path of a few inches.
Evolutionary Explanation: It's a leftover from fish ancestors, where this path made sense. Evolution modified existing structures rather than redesigning from scratch.
________________________________________
5. Human Menstrual Cycle
Flaw: Humans shed the uterine lining even if not pregnant, wasting resources and causing pain.
Result: Menstrual cramps, anemia, mood changes.
Evolutionary Explanation: Other mammals reabsorb the lining. Our approach may have evolved due to pathogen risks in internal fertilization.
________________________________________
6. Shared Path for Food and Air
Flaw: The esophagus (food) and trachea (air) share an entrance.
Result: Risk of choking a leading accidental cause of death.
Evolutionary Explanation: The throat evolved in stages, without foresight.
________________________________________
7. Human Spine and Back Pain
Flaw: Our spine is an S-curve not ideally suited for upright walking.
Result: Many people suffer chronic back pain, herniated discs, etc.
Evolutionary Explanation: Our ancestors were quadrupeds. The upright posture evolved later, leading to inefficient structure.
________________________________________
8. Brain Vulnerability and Mental Illness
Flaw: The brain is highly energy-consuming and prone to many dysfunctions.
Result: High rates of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc.
Evolutionary Explanation: Natural selection favored reproductive success, not mental wellness or long-term wellbeing.
________________________________________
9. Knee Joint Design
Flaw: Knees bear immense strain, especially the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), which often tears.
Result: Common injuries in sports and aging.
Evolutionary Explanation: Knees evolved from quadruped ancestors, not optimally engineered for bipedal running and jumping.
________________________________________
10. Genetic "Junk" and Mutations
Flaw: The genome is full of non-coding or redundant DNA and is prone to harmful mutations.
Result: Genetic diseases, cancer, and congenital defects.
Evolutionary Explanation: DNA accumulates "baggage" over time. There's no intelligent editing or streamlining process.
________________________________________
11. Susceptibility to Cancer
Flaw: Cells divide for life but are prone to mutations that cause cancer.
Result: One of the top global causes of death.
Evolutionary Explanation: Cell division is essential for life, but natural selection can't eliminate all cancer risk especially after reproductive age.
________________________________________
12. Human Psychology Biases
Flaw: We are prone to cognitive biases (e.g., confirmation bias, tribalism, overconfidence).
Result: Misjudgments, discrimination, and conflict.
Evolutionary Explanation: These evolved to enhance survival in specific environments, not to produce truth-seeking rationality.
________________________________________
If we were designed by an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent being, such flaws are impossible to justify. Evolution by natural selection, on the other hand, explains these quirks and imperfections as the result of a messy, blind, trial-and-error process where old parts are tweaked, not replaced, and survival/reproduction, not perfection, is the end goal.

[William]

[Replying to SiNcE_1985 in post #160]

This is like erroneously trying to explain the origins of your computer, by thinking the answer is found from within the computer.

No, an external cause is necessary.

What do you mean by "an external cause" and why is it necessary?

For example, your computer analogy misses the mark in that while the one thinking the explanation re the origins of your computer is found from within the computer, this is not a totally incorrect assumption as many things can be ascertained re the origins by examining, not only the inside of the computer but by examining the whole computer itself.

And what is outside the computer doing the examining, and is that "outside" the computer not sharing the very same environment that the computer is inside of?

And is not the computer made of the stuff that is outside of itself?

So again, What do you mean by "an external cause" and why is it necessary?

[Compassionist]

[Replying to SiNcE_1985 in post #160]

If space itself expanded, it had to expand into preexisting space.

No — this is simply false.

General Relativity does not describe space expanding into anything. Expansion is a change in the metric itself. Asking “what is it expanding into?” presupposes an external embedding space, which the theory explicitly denies.

This is not semantics. Your analogy depends on importing classical intuitions that the theory itself rejects.

If you blow decks of cards in the air you don’t get a card house.

This analogy fails for the same reason every Intelligent Design analogy fails. You keep making false analogies.

Card houses:
• do not replicate
• do not vary
• do not undergo selection

Biological systems do.

You are repeatedly comparing non-replicating artefacts to replicating populations. That is not intuition — it is a category mistake.

Fine tuning is required for any of that stuff to occur.

Fine-tuning is a boundary-condition argument, not a mechanism.

Even if fine-tuning is granted in full, it establishes only that:
• certain constants fall within narrow ranges

It does not:
• explain chemistry,
• explain abiogenesis,
• explain evolution,
• or license collapsing all downstream explanations into design.

Saying “A depends on B” does not mean “B explains A’s internal mechanisms.”

Evolution depends on life, life depends on chemistry, chemistry depends on fine tuning.

This is a dependency chain, not an explanatory collapse.

Dependency does not imply explanatory redundancy.

• Aerodynamics depends on physics
• Physics depends on cosmology

That does not make aerodynamics a religion if cosmology is unsettled.

You are committing cross-level invalidation: using uncertainty at one level to dismiss explanations at another.

If “we need more time” is the excuse, then time is the savior.

No — mechanisms are doing the work, not time.

Time without replication, variation, and selection produces nothing.

The fact that processes take time does not make time explanatory. This is like saying gravity is “saved” by distance. I have made this point before, but you keep failing to grasp the concept.

A reptile evolving into a bird — I call that “anything can happen”.

Then you are ignoring the constraints.

Evolution forbids:
• mammals developing feathers without lineage continuity
• birds evolving without theropod ancestry
• genetic hierarchies appearing scrambled

“Reptile → bird” is shorthand for a constrained, fossil-documented, genetically nested transition — not magic.

Calling that “anything” is rhetorical, not analytical.

The universe is a closed system.

Yes — and that still does not do what you want it to do.

Low-entropy initial conditions do not:
• specify DNA,
• predict proteins,
• entail biological design,
• or block local complexity.

Penrose’s calculation concerns cosmic smoothness, not biological impossibility. You keep sliding from cosmology to biology without crossing the bridge.

Conduct an experiment to show how you get 10^10^123 precision without intelligence.

This demand is incoherent.

We do not experimentally recreate:
• Big Bang initial conditions,
• neutron star formation,
• or cosmic inflation.

Yet we still do science about them via constrained inference.

Requiring laboratory reproduction of cosmology is not scientific rigor — it is category confusion.

You can’t appeal to natural law to explain origins because nature began to exist.

That is a metaphysical claim, not a scientific one.

And even if granted, it still does not follow that:
• biological complexity is designed,
• evolution is false,
• or science becomes religion.

A first cause — even if real — does no explanatory work at the biological level unless you specify mechanisms and constraints. Otherwise, it is a stop-sign.

You’re using scientific methodology for a non-natural explanation.
Fatal flaw.

No — this is exactly backwards.

If a claim is offered as an explanation of the world, it is subject to explanatory standards.

If it cannot:
• constrain outcomes,
• forbid possibilities,
• or generate testable distinctions,

then it is not an explanation — regardless of whether it is “natural” or “supernatural.”

Exempting your hypothesis from standards is not a rebuttal. It is special pleading.

Still doesn’t explain cosmic or chemical fine tuning.

Correct — because evolution never claimed to.

That is the core mistake you keep repeating.

• Evolution explains diversification, not cosmic origins.
• Abiogenesis explains the chemistry-to-life bridge.
• Cosmology explains boundary conditions.

You are demanding that one level do the work of all others — then declaring failure when it doesn’t.

That is not a critique. It is a misuse.

Final clarification:

Your syllogism fails because premise (2) is asserted, not demonstrated:

2. C and D is not possible without an intelligent design component.

That claim:
• is not derived from physics,
• is not derived from chemistry,
• is not derived from biology,
• and forbids no alternative models.

Everything downstream depends on that unsupported assertion.

Until you provide:
• a mechanism of design,
• constraints it imposes,
• predictions it makes,
• and outcomes it forbids,

you have not replaced science — you have stepped outside explanation altogether.

Calling that “not scientific by nature” does not save it.

It merely confirms the point:

Intelligent Design does not cross explanatory levels — it jumps them, and stops inquiry where explanation should begin.

Part I — Formalising the syllogism and showing exactly why it fails

1. The syllogism as presented

You summarised it (accurately) as:

1. A (life) and B (evolution) depend on C (cosmic fine-tuning) and D (chemical fine-tuning).
2. C and D are not possible without an intelligent design component.
3. On naturalism, there is no intelligent design component.
4. Therefore C and D are not possible on naturalism.
5. Therefore A and B are not possible on naturalism.

Let’s evaluate this formally.

2. Step-by-step validation

Step 1 — Dependency claim

A and B depend on C and D.

Valid (as a dependency statement)

Life requires chemistry; chemistry requires physics; physics depends on cosmological boundary conditions. No issue here.

Step 2 — The critical premise

C and D are not possible without intelligent design.

This is the first failure point.

This premise is:

not logically derived from Step 1,
not empirically established,
not analytically true,
and not supported by physics or chemistry.

It is an unsupported necessity claim.

Formally, you are asserting:

Intelligent Design → C

But no argument has been given showing that fine-tuning logically entails intelligence rather than:

brute fact,
necessity,
multiverse,
unknown physics,
selection effects.

Without such an argument, Step 2 is a bare assertion, not a premise earned by inference.

Step 3 — Naturalism excludes Intelligent Design

On naturalism, there is no intelligent design.

Conditionally acceptable, depending on the definition.

This is fine if naturalism is defined as excluding intentional cosmic agency. We can grant this for the sake of argument.

Step 4 — Deriving impossibility

Therefore, C and D are not possible.

Invalid inference

This conclusion depends entirely on Step 2 being true.

Since Step 2 is unsupported, Step 4 collapses.

This is a textbook case of denying alternatives without elimination.

You have not shown that Intelligent Design is the only sufficient condition for fine-tuning.
Therefore, you cannot infer impossibility under its absence.

Step 5 — Cascading collapse

Therefore, A and B are not possible.

Invalid by transitivity failure

This is a downstream propagation of an invalid premise.

Once Step 2 fails, all subsequent conclusions fail, regardless of their internal logic.

3. The exact logical error (named precisely)

The syllogism commits two formal fallacies:

(1) False dilemma

You assume:

Either fine-tuning is due to intelligent design, or it is impossible.

But you have not ruled out:

necessity,
chance with selection effects,
multiverse,
unknown constraints,
brute fact.

Uneliminated alternatives invalidate exclusivity.

(2) Modal scope error

You shift from:

“Fine-tuning is improbable”

to:

“Fine-tuning is impossible without intelligence”

That is a jump from low probability to modal impossibility, which is invalid without additional premises.

Probability ≠ necessity.

Part II — Where fine-tuning stops doing explanatory work

Now we isolate the exact boundary.

1. What fine-tuning actually explains

At most, fine-tuning explains:

Why a universe with long-lived structure and chemistry is possible at all.

It applies only to:

cosmological constants,
initial entropy,
large-scale physical regularity.

This is a boundary-condition explanation, not a mechanism.

2. Where it definitively stops

Fine-tuning does not explain:

how atoms bond,
how molecules self-organise,
how replication arises,
how selection works,
how complexity accumulates,
how species diversify.

Those require local, mechanistic explanations, which fine-tuning does not provide and does not attempt to.

3. The exact stopping point

Fine-tuning explains why the stage exists — not what happens on the stage.

Once physical laws and constants are in place, fine-tuning is explanatorily inert with respect to biology.

4. Why using fine-tuning against evolution is invalid

Using fine-tuning to attack evolution commits cross-level invalidation:

“Because we don’t know why the universe allows chemistry, biology doesn’t work.”

That move is invalid because:

evolution presupposes chemistry,
chemistry presupposes physics,
but none of those explanations replace or invalidate the others.

Each level answers a different question.

5. Final distilled diagnosis

The syllogism fails because:

1. It asserts intelligent design as a necessary condition without proof.
2. It collapses probability into impossibility.
3. It treats dependency as explanatory replacement.
4. It uses cosmological uncertainty to invalidate biological mechanisms.

And fine-tuning stops doing work precisely at the point where mechanisms begin.

Beyond that point, invoking it explains nothing further.

Your argument fails because fine-tuning is a boundary-condition explanation, not a biological mechanism — and you treat improbability as impossibility without eliminating alternatives. That is why the syllogism collapses at premise (2), and everything after it fails.

[SiNcE_1985]

No — this is simply false.

General Relativity does not describe space expanding into anything. Expansion is a change in the metric itself. Asking “what is it expanding into?” presupposes an external embedding space, which the theory explicitly denies.

This is not semantics. Your analogy depends on importing classical intuitions that the theory itself rejects.

I know what the theory states; what I'm asking is, how can something expand into previous non-existing space?

Makes no sense.

This analogy fails for the same reason every Intelligent Design analogy fails. You keep making false analogies.

Card houses:
• do not replicate
• do not vary
• do not undergo selection

Biological systems do.

You are repeatedly comparing non-replicating artefacts to replicating populations. That is not intuition — it is a category mistake.

It isn't, though.

You keep jumping the gun, talking about what happens within the biological system, a system which in itself owes it's entire existence to a astronomically precise, low entropy process...of which can't be explained via natural processes.

This is the cart before the horse fallacy.

Before any kind of natural selection, replications, evolution, or whatever bio-babble you want to add, there was a cosmic/chemical fine tuning that isn't being accounted for, and must be explained.

Fine-tuning is a boundary-condition argument, not a mechanism.

Doesn't matter what you call it. Can you explain it?

Even if fine-tuning is granted in full, it establishes only that:
• certain constants fall within narrow ranges

Yeah, and these constants fall within such narrow ranges, that if either of them were off, to even the tiniest degree, life would not be possible.

So basically, what your saying is; such astronomical odds were defied, in one shot.

Nonsense.

You wouldn't put your money or life on 1 / 10^10^123 odds, in real life.

But, to deny the existence of a Creator, you are willing.

That's crazy work.

It does not:
• explain chemistry,
• explain abiogenesis,
• explain evolution,
• or license collapsing all downstream explanations into design.

Without fine tuning, there would be NO CHEMISTRY, ABIOGENESIS, OR EVOLUTION.

Do you not understand this?

Saying “A depends on B” does not mean “B explains A’s internal mechanisms.”

I agree, but since that's not my beef, the point is moot.

This is a dependency chain, not an explanatory collapse.

Dependency does not imply explanatory redundancy.

But notice, that's not my argument.

My argument is..

1. A is false.

2. B cannot be true, if it is dependent upon A, which is false.

3. Therefore, B is false.

• Aerodynamics depends on physics
• Physics depends on cosmology

That does not make aerodynamics a religion if cosmology is unsettled.

Still stuck on the religion thing, huh?

You are committing cross-level invalidation: using uncertainty at one level to dismiss explanations at another.

No, what I'm saying is even bolder than that.

I'm saying it isn't uncertain, it is blatantly FALSE.

No — mechanisms are doing the work, not time.

Time without replication, variation, and selection produces nothing.

The fact that processes take time does not make time explanatory. This is like saying gravity is “saved” by distance. I have made this point before, but you keep failing to grasp the concept.

Ok, so demonstrate to me a real-time observation of a reptile to bird transformation, in ONE YEARS TIME.

And if you're unable to do so, then explain why you can't, without using any variation of "one year isn't enough time" as an excuse.

Can you do it? No, you can't.

That's how important time is to your theory.

Then you are ignoring the constraints.

Evolution forbids:
• mammals developing feathers without lineage continuity
• birds evolving without theropod ancestry
• genetic hierarchies appearing scrambled

“Reptile → bird” is shorthand for a constrained, fossil-documented, genetically nested transition — not magic.

Calling that “anything” is rhetorical, not analytical.

I mean, that's your unseen, faith-based religious theory.

Wanna know mine?

Mine: God created all the animals of the land, air, and sea...and Jesus is returning soon.

I guess we're even.

Yes — and that still does not do what you want it to do.

Low-entropy initial conditions do not:
• specify DNA,
• predict proteins,
• entail biological design,
• or block local complexity.

Can you do all the those cool things with high entropy conditions...yes or no?

Penrose’s calculation concerns cosmic smoothness, not biological impossibility. You keep sliding from cosmology to biology without crossing the bridge.

This is false. Penrose's calculation is specifically in reference to the possibility of life.

This demand is incoherent.

We do not experimentally recreate:
• Big Bang initial conditions,
• neutron star formation,
• or cosmic inflation.

Yet we still do science about them via constrained inference.

The Big Bang theory has a history of being supported based on observational, and mathematical evidence.

We observe it, and the math works.

Abiogenesis and macroevolution...we don't observe it.

Everything is conjecture, and speculative.

Requiring laboratory reproduction of cosmology is not scientific rigor — it is category confusion.

Um, no.

I was asking for 1 / 10^10^123 odds being defied on ANY scale, which should make it even easier for you to produce ...not just cosmological.

That is a metaphysical claim, not a scientific one.

And even if granted, it still does not follow that:
• biological complexity is designed,
• evolution is false,
• or science becomes religion.

A first cause — even if real — does no explanatory work at the biological level unless you specify mechanisms and constraints. Otherwise, it is a stop-sign.

The cosmic engineering that was required for the universe to exist and be life permitting; biological levels is covered with that.

No — this is exactly backwards.

If a claim is offered as an explanation of the world, it is subject to explanatory standards.

If it cannot:
• constrain outcomes,
• forbid possibilities,
• or generate testable distinctions,

then it is not an explanation — regardless of whether it is “natural” or “supernatural.”

1. Constrain outcomes.
2. Forbid possibilities.
3. Generate testable distinctions.

I have no idea what either of those three mean, within the topic of this discussion.

Exempting your hypothesis from standards is not a rebuttal. It is special pleading.

Since your hypothesis (natural phenomenon) lacks the explanatory power to produce the given effects, then it simply fails as a viable option to be considered as a creative agent, to CREATION.

My hypothesis (supernaturalism), has the explanatory power to produce the given effects.

1. External (was outside of space/time).
2. Eternal (necessary existence).
3. Powerful (enough to create from nothing).
4. Intelligent (creating with 10^10^123 precision).

All 4^ is needed, and your hypothesis (naturalism) is neither.

Correct — because evolution never claimed to.

That is the core mistake you keep repeating.

• Evolution explains diversification, not cosmic origins.
• Abiogenesis explains the chemistry-to-life bridge.
• Cosmology explains boundary conditions.

You are demanding that one level do the work of all others — then declaring failure when it doesn’t.

That is not a critique. It is a misuse.

If abiogenesis is false, then evolution cannot be true without invoking God.

Final clarification:

Your syllogism fails because premise (2) is asserted, not demonstrated:

2. C and D is not possible without an intelligent design component.

That claim:
• is not derived from physics,
• is not derived from chemistry,
• is not derived from biology,
• and forbids no alternative models.

Ok, and the origin(s) of the universe is/cannot also be..

derived from physics, chemistry, or biology.

You cannot use "nature/science", to explain the origins of its own domain.

This is like saying "I'm gonna use baseball, to explain the origins of baseball".

This is circular reasoning.

Everything downstream depends on that unsupported assertion.

Until you provide:
• a mechanism of design

I don't know what you mean by "mechanism of design".

What I do know is; we recognize ID, based on three components..

1. Complexity
2. Function
3. Purpose

These 3 are a Trinity for ID, without failure.

I challenge you to name one product of intelligent design, that DOES NOT have those three components.

The entire universe has those three components, so it is logical to conclude that the universe is a product of intelligent design.

you have not replaced science — you have stepped outside explanation altogether.

Sciences' own limitations, has it replaced.

Calling that “not scientific by nature” does not save it.

It merely confirms the point:

Intelligent Design does not cross explanatory levels — it jumps them, and stops inquiry where explanation should begin.

Again, you cannot use nature, to explain the origins of nature.

It is impossible, and fallacious.

Since I can't use science/nature...My God gladly steps in, saying "Don't worry, I'll take over from here".

Step 2 — The critical premise

C and D are not possible without intelligent design.

This is the first failure point.

Of course it is, because the premise begats ID (God), and we can't have that, can we?

This premise is:

not logically derived from Step 1,
not empirically established,
not analytically true,
and not supported by physics or chemistry.

1. Complexity.
2. Purpose.
3. Function.

Can you demonstrate intelligent design without invoking those 3?

If (since) you can't, then it follows that products of those three, are products of intelligent design.

That in itself makes it empirically established, because those components correlate with intelligent design...all day, every day, without failure.

It is an unsupported necessity claim.

Formally, you are asserting:

Intelligent Design → C

But no argument has been given showing that fine-tuning logically entails intelligence rather than:

brute fact,
necessity,

Philosophical problems.

Something which begins to exist, cannot exist based on necessity.

So, those two (brute fact/necessity) are negated.

multiverse

No evidence supporting it. Fantasyland.

unknown physics

Speculative conjecture. Fantasyland.

selection effects.

There was nothing there to select. Nothing existed.

Without such an argument, Step 2 is a bare assertion, not a premise earned by inference.

Step 3 — Naturalism excludes Intelligent Design

On naturalism, there is no intelligent design.

Conditionally acceptable, depending on the definition.

This is fine if naturalism is defined as excluding intentional cosmic agency. We can grant this for the sake of argument.

Step 4 — Deriving impossibility

Therefore, C and D are not possible.

Invalid inference

This conclusion depends entirely on Step 2 being true.

Since Step 2 is unsupported, Step 4 collapses.

This is a textbook case of denying alternatives without elimination.

Law of Excluded Middle.

When you have only two options, and one is negated, the other one wins by default.

Either..

1. God did it.

2. Nature did it.

3. Nature began to exist.

4. Therefore, nature couldn't do it.

5. Therefore, God did it (Law of Excluded Middle).

You have not shown that Intelligent Design is the only sufficient condition for fine-tuning.
Therefore, you cannot infer impossibility under its absence.

I have.

Penroses' equation already covers random chance, and something which began to exist cannot exist necessary.

1. Random chance: Negated.

2. Necessity: Negated.

3. Intelligent Design: Not negated. Only game left in town.

But you have not ruled out:

necessity,
chance with selection effects,
multiverse,
unknown constraints,
brute fact.

Looks to me like I just did.

Uneliminated alternatives invalidate exclusivity.

(2) Modal scope error

You shift from:

“Fine-tuning is improbable”

to:

“Fine-tuning is impossible without intelligence”

That is a jump from low probability to modal impossibility, which is invalid without additional premises.

A one chance in 10^10^123, is about as impossible of odds as you can get, without being impossible.

You wouldn't bet your life against those odds, would you?

No.

And besides that, again, your competing hypothesis against ID have already been negated.

Probability ≠ necessity.

Part II — Where fine-tuning stops doing explanatory work

Now we isolate the exact boundary.

1. What fine-tuning actually explains

At most, fine-tuning explains:

Why a universe with long-lived structure and chemistry is possible at all.

It applies only to:

cosmological constants,
initial entropy,
large-scale physical regularity.

Yeah, and "at most", fine tuning is required for life to originate, evolve, and diversify.

This is like a bodybuilder saying "at most, weight training and healthy eating habits are meant for muscle building and fitness".

No "at most"...it is "above everything".

This is a boundary-condition explanation, not a mechanism.

2. Where it definitively stops

Fine-tuning does not explain:

how atoms bond,
how molecules self-organise,
how replication arises,
how selection works,
how complexity accumulates,
how species diversify.

The instructions on how to bake a cake doesn't explain how the heat turns the cake batter from liquid, to solid.

That doesn't change the fact that the ingredients and processes for the cake, must be fine-tuned to get desired results...and Mother Nature (mindless/blind high entropy) processes, isn't out there baking cakes.

I said that to say; fine-tuning isn't negated based on the lack of a "how" answer to your questions.

Those require local, mechanistic explanations, which fine-tuning does not provide and does not attempt to.

3. The exact stopping point

Fine-tuning explains why the stage exists — not what happens on the stage.

Without fine-tuning, there would no stage.

Once physical laws and constants are in place, fine-tuning is explanatorily inert with respect to biology.

4. Why using fine-tuning against evolution is invalid

Using fine-tuning to attack evolution commits cross-level invalidation:

“Because we don’t know why the universe allows chemistry, biology doesn’t work.”

That move is invalid because:

evolution presupposes chemistry,
chemistry presupposes physics,
but none of those explanations replace or invalidate the others.

Each level answers a different question.

5. Final distilled diagnosis

The syllogism fails because:

1. It asserts intelligent design as a necessary condition without proof.
2. It collapses probability into impossibility.
3. It treats dependency as explanatory replacement.
4. It uses cosmological uncertainty to invalidate biological mechanisms.

And fine-tuning stops doing work precisely at the point where mechanisms begin.

Beyond that point, invoking it explains nothing further.

Your argument fails because fine-tuning is a boundary-condition explanation, not a biological mechanism — and you treat improbability as impossibility without eliminating alternatives. That is why the syllogism collapses at premise (2), and everything after it fails.

I've already addressed this.

There is no viable scientific explanation as to..

1. Why the universe would began to exist at X point in the finite past.

2. And why would it begin to exist in such a low entropy state.

Science simply fails because..

You cannot use science to explain pre-deterministic factors, before the existence of physical reality.

[Compassionist]

[Replying to SiNcE_1985 in post #163]

I know what the theory states; what I'm asking is, how can something expand into previous non-existing space?

Makes no sense.

This objection rests on a category mistake, not a flaw in the theory.

General Relativity does not describe “something expanding into space.” It describes a change in the metric relations themselves. There is no background container that spacetime occupies or moves into. The Big Bang is the beginning of spacetime. There is no space or time before this.

Asking “what is it expanding into?” is like asking: What is north of the North Pole? There is nothing north of the North Pole. The question presupposes a framework the theory explicitly denies.

If your intuition finds that difficult to understand, that is not an argument against the model. Modern physics routinely violates everyday spatial intuitions e.g. time dilation, non-locality, frame-dependence, quantum superposition. Conceptual discomfort ≠ false.

Before any kind of natural selection, replications, evolution, or whatever bio-babble you want to add, there was a cosmic/chemical fine tuning that isn't being accounted for, and must be explained.

This is correct — and I already acknowledged it in my previous posts — but you are smuggling in a false conclusion.

Fine-tuning addresses boundary conditions, not mechanisms. That distinction matters.

Yes:
• Without certain constants, chemistry would not occur.
• Without chemistry, biology would not occur.

But it does not follow that:
• Fine-tuning explains biological structure.
• Fine-tuning licenses collapsing downstream explanations into design.

Dependency ≠ explanatory replacement.

Saying “biology depends on physics” does not mean physics explains protein folding.

So basically, what you're saying is; such astronomical odds were defied, in one shot.
Nonsense.

This is a misunderstanding of probability’s role in explanation.

Low probability does not entail impossibility.
Low probability does not entail intelligence.

Improbability only licenses inference when:
• alternatives are exhausted,
• probability distributions are well-defined,
• selection effects are controlled.

None of those conditions are met here.

You are converting improbability into modal impossibility without justification. Also, if there are an infinite number of universes in the Omniverse, it is guaranteed that at least some universes would have the required specifications that look like fine-tuning. We can't test this hypothesis because we don't have any way to go outside our universe and check if there are other universes.

Without fine tuning, there would be NO CHEMISTRY, ABIOGENESIS, OR EVOLUTION.
Do you not understand this?

Yes, of course I understand this, but that still does not do the work you want it to do.

This establishes a necessary condition, not a sufficient explanation.

A stage being required for a play does not explain the script, actors, or plot.

Fine-tuning explains why structure is possible, not how specific structures arise.

Ok, so demonstrate to me a real-time observation of a reptile to bird transformation, in ONE YEARS TIME.

This demand is incoherent and reflects a misunderstanding of explanatory scope.

No scientific theory claims:
• Macroevolution occurs in one year.
• Complex transitions are observable on human timescales.

We do not observe:
• Continental drift in real time.
• Stellar evolution in a year.
• Mountain formation experimentally within one year.

Yet these are not faith-based claims — they are inferred from constrained evidence.

Time is not the explanatory agent; mechanisms operating over time are.

I mean, that's your unseen, faith-based religious theory.
Wanna know mine?
Mine: God created all the animals...
I guess we're even.

No — we are not at all “even,” and this is the core confusion.

Evolution:
• forbids outcomes
• predicts nested hierarchies
• constrains transitional forms
• generates testable expectations.

A bare appeal to divine creation:
• forbids nothing
• predicts nothing specific
• constrains no outcomes.

One is a constrained explanatory framework.
The other is an unconstrained assertion.

They are not epistemically equivalent.

Can you do all those cool things with high entropy conditions...yes or no?

Entropy is not a global veto on local order.

Low-entropy initial conditions permit:
• local complexity
• energy gradients
• self-organization.

The Second Law applies globally, not locally. This is settled physics.

We observe the Big Bang. Abiogenesis and macroevolution… we don’t observe it.

This is false by the standards you are selectively applying.

We do not “observe”:
• the Big Bang directly
• inflation directly
• early nucleosynthesis directly.

We infer them from constrained evidence.

Abiogenesis and evolution are approached the same way: indirect evidence, laboratory analogues, predictive consistency.

Observation ≠ direct eyewitness replication.

My hypothesis (supernaturalism), has the explanatory power to produce the given effects.

No — it has causal reach, not explanatory power.

“God can do X” explains nothing unless you specify:
• why this outcome rather than another
• what constraints apply
• what evidence would falsify the claim.

An unconstrained agent explains everything — which means it explains nothing.

That is not power. That is explanatory collapse. Also, humans have believed in and continue to believe in many Gods. Which God is real (if any)? How do you know?

1. Complexity
2. Function
3. Purpose
These 3 are a Trinity for ID, without failure.

This is demonstrably false.

Natural processes generate:
• complexity (snowflakes, turbulence)
• function (enzyme catalysis, selection-driven traits)
• apparent purpose (teleonomy).

None require intelligence.

You are mislabeling effects as causes.

Either God did it, or nature did it.
Nature began to exist.
Therefore God did it.

This is a false dichotomy followed by an invalid inference.

You have not ruled out:
• brute fact
• unknown constraints
• necessity at a deeper level
• selection effects
• models beyond current physics.

The Law of Excluded Middle applies only when all alternatives are exhausted. They are not.

Final clarification

Your argument fails at the same point every time:

You attempt to move from:
• improbability → impossibility
• dependency → explanatory replacement
• boundary conditions → mechanisms.

Fine-tuning explains why a universe with structure is possible.
It does not explain biology, cognition, or evolution.

Once physical laws are in place, fine-tuning becomes explanatorily inert at the biological level.

That is where it stops doing work — and where your syllogism collapses.

This is not hostility to God or Gods.
It is insistence on explanatory discipline.

Here are some of the reasons the Biblical God, if he/she/it/they exist(s), has done/is doing/will do more evil than good:

God didn't keep his words to Adam and Eve

In Genesis 2:16 and 17 the Bible (New International Version) says:
And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die."

If after eating the forbidden fruits, Adam and Eve died just as God had said, then that would have been just and consistent with God's Words. However, after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruits, instead of just Adam and Eve just dying:
1. God evicted them from Eden.
2. God punished Eve and all her daughters (an estimated 54 billion and counting) with painful childbirths.
3. God evicted all the other species from Eden, too, and makes herbivores, parasites, carnivores and omnivores instead of making all the species non-consumers.
4. God punished humans with having to toil to survive.
5. God commanded humans to reproduce which leads to more suffering and death. Ruling over other creatures causes suffering and death to those creatures, too. "God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."" - Genesis 1:28, The Bible (NIV)

These acts are cruel and unjust and totally inconsistent with what God had said to Adam and Eve which was they would just die if they ate the forbidden fruits. God didn't keep his words to Adam and Eve.

If God had made Adam, Eve, the angels, all the other species all-knowing and all-powerful, then they would all be making perfect choices. It is 100% God's fault that Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge. If they were all-knowing and all-powerful, they would not have the desire to gain knowledge, as they would already have known everything there is to know.

I didn't ask to come into existence. No living thing does. I would have preferred it if I had never existed. If God is real and actually did the things the Bible claims, then these cruel, unjust and inconsistent actions make the Biblical God evil.

Global genocide - The Global Flood

Genesis 6:13, 7:21-23 (ESV)

“And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’ … And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.”
Summary: God kills virtually every living creature on Earth, sparing only Noah's family and the selected animals in Noah's Ark.

Genocide of Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis 19:24-25 (ESV)

“Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.”
Summary: Two entire cities are burned alive - men, women, and children - for collective sin.

The Ten Plagues of Egypt (mass suffering and death)

Exodus 12:29-30 (ESV)

“At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night … and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead.”
Summary: Every Egyptian firstborn - including infants, sentient animals and prisoners - is killed by God.

Genocides ordered in Canaan

Deuteronomy 20:16-17 (ESV)

“But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded.”
Summary: Explicit divine command to exterminate entire populations.

1 Samuel 15:2-3 (ESV)

“Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel … Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”
Summary: A total genocide command including infants and animals.

Slavery sanctioned and regulated, instead of banned

Leviticus 25:44-46 (ESV)

“As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. … You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers … you shall not rule one over another ruthlessly.”
Summary: Permanent enslavement of foreigners is explicitly permitted.

Human child sacrifice ordered (later revoked)

Genesis 22:2, 12 (ESV)

“He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering…’”
“He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy…’”
Summary: God tests Abraham by commanding the killing of his child - a psychological act of cruelty, even if halted. Why would an all-knowing and all-powerful being need to test anyone? It makes no sense.

Mass slaughter of boys, men and non-virgin women and sexual slavery of virgin girls

Numbers 31:17-18 (ESV)

“Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.”
Summary: Command to kill boys and non-virgin women; keep virgin girls as sex slaves.

Sevenfold punishment and cannibalism (threat)

Leviticus 26:27-29 (ESV)

“But if in spite of this you will not listen to me, but walk contrary to me, then I will walk contrary to you in fury, and I myself will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.”
Summary: God threatens to make His people resort to cannibalism as punishment.

Eternal torment in Hell

Matthew 25:46 (ESV)

“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Revelation 14:10-11 (ESV)

“He also will drink the wine of God’s wrath … and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.”

Mark 9:43-48 (ESV)

“It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire … where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”
Summary: Eternal conscious torment for unbelievers - infinite punishment for finite crimes.

Matthew 25:41 (ESV)

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’”

Revelation 20:10 (ESV)

“...and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Luke 13:27-28 (ESV)

“But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out.”

Matthew 13:49-50 (ESV)

“So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Divine deception and hardening of hearts

Exodus 9:12 (ESV)

“But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had spoken to Moses.”
Summary: God prevents Pharaoh from repenting, then punishes him for it.

2 Thessalonians 2:11 (ESV)

“Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false.”
Summary: God intentionally deceives some people.

Killing for minor offenses

Numbers 15:32-36 (ESV)

“While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day… And the LORD said to Moses, ‘The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.’”

2 Kings 2:23-24 (ESV)

“He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.”
Summary: Death penalty for collecting firewood on the wrong day, and 42 small boys murdered by bears because they made fun of a prophet's baldness.

Collective punishment across generations

Exodus 20:5 (ESV)

“For I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.”
Summary: Descendants are punished for ancestors’ actions - contrary to the Bible’s own later law: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.” - Ezekiel 18:20 (ESV).

Predestination

Ephesians 1:4-5 (ESV)

“Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,”

John 6:44 (ESV)

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”
Summary: God predestined who would be saved and who would be damned forever. It is absurd and utterly cruel and unjust.

Conclusion

These verses show that the Biblical God, by the Bible’s own words, kills entire populations, including children and animals, endorses slavery, inflicts suffering, threatens eternal torture in hell, hardens hearts or deceives minds, and predestinates who would be saved and who would be damned, removing moral responsibility.

When the acts attributed to God are judged by the same moral standards the Bible applies to humans - such as “You shall not kill,” “Love your neighbour,” and “Love your enemies” - they fit the description of moral evil far more often than benevolence. The Biblical God is a hypocrite who has killed and has failed to love his neighbours and enemies.

That’s why I conclude that, if the Biblical God exists and the Biblical text is true, His recorded actions are predominantly evil rather than good.

There are also extra-Biblical reasons. At least 99.9% of all the species that have existed so far on Earth are already extinct. Every year, non-vegans cause suffering and death to 80 billion sentient land organisms (e.g. cattle, chickens, pigs, lambs, goats, ducks, turkeys, etc.) and 1 to 3 trillion sentient aquatic organisms (e.g. fish, lobsters, octopuses, crabs, etc.). Life is full of suffering, injustice, and death. An allegedly all-knowing and all-powerful being, such as the Biblical God, could have prevented all suffering, injustice, and death, but failed to do so. He could have made all organisms made of energy that don't need to consume anything to live forever, but he didn't do that. So, all suffering, injustice, and death are his fault. If he had not created anything, no one would have the burden of existence or the risk of making mistakes. If he had made everyone he had made all-knowing and all-powerful, then everyone would always make perfect choices, and no one would have made any mistakes due to ignorance or incompetence or trickery.

I am an agnostic regarding the existence of God(s) because it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God(s). However, I am convinced that the Biblical God is imaginary and evil. He is imaginary because there is no evidence for the claims made in the Bible. He is evil because of his many evil words and actions in the Bible. I created a thread requesting evidence for Biblical events: viewtopic.php?t=42683 If you can prove Biblical events by evidence, please do. The Bible doesn't count as evidence for the claims in the Bible, just as other religious books don't count as evidence for the claims in those religious books.

Please explain why an allegedly all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God (or Gods) would create design flaws in organisms and why it or they would cause the extinction of at least 99.9% of all the species to exist so far on Earth, and why there is so much suffering, injustice, and death.

[SiNcE_1985]

This objection rests on a category mistake, not a flaw in the theory.

General Relativity does not describe “something expanding into space.” It describes a change in the metric relations themselves. There is no background container that spacetime occupies or moves into. The Big Bang is the beginning of spacetime. There is no space or time before this.

If you can't see beyond our observational universe, then you (nor anyone else) can definitely say there was no preexisting space.

Asking “what is it expanding into?” is like asking: What is north of the North Pole? There is nothing north of the North Pole. The question presupposes a framework the theory explicitly denies.

When something expands, it has to expand into something.

I don't care what the "experts" say; scientists don't necessarily make good philosophers.

It is gaslighting, to say that X expanded into zero space.

If your intuition finds that difficult to understand, that is not an argument against the model.

Yeah, illogical concepts are usually difficult to understand.

Modern physics routinely violates everyday spatial intuitions e.g. time dilation, non-locality, frame-dependence, quantum superposition. Conceptual discomfort ≠ false.

Well, then... we'll have to deal with one absurdity at a time, won't we?

This is correct — and I already acknowledged it in my previous posts — but you are smuggling in a false conclusion.

Fine-tuning addresses boundary conditions, not mechanisms. That distinction matters.

Yes:
• Without certain constants, chemistry would not occur.
• Without chemistry, biology would not occur.

But it does not follow that:
• Fine-tuning explains biological structure.
• Fine-tuning licenses collapsing downstream explanations into design.

Dependency ≠ explanatory replacement.

Saying “biology depends on physics” does not mean physics explains protein folding.

Yeah, but the competing hypothesis to ID that you've put forth; neither one is viable to explain the fine-tuning.

That's what the question is; how is fine-tuning best explained.

This is a misunderstanding of probability’s role in explanation.

Low probability does not entail impossibility.
Low probability does not entail intelligence.

None of those conditions are met here.

This is not just low probably. This is borderline impossibility.

Imagine you had a trillion black balls in a very large container.

And among these black balls, there is one single white ball.

Black balls represents life PROHIBITING universes.

White ball represents life PERMITTING universe.

Now imagine, you are wearing a blindfold, and you are tasked with jumping inside the container to blindly select a ball, and whichever ball you select will determine whether a life prohibiting universe will be selected and exist, or a life permitting one.

Now, each ball, regardless of the color, has the SAME probability of being selected.

But the odds of you selecting the single white ball is even more overwhelming low, compared to the selection of any given black ball.

And the odds of a life permitting universe by chance, is even more astronomically larger than that^.

It ain't happening on the basis of any other alternative...as those odds are higher on the basis of an intelligent, selective entity with vision.

Improbability only licenses inference when:
• alternatives are exhausted,
• probability distributions are well-defined,
• selection effects are controlled.

I've already responded to these other alternatives.

You are converting improbability into modal impossibility without justification. Also, if there are an infinite number of universes in the Omniverse, it is guaranteed that at least some universes would have the required specifications that look like fine-tuning.

Well, science is supposed to be based on evidence.

And there is no evidence for multiverse...just a lazy, pathetic, and helpless way for naturalists to explain away fine-tuning, because they know just what it entails.

And not only is there no evidence for a multiverse, there is evidence against it..namely, infinite regression....which is impossible.

So between the lack of evidence for it, and positive evidence against it; makes the multiverse a non-plausible (impossible) alternative.

We can't test this hypothesis because we don't have any way to go outside our universe and check if there are other universes.

Oh, so there was once a time when the scientific method was all about evidence, experiments, and testing....and now has become based on conjecture, speculation, and fantasyland.

Does the God hypothesis make you guys that uncomfortable?

Yes, of course I understand this, but that still does not do the work you want it to do.

This establishes a necessary condition, not a sufficient explanation.

Where did this necessary condition come from, if not from a necessary process/entity?

A stage being required for a play does not explain the script, actors, or plot.

Fine-tuning explains why structure is possible, not how specific structures arise.

The stage and the play was all set via ID, correct?

This demand is incoherent and reflects a misunderstanding of explanatory scope.

No scientific theory claims:
• Macroevolution occurs in one year.
• Complex transitions are observable on human timescales.

That's the point, the entire theory is based on grand scales of eplased time...a point that you keep downplaying, only to emphasize how much it is needed after being pressed to get results in significantly less time.

Me: Time is a major factor.

You: Time is not a major factor (or whatever variation of this you said).

Me: Ok, well, do it in a year.

You: I can't, because one year isn't enough time.

Laughable.

We do not observe:
• Continental drift in real time.
• Stellar evolution in a year.
• Mountain formation experimentally within one year.

Again, I haven't looked into any of those things.

For all I know, the claims made about that stuff may just be as bogus as those of evolution.

Yet these are not faith-based claims — they are inferred from constrained evidence.

Time is not the explanatory agent; mechanisms operating over time are.

If it can't happen without it, then it is a key component.

That's all I am saying.

No — we are not at all “even,” and this is the core confusion.

Evolution:
• forbids outcomes
• predicts nested hierarchies
• constrains transitional forms
• generates testable expectations.

A bare appeal to divine creation:
• forbids nothing
• predicts nothing specific
• constrains no outcomes.

I predict that animals will bring forth after their kind..and will continue to do so.

So far, my prediction has been accurate.

One is a constrained explanatory framework.
The other is an unconstrained assertion.

They are not epistemically equivalent.

One has explanatory power to produce the effect.

The other one doesn't.

Entropy is not a global veto on local order.

Low-entropy initial conditions permit:
• local complexity
• energy gradients
• self-organization.

The Second Law applies globally, not locally. This is settled physics.

Point?

This is false by the standards you are selectively applying.

We do not “observe”:
• the Big Bang directly
• inflation directly
• early nucleosynthesis directly.

We infer them from constrained evidence.

We "observe" the expansion, and "infer" that if something is expanding larger into the future, then it follows that it must contract smaller into the past.

Abiogenesis and evolution are approached the same way: indirect evidence, laboratory analogues, predictive consistency.

Dogs produce dogs. That is the direct evidence.

No — it has causal reach, not explanatory power.

“God can do X” explains nothing unless you specify:
• why this outcome rather than another

Your alternative, natural options have already been shut down.

• what constraints apply

If you can create from nothing, then you have no constraints.

• what evidence would falsify the claim.

A viable, naturalistic explanation would be a step in the right direction.

An unconstrained agent explains everything — which means it explains nothing.

Oh, well in that case, a a blind, mindless, constrained process explains even more nothing.

Also, humans have believed in and continue to believe in many Gods. Which God is real (if any)? How do you know?

Yahweh, Jesus Christ...whichever one you prefer..and I know based on persuasive evidence.

This is demonstrably false.

Natural processes generate:
• complexity (snowflakes, turbulence)

Complexity, but no purpose or function.

• function (enzyme catalysis, selection-driven traits)
• apparent purpose (teleonomy).

None require intelligence.

Demonstrate how life can arise from nonliving material, and the you'll prove that those things do t require intelligence.

This is a false dichotomy followed by an invalid inference.

You have not ruled out:
• brute fact
• unknown constraints
• necessity at a deeper level
• selection effects
• models beyond current physics.

Oh, now all of a sudden "necessity at a deeper level" (whatever that means).

Making it up as you go along?

That aside, I already responded directly to that stuff, and you obviously don't have anything to say in response.

So, as far as I'm concerned, what I said stands.

The Law of Excluded Middle applies only when all alternatives are exhausted. They are not.

Then respond to what I said.

Final clarification

Your argument fails at the same point every time:

You attempt to move from:
• improbability → impossibility
• dependency → explanatory replacement
• boundary conditions → mechanisms.

Fine-tuning explains why a universe with structure is possible.
It does not explain biology, cognition, or evolution.

Once physical laws are in place, fine-tuning becomes explanatorily inert at the biological level.

That is where it stops doing work — and where your syllogism collapses.

Moving along. You've got nothing.

You are a formidable opponent, though.

You just ain't ready yet.

Here are some of the reasons the Biblical God, if he/she/it/they exist(s), has done/is doing/will do more evil than good:

Evil according to who? You?

God didn't keep his words to Adam and Eve

In Genesis 2:16 and 17 the Bible (New International Version) says:
And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die."

If after eating the forbidden fruits, Adam and Eve died just as God had said, then that would have been just and consistent with God's Words. However, after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruits, instead of just Adam and Eve just dying:
1. God evicted them from Eden.
2. God punished Eve and all her daughters (an estimated 54 billion and counting) with painful childbirths.
3. God evicted all the other species from Eden, too, and makes herbivores, parasites, carnivores and omnivores instead of making all the species non-consumers.
4. God punished humans with having to toil to survive.
5. God commanded humans to reproduce which leads to more suffering and death. Ruling over other creatures causes suffering and death to those creatures, too. "God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."" - Genesis 1:28, The Bible (NIV)

These acts are cruel and unjust and totally inconsistent with what God had said to Adam and Eve which was they would just die if they ate the forbidden fruits. God didn't keep his words to Adam and Eve.

Do you understand the difference between a spiritual death, and a physical death?

And those "evil" acts are evil according to your subjective standard?

Is that what you're arguing?

If God had made Adam, Eve, the angels, all the other species all-knowing and all-powerful, then they would all be making perfect choices. It is 100% God's fault that Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge. If they were all-knowing and all-powerful, they would not have the desire to gain knowledge, as they would already have known everything there is to know.

I didn't ask to come into existence. No living thing does. I would have preferred it if I had never existed. If God is real and actually did the things the Bible claims, then these cruel, unjust and inconsistent actions make the Biblical God evil.

Global genocide - The Global Flood

Genesis 6:13, 7:21-23 (ESV)

“And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’ … And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.”
Summary: God kills virtually every living creature on Earth, sparing only Noah's family and the selected animals in Noah's Ark.

Genocide of Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis 19:24-25 (ESV)

“Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.”
Summary: Two entire cities are burned alive - men, women, and children - for collective sin.

The Ten Plagues of Egypt (mass suffering and death)

Exodus 12:29-30 (ESV)

“At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night … and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead.”
Summary: Every Egyptian firstborn - including infants, sentient animals and prisoners - is killed by God.

Genocides ordered in Canaan

Deuteronomy 20:16-17 (ESV)

“But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded.”
Summary: Explicit divine command to exterminate entire populations.

1 Samuel 15:2-3 (ESV)

“Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel … Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”
Summary: A total genocide command including infants and animals.

Slavery sanctioned and regulated, instead of banned

Leviticus 25:44-46 (ESV)

“As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. … You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers … you shall not rule one over another ruthlessly.”
Summary: Permanent enslavement of foreigners is explicitly permitted.

Human child sacrifice ordered (later revoked)

Genesis 22:2, 12 (ESV)

“He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering…’”
“He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy…’”
Summary: God tests Abraham by commanding the killing of his child - a psychological act of cruelty, even if halted. Why would an all-knowing and all-powerful being need to test anyone? It makes no sense.

Mass slaughter of boys, men and non-virgin women and sexual slavery of virgin girls

Numbers 31:17-18 (ESV)

“Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.”
Summary: Command to kill boys and non-virgin women; keep virgin girls as sex slaves.

Sevenfold punishment and cannibalism (threat)

Leviticus 26:27-29 (ESV)

“But if in spite of this you will not listen to me, but walk contrary to me, then I will walk contrary to you in fury, and I myself will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.”
Summary: God threatens to make His people resort to cannibalism as punishment.

Eternal torment in Hell

Matthew 25:46 (ESV)

“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Revelation 14:10-11 (ESV)

“He also will drink the wine of God’s wrath … and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.”

Mark 9:43-48 (ESV)

“It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire … where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”
Summary: Eternal conscious torment for unbelievers - infinite punishment for finite crimes.

Matthew 25:41 (ESV)

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’”

Revelation 20:10 (ESV)

“...and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Luke 13:27-28 (ESV)

“But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out.”

Matthew 13:49-50 (ESV)

“So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Divine deception and hardening of hearts

Exodus 9:12 (ESV)

“But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had spoken to Moses.”
Summary: God prevents Pharaoh from repenting, then punishes him for it.

2 Thessalonians 2:11 (ESV)

“Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false.”
Summary: God intentionally deceives some people.

Killing for minor offenses

Numbers 15:32-36 (ESV)

“While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day… And the LORD said to Moses, ‘The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.’”

2 Kings 2:23-24 (ESV)

“He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.”
Summary: Death penalty for collecting firewood on the wrong day, and 42 small boys murdered by bears because they made fun of a prophet's baldness.

Collective punishment across generations

Exodus 20:5 (ESV)

“For I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.”
Summary: Descendants are punished for ancestors’ actions - contrary to the Bible’s own later law: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.” - Ezekiel 18:20 (ESV).

Predestination

Ephesians 1:4-5 (ESV)

“Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,”

John 6:44 (ESV)

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”
Summary: God predestined who would be saved and who would be damned forever. It is absurd and utterly cruel and unjust.

Conclusion

These verses show that the Biblical God, by the Bible’s own words, kills entire populations, including children and animals, endorses slavery, inflicts suffering, threatens eternal torture in hell, hardens hearts or deceives minds, and predestinates who would be saved and who would be damned, removing moral responsibility.

When the acts attributed to God are judged by the same moral standards the Bible applies to humans - such as “You shall not kill,” “Love your neighbour,” and “Love your enemies” - they fit the description of moral evil far more often than benevolence. The Biblical God is a hypocrite who has killed and has failed to love his neighbours and enemies.

That’s why I conclude that, if the Biblical God exists and the Biblical text is true, His recorded actions are predominantly evil rather than good.

There are also extra-Biblical reasons. At least 99.9% of all the species that have existed so far on Earth are already extinct. Every year, non-vegans cause suffering and death to 80 billion sentient land organisms (e.g. cattle, chickens, pigs, lambs, goats, ducks, turkeys, etc.) and 1 to 3 trillion sentient aquatic organisms (e.g. fish, lobsters, octopuses, crabs, etc.). Life is full of suffering, injustice, and death. An allegedly all-knowing and all-powerful being, such as the Biblical God, could have prevented all suffering, injustice, and death, but failed to do so. He could have made all organisms made of energy that don't need to consume anything to live forever, but he didn't do that. So, all suffering, injustice, and death are his fault. If he had not created anything, no one would have the burden of existence or the risk of making mistakes. If he had made everyone he had made all-knowing and all-powerful, then everyone would always make perfect choices, and no one would have made any mistakes due to ignorance or incompetence or trickery.

I am an agnostic regarding the existence of God(s) because it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God(s). However, I am convinced that the Biblical God is imaginary and evil. He is imaginary because there is no evidence for the claims made in the Bible. He is evil because of his many evil words and actions in the Bible. I created a thread requesting evidence for Biblical events: viewtopic.php?t=42683 If you can prove Biblical events by evidence, please do. The Bible doesn't count as evidence for the claims in the Bible, just as other religious books don't count as evidence for the claims in those religious books.

Please explain why an allegedly all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God (or Gods) would create design flaws in organisms and why it or they would cause the extinction of at least 99.9% of all the species to exist so far on Earth, and why there is so much suffering, injustice, and death.

These are separate topics than the one we were discussing.

Start a new thread on these topics, and I'll join you there.

Until then, hold this..

L.

[Compassionist]

[Replying to SiNcE_1985 in post #165]

If you can't see beyond our observational universe, then you (nor anyone else) can definitely say there was no preexisting space.

This does not follow.
The claim is not “we can see there was no preexisting space,” but that the theory explicitly defines the spacetime of our universe itself as originating at the Big Bang. In General Relativity, “preexisting space” is not merely unseen — it is undefined.
Appealing to observational limits does not rescue a concept that the theory itself rules out.

Ignorance of what lies “beyond” a model does not license reintroducing entities the model denies.

When something expands, it has to expand into something.

That intuition is precisely what is being challenged.
“Expansion” in General Relativity is not motion through a container; it is a change in metric relations. Saying “it must expand into something” assumes Newtonian space — the very framework modern cosmology replaced.

This is not gaslighting; it is abandoning an outdated conceptual model.

Illogical concepts are usually difficult to understand.

Conceptual difficulty is not a refutation.
Quantum superposition, relativity of simultaneity, and non-Euclidean geometry all violate everyday intuition — yet they are empirically indispensable.
Calling a theory “illogical” because it contradicts common-sense metaphors is not an argument; it is resistance to abstraction.

The competing hypothesis to ID that you've put forth; neither one is viable to explain the fine-tuning.

This is a false dilemma.
You repeatedly assume:

Either intelligent design explains fine-tuning, or nothing does.

But explanatory insufficiency ≠ exclusive entitlement.
Brute fact, necessity, unknown constraints, selection effects, or future physics may be incomplete — but they are not logically eliminated.

This is borderline impossibility.

No — this is the same probability → impossibility error restated.
Low probability, even astronomically low probability, does not entail modal impossibility unless:
• the probability distribution is well-defined,
• selection effects are accounted for,
• and all alternatives are eliminated.

None of those conditions are met here.

Your white-ball analogy assumes:
• a single random draw,
• a known distribution,
• no selection bias.

Cosmology satisfies none of those assumptions.

There is no evidence for multiverse… and evidence against it… infinite regression.

This overreaches in two ways.
First, lack of evidence ≠ evidence of impossibility.
Second, multiverse models do not entail causal infinite regress in the way you claim — many are finite, cyclic, or law-governed.

You may reject the multiverse, but you cannot declare it logically impossible without argument. We currently lack the capacity to test the Multiverse Hypothesis. Just as we lack the capacity to test all of the variations of God/Gods Hypothesis e.g. Pantheism is true, Panentheism is true, Islam is true, Hinduism is true, Christianity is true, Judaism is true, Theism is true, Sikhism is true, Bahaism is true, Tenrikyo is true, Wicca is true, Zoroastrianism is true, Shintoism is true, Daoism is true, Jainism is true, Buddhism is true, Animism is true, Deism is true, Atheism is true, etc. They can't all be true, even though the believers believe their beliefs are true. I am an agnostic because we can't test the God/Gods Hypothesis. Besides, religions are self-contradictory and mutually contradictory. They also contradict what we know from the scientific method, e.g. some religions claim that God created all living things, while we know from science that evolution occurred and is still occurring. We can't rely on religion to accurately tell us the truth about reality and morality.

Does the God hypothesis make you guys that uncomfortable?

This is rhetoric, not analysis.
Disagreement is not emotional discomfort. I am not at all uncomfortable about the God/Gods Hypothesis. We lack the capacity to test the God/Gods Hypothesis. The objection is not to God as such, but to using God as a replacement for explanation.

Where did this necessary condition come from, if not from a necessary process/entity?

This is a non sequitur.
A necessary condition does not imply a necessary agent.
Low-entropy initial conditions may be brute, necessary, or law-like without being intentional.

You are inserting agency where only constraint has been established.

The stage and the play was all set via ID, correct?

That is exactly what has not been shown.
You are asserting what the analogy is meant to prove.
Fine-tuning explains why a stage exists; it does not entail authorship of the script.

That inference is added — not derived.

Time is a major factor.

Time is a parameter, not an explanatory agent.
No one denies that processes require duration.
What is denied is that “more time” substitutes for mechanisms.

Saying “it takes time” does not mean time is doing the explanatory work.

I predict that animals will bring forth after their kind.

This prediction forbids nothing evolution allows.
Evolution does not predict dogs giving birth to cats.
It predicts population-level divergence with descent continuity — which your “kind” language is vague enough to accommodate after the fact.

A prediction that cannot fail is not a constraint.

Dogs produce dogs. That is the direct evidence.

That is consistent with evolution, not contrary to it.
Evolution predicts heredity, not instantaneous transformation.
Your observation supports inheritance — one of evolution’s core mechanisms.

Your alternative, natural options have already been shut down.

They have not been eliminated — they have been dismissed.
Elimination requires demonstration, not assertion. You have not demonstrated.

Yahweh, Jesus Christ… and I know based on persuasive evidence.

Persuasive to whom, and by what standard and what evidence?
Fine-tuning does not predict:
• revelation,
• incarnation,
• scripture,
• salvation narratives.

Jumping from cosmological constants to Christianity is an unsupported leap. Please reply to this post in another thread where I requested evidence for Biblical events: viewtopic.php?t=42683

Demonstrate how life can arise from nonliving material.

This is a misplaced burden of proof.
Abiogenesis is an open research problem.
Its difficulty does not invalidate evolution, nor does it license intelligent design of organisms.

Hard ≠ religious.
Unsolved ≠ unscientific.

You’ve got nothing.

On the contrary, the issue is now very clear:

You repeatedly attempt to move from:
• improbability → impossibility
• dependency → explanatory replacement
• boundary conditions → mechanisms

Each move is invalid.

Fine-tuning explains why a universe with structure is possible.
It does not explain biology, cognition, or evolution.

Once physical laws exist, fine-tuning becomes explanatorily inert at the biological level.

That is where it stops doing work — and where your argument consistently collapses.

The fatal flaw is this:

You are illegitimately replacing an explanation with a dependency.

Everything in your argument hinges on the move:

“Evolution depends on chemistry, chemistry depends on physics, physics depends on fine-tuning — therefore fine-tuning explains evolution.”

That move is invalid.

Why this fails — precisely

Dependency is not explanation.

• Biology depends on chemistry.
• Chemistry depends on physics.
• Physics depends on initial conditions.

But it does not follow that physics explains protein folding, or that initial conditions explain speciation.

Saying “X would not exist without Y” does not mean “Y explains X.”

That is a category error.

Concrete example

Oxygen is necessary for fire.

But oxygen does not explain:
• why this fire started,
• why it spread this way,
• why it burned these materials.

Necessity ≠ mechanism.

Fine-tuning is a background condition, not a causal account.

Where your syllogism breaks

Your key step is this:

If A (life/evolution) depends on B (fine-tuning),
and B requires intelligence,
then A requires intelligence.

That inference is false.

Even if B required intelligence (which is itself unproven), it would still only explain:
• why complexity is possible at all

— not how specific biological structures arise.

You are smuggling explanation across levels.

This is the exact stopping point

Fine-tuning can, at most, address this question:

“Why does a universe capable of complexity exist at all?”

It cannot answer:
• why DNA has this structure,
• why mammals evolved,
• why birds have feathers,
• why nested genetic hierarchies exist.

Those are downstream mechanistic questions.

Once chemistry exists, fine-tuning does zero explanatory work in biology.

Why this sinks Intelligent Design

Because ID does exactly this every time:

It notices a real boundary (origins),
then uses it to invalidate explanations that operate after that boundary.

That is not critique — it is misapplication.

An explanation that only says “the stage exists” does not explain the play.

Bottom line

Your argument fails at one point and never recovers:

You treat a necessary condition as if it were a sufficient explanation.

Until that mistake is fixed, no appeal to entropy, improbability, or intelligence can touch evolution at all.

That is the wall.

Here is a link to the post in another thread about why I am convinced that the Biblical God is evil:
viewtopic.php?p=1179106#p1179106

You didn't reply to the following request from my previous post:
Please explain why an allegedly all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God (or Gods) would create design flaws in organisms and why it or they would cause the extinction of at least 99.9% of all the species to exist so far on Earth, and why there is so much suffering, injustice, and death.

[SiNcE_1985]

This does not follow.
The claim is not “we can see there was no preexisting space,” but that the theory explicitly defines the spacetime of our universe itself as originating at the Big Bang. In General Relativity, “preexisting space” is not merely unseen — it is undefined.
Appealing to observational limits does not rescue a concept that the theory itself rules out.

Ignorance of what lies “beyond” a model does not license reintroducing entities the model denies.

This is cosmo-babble.

I understand what the theory "states"; but nevertheless, expanding into "no space" is inconceivable.

That intuition is precisely what is being challenged.
“Expansion” in General Relativity is not motion through a container; it is a change in metric relations. Saying “it must expand into something” assumes Newtonian space — the very framework modern cosmology replaced.

This is not gaslighting; it is abandoning an outdated conceptual model.

If space itself was created at the moment of the big bang, then this complicates matters even more for you...as it becomes apparent that nothing comprised of mass, can have the explanatory power needed to produce the big bang effect.

Why? Because mass presupposes space.

So, you literally cannot appeal to ANY naturalistic cause... otherwise, you'll be arguing in a circle, which is fallacious.

Conceptual difficulty is not a refutation.
Quantum superposition, relativity of simultaneity, and non-Euclidean geometry all violate everyday intuition — yet they are empirically indispensable.
Calling a theory “illogical” because it contradicts common-sense metaphors is not an argument; it is resistance to abstraction.

Logic cannot be violated.

This is what happens when science becomes your God...it is given supernatural and logic-defying powers....it has everything but the moral-accountability factor, which is what this really all about anyway.

This is a false dilemma.
You repeatedly assume:

Either intelligent design explains fine-tuning, or nothing does.

But explanatory insufficiency ≠ exclusive entitlement.
Brute fact, necessity, unknown constraints, selection effects, or future physics may be incomplete — but they are not logically eliminated.

There is no evidence for those other options...and as I've demonstrated, there is evidence against them.

No evidence for X + Positive evidence against X = rational rejection of X and thus unbelief.

No — this is the same probability → impossibility error restated.
Low probability, even astronomically low probability, does not entail modal impossibility unless:
• the probability distribution is well-defined,
• selection effects are accounted for,
• and all alternatives are eliminated.

None of those conditions are met here.

Your white-ball analogy assumes:
• a single random draw,
• a known distribution,
• no selection bias.

Cosmology satisfies none of those assumptions.

1 chance in 10^10^123 is indeed a single, random draw.

This overreaches in two ways.
First, lack of evidence ≠ evidence of impossibility.
Second, multiverse models do not entail causal infinite regress in the way you claim — many are finite, cyclic, or law-governed.

If multiverses are finite, then they had a beginning...and a cause is needed to explain this beginning, because..

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause (P1 KCA).

You may reject the multiverse, but you cannot declare it logically impossible without argument.

My argument is simple...an eternal past is impossible, and any pre-big bang scenario, postulates an eternal past.

Multiverse scenarios are no exception.

We currently lack the capacity to test the Multiverse Hypothesis.

Then it isn't science, is it?

Just as we lack the capacity to test all of the variations of God/Gods Hypothesis e.g. Pantheism is true, Panentheism is true, Islam is true, Hinduism is true, Christianity is true, Judaism is true, Theism is true, Sikhism is true, Bahaism is true, Tenrikyo is true, Wicca is true, Zoroastrianism is true, Shintoism is true, Daoism is true, Jainism is true, Buddhism is true, Animism is true, Deism is true, Atheism is true, etc. They can't all be true, even though the believers believe their beliefs are true. I am an agnostic because we can't test the God/Gods Hypothesis. Besides, religions are self-contradictory and mutually contradictory. They also contradict what we know from the scientific method, e.g. some religions claim that God created all living things, while we know from science that evolution occurred and is still occurring. We can't rely on religion to accurately tell us the truth about reality and morality.

We cannot test those God-Hypothesis using the scientific method.

But guess what, thinkers have been arguing for the existence of God using logical arguments for thousands of years, before any scientific revolution or discovery.

Ontological arguments, Arguments from design, Arguments from Causation....have been used for centuries, and neither relies in science.

Your religion relies on science. Mine doesn't.

This is rhetoric, not analysis.
Disagreement is not emotional discomfort. I am not at all uncomfortable about the God/Gods Hypothesis. We lack the capacity to test the God/Gods Hypothesis. The objection is not to God as such, but to using God as a replacement for explanation.

We have the capacity to test the God Hypothesis.

I can prove the existence of God, just by using First Cause argumentation.

This is a non sequitur.
A necessary condition does not imply a necessary agent.
Low-entropy initial conditions may be brute, necessary, or law-like without being intentional.

You are inserting agency where only constraint has been established.

Well, again, I've ruled out those other options, and I've yet to see you respond to anything I've said.

Those options all fall under the "Nature did it" category...and all of them are subject to..

1. Infinite regress.
2. No evidence for it.
3. Evidence against it.

And #3 is a result of #1.

That is exactly what has not been shown.
You are asserting what the analogy is meant to prove.
Fine-tuning explains why a stage exists; it does not entail authorship of the script.

That inference is added — not derived.

When you presupposed the play, you are presupposing ID.

There is no script or play without ID....otherwise, you'll have to demonstrate how the play can exist without ID.

Your position is; No ID required.

So, to use an ID-related analogy, in correspondence to a reality of which you don't believe to be ID-related, is crazy work.

Time is a parameter, not an explanatory agent.
No one denies that processes require duration.
What is denied is that “more time” substitutes for mechanisms.

Saying “it takes time” does not mean time is doing the explanatory work.

I'm not sure what exactly is doing the explanatory work, and neither are you.

I've yet to see any simulation or model as to how those astronomical odds (Penrose Equation) were met without ID guidance...all I'm getting is,

"It happens."

"But you won't see it happen, because it takes hundreds of millions of years to occur".

That, along with speculative, fantasyland bio-babble.

Those competing hypothesis you've presented; neither has empirical or scientific backing.

So to appeal to it, isn't based on science.

This prediction forbids nothing evolution allows.
Evolution does not predict dogs giving birth to cats.
It predicts population-level divergence with descent continuity

A reptile evolving into a bird, is not an example of an animal bringing forth after it's kind, as the Bible says.

The hocus pocus stuff that you believe to have occurred millions of years ago, doesn't reflect observation and experiment.

You know, actual science.

— which your “kind” language is vague enough to accommodate after the fact.

?

A prediction that cannot fail is not a constraint.

?

That is consistent with evolution, not contrary to it.
Evolution predicts heredity, not instantaneous transformation.

No, not instantaneous.

Give it about a hundred million years.

Your observation supports inheritance — one of evolution’s core mechanisms.

My observation also supports limitations.

They have not been eliminated — they have been dismissed.
Elimination requires demonstration, not assertion. You have not demonstrated.

Did you respond to what I've been saying about it?

Persuasive to whom, and by what standard and what evidence?

Persuasive to me, and by whatever standard that made me convinced.

Fine-tuning does not predict:
• revelation,
• incarnation,
• scripture,
• salvation narratives.

I agree, which is why I'll never used fine-tuning as an argument for Jesus.

Jumping from cosmological constants to Christianity is an unsupported leap. Please reply to this post in another thread where I requested evidence for Biblical events: viewtopic.php?t=42683

I'll be there once this subject settles down.

This is a misplaced burden of proof.
Abiogenesis is an open research problem.
Its difficulty does not invalidate evolution, nor does it license intelligent design of organisms.

Hard ≠ religious.
Unsolved ≠ unscientific.

If abiogenesis is false, evolution cannot possibly be true.

If life can't originate naturally, how can it evolve and diversify naturally?

Makes no sense.

On the contrary, the issue is now very clear:

You repeatedly attempt to move from:
• improbability → impossibility

1 / 10^10^123, is impossible.

• dependency → explanatory replacement

If you depend on something that requires a 1 / 10^10^123, you may as well not depend on it...because it ain't happening.

• boundary conditions → mechanisms

If those conditions weren't met, there would be no mechanism

Fine-tuning explains why a universe with structure is possible.
It does not explain biology, cognition, or evolution.

Once physical laws exist, fine-tuning becomes explanatorily inert at the biological level.

Um, no.

You are wrong.

Physical law presupposes a fine tuned system (universe), of which natural law & order is even possible.

That is where it stops doing work — and where your argument consistently collapses.

The fatal flaw is this:

You are illegitimately replacing an explanation with a dependency.

Everything in your argument hinges on the move:

“Evolution depends on chemistry, chemistry depends on physics, physics depends on fine-tuning — therefore fine-tuning explains evolution.”

That move is invalid.

Why this fails — precisely

Dependency is not explanation.

• Biology depends on chemistry.
• Chemistry depends on physics.
• Physics depends on initial conditions.

But it does not follow that physics explains protein folding, or that initial conditions explain speciation.

I'm saying that; on your naturalistic worldview, you cannot explain...

1. A universe from nothing.

2. A fine tuned universe.

3. The origins of life.

4. The origins of consciousness.

Never mind evolution; your entire worldview collapses before you even get to evolution.

Neither of those things can occur, on naturalism.

If those things did occur, they did not occur on naturalism.

If the universe can't come from nothing, then literally, nothing else follows.

No life or evolution.

Saying “X would not exist without Y” does not mean “Y explains X.”

That is a category error.

Concrete example

Oxygen is necessary for fire.

But oxygen does not explain:
• why this fire started,
• why it spread this way,
• why it burned these materials.

This all depends on the question being asked.

If your telling me that..

1. There is no God.

Then, it follows that..

2. Therefore, abiogenesis is true.

But, you don't have any evidence for #2....and it could be false.

And if #2 is false, then.. evolution will also be false, since life can't evolve without it originating.

So, if #2 is false, then #1 would have to be true.

And I can make the case that #2 is false, due to..

A. No evidence for it.
B. Evidence against it.

Necessity ≠ mechanism.

Fine-tuning is a background condition, not a causal account.

Call it what you want...can you explain it, is the question.

You keep making those^ kind of distinctions, without providing any plausible explanation as to how/why fine tuning could be an initial condition parameter.

You cannot appeal to anything within nature, to explain fine-tuning...and it must be explained.

Where your syllogism breaks

Your key step is this:

If A (life/evolution) depends on B (fine-tuning),
and B requires intelligence,
then A requires intelligence.

That inference is false.

Oh, so a laptop computer is fined-tuned, and required intelligence.

Yet, the universe, which is more fine-tuned than the computer, doesn't require intelligence?

Taxicab fallacy.

Even if B required intelligence (which is itself unproven), it would still only explain:
• why complexity is possible at all

— not how specific biological structures arise.

You are smuggling explanation across levels.

This is the exact stopping point

There would be no biological structures without fine tuning.

Fine-tuning can, at most, address this question:

“Why does a universe capable of complexity exist at all?”

It cannot answer:
• why DNA has this structure,
• why mammals evolved,
• why birds have feathers,
• why nested genetic hierarchies exist.

Those are downstream mechanistic questions.

Once chemistry exists, fine-tuning does zero explanatory work in biology.

No life without fine tuning.

If you are drowning in an ocean, fine-tuning is the brick that is tied to your ankle.

Why this sinks Intelligent Design

Because ID does exactly this every time:

It notices a real boundary (origins),
then uses it to invalidate explanations that operate after that boundary.

That is not critique — it is misapplication.

An explanation that only says “the stage exists” does not explain the play.

Bottom line

Your argument fails at one point and never recovers:

You treat a necessary condition as if it were a sufficient explanation.

Until that mistake is fixed, no appeal to entropy, improbability, or intelligence can touch evolution at all.

That is the wall.

The wall is; the more complex something is, the more intelligence is required.

Systems, functions, and purpose....all require intelligence.

You're willing to grant that a computer code requires intelligence, but won't grant the fact that the DNA code requires intelligence...when DNA is more complex than any computer code.

This is crazy work, and goes to show the lengths people will go through just to deny the existence of a Creator.

It is inconsistent logic, and intellectually disgusting.

Here is a link to the post in another thread about why I am convinced that the Biblical God is evil:
viewtopic.php?p=1179106#p1179106

You didn't reply to the following request from my previous post:
Please explain why an allegedly all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God (or Gods) would create design flaws in organisms and why it or they would cause the extinction of at least 99.9% of all the species to exist so far on Earth, and why there is so much suffering, injustice, and death.

I'll join you there after we finish with this subject.

[Compassionist]

[Replying to SiNcE_1985 in post #167]

The wall is; the more complex something is, the more intelligence is required.
Systems, functions, and purpose....all require intelligence.

This claim is the single fatal flaw in your entire argument.

It is not a conclusion. It is an unsupported premise.

You keep asserting it as self-evident, but you never justify it — and modern biology exists precisely because this premise is false.

Why this premise fails — cleanly and decisively

You are treating engineered complexity and evolved complexity as the same kind of thing.

They are not.

• Engineered systems require foresight because they do not reproduce.
• Biological systems acquire complexity because they do reproduce with variation and selection.

This is not a minor distinction — it is the entire point of evolutionary theory.

Your “DNA = computer code” analogy fails for one reason only

Computer code:
• does not self-replicate,
• does not mutate,
• does not undergo selection,
• does not form populations.

DNA:
• self-replicates,
• mutates,
• undergoes selection,
• forms lineages with inheritance.

Because of this difference, complexity in DNA does not require foresight.

Selection replaces foresight.

That is not philosophical hand-waving — it is an empirically demonstrated mechanism (e.g., antibiotic resistance, experimental evolution, observed speciation).

This is where your syllogism breaks — exactly

Your key move is:

If computers require intelligence,
and DNA is more complex than computers,
then DNA requires intelligence.

That inference is invalid.

It assumes that complexity alone is the relevant variable.

It isn’t.

The relevant variable is whether the system can accumulate complexity incrementally without foresight.

Biological systems can.
Artifacts cannot.

Why fine-tuning does not rescue this argument

Even if we grant (for the sake of argument) that:

• the universe is fine-tuned,
• the fine-tuning is unexplained,
• the fine-tuning is improbable,

none of that restores your failed premise.

Fine-tuning concerns boundary conditions of physics.
Evolution concerns biological mechanisms operating within those conditions.

Once replication exists, fine-tuning does zero explanatory work at the biological level.

This is not denial — it is scope discipline.

Why repeating “no life without fine-tuning” does not help

Everyone agrees life depends on chemistry and physics.

What does not follow is that physics therefore explains feathers, eyes, or genomes.

Dependency ≠ explanation.

Saying otherwise is the same error every time, no matter how emphatically it’s stated. You keep making the same mistake in all of your posts in this thread.

Your argument collapses at one point and never recovers:

You assume that complexity + function logically implies intelligence.

Evolution exists because that assumption is false.

Until you either:
• show that cumulative selection cannot generate functional complexity, or
• show that biological systems behave like non-replicating artifacts,

no appeal to fine-tuning, improbability, entropy, or intuition can touch evolution.

That is the wall — and it isn’t on the other side.

[The Barbarian]

The Big Hoax: Turns Out Junk DNA Isnt Junk After All

"For decades, evolutionary scientists dismissed vast stretches of our DNA as useless "junk"leftover evolutionary baggage with no purpose. This concept conveniently supported evolutionary theory while dismissing what creationists have long maintained: our genome reflects intelligent design, not random processes. Recent scientific discoveries have dramatically shifted the paradigm, revealing that what was once labelled "junk" actually serves critical functions in Gods intricate design."

The term "junk DNA" emerged in the 1970s to describe the approximately 98% of human DNA that doesnt code directly for proteins. Evolutionists seized upon the concept, claiming these vast non-coding regions represented evolutionary debrisbroken genes and viral remnants accumulated through millions of years of mutation and selection.

They are misinformed. When I was an undergraduate in the 1960s, there were journal articles on the functions of non-coding DNA. Last time I checked, there are still some articles available on PubMed.

Some of it, like retroviral fragments and old broken genes (like the vitamin C gene) are in deed without function.

Most animals produce vitamin C using an enzyme called GULO. About 60 to 70 million years ago, a mutation in our primate ancestors disabled the GULO gene.
https://www.earth.com/news/our-bodies-q ... parasites/

Fruit-eating primates get all the vitamin C they need from diet, so they don't need the GULO gene. But now, it appears that losing that gene has benefits in fighting parasitic infections.

Non-coding (what creationists call "Junk") DNA does various things. And recently, it was found that non-coding DNA is the source of newly-evolved genes.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-025-00929-9

[The Barbarian]

Correction... I should have said "a source of new genes." Gene duplication and mutation still account for many new genes as well.